Get your tickets here - http://www.ticketmaster.ca/Hedley-tickets/artist/970108

Lori Welbourne: Where are you from, Dave? Are you from Vancouver? 

Dave Rosin: No… I’m from Prince George originally. I grew up there and we also lived in Tumbler Ridge and Fort Saint John when my dad was in gas fitting, but my parents now reside in Kelowna so I get up there a couple times a year to visit the folks and the fam and quite enjoy it. It’s definitely a shorter drive there than it is going all the way back to PG.

Lori: You’re playing here in Kelowna on February 10^th

Dave: We’re not only playing in Kelowna on February 10^th but we’re kicking off our entire Shipwrecked tour at Prospera Place which is so exciting. Every time we head out to do another round of shows, those first ones are always so cool because it’s like putting together all the ideas that we’ve been working on for the last 6 months. If you can imagine the accumulation of all the diagrams on napkins and stuff written down on shopping lists and things like that put into a big pile and given to our tour manager with us saying: “okay, let’s make this happen!” The first night is all the pieces coming together and it’s a fantastic part of the process.

Lori: So the tour starts on February 10 and you visit 30 more cities across Canada before ending up back in Vancouver on March 24^th?

Dave: Yes. We get to sleep in our own beds after the last night of the tour, how about that for once?

Lori: Your latest record is called Storms and your tour is called Shipwrecked so one of the first questions I’ll ask you from those sent in on Facebook is if the group has been asked to change the name of the tour in the wake of the recent ship disaster off the coast of Italy.

Dave: No. That was a terrible thing that happened, but of course we had no way of foreseeing it and it’s one of those awful things that happens. All I’ve got to say is that the name “Storms” came directly from the lyrics Jake was writing.  With every other record we’ve had kind of an idea of what we wanted to call it or kind of a way we wanted to lead it and it would all start to fall into place after that. But this time we didn’t know what we were going to call it. We had a bunch of songs and really early on when Jake was showing us some of the lyrics we just couldn’t help but see that there was a real trend and a pattern and it was shaping up to be it’s most lyrically concise record yet. Images of a storm really pulled it out for us, not only lyrically but also in what was going on in our own personal lives as with what everybody else in this world has gone through. Things like new family members being born, losing friends, friends surviving and beating horrible illnesses, losing family members… life can be really up and down at some points and sometimes when you feel your darkest moment and the storm feels like it’s at it’s worst, that’s when all of a sudden the sky gets a little bit brighter and you kind of bond with your  friends and your brothers and even the worst storms have to end.  That was kind of our initial thing, especially with the word “Shipwrecked’ - sometimes you find yourself in a foreign land or on a foreign coast but you’re alive and happy to be there. That’s kind of how we felt.  

Now the funny thing is I’ve been talking to Victoria today and we could easily get shipwrecked there, but it’s going to be more of a problem when we get into places where there’s no ocean. We’ve got some tricks up our sleeves though. Let me just say that we’re bringing the boat to you this time.

Lori: The content of your latest record is material anyone could relate to.

Dave: Well, it means a lot for us to make music for people and not just make music for one type of thing. We’ve never been a band that wants to play the same song over and over again. And the fact that we have a real mixed crew come to our shows, from kids to people in their 20’s to some older folks as well. It’s always been a mixed bag, but it’s something we’ve always enjoyed and it’s like the biggest army we could amass. A little bit of column A, a little bit of column B and then some C too.

Lori: Do you guys still get nervous on stage?

Dave: Not as much on stage because you’re so in-the-moment and Chris says this really well: there are so many parts of our lives that we’re not fully in-the-moment, but in that hour and a half performance there’s nowhere else you can be. You can’t be thinking about how you left the iron on at home - you have to be there with your brothers because the four of us are there making music for all those people and the four of us out there on stage are a very small part of that equation. It’s more about the people that come to the show who have gone and bought the CD, have learned songs, who’ve taken the night off work and bought tickets with their friends and have come out to enjoy it. So the next thing you know there’s a couple hundred and then a couple thousand people in a room all singing the same song and enjoying that same moment together. For us, we’ve become a very small part of that equation, but what a great part it is.  So do we get nervous on stage? No. Do we get a little nervous before that for certain things? Yes. I think we definitely get excited and get those butterflies in the tummy. Tom says: “The day I don’t get that feeling is the day I stop doing this.” I tell kids all the time that there’s no drug that could ever do what performing on stage does for me. It’s like the most natural high you could ever get in life.

Lori: Can we expect a cool set design to go along with the Shipwrecked theme?

