by Shanell Dupras
The Vibrating Beds have been a bit off the charts this summer writing new material, and with a sudden burst of shows coming up in August, Stylus decided to sit down with singer/guitar player Jenna Diubaldo to catch up, talk about their upcoming show with Salinas and Clipwing at the Windsor on August 15h, and see what else is coming up for the band.
Stylus: What has the Vibrating Beds been up to lately?
Jenna Diubaldo: …There’s plans in the works to record a new album, but we’re not quite sure yet [on the details]. We’ve been talking to John Paul Peters about recording, and applying for grants… Hopefully that will work out in the fall and have something out next year.
Stylus: Were you thinking of doing another 7” or is this going to be a full length?
JD: No I think we’re actually going to do a full length. We’ve had a lot of people saying they want to see that. Well not a lot of people. By a lot of people I mean like five people.
Stylus: I think I’m one of those five people!
JD: Yeah, you and Kent Davies… We thought about going the 7” route again, and I mean who’s to say that won’t happen? We’re aiming for a full length. We have enough material now for a full length; we’re hoping to write a little bit more. We always like to go in with some extra’s [so we] can cut stuff if we need to. We’re looking at recording with JP Peters eventually. I’ve heard great stuff about him; a lot of people are working with him. He seems interested in working with us too and it’s always good to have someone who actually cares about getting a good sound out of you and has an investment in your album to a certain extent.
Stylus: The Vibrating Beds have always done vinyl releases. If you do a full length will you put it on a CD as well?
JD: That’s still up for debate. It depend show much money we have! If we had all the money in the world we would definitely do a vinyl LP and then a CD as well… Everyone downloads everything anyway, but every time we go on tour we have people asking for a CD. There are a lot of people that buy our 7″s, but some of them buy it only because we have a download card with it… I think for a lot of people it’s like “Ohh I get this record that I’m never going to listen to and I’ll download it and put it on my iPhone” or whatever… In short, hopefully both mediums. Hopefully it’ll be on record, CD, and on iTunes.
Stylus: How did you guys hook up with Salinas and Clipwing for this show?
JD: We’ve played with Salinas before once or twice. Darcy just emailed us and said, “Hey do you guys want to play this show? You’re one of our first picks to play.” We haven’t played in the past few months. We were hoping to record in July and ended up having to push it back a bit; we figured since we haven’t played all summer we might as well play some shows! It ended up that, you agree to a couple of shows and then a couple more shows show up that you can’t say no to. [We’re] playing four shows in August now… [One that’s past], the Salina’s show, then we’re playing with Andre Williams, then we have a show with, I think Ben Disaster at the end of the month too? It’ll be a busy month!
Stylus: How do you like the Windsor?
JD: The Windsor embodies a lot of the stuff that people miss about The Albert. I think it was a really easy transition. Sam Smith is booking there now, and there’s a really cool music scene going on there now. They’ve taken a step away from just booking blues acts. Good stage; I’ve heard that they’ve even bought the sound system from The Albert too. It’s pretty much The Albert version 2.0… Cheap drinks, good crowd. We definitely like playing there…
Stylus: Why should people come to this show?
JD: First of all the booze is cheap. I’ve seen Salinas before and they’re a really tight band. They have a very interesting blend of influences. I haven’t checked out Clipwing yet but I’ve heard good things about them! It says on the Facebook event that it’s a very eclectic mix of music. Usually you go and see bands that are all of the same genre and the same sort of sound. I think that this is a show to come to where you can see a bunch of different bands play a bunch of different kinds of music. And what else do you have to do on a Thursday night?
Stylus: Are you going to play any of the new songs at the show?
JD: Yeah, there are a couple songs that we wrote when we first got together that we just never recorded; that never made the cut for the 7″. Those will definitely go on the full length. There’s a bunch of new stuff we’ve worked on. A couple of songs we haven’t played out yet. Not sure if those will end up on the set list for this one or not, but there’s definitely a lot of new material that’s in heavy rotation right now that will be on the full length for sure.
Stylus: Do you guys have any major plans for the rest of 2013?
JD: We’ll mostly be fine-tuning our songs and maybe writing a couple more tunes. Hopefully getting into the studio and recording some sort of album – hopefully a full length. We’re hoping to get something out early 2014, and tour and do the whole festival thing, providing that all of our life commitments will let us do that! We applied for NXNE and Sled Island for this year, but it ended up not working out that we could go to either. Which was quite fortunate considering the flooding in Calgary… We ended up not going out there so next year we’re definitely looking to do some of those festivals.
Don’t miss their next gig on August 15th at the Windsor! The doors open at 9:30pm, with Clipwing starting out the show 10, Salinas at 10:40, and the Vibrating Beds take the stage at 11:25. Tickets are a measly $7 at the door.