By Jim Barber
From Canada’s ‘Limestone City,’ Kingston, Ontario comes a band build on a rock-solid foundation of superlative musicianship, powerfully emotive vocals, intricate yet eminently accessible progressive-metal compositions, atmospherically lush and vibrant production, haunting melodies and a fierce commitment to creative excellence.
Lotus Shaker has been a stalwart on the Kingston scene for more than a decade, releasing music that is both intensely heavy, and melodically evocative. In recent months, after much experimentation and seeking as close to musical perfection as possible, the band released two singles which are not only emblematic of their insightful and prodigious songcraft, but which have galvanized all who have heard them – ‘Visceral Response,’ and most recently, ‘Dahlia.’
The core duo comprising Lotus Shaker, songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Dan Chisholm and vocalist/songwriter Britt Langford are still mulling over whether ‘Dahlia,’ and it’s emotionally powerful predecessor ‘Visceral Response’ are leading up to something bigger, such as an EP or possibly even an LP. And they’re also considering whether such a release will be released both digitally/online as well as physically with vinyl, CDs or both.
“We don’t really know just yet. I don’t know if people listen to albums as much as they used to. I’m very much an album person myself, but a lot of bands that are more in the genre that we’re kind of based on right now, a lot of them are just doing singles one at a time and then sometimes they’ll do life a four or five song EP. For us, I think that’s probably the goal [to eventually produce an EP or LP]. We do have quite a bit of music on the go and are starting to record a lot of those songs and get them together. We’re really taking our time with it and seeing which way we want to go, what we want to do. Whatever it is, we’re going to do it on our own terms. We’re not really putting specific timeline down and trying to commit to doing that at a certain time. I think we’re really doing it free form,” said Chisholm, adding that there is a case to be made that streaming services are starting to become more costly, as well as understanding, as someone who has spent his life around recording studios, there is something to be said for the audio quality of physical.
“Even now, everything’s kind of inching up all the time. If it’s 20 bucks now a month, it it’s 30 bucks a month for a streaming service next year, and keeps going up, and because there’s multiple streaming services now, you’re spending a lot of money, but you don’t actually own anything at the end of the day. And the audio quality does suffer. We have noticed that as well. Even with YouTube when you put up a video that’s in 4K, it does compress the audio quality and it’s hard to get even that quality in streaming services, especially with dynamic range and stuff like that as well.”
“It is nice to hear the physical aspect is coming back and there’s a resurgence. I think people do like streaming, but also there’s the factor of actually having the music physically on them, so they’re able to go back and forth with it,” added Langford.
“It’s one of those things too, even from the artist’s perspective, you’re probably not going to make as much money if your music is just on a streaming platform. When it’s physical, or when you’re doing merch, people are buying it. And a lot of bands are relying on merch now. So it’s something we’re going to have to really think about, and ultimately we’ll do what’s best for us and for the people who want our music.”
Chisholm and Langford are partners in life as well as music, but, to give it the appropriate credit, it was music that brought the pair together in the first place, as they were both involved in a music production program {now the Music & Digital Media Program] at St. Lawrence College beginning in 2010.
“It was an awesome program because it was music based, but it also had all the digital stuff we’d need, like a Photoshop class. We even had a couple of sessions on grant writing, which is really important stuff as well. There were video production elements and there was also audio production. Our instructor was a local jazz player in town and just an exceptional all-round musician and an incredible engineer as well. That whole thing was really eye-opening because he would have us make projects out of the whole class. He would section us off into five different groups and they would choose a song to record. And you would need a drummer in each group and a guitarist and singer and stuff, and then we moved into recording it all and under his watch, he would push us in the right direction as far as mixing and everything goes. So it was an actual recording experience from beginning to end, which is amazing. And then we would also have one-on-one private lessons with the teachers. I was with Dave Barton, a local jazz guy and an incredible guitarist, and those were some of the greatest lessons I’ll ever have” Chisholm said.
“It was so much fun and we learned a lot. It was basically what we’re still doing now, which is the DIY thing because we learned it all in college. And we were also becoming a couple at the same time. Early on we realized, why don’t we just play together, if we’re already together and in this program,” said Langford.
