tunesday - hey rosetta! interview

Canada has gifted us many wonderful things over the years, like the walkie-talkie, Trivial Pursuit and the goopy goodness that is poutine. From a musical standpoint, though, we're giving them enthusiastic high fives for alt-rock group Hey Rosetta! – a seven-piece collective making tunes to sway to, and get lost in an introspective dream.

With their fourth album Second Sight just out in Australia, we had a wee chat with drummer Phil Maloney to get to know the guys a little better.



How did you meet and get together as a band?
Tim (singer/songwriter) and Adam (guitar) met initially as their older sisters were already friends. They knew of Josh as a pretty legendary bass player around town and he was game to join the band. I met Josh in the orchestra pit of a musical we were playing in and joined shortly after. Romesh (cello) actually toured with the band during the very first tour but had to leave to finish up his music degree. He finished his degree and came back and has been an integral part of the band for a few years now. We met Kinley (violin/keys/vocals) through some friends who we were touring with. She was just so lovely and talented that it was a no brainer. She joined a few years ago too. The latest member to join the touring cast is Mara (french horn/keys/vocals) - she's in a number of bands in Toronto and back home in St. John's so we've all been friends with her for years. She's been in the band for about year.

Five adjectives to describe your music?
Poetic, eloquent, expressive, sincere, dynamic.

Have you had any odd fan moments?
We have had fans with lyrics and artwork tattooed on them, which isn't really odd at all, but pretty awesome! I can't even believe it's true but on a couple of occasions, people have proposed to their partners at our shows. That's wild!

What's your most un-rock n roll pastime?
Where we live is a very very small town. About 90,000 people total. And that's 20% of the population of our province. The province is about two times the size of New Zealand, to put it into perspective. There's lots of beautiful landscape to see - we do a lot of sightseeing. We get pretty excited about icebergs. And we do things like baking bread with nan.

Biggest lesson you've learned in the past 12 months?
Life is far too short and anything can happen. Do as much living as you can RIGHT NOW. We travel a lot on tour. It takes us about 50 hours of driving before we get to New York for example. So you have a lot of time to think. But in addition to just living the best life you can, I'd say we've all learned that we are a family. We spend nearly a year in the studio making SECOND SIGHT. We came to know ourselves and eachother through that process. It was long, it was daunting, there were a lot of ups and downs (we got dropped by our US label, for example) but when we finished the record, we all knew that we had really made something together that we're all very proud of.

What's up next for the band?
Our new album Second Sight has just been released, so we're having a big party in Toronto for that. We play some more little shows in the area then take off for Germany and France. Then, in November, we tour east to west across the US with fellow Canadian band Stars. Hopefully we'll be back over to Australia in the early new year. We do a big holiday celebration back home in Newfoundland for 5,000 people each year and we've just announced that. So, in short, we'll put our album out and go on tour for a few years!