WANHEDA: “Would love if our music was used in a documentary or a TV program”| CVLTARTES

Wanheda returns with their second EP, “Dusty Trails”, continuing their arc of creating emotionally charged concept albums for the passionate and the intellectual. Opening Dunk!festival in 2019 and releasing their vibrant and expansive debut LP made them one of Belgium’s finest post-rock acts to watch, but with Dusty Trails, Wanheda cements itself as one of the most compelling acts in the scene today.

We’ve chatted with lead guitarist Jan Verduyckt on “Dusty Trails”, elevator pitches for their music, and the message they’re trying to convey.

Hello! Thanks for sitting down with us to discuss music, inspiration, and more! For starters, when did you get the music bug? Can you recall your first ever musical experience?

I remember singing ‘Con te partirò’ by Andrea Bocelli and ‘I Don’t Want To Miss a Thing’ by Aerosmith when I was young. It was something we did when our family and friends went on a winter holiday to the south of Belgium. In the evening, we always did like these little talent shows. The children could perform anything they liked. I sang these two songs. I don’t speak Italian, so the words were just gibberish. Another kid was hitting like trash cans and kept a very steady rhythm. Later he started playing drums and we started our first band together.

The first guitar-based music I really liked was The Offspring when they released “Pretty Fly” in 1998. I was 9 years old back then. I can still remember seeing the video clip on the TV, while my parents were watching as well. My father and I immediately liked it and my mom gave us this look like we just liked it because of all the ladies in bikinis dancing around the pool. But that really was only partially true ;).

Later my dad introduced me to his guitars. And I started playing guitar when I was around 11. My dad was more into blues and classic rock acts. I think you might hear his influence through the many guitar solos we have in our music, which is not very common in the post-rock genre.

What are the elevator pitches for your music that’ll make people have to listen?

Well, we are often told that we come out refreshing and unique as a post-rock band. We don’t think of ourselves as purely post-rock bands but often use the general term “instrumental rock” because we have so many influences. Specifically for our newest release ‘Dusty Trails’ I would say we lean right into Tenacious D territory to the point where you might consider – what if Jack Black wrote a Wild West-themed instrumental rock record?

For newcomers to your music, if you had to pick one track that shows people who you are as an artist, which one would it be?

I’d choose ‘A Desert of Real’. It has a little of everything we use in our music like soft and heavy parts, a short guitar solo, tremolo picking, strings, piano, and synths. So, I have chosen a song from our album ‘Desert of Real’, because I feel like it definitely represents our current sound more than the songs from the first album. But if you’d ask me this question again in like a year, maybe I would choose a song from our new EP. I still have to get used to the somewhat new sound and playing the new songs live.

Please tell us a bit more about your upcoming EP, “Dusty Trails”. What is the message you’re trying to convey with this release?

Our message is primarily the music we recorded. That’s really our core business and what we love to do the most. We hope listeners enjoy the tunes and maybe catch a live performance. I feel like the message can be different depending on the interpretation of the listener. This might be easier for instrumental music. But even with music that has lyrics, I always listen to “the feel” of the song first before deciding whether I like it or not.

Of course, our EP and the songs have titles. But they came after I wrote the songs and were chosen because of “the sound/the feel” of the songs. We had some hard topics for our concept releases in the past. And yes, these topics like climate change and mental health are important to us. But we consider ourselves mostly musicians and not influencers, politicians, or storywriters.

The story of “Dusty Trails” is about a cowboy who dreams of adventures flying like a vulture and even trying to reach the sun. The dreams just seem a little big and this makes him desperate and lost on his dusty trails. Eventually, he loses his mind. Sort of like a Don Quichot story, but this time a cowboy is the main character. So the message of this story is about dreaming and setting goals. But it’s important to start with small steps and focus on yourself or you’ll never reach anything at all.

What do you hope listeners take away from “Dusty Trails”?

I just hope they like our songs and maybe give it another spin. It always gives me the most pleasure to see someone closing their eyes and really getting into our music. Because that means we touched something inside this person.

Take me through your sound design process. Does the conception come first or do the songs evolve naturally – do you have a clear idea of what it will be before you start to make it?

The songs always come first. I could have like a small idea of how I want the song to sound or be structured. But in many cases, this can change or I have to adapt my ideas because I came up with something better or it just doesn’t work as well as I might have hoped. Most of the songs are written over a longer period and I listen to them over and over again I play the melodies in my head while in bed and then I try to create new or better melodies and parts.

