I’m Andy from Vancouver, BC and play guitar in Echo Nebraska. Our EP, Send the Ships comes out on January 26. Our band had quite an unconventional beginning.
I met Devan and Gunn less than two weeks after moving to Vancouver from Ontario. They were making a record under Amber Hills with producer, Colin Stewart. I was the assistant engineer on the album. Devan had a bunch of songs that didn’t quite fit that band’s sound. He showed them to me. Naturally, like any aspiring young music producer, you invite talented songwriters over to your place with your recording gear sprawled out over the living room, crack a few beers, and see what happens.
We never intended to start a band. I just really dug providing instrumentation to Devan’s songs. We talked about doing the odd open mic together, but it wasn’t until we had an arsenal of these fully-fledged demos, that we decided to form a group and head to the studio.
We knew Gunn had to play bass, because frankly, he’s awesome. His ear and the way he locks into a kick drum is second to none.
Finding a drummer was a tad more tricky, but Devan called on a former roommate of his, Stacy. We had a few weeks of rehearsal, then went into the studio to record Send the Ships.
Immediately, everything clicked. We started to sound like a band. So we spent the summer recording, and even made a music video for “Hey, Allison”. Only a few family members and friends knew what we were up to. But in late November, we announced that we existed and had this record coming out. We released the music video, and played a couple of gigs to kick things off. We didn’t want to start off slowly.
We still needed one more piece to complete the puzzle. We put out a feeler searching for a keyboardist who could also provide backing vocals. Luckily we found a great one with Karen. The band is now complete! So the band that was never supposed to be a band is now, most definitely, a band that is having a great time making music together.
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