At Queen’s Orientation Week six years ago, Bedouin Soundclash bassist Eon Sinclair thought he had everything figured out.
“I was set that I was going to do my geography and love it, and do my history and love it, and come out as a teacher and love teaching,” said Sinclair, ArtSci ’04.
Two albums, a Zellers commercial, international tours and a 2006 Juno Award for Best New Group later, things have turned out a little bit differently.
Sinclair, singer/guitarist Jay Malinowski and drummer Pat Pengelly met in their first year at Queen’s and bonded over a shared appreciation of reggae. The band originally included Brett Dunlop on hand percussion.
“We used to play in the basement of Morris Hall. Pat was over there and they have … a study kind of thing down there, and since his drums were all over there, he and his friends would just take us down,” said Sinclair.
“Jay and myself were in Waldron Tower, where there really is no adequate common areas, so [we] would take our guitars and amps and just walk across campus with them, and set them up in the basement down there, and we’d practice for hours.”
After first-year exams, Bedouin Soundclash recorded their first album—2001’s Root Fire—in 12 hours, featuring the campus hit “Santa Monica.” Later that year, they won the Queen’s Battle of the Bands competition.
Root Fire was picked up by Montreal-based label Stomp Records and distributed nationally, followed by cross-country tour dates for a band still concerned with their coursework.
“It’s a hard thing to figure out, because ultimately you’re at Queen’s to study a particular subject, and there isn’t really a degree program in being a band. Your time has to be divided … There were definitely moments throughout where we questioned whether we should stay, whether we should go, what we should do. Should we move to a place where a scene was already happening and try to make music the same, or stop, and just go back to the academics?”
Sinclair said it took a while for some of the city’s main concert venues to give the band a chance, but once Bedouin proved they could draw a crowd, local promoters ed them. “That really helped us hone our live performance and that’s one of the things that we’re most proud of in this band, it’s one of the things that a lot of people have come to expect from us is a good live show.”
2004’s follow-up Sounding A Mosaic spawned the future Zellers jingle “When The Night Feels My Song,” which was a monster summer radio and video hit in 2005, becoming the number two most played track on Canadian radio. The band’s off-the-floor, groove-heavy but accessible sound stands out on the mainstream rock airwaves.
“We stand out because we’re doing something that hasn’t really been on mainstream radio for a while, which is heavily reggae-influenced, and ska-influenced as well … We didn’t need a sound with a lot of shine, we didn’t need to sound really well-produced, because the production value is there in the arrangement of the songs and the parts we put into them.”
According to Sinclair, fans drawn in by “When The Night Feels My Song” should find more to enjoy on Street Gospels, due out next spring.
“‘When The Night Feels My Song’ is the last song that was written for Sounding a Mosaic, and most of the songs on the [new] album are closer to that direction than some of the songs on Sounding A Mosaic, which still [had] really clear influences—like, ‘this is a drum and bass song, and this is a two-step song, and this is a soca song.’
“We tried to keep everything really concise, basically making—I guess, for lack of a better term—pop songs, but … also really, really interesting stories about people and places that were around us.”
Bedouin’s latest video for “Gyasi Went Home” was filmed over a week on location in Guyana. It gave Sinclair the opportunity to bring Malinowski and Pengelly to the country for the first time.
“My whole family’s from Guyana and I know that a lot of people—especially in Canada—have had encounters with Guyanese people, and people … don’t really know what the music coming from there is like or what the country’s like, or what the culture’s really like,” he said. “It seems to be really ambiguous, where people recognize it’s Caribbean culture but think Guyanese people are Jamaican, or Trinidadian, and they’re not.
“[Pat and Jay] know my parents, they know my family … they’ve had the food and they know the culture, but there’s nothing like going to a nation to actually immerse yourself … So I was really happy that I had the opportunity to introduce these guys to my roots.”
Like this year’s frosh, who face an Orientation Week without house parties, Bedouin’s future also encountered a tamer week than they were expecting.
“Queen’s was really notorious, prior to our year, for having a really party-intensive, alcohol-friendly frosh week experience, to put it lightly,” he said. “And our year was the first year they had a major crackdown and said ‘No, the focus is not going to be partying and alcohol, it’s going to be learning your campus environment.’ … It was a lot of fun, but it wasn’t the O-Week experience that I think we all envisioned.”
Sinclair, usually quick to respond, took a few moments to consider what advice he would give to this year’s frosh.
“I would tell them to really take the time to explore a lot of different options while you’re [there],” he said. “You don’t always know exactly what you want and it’s okay to not know exactly what you want. But the important thing is to explore different ideas and be open to them. Let nature take its course … ’cause you’ll end up finding something that, I think, is worthwhile.”
In the next month, Bedouin will issue a three-song sampler CD including a track from Street Gospels, “12:59 Lullaby,” and a song from their Bedouin Soundclash vs. Bad Brains mash-up EP.
The band has returned to Canada for an orientation week tour fresh off headlining the Carling stage at the Reading and Leeds festival. But reflecting on the most memorable experiences in their career, simpler and more intimate moments stand out for Sinclair.
“When we get an opportunity to do something new and different, those are the things that I always ,” he said. “I the first time we went over to the UK, and the first time we played there was a really small bar called The Polar in Brighton … It wasn’t a great gig: we were playing off the floor, the amps were coming out, Pat’s bass drum kept moving around so a friend of ours had to sit in front of it the whole show so it wouldn’t jump across the stage. But we played, and people loved it, and that was an amazing moment.
“Beyond that, I really like the moments when we have an opportunity to sit down at soundcheck … and somebody will start playing, and we’ll all jump in … and by the end of the soundcheck we’ve got a new song,” he said. “It’s the creative interaction between the three of us that excites us the most.”
Tickets for the all-ages frosh concert, also featuring Matt Mays and El Torpedo and the Pocket Dwellers, are available to Queen’s students only for $15 at Destinations and the QEA booth at today’s sidewalk sale. Tickets for the official afterparty at Alfie’s (19+) with Sinclair DJing are $5 and available at Destinations and the QEA and TAPS sidewalk sale booths.
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