“And we clicked right away. I think Dan has such a beautiful creative process in terms of the writing. He’s writing a lot of the music and writing the structure and the skeleton of the song on guitar and then getting the drums and the other instrumental parts in. I step back and really let him flourish with that, and then I kind of come in and start thinking about lyrics right away, often before the melody. And having that aspect where I go off and do that kind of separately and then coming back together works so well, because he’s kind of the producer as well in the studio. That’s all been such a great experience lately, especially with this new stuff. It’s been a lot of fun and a great process. And, yeah, I just think we have a lot of respect for each other in a lot of ways, and did right from the beginning.”
Lotus Shaker has seamlessly navigated their way musically through a number of genres and sub genres, adeptly taking bits and pieces from whatever strikes their artistic fancy and adding them to the foundational sound that is uniquely theirs. Their identity is one which is familiar, yet still stands out. It is a style that at one point leaned a little more heavily on blues-based hard rock, but which is now more firmly ensconced in both the prog-rock and prog-metal world. Yet it’s still delightfully fluid, with Langford’s voice in particular adding an element of soulful power and emotive complexity that defies rigid classification.
“When we started Lotus Shaker, it was definitely more bluesy. The rock part was always there, but it’s definitely evolved. I think we’ve both always had a personal taste for the heavier genre, but still keeping it sounding like us, you know, having my voice on it, but incorporating the element of it being very progressive with a lot of different elements and a lot of different sounds. In general, it has gotten a little heavier more recently,” said Langford.
“When I was really young I think I was definitely inspired by Robert Plant for sure. Led Zeppelin was a huge influence to me. But there was also the big divas like Celine Dion for sure. Growing up I was obsessed with her and then I think when I went to college I decided I really wanted to be able to belt it out in a rock setting, and that was influenced by The Gathering and In This Moment and Evanescence and all the sort of Goth rock. Lately I’ve been inspired by a lot of the Nu metal musicians and singers like Daniel Tompkins from Tesseract. He’s probably one of my biggest heroes right now. He’s incredible, absolutely incredible. And of course there’s Tatiana Shmayluk from [Ukrainian metal band] Jinjer, who is also very gifted.”
“The only time we have to put a stamp on what our music is is when you go to upload your music online and it says what would your genre be, and what artists do you sound like and stuff like that. To me, progressive in the sense of progressive rock is probably the best one if you were to put a label on it. We love bands like Dream Theater, we just saw them actually. We’re big Genesis fans as well and King Crimson is one of my favourite bands. I can definitely see elements of Dream Theater in ourselves; we do some of the extreme rhythmic changes ad things like that, as well as very heavy guitar,” Chisholm added.
“We listen to everything. We love classical music. We’re big jazz heads as well and recently we got into some bluegrass guitar stuff as well. Honestly, we like everything. But one of the things that I really admire about the heavy music genre, and I’ve always been a heavy music fan, is that it’s almost like jazz where you can get away with really dissonant chords or certain other things that you can’t get away with maybe as much in the rock genre. I feel a lot of the heavy music is a bit more limitless. You could have a little jazz break if you wanted to and there’s also an audience for a lot of this stuff. We’ve talked to a lot of musicians and fans who follow those sorts of bands and they are a very accepting community for that sort of stuff, which we’ve always admired. I was in a heavy metal band in high school called Goregasm, and it was the heaviest thing I’ve ever played. But by the time I met Britt in college, I was right into the Delta Blues. I was playing fingerstyle Delta Blues and we actually started off with a Blues band called the Libido Blues Band, which was hilarious, and played a bunch of gigs. Then we had another band that drifted into a lot of rock and funk and were starting to get popular in the local bars playing a lot of classic rock covers. COVID kind of cut that off and allowed us to really reflect and kind of create what we wanted to create. We didn’t really have our eyes necessarily set on playing heavy music. It just started to come out that way as we started recording things. And it just keeps getting heavier and heavier. But there’s always a lot of really melodic textures and certain things that I always try to embellish our music with.”
