By Jim Barber
With a house filled with visiting family, enjoying the warmth of a northern Alberta July, all seemed well and good for Jared Salte and his partner in life and music Bethany Schumacher, better known as the innovative Canadian industrial alt pop group The Royal Foundry.
But during the still simmering night in this summer of 2023, one of those visiting family members smelled smoke.
What followed was an 18-month tempest-tossed journey into a world filled with high anxiety, uncertainty, dislocation and daily frustration. Yet, it also ended up being a period of strength, resilience and perseverance, what both Salte and Schumacher have called one of the most rewarding and creatively edifying experiences of their already remarkable musical careers, which has seen them release five albums, many singles, all to critical and popular acclaim, since 2014.
The satisfying result is the eminently meaningful and melodic new album, Be Kind. Rewind., released in early May of 2025. Royal Foundry’s latest artistic outpouring was essentially completed on a run-and-gun, ad hoc basis during the 18-month period that saw the couple have to leave their home because of the ensuing damage from an attic fire in their home in High River. It wasn’t supposed to be 18 months, but what started off as three or four, turned into six, which turned into a year, and finally ended up being a year and a half.
“We don’t know exactly what happened, but it happened in our attic, so maybe it was rodents chewing on the wires. We have a pretty old house, at least 125 years old, so some of that wiring’s pretty old to begin with. The damage from the actual fire was very minimal. It slowly burned in the attic probably for hours even before an alarm went off. Most of the damage was from the firefighters putting it out, and then having an old home means we have asbestos in all our insulation. So that was the real damage, and it was a complete mess, because they had to rip up pretty much everything in the house, which was a bit of a bummer. And so we were displaced for 18 months just bouncing around from temporary place to place,” Salte said, adding that he was sleeping soundly at the time of the conflagration but fortunately his brother-in-law, who was there with his wife and six kids, was up.
“He started looking around and then the alarm went off, but you know even when it went off, the instinct is to shut it off because we couldn’t see anything. Often the last thing you think is there’s an actual real fire. We were all just trying to shut off the alarms, but then we all started to smell it and decided, ‘yeah, we gotta go.’ We didn’t see any fire until we had evacuated, and the firefighters had shown up. Once they shone a spotlight on our roof we could see all this smoke. So it was a good thing to have extra company that night, because I think we might not have noticed it or slept through it for a while longer. It could have been way worse. And it was dealing with the aftermath, not the fire itself that cause most of the frustration – dealing with the insurance companies and contractors and not having any sort of timeline for when we could come home.”
Throwing metaphorical gasoline on an already raging inferno of stress was the fact that at the time of the fire Schumacher, Salte’s wife of now a dozen years, was about five months pregnant with their first child. Otto would be born just a few months later, on Nov. 13, 2023 – a good month before he was expected. So, yeah, life just decided to toss a few unexpected curveballs Salte and Schumacher’s way.
“He was pretty big. When he came and we were in the NICU [Neonatal Intensive Care Unit] every nurse and doctor was like, ‘you know, he doesn’t look like a preemie.’ But they still had to do a lot of stuff to get him back to normal because he was early, and his lungs weren’t fully developed, which is scary. We were there for a week and that was very stressful,” he said, of his now healthy, happy little man.
“She was very solid about it. Bethany is the most emotionally consistent person I’ve ever met. Obviously him coming early and not being in our home made things a lot harder. But in a way, I don’t know, I think sometimes having stuff like that happen focuses you. If you’re totally comfortable in life and everything’s going well and you go through all your maternity appointments and stuff, you can almost have too much time to think and too much time to stress. So in a weird way, we were able to just do what we had to do.”
Showing an inner resolve in the face of adversity, not only did Salte and Schumacher get through the experience in terms of just their day-to-day lives, but they channeled the extra emotional tumult into their songwriting and performances on Be Kind. Rewind, adding an unmistakable sense of urgency and energy to what were already masterful examples of songcraft and musicality.
On their social media, when hyping up the release of the album, The Royal Foundry described the new music as raw, nostalgic, loud, vulnerable and weird. Anyone following the band since their indie-folk days more than a decade ago understands that those epithets are always applicable to the music crafted by this talented and highly literate duo. This time out, those characteristics were more intense and unbridled, adding up to the group’s most visceral collection of music thus far.
