Getting to Know… Versa | Interview

In the 424^th Q&A in our Getting to Know… series, we get the inside scoop from Victoria, British Columbia progressive/post-rock band, Versa. 

“Our goal as a band has always been to combine elements of instrumental post-rock music with symphonic progressive rock, and I’m not familiar with too many bands that exist at that intersection in the way that we do.” Epic stuff, Versa! In response to our first burning question, the Victoria, British Columbia band expounds, “We’ve got both the big crescendos of post-rock and the thrilling solos and weird time signatures of prog – a double-whammy of audience excitement!” Woo-hoo! We get the inside scoop on the band’s genesis, goals, musical influences, and current, and future musical endeavors. So, without further ado, let’s jump right into Getting to Know…Versa: Interview No. 424!

For those who may not be familiar with you, what would you say makes Versa distinct or unique? How do you rock the audience’s socks off?

Our goal as a band has always been to combine elements of instrumental post-rock music with symphonic progressive rock, and I’m not familiar with too many bands that exist at that intersection in the way that we do – combining the sweeping and cinematic with the exhilarating and technically-proficient.  We’ve got both the big crescendos of post-rock and the thrilling solos and weird time signatures of prog – a double-whammy of audience excitement!

Okay, let’s explore some juicy backstories. How did Versa form, and what were some of your goals or visions early?

We are from Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, and started making music together as students at the University of Victoria School of Music in 2007.  We all shared an interest in post-rock, indie rock, and prog, and decided to get together to compete in the annual UVIc Battle of the Bands.  Our goal was to perform music that would definitely lose us the Battle of the Bands competition but would endear us to 25% of the audience.  We’ve been making music together ever since.

Let’s talk more about goals.  Have your goals or your perspectives changed since first starting? What do your aspirations or goals look like now?

Early on – 17 years ago now! – we had some aspirations to tour and do this kind of music full-time, but that didn’t happen for us, which is fine.  In some ways, it makes the music more rewarding – we have other jobs and income and while we don’t necessarily have as much time to devote to music as we’d like, we also don’t have stress about monetizing our passion to pay our bills. Our goals now are to just make something we’re proud of, that’s fun to play, that’s exciting for an audience to hear, and that connects with the right listeners.  We’ve been really lucky since returning from COVID to connect with some amazing, passionate fans and other artists in the progressive rock community and that’s been incredibly rewarding.

Everybody is influenced by somebody else. Whom would you consider some of your biggest musical influences and how are they influential?

We all grew up in the 90s and early 2000s listening to the more artsy/pretentious side of alternative rock – Radiohead, Bjork, Nine Inch Nails, Tool, etc.  We’ve been heavily influenced by the early-2000s post rock bands like Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Mogwai, and Sigur Ros, as well as classic symphonic prog bands like Jethro Tull, Genesis, and Gentle Giant.  More recently I (Matt, flute/guitar/vocals) have been listening to a lot of modern progressive metal, bands like Haken, Caligula’s Horse, Leprous, etc., and that influence has been pushing our music in some new directions you’ll hear on the new album, “A Voyage / A Destination Part 2”.

Ah, the fun stuff.  What’s your craziest tour story or the wackiest thing that’s happened during a performance?  Feel free to be creative.

We’ve never toured!  We have some fun live performance stories though – at one of the biggest gigs we’ve played (to around 500 people at Sugar – now Capital Ball Room – in Victoria), we were playing our piece “We Are Not What We Say We Are”, which is a song in which I really hammer on the piano, and the piano stand collapsed mid-song.  I caught the keyboard on my leg and finished the song standing on one leg, balancing the piano on the other!

At our album release show for our second album, The Decline & Fall Of…, the encore of our set was a cover of the LCD Soundsystem song “All My Friends”, and we invited anyone who wanted to join us to come up on stage and grab an instrument and jam (we had several extra guitars and keyboards on stage with us).  We ended up with around 20 musicians on stage and it was a really joyful, wonderful moment.

To this point in your career, what would you describe as your favorite song you’ve recorded or performed live? What makes that song special?

Playing “We Are Not What We Say We Are” live is always a powerful experience – it’s the piece of music we’ve written that the most people know (by a pretty wide margin) and it always connects with the audience when performed live.  It features a lot of improvisation as well so there’s always a risk it goes off the rails, but thankfully it never has.

We haven’t played much of the material on our last album, A Voyage / A Destination, or on the forthcoming album, live, due to COVID and then some changes in membership (we haven’t played live since 2017) so it’s going to be a lot of fun to test out the new material in front of a live audience.  Some of it is a LOT more difficult than our earlier songs, so it’s going to be a challenge!

Is there anything else awesome, cool, or left-of-center we should know about Versa? Secret talents or surprising tidbits?

We’re very much a DIY band to our core – we don’t just record our own music, we actually build a lot of our own instruments, microphones, preamps, and other gear.

What is Versa currently working on or promoting that you can share? We love secrets, but there’s no pressure. 

A Voyage / A Destination Part 2, our new album, arrived October 4^th, available for digital download and on all major streaming platforms, and we’re also doing a physical double album – we didn’t press physical copies of A Voyage / A Destination when it was released in 2022, but we’ve had lots of requests, so we’re released a double-disc with both albums the same date.

We’re working on several music videos to accompany some of the songs on the album, and after that, we’re looking to finally get back to playing a few live shows and perhaps record a covers EP before moving on to another album of original music.

Thank you so much for sharing and taking the time to answer these questions, and best of luck moving forward. 

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Getting to Know…Versa: Interview No. 424 [📷: Brent Faulkner / The Musical Hype; Versa; Clker-Free-Vector-Images, Królestwo Nauki, OpenClipart-Vectors, Pete Linforth, Tumisu from Pixabay]