Their songwriting process has evolved as they both have as a couple and as individual creative talents. The more time spent in one another’s company has obviously led to more trust on a personal and creative level, meaning ideas flow back and forth with ease, the unbridled chemistry between Langford and Chisholm creating musical magic, as evidenced by the potently compelling nature of ‘Dahlia’ and ‘Visceral Response.’
“It usually starts with a riff. With ‘Dahlia’ for example, I had a whole bunch of other songs on the back burner that I really wanted to record. And then the week I was going to do that, I went to do a little picking on the guitar and accidentally hit the wrong chord or something and I thought it sounded beautiful. Within a couple of days, that turned into what ‘Dahlia’ is and I wound up recording that really quickly. Inspiration just hit really quick and we would up getting that whole track together and recorded vocals on it. There are other songs that I spent a lot of time on, but for some, you just write a riff and you record it, listen back to it and other stuff all starts to spark out of that. It’s all about making those quick decisions and capturing those happy accidents. I find those songs come together really quickly, whereas we’ll have other songs that I’m sitting on forever,” Chisholm explained.
Lyrically, Langford, poeticism is gleaned from real life – the good, the bad, the tragic, the joyful, the pragmatic and the hopeful.
“Sometimes it’s really, really random where it’ll just come and hit me. I have so many notes in my phone – usually I’ll have my phone on me and I just write whatever thought comes to mind. If I think it’s going to work with the song we’re working on, then I just throw it in there. But usually Dan will give me a really rough draft of the song and I’m able to run off and write to it. I think of Tool, where Maynard [James Keenan, the bound’s founder and frontman] actually listens to the drums and goes with the drums when he’s writing. He always wants to listen to the drums first before anything else, and I think that’s so cool. I’m starting to try to do that more, being better at rhythm with it and with the lyrics as well. But sometimes things just hit so randomly and then all of a sudden I’ve got a chorus, or okay now I’ve got a verse,” she explained, adding that however a song comes, it has to be real, it has to be authentic, and it has to be something that she’s lived and experienced.
“I do it all from personal experiences. It’s almost always from personal stories, and they’re definitely going to be more metaphorical in some aspects. I’m not always going to be literal, or maybe I will, but however it turns out, it’s just running off of personal experience.”
‘Visceral Response’ could not be a more accurate and appropriate title for the previous single, as Langford talks about the extreme sense of grief and loss that led to this cathartic masterwork of melodic metal.
“That song was about by dad. My dad passed away in 2022 and the theme of the song was life and death and the emotions that are tired in with that, the emotions that are tied with grief – especially at the end of the song where I’m singing really powerful and it’s really loud and you know, I’m really belting it out at that point. It’s kind of that sorrow that I felt and still feel to this day. We both wrote that song for him. It’s about sort of witnessing his passing and how life-changing it is for us all, but how beautiful it cane be to be there to honour him into that next chapter,” Langford said.
“Whereas ‘Dahlia’ is totally different. ‘Dahlia’ is kind of about that personal struggle with anxious feelings and trying to overcome them, and how a dahlia flower can grow in the middle of chaos, and that we can also grow within chaos as well. I think the world itself is dealing with a lot of chaos, so it’s about learning how to manage it and cope with it, and still be beautiful.”
Both ‘Visceral Response’ and ‘Dahlia’ are the foundation of this phase of Lotus Shaker’s evolution. It is part of a series of new songs, as mentioned above, that are in the process of being written, refined and recorded. Both Langford and Chisholm note that once they feel there’s enough material in this new vein of songwriting, they will start to play more live shows.
“Our loose game plan is to basically get that set worth of stuff that we can perform live, because we just want to do originals. We’re not doing any covers. I think once we get to that point, once we get them recorded and out there into the world, that will be the time that we’re looking at making some shows happen,” Chisholm said.
In the interim, you can follow Lotus Shaker on their various socials, or at https://www.lotusshakermusic.com.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, Ontario, Canada, who has been writing about music and musicians for more than 30 years. Besides his journalistic endeavors, he works as a communications and marketing specialist and is an avid volunteer in his community. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