And even though the conceptual vision for what would become Be Kind, Rewind. was established by The Royal Foundry well before a smoking attic and adorable baby upended things, these happenings injected an unmistakable frisson that reinforced the theme – that being the strange new world post-COVID pandemic.
“Originally we were going to release this as two separate EPS: Be Kind first, which we actually did first, and then Rewind right after. But we just decided to package it all together at the same time, because it felt silly to put one out with its own cover and art and everything and then do another one just a month later. So we had that concept before any of that other stuff happened. We stared writing in 2022 and actually had four songs done by early 2023,” said Salte, who took this interview call solo while Schumacher was tending to little Otto.
“We were just starting to exhale after COVID and, like everybody else, we wanted to play catch up because we hadn’t released anything for a long time [since Little High, Little Low in 2022]. So we were ready for it. Musically, the Rewind part was taken from the old Blockbuster Video stores, and it was very nostalgic for us. We wanted to create an album of music that kind of reminded us of our teenage years, those formative years of the 1990s. And then, lyrically, the Be Kind part really did come from all the stresses we’d been going through. I’d been getting into [the ancient Greek philosophical discipline] Stoicism and this idea of just giving up yourself and your problems and instead expressing gratitude and happiness in all situations. So that’s where that part came from. And we found that lyrically and musically, those two ideas sort of married together well.”
Another factor that seems to have added an extra element of focused creativity to the entire process was that The Royal Foundry reached out to include a third voice and set of ears in the studio in the person of producer Ryan Worsley.
“This was the first time we handed the reins over to someone else for producing the full album. We had collaborated before with other people, maybe on a song or two, but this was the full record produced by someone other than ourselves. We kind of produced the first version of the record, because our demos are not normal demos. I do studio work all the time, so we fully do all the songs when we demo. It’s really not what you’re supposed to do, especially if you’re hiring an outside producer, but I think with technology now, more and more people are doing that for their pre-production,” Salte said.
“In a way it was a little difficult to give up that sort of control because you get married to your ideas, processes, and whatnot. But we really wanted to just open ourselves up to letting him shape things. Not blindly of course, obviously we have our own musical discretion, but I think it was, overall, very fulfilling because we essentially spent probably three months working on the album ourselves and then another two months working on that album with Ryan. It was probably the most we’ve ever really dove into the meat of the songs. Having that other voice challenges you. We’ve had feedback before on songs, but with Ryan we were going line by line on the lyrics and really dialing in the tone for each guitar sound and things like that. We’d always done that, but there’s just another level and another perspective with someone like Ryan, and that was invaluable for sure.”
Returning to the album after the fire, but before Otto was born, Salte and Schumacher channeled all the negative energy into their work, using the recording process as a healthy distraction.
“It did impact the performance, because it was a chance to get some of the frustration and angst out. Arguing with the insurance company is extremely frustrating and time consuming. I think it was like having another part-time job for me, spending around 20 hours a week meeting with contractors or arguing with insurance adjusters with them constantly trying to devalue our property. So, like I said before, that was part of the inspiration behind most of the songs that were done in that second phase after the fire, which probably affected what we were writing about lyrically,” he said.
Be Kind. Rewind. is The Royal Foundry at their very best, incorporating powerfully infectious melodies, raw riffs, catchy choruses, compelling lyrics, artful harmonies, layered synth and industrial sonics, with, as already discussed, a heightened, intense energy that is palpable from the first drop of the needle on the lead-off track ‘There Goes the Neighbourhood.’
“That was one of the ones that kind of came later in the process. It’s a special one for us. We always envisioned it as kind of a sci-fi thing about a the robotic, dystopian, suburban future, which is a commentary on the sameness and mundaneness of the suburbs, and everyone blending in with their neighbours because they don’t want to stand out,” Salte said.
“Not that there’s anything wrong with backyard barbecues and people always cutting their lawn, I actually like mowing my lawn while listening to a podcast. But sometimes in those sorts of places there’s this Hobbit-like mentality that we all get into where it’s ‘this is how you do things. We don’t like change. We just stay within the lines,’ and sometimes that sort of life feels a little bit robotic. And this song is our commentary on that.”
