WESTLOCK - Kerri’s Bakery was popping and hopping on July 9 as performers Justin and Chelsey Wiesinger opened for Eric Kane on his Water My Soul Western Canada Tour.
The Barrhead-based duo has been the opening act for Eric Kane on his Water My Soul Western Canada tour. Their music is inspired a lot by classic rock bands like Barenaked Ladies and Bowling for Soup.
Residents of Westlock might recognize them from their latest music video Garage Sailing, which was filmed during the town-wide garage sale back in June.
The video went live on June 30 and according to Justin Wiesinger’s post on Facebook, the song was signed by TheSoul, a company and record label that runs high-profile accounts. The song has been used as background music on social media reels with over 10 million views.
“Garage sailing and thrifting and all the vintage stuff really shows us what's real and what's genuine and so Garage Sailing is just about fun, it's about relationships and not having to spend a lot of money,” said Justin.
The song was inspired by their trip around Westlock last year during the garage sales when they found He-Man toys, laser discs and fancy purses, all mentioned in their single.
Part of their style of music is seeing what makes them excited and emotional and then turning that into a hit for everyone, “So generally, I think music is inspired by emotional things. It's like capturing a cultural moment that's relatable. It's like ‘I love this. Maybe somebody else likes garage sailing.’”
The couple will be finishing off the tour with Kane while making their stops at local libraries for free performances.
Kane, an Edmonton-based musician, has been in the industry for over ten years, performing in various cities across Canada and bringing his soulful aura to audiences everywhere.
While music has always been in his blood because of his talented grandfather, he never saw music as something he could do until he was 16 and got his first guitar. “My brother though was the one who really acted on the music and I really admired that. I went to all their practices, and witnessed them playing in a heavier rock metal band.” Kane says.
Kane ended up playing the drums in his brother’s band for five years before his brother's passing.
“At that point, I was still really shy and I would never have been able to sing in front of people and talk. And then my brother passed and I ended up writing him a song that went out about a month after he passed and I posted it on Facebook.”
The song Over and Over went viral, leading to media coverage and on-air performances, “The reaction I got to that was the moment I knew that this is what I was supposed to do. And I [was] flooded with messages from thousands of people that I’ve never met before thanking me for opening my heart and putting it on paper [in a] song.”
His tour includes major cities like Kelowna, Calgary and Victoria as well as rural communities like Barrhead, Slave Lake and Westlock. Kane found that playing at big arenas was getting harder for independent artists like himself.
“So I started finding little rooms in and around those big cities where I could put 50 to 100 people in a room and they're all there attentively listening and creating mini theatres.”
Throughout the performance, Kane would talk about the importance of mental health citing that the death of his brother was from a failed recovery and health system. These tragedies and losses were the creative focus of his music.
“The original reason was therapy,” Kane said. “And it is still therapy. But now that I'm living life and healing and coming out on the other side of all these things, it's a lot of the lessons that I've learned throughout those struggles and those wins and those losses, the yin and yang of life and those are the things that really inspire me to write and they're usually personal experiences for sure.”
The set was beautifully designed to capture the audience in the last ten years of Kane’s life through the loss of his brother and the struggle with his mental health then leading into rekindling the love he has for himself. He hopes that his music sparks conversation.
“I think one of the greatest things we can do is just talk about whatever we're going through,” said Kane.
“And whether that's grief, whether that's loss, whether that's addiction, whether that's mental health, the way out of your head and the way forward is speaking to others about it.”
His latest single, Water My Soul, which he is on tour for, reached 40,000 listens on Spotify as of July 9, saying that it makes him feel like he is really on to something.
