A Conversation With: Hey Ocean!

I recently had the opportunity to sit down with David Beckingham of Hey Ocean! Hailing from Vancouver this band stopped in Toronto on their seven-show tour to play the Horseshoe Tavern.

Their evening was running a little late, so I had only a few moments with Beckingham as
he quickly ate a salad after sound check. In that time though we shared some laughs,
talked about Hey Ocean’s origin and influence and listened to some Zeppelin.

Are you guys excited to play the shoe?

Yes, yes.

Have you played here before?

Yes. We’ve played here a couple times before. A couple years ago.

(Drummer enters the room and hands David his iPhone.)

Do you just leave your phone in places?

Haha, no. He is using my metronome app on my phone. He’s the drummer, so he
clicks into a metronome. We’ve never done that before. But since we wrote this
record to a lot of syncopation-we have a keys player. Actually we have two new
people playing with us that don’t normally tour with us, a keys player and an extra
guitar player-the keys player has to tap into the rhythm a lot of the time for songs.

Are they with you for the whole tour?

Yes. It’s just a small tour. We’re only playing 7 shows from here to Halifax.

I saw that on your site; within the next five days you’re heading to the east coast?

Yes, we love it out there.

I also read on the site that you guys had intentions of touring into the States. Has that
happened yet?

Yeah, we’ve been down the west coast on a tour. We’ve played L.A. and New York.
L.A. a number of times, New York and Philadelphia once. When it makes sense. We
did that NACA tour, toured some schools, campus shows. We hope to get in there
more, it is a big place. Our objective is to tour as many places as we can, trying to get
out there as much as possible.

Which coast of the States to you like better? East or West?

It’s hard to say because I haven’t explored the east coast as much as the west. But
I’m excited to check out more of the east coast. Like the Carolinas and stuff. That
kind of southern atmosphere. I’d be stoked to check that out. So we’ll see. And I love
New York, amazing.

Let’s back track a little. What’s your origin story? How’d Hey Ocean! all come together?

In a nutshell: I’ve known Ashley, our lead singer, since grade 5. I moved away to
Kenya for two and a half years and came back, we ended up being friends again in
high school. When we graduated, we moved to Victoria and played a couple open
mics together, then moved back to Vancouver, where we’re from, and met up with
Vertesi about 6 years ago. And we’ve been doing this ever since.

Very nice. Tell me about Kenya, what did you go there for?

My dad was doing some crazy missionary work out there. Teaching in rural areas
in Kenya, so I just sort of went to school, like international school there. So really I
led a normal life, just in East Africa so I was exposed to a completely different way of
living, all the poverty, there are obvious differences in the culture. It was a really big
eye opener for me, and musically too.

How so?

There’s like an African guitar situation; when you hear those rattle-y guitars, like
high-end telecasters that are really like quick pick-y, scaley stuff, that’s what it’s
influenced by. And when I came back I actually listened to a lot of Paul Simon
because he does a lot of that stuff. There’s a lot of African influence in his music. And
actually a lot of our music is influenced by Paul Simon. Well, we like to think so. He
definitely influences us. But we’re influenced by a lot.

Like what?

Oh there’s tons. Seriously, from like serious Kelly Clarkson pop. For this record
especially, we were like, let’s go for it. We wanted to make a good pop record.
Michael Jackson. Classic pop stuff really influences us. We’re lovers of all kinds of
music.

I think that anyone admittedly influenced by Kelly Clarkson would have to be!

(laughs) It’s more the production side of it. There was one song in particular that
did it for us. I think it’s safe to say that with any big sort of pop artist there’s kind
of a team writing and producing to make that record what it is – and we were like,
let’s take for some of that stuff, because a really well written pop song is usually well
produced too. We didn’t go over the age with anything on our record, but there were
times where something badass happens and we’d take from that. We just wanted to
do a better pop record. Something more refined.

I notice that you guys have been really busy over the last little while; Gibson showcase, endless interviews, AUX TV showcase. How is that going?

We did a couple live recordings of acoustic stuff too, and did some magazine stuff,
and radio. It’s been great. We’ve been working with a new publicist, Melissa. She’s been doing a great job. We’ve been the busiest ever. Which I guess is how it’s supposed to be on tour. Maximize your time.

That’s the dream isn’t it? How does it all feel?

It definitely feels like work. Important things like nutrition and sleep come into
play. When you’re like playing a show at 11:30 at night, but your up from 9 in the
morning doing media stuff. But it’s super awesome that people are interested and
want to talk about the band. That’s what we want. We want people to hear about it
and come out to the shows.

Do you have any advice for bands that are starting out the same way you guys did?

We learned as we went. We’re still learning as we go. It’s not like we know all the
answers. The industry is changing a lot, so just be on top of your online stuff, and
that kind of thing is all part of the parcel. Remember that every gig gets you another
gig. Try and play with other bands, trade fans. It definitely takes perseverance to
basically decide to jump off a cliff and see what happens. It is a fearless leap to figure
out: This is how old I am, and I’m willing to work till whatever, until my music is
doing what it needs to do. That’s true of any job really, you want to do what you
love, but you have to work really hard to get there sometimes.

What is one thing you think your fans should know about you guys?

None of us are sleeping together.

That’s good.

That is good. What’s something important though.

Maybe that is important?

Maybe we should keep them guessing though, maybe I shouldn’t say that. Our fans
should know that we appreciate them. It’s kind of an obvious answer, but we do. We
wouldn’t be able to do what we’re doing if no one was into. And we do have some
super great fans. Fans that will follow us around Alberta, and come to all the Alberta
shows. Such lovely fans that will send us stuff on our birthday. Amazing. So they
should know that we need them and love them.

If you could only listen to one album for the rest of your life what would it be and why?

My answer is probably subject to change, but right now I’d have to say Houses of the
Holy by Led Zeppelin because of the song “Fool in the Rain”. It’s amazing. Want to hear
it?

Yes, yes I do.

(plays the track off his phone) this is it. Do you like Zeppelin? There’s a breakdown in the middle where they just go crazy. This would be the tune (sings a little). There you go.

Thank you. I’ll let you get back to your salad now.

(Laughs) I will get back to my salad. Thanks so much. Cheers.