The damage from the fire was confined to the main house, so The Royal Foundry’s studio, in a detached garage, was spared. Hours after the fire, Salte said he managed to get into the studio to check on it, and once inside, ideas started to percolate in his fertile songwriting mind.
“Thankfully, it was fine. Being a musician, I have different priorities than a normal person, so I just started playing on the piano and recording ideas in the moment. I wasn’t there to grab anything to take back to where we were staying, I guess I just had an impulse to capture some musical moments and see if there was anything here, because I was an open wound at the time. I was feeling quite a bit of feelings so let’s just put down some ideas. And something came out of that time that turned into ‘I Give Up,’” he explained of the origins of one of the most powerful tracks on the album, one that, again, was one of the last to be completed for the album.
On a Facebook post, the band described the song, returning to the theme of Stoicism, as “not a song about quitting. It’s about surrendering to the moment, letting go of what you can’t control and focusing on what you can – your mind, your resilience, your next step forward.”
The video for the uplifting and genuinely fun track Howlin’ At the Moon, as well as the recorded audio track, features a guest cameo from the only four-legged member of The Royal Foundry, the couple’s three-year-old toy Australian Shepherd, Alfie.
“The title did not come from our dog, although when I was recording the vocal demos for it, Alfie started howling along with me. And it made it on the record. He actually harmonized. He hit the right note and everything. So we made sure that he was in there, and that he also had a starring role in the video.,” Salte said.
Throughout the length of the Be Kind. Rewind. album, there are short, instrumental links acting as connective tissue musically and tonally between the fuller songs. One of the most evocative is entitled ‘TwentyTwentyThree’ which kind of sums up that year in less than a minute and a half.
“It’s obviously about capturing that time for us. It kicks off with a crowd cheering. That was the show we played the night before the fire, then you hear a fire truck siren and then at the end there’s our baby’s heartbeat.”
Two of the more pop-centered compositions for the project are the songs ‘Famous,’ and “I Don’t Want to Talk.’”
“’Famous was the first song that we finished. It’s a pretty sarcastic song, I think, to some people. Sometimes people listen to it and, if you’re just listening at the surface level you might think, ‘yeah, I want to be famous.’ But we’re not touting it as a great thing in the song. And it came right away. I think I came up with that beat that kicks it off, and the song ended up being one of those ones that just kind of wrote itself. I think we were done in less than a day,” he said, throwing kudos to drummer Cody Hiles for his work on the album.
“I Don’t Want to Talk was the last song we wrote for the record. We wrote it when we were living with my parents, and I was back in my old bedroom, with the newborn and with Bethany and you’re looking at all the old posters on the way and seeing that nothing’s changed there. It was a step back in time that fit in with the Rewind theme. We were at my parent’s a lot, and it’s where we did the album artwork and photography too.”
The ability to use the creation of a work of art to help distract from such monumental, life-changing experiences as the displacement from your home for well over a year and the premature birth of your first child – running concurrently – was helpful for Slate and Schumacher in keeping their sanity. But so, interestingly, was the COVID pandemic that inspired the album in the first place.
“We felt kind of seasoned because COVID happened and it was a similar situation in terms of how it upset our lives, as it did most people. We were living in Nashville when COVID happened. At the same time, our visas were running out and it was time to go back home,” Salte said.
“We had a period of a year living with parents and not knowing where were going to go in life. Then we bought this house that ended up having a fire a couple of years later. Yes, the fire and the baby was difficult, but we felt well practiced because of COVID which was pretty intense and depressing too. That situation of being displaced was tough, but we felt like seasoned veterans this time. When the fire happened it was more like, ‘okay, what do we need to do.’”
With Otto closing in on two years of age, and undoubtedly in his ‘I want to run around and explore the world’ phase, touring plans for The Royal Foundry will have a bit of a twist moving forward.
“Early on, we took some shows, and we did it as a duo with just me and the drummer [the aforementioned Cody Hile.] Now that Otto’s a bit older, it’ll be more of a normal tour. We have a very supportive family who can help out when we’re on the road. We’re looking at setting up a tour for spring of 2026 to support the new album. This summer we’re just doing festivals and not going too far from home.”
For more information on Be Kind, Rewind and forthcoming touring plans, visit https://www.theroyalfoundry.com.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for more than 30 years. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he works as a communications and marketing specialist, and is an avid volunteer in his community. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
