On Supporting Local Music: An interview with YIKES

Edmonton is known for many things: West Edmonton Mall, the University of Alberta, and its unforgivingly cold weather. What Edmonton is less known for is its music scene. Despite the variety of bands and musical artists, many would struggle to name even a few. With their newest project, YIKES is planning to celebrate Edmontonian art.

YIKES is an alternative rock band that started in 2012. Their members have changed throughout the years, but it currently consists of four members: Scott Deshane (guitarist and vocalist), Matthew Ketchum (guitarist and vocalist), Andreas Wagner (bassist), and Peter Joshua (drummer).

They’ve published four albums so far: In Space, At Sea, Out West, and On the Farm. 

With almost seven years of experience as a band, YIKES has a collection of fun, amusing, and even embarrassing moments. 

“At an unnamed location, which there was illegal fireworks happening, which everyone knew about, but you weren’t supposed to advertise,” said Andreas. “And we advertised it, unwittingly, through the PA systems. We told everybody, and they were like, shut up about the fireworks!” 

Currently, the band is working on their most ambitious project to date. Instead of occasionally releasing albums, they are planning to come out with a new single every month of 2020. With every single, they intend to collaborate with one visual artist and one musical artist from Edmonton. 

“We want to have a steady stream of content, coming out every month for an entire year,” Scott said. “And at the end of it, we want to have a collection of art that is uniquely Edmontonian.”

YIKES has plans to collaborate with visual artists to create their cover art, such as Josh Harnack and Mr. Smudge. For musical artists, YIKES will be collaborating with vocalist Kasha Anne, the band Sawbones, and many others. 

“Generally, we try to do things differently than what we’ve done before,” said Andreas. “Our process before has been lock ourselves in our studio for eight months, release the album, be really tired of everything, and take a break, and then do it again. we did that for three albums, and that took a long time, so now [we’re releasing] one single at a time.”

However, being in a band isn’t as easy as it looks. It doesn’t just involve writing music and then playing them at gigs. Sometimes, it can be challenging and frustrating. 

“You have to spend so much more time sending emails and networking with people and making all these connections,” Andreas said. “[You’re] essentially running a business.”

According to YIKES, band work requires time and effort, but yields little reward. For the band, it’s particularly frustrating when they try to get fair payment from a venue.

“Music is not valued at the moment, as much as it ought to be,” Matt explained. “This requires an exorbitant amount of work, an insane amount of work. It can be criminal what we are offered.”

For YIKES, there is a lot of musical talent in Edmonton that goes unnoticed. 

“There’s so much talent in this community that most people don’t even realize exists because nobody goes out to live music venues,” Scott said, “If you have a local music venue in your neighbourhood, go there! If you see someone that you’re mildly interested in, go there and buy a CD!”