Photo Credit: Marty Moffat.
Bywater Call is a seven-piece band led by Meghan Parnell on vocals and Dave Barnes on guitar, backed by five talented musicians. Hailing from Toronto, the band has rocketed up the charts with their powerhouse music and have toured extensively though Canada and Europe.
Ken Wallis interviewed Meghan Parnell for the radio show BluesSource Canada. The following are excerpts from that interview, edited and amended for brevity and clarity.
Ken Wallis
Bywater Call has a new album out. It’s entitled Shepherd and joining us to tell us all about it is Meghan Parnell. Meghan, thanks for coming on the show.
Meghan Parnell
Thanks for having me.
Ken Wallis
So first of all, where did the title come from?
Meghan Parnell
It's from a lyric in the second tune on the album called Colours and a big power ballad. The lyric in the tune is the shepherd with none of her sheep, which speaks to the character and the tune. But we also thought that image reflected where we were as a band. We did this album pretty much on our own self-produced, self-recorded, self-released. We thought that was really an appropriate image for where we were.
Ken Wallis
Your music crosses so many different genres. Basically, it's blues, but it's a whole bunch of different genres and it's a great mix. How would you