Dave: There are some pretty cool things. We’re not going in much of a set-design route like a theatre show would, but we’re bringing in some aspects of that. We have a larger multimedia show planned this time. We’ve had some fans submit photos directly to us for a song and have included them with images we’ll be sharing.  We’re always trying to do something different and the great thing about doing these big rooms is that we can kind of hash out all of our ideas at one time and put all our napkins in a pile at one time and say “okay, here we go” and have the opportunity to try everything. So there’s almost a 3D motion aspect to it this time, more so than some set pieces would allow. But, like I said, we’re bringing the boat to you.

Lori: I’m sure you get asked this quite often. Why did you call the band Hedley?

Dave: We called the band Hedley because Metallica was taken. Actually, Hedley is this old mining town on the Crowsnest Highway that’s been abandoned and years ago we wanted to buy it. We’re over that now, but we found out later that before there was a Merritt Mountain Music Festival  there was a music festival in Hedley. We’d love to go back and do another music festival in Hedley one day and have a big to-do and put a show on right there in the middle of the mountain.

Lori: There are so many bands out there trying to achieve the same kind of success you guys have had. Did you always have a feeling that you would make it?

Dave: I always had a feeling in my heart that I was going to play music. Period. When I was growing up music was very important to me as it is with so many people. Not just listening to it, but I wanted to play it, I wanted to perform. I really have to give my parents a lot of love and credit for supporting me and believing in me and pushing me to follow my dreams as well, but not be silly about things. Jake would say the same thing. We never dreamt about being in a band for a living, we kind of put that on the same scale as playing hockey in the NHL or soccer in the World Cup. For us that seemed like a pipe dream. But if you love doing it for free, just do it. From high school on I  played with as many bands as I possibly could and put my whole heart into it and didn’t really think about money and getting signed and all that stuff. People always say that once you get signed by a record label: “oh it’s all down hill from there.” Well, it’s not down hill from there. Just because you found someone to put out your record doesn’t mean that it’s going to be a success. You have to put a lot of work into it. And that’s what I would say to anybody that’s trying to play for a living, just get ready to pound the pavement and work and play because you love it. And that’s essentially what it comes down to. If Hedley was to all of a sudden end two days from now, the four of us would still be playing  music in some form. It’s just a part of who we are now, and that’s why we play music. Not because we can make a pay cheque from it.

Lori: So it’s just a true passion that you’re following?

Dave: Absolutely.  I learned to play guitar and there’s that point where anybody learning to play the guitar just shuts the door to their bedroom and sits there and really works on it and you’re really bad but you keep working on it and at some point you think: “hey, I’m getting better at this.” Well, that feeling just doubles when you start playing with people in a band and I tell kids this too: You have to start playing with people. It’s one of those things, learning to interact with different musicians in that same language that you can communicate with is beneficial in life, and it just feels good. It feels so good making music with people. We’re really four of the luckiest guys I know getting to play music together for a living.

Lori: Since your success have you had a lot of people from your past reach out to you?

Dave: Yes, but I think that’s just the Internet these days and being on Facebook and stuff. People want to reconnect in general, no matter what you do. I’ve been lucky enough to run into folks that I haven’t seen in a long time and it’s always nice to reconnect. Nobody’s come out of the woodwork trying to hit us up for money or that kind of thing, like “Hey, remember me? I’m your third cousin with a wife removed on your mothers side and I’ve got this great idea to make a million!” Nothing like that. It’s definitely nice to see cousins and friends you haven’t seen in a long time out at shows. The great thing about getting to travel for a living is that I have family all over the country. I’ve got family in Grand Prairie and Kelowna and my wife has family in Montreal and the east coast, so this job gives me the opportunity to see my in-laws and my family several times a year. I get to see my friends that I went to high school with that now live in other parts of Alberta and stuff, so in that sense this is amazing because it allows me to travel and become a weekend warrior popping in on people  And events like the Juno Awards are fun because you get to see friends you haven’t seen for awhile. It’s kind of funny for me and kind of surreal to see the guys from Blue Rodeo and say “Hey Jim, how’s it going?” and they say “Hey Dave, good to see you.” Or you run into the guys from Finger Eleven again and remember coming down to Vancouver for Edgefest and watching them play. So things like that are really neat and that’s actually where we first met Classified and Karl Wolf who will be coming to town with us.  We first saw those dudes at events like that and we played in Halifax on a basketball court during halftime with Classy one time and here we are getting the chance to cross the country back and forth with them. It’s those relationships that you make that make us super fortunate to travel around and make more.

Lori: Do girls still throw panties up on the stage?

Dave: If a boyfriend is taking his girlfriend to the show, it’s a little hard to sneak their panties off and toss them up on stage. They’d have to bring an extra pair. Tom gets a load of bras though. Here’s the thing I will say about females and their underwear: bras can be expensive and any girl that throws a bra on stage, if you go up afterwards thinking you’re going to get your $40 waterbra from LaSenza back, it’s probably not going to happen.