So, most of our songs have no real designer plan, but they evolve over a longer period and they often start because of musical influences and ideas that might evolve into something totally different in the end. The concept or title always comes later; most of the time when we are almost ready to release it and we are like “shit, we still have no title”. We always use a silly work title before we have the final title. And for some band members, it takes quite an effort to get used to these final titles (winks at JP).

How do you know when a track is ready? Does it ever become difficult to refine ideas or stop perfecting?

It’s very difficult for me to finish a song. Even now I often feel like certain parts of songs on the new album could or should have been a little different. So yes, I don’t really know when a track is ready. Most of the time it’s the other guys who say; that’s enough, it’s ready, and we can still change some details in the studio.

There are many descriptions of the ideal state of mind for being creative. What is it like for you? What supports this ideal state of mind and what are distractions? Are there strategies to enter into this state more easily?

I like to write music on my own or with two- or three-persons max. Most of the melodies I write at my attic, just with my guitar and my laptop. But sometimes the band rents a place for a weekend in the south of Belgium. There we listen to the melodies and write some new stuff or they give me advice on what should change and what should definitely stay. It is something I really enjoy doing with our band.

A smartphone is a very big distraction. It’s very easy to be distracted because the world is in this tiny shell. It makes the songwriting slow and inefficient. So, I try to put it away when writing songs. Even at rehearsals, we keep our smartphones far away.

Do you have certain rituals to get you into the right mindset for creating? What role do certain foods or stimulants like coffee, lighting, scents, exercise, or reading poetry play?

Hearing music I like always makes me want to write new stuff. And once I created something that I think has potential, it’s not difficult for me to keep on working on it for a longer period of time. Because composing is something I really enjoy doing.

The composing room should at least be a little cozy. I always turn on some cozy lights to write music and sometimes I drink coffee or Mint tea. We drink other things when we have these band weekends, which I previously talked about. (winks)

Guitar exercises are of course important. There is still a lot I don’t know about songwriting. Luckily the advantage of the internet is I can learn a lot with a simple click. So, I try to increase my skills as a songwriter by watching videos of for example Paul Davids, Rick Beato, Signals Music Studio and many more…

What other creative outputs do you engage in that we may not suspect?

I once started writing a fiction book. But it’s far from finished and I’m not sure I will ever finish it. Nowadays I like to be “creative” with my hands and search and use more eco-friendly materials like lime plaster or clay in my home. I’m also looking for a lot of ideas to make my garden friendlier for insects and birds like making a Wadi and creating native flower spaces in the garden. I also tried to make a pesticide-free vegetable garden. But snails are a real pain in the ass. I feel a little old telling you this, but these things really give joy and satisfaction in my life.

What music have you been listening to recently and what excites you for the remainder of the year?

I’ve been listening to a lot of oldies. The last album I discovered that really amazed me was ‘Closing Time’ by Tom Waits, released in 1973. And ever since my grandmother passed away, I’ve been listening to a lot of Pink Floyd again. Because my sister, brother-in-law, dad, and I played ‘Wish You Were Here’ at her funeral. ‘Wish You Were Here’ and ‘Dark Side of The Moon’ are just two of my favorite albums of all time. And if I check my Spotify account, I see a lot of Radiohead songs and even some tracks by “Herman Van Veen”, a Dutch singer with a very pleasant voice and a lot of creative achievements during his life.

I’m also looking forward to the new ‘Distant Dream’ album that’s going to be released on the 6^th of December. In February and March of the next year, we will hit the road again with our friends of ‘Distant Dream’.

To wrap it up, what do you hope to do with your art in the future? I mean, do you have any crazy goals?

I would love it if our music was used in like maybe documentary or a TV program. And I can reveal that the first steps for this are already taken. (smiles)

But any crazy goals, I don’t know. I often think when I’m at a certain place, wouldn’t it be awesome if we could perform here? Like in Cueva de Los Verdes in Lanzarote, I had this feeling. It’s a beautiful cave with water and a very mysterious atmosphere. But we are a very loud live band, so I’m not sure it would be a good idea for the animals that live there. Maybe we could do an acoustic session.

I also would love to share the stage with my great post-rock examples like ‘Mono’, ‘If These Trees Could Talk’ or why not even ‘Sigur Ros’.