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 Jakalope's Katie B. |
Like something found down Alice's rabbit hole, Jakalope is a wonderland creature brought alive by merging two rather ordinary forms.
And if you don't believe in fantastical beasts, you can check out Jakalope for yourself tomorrow night at the Klondike Days Brewhouse stage.
Dave "Rave'' Ogilvie, known for producing records with David Bowie, Nine Inch Nails, Skinny Puppy and Marilyn Manson, had been doing some work for Aubrey Winfield from the Toronto-based Orange Record Label when he was unexpectedly propositioned.
"After hearing some of the stuff that I had sitting around for a while, (Winfield) said, 'We'd love to pull you away from your producer/mixer world and actually see you be an artist because we really believe in you.' So that was, I guess, the beginning of (Jakalope)," said Ogilvie, in a recent interview.
"It (Jakalope) was completely out of nowhere, which was sort of the beauty of it because I didn't have time to think," added Ogilvie. "I basically had two days to come up with the name of the band, the concept of the band, the reality of it all."
Ogilvie, who'd begun playing guitar in school and pulled out of a music degree at Montreal's McGill University because "it was taking all the fun out of music for me, going that deep into it," had been working behind the scenes at Bryan Adams's Vancouver studio the Warehouse since it opened in 1996.
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Four years ago, Katie Biever, now known as Jakalope's singer, Katie B., was hired at the Warehouse as a receptionist after moving to the big city from a farm outside of Airdrie, just outside of Calgary.
Growing up, it was her sister who sang constantly and convinced her mom to pay for singing lessons and, wanting to do everything her sister did, Katie B. was enrolled as well.
"I was more the one to run around and be a little bit crazier and that's when we kind of saw I maybe had that extra little front-woman thing. So my mom kept at me," says Katie B., while talking with Ogilvie from the Warehouse.
Ogilvie's immediate vision for Jakalope was an industrial-influenced project where he could involve all the friends he'd made over the years, but the missing link was the singer, and that's when the focus turned to 23-year-old Katie B. and her pop melodies.
"She's done a bunch of big sessions here where she was hired as a singer, so if people from the Disney corporation are hiring her to sing on something, she's gotta be good at what she does. So knowing her personality, the sound of her voice and the fact that she could sing, it was just the perfect match," Ogilvie said.
So with Katie B. in charge of writing and singing the lyrics for Jakalope, and Ogilvie hashing out the musical side of things, the next thing to do was enlist all of Ogilvie's famous musician friends.
The main core came together with the addition of Matt Warhurst from SNFU, Sean Stubbs from Numb, Monster Magnet's Phil Caivano, Porno For Pyros' Matt Hyde and Lisa Winn, who provided backup vocals on Jakalope's debut recording It Dreams, released last October.
Ogilvie then called up longtime friend Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nails to help out with the music, and close pals Don Harrison, Don Binns and Don Short, a.k.a. "the three Dons," from the band Sons of Freedom, as well as nearly two dozen other talented acquaintances to round out the recording.
"The whole thing has been just plant a seed and see what grows out of it with knowing what kind of seed you're planting," explains Ogilvie, admitting the downfall was facing all the friends who didn't get to join in the fun.
Being her first formal band, Katie B. adds, "What's so exciting about having all these other artists come on board is you don't even know who's going to come and what style they're going to bring to everything to give it a new flavour to mix with what we've already been doing."
Having recently returned from Japan, where Jakalope has found a solid fan base, Ogilvie says work on a second Jakalope album is already in the works.
"This (CD), now that we have our core of people, and the blueprints are already worked out of how this operation works, is going to be a lot faster."
The Brewhouse is located on the Northlands Exhibition Grounds and Jakalope has an opening band starting at 10 p.m.