{"id":12499,"date":"2023-07-03T12:30:00","date_gmt":"2023-07-03T17:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/?p=12499"},"modified":"2026-05-22T13:06:27","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T18:06:27","slug":"artist-interview-wild-rivers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/2023\/07\/03\/artist-interview-wild-rivers\/","title":{"rendered":"Artist Interview: Wild Rivers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

*We are excited to cover the Winnipeg Folk Festival again! Here is some of our highlights from last year!*<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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by Isabella Soares<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indie trio Wild Rivers might have started their career in 2016, but their music reached other parts of the world through streaming during the pandemic. Now that touring and playing festivals are back on the table, Devan Glover (vocals), Khalid Yassein (vocals and guitar), and Andrew Oliver (guitar and bass) have been witnessing crowds singing along throughout Europe, the US, and Canada. After the band members left the Snowberry Field Stage at the 2022 Winnipeg Folk Festival, they talked to Stylus Magazine about their favourite songs to play live, the process behind their latest album Sidelines<\/em>, and weighed-in on writing love and heartbreak songs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Kicking off the Western Canada leg of their tour, Wild Rivers came to Winnipeg after a few years only to notice that there was a jam-packed crowd ready to hear their songs live in the festival grounds. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe last few times we performed were big shows, but not all were our fans. Today it was a big show and a ton of people were singing along, so it feels like we made some progress,\u201d Oliver says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The band released their sophomore album, Sidelines<\/em>, in February 2022 and its soothing, happy\/sad sound reached over 300 million collective streams. Despite it coming out recently, they started working on the record prior to the pandemic. To Glover, the extended time played in their favour. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe had written most of it right before the pandemic, which was great. We moved into a house in L.A. together and wrote a lot of the songs there. It was our first time doing that whole thing of living together and setting up all our instruments in the living room. When it came time to record, it was March 2020. We started in Connecticut, and we were kind of finishing it throughout the year. Some of it was done remotely and finally we went back to Kingston, where the band actually started, to a beautiful studio named The Bathouse Studio and finished it there,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to Sidelines<\/em>\u2019 production process, the band also shared their interest in writing songs about love and heartbreak. Although there are equal shares of both throughout their discography, Yassein says that \u201cthe love songs happen first and the heartbreak ones tend to happen later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor me, and the rest of the band can attest, it’s easier to write songs when you are not so good. It\u2019s kind of a therapeutic thing to help you come to terms with how you are feeling,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now that they are back on the road, the band has gotten to play a few of their latest tracks as well as their earlier songs. \u201cThinking \u2018bout Love\u201d for instance, continues to cheer up the crowds in and out of shows. The single even received a GOLD Music Canada certification in June 2022, symbolizing its fan-stamp of approval. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe usually close with \u201cThinking \u2018bout Love\u201d now and that is one that everyone stands up and sings along to, which is really special. \u201cSmall Talk\u201d is also fun and most of the time in venues we get people to go really low and get as small as they can. At a certain point, the song bursts open and we do a solo,\u201d Oliver says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following Canada\u2019s tour dates, Wild Rivers will take a couple weeks off before heading to their US run starting in September. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

*We are excited to cover the Winnipeg Folk Festival again! Here is some of our highlights from last year!* by Isabella Soares Indie trio Wild Rivers might have started their career in 2016, but their music reached other parts of the world through streaming during the pandemic. Now that touring and playing festivals are back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12500,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,7],"tags":[1461,1551,1106],"class_list":["post-12499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-live-bait","tag-concert-review","tag-wild-rivers","tag-winnipeg-folk-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12499"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12501,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12499\/revisions\/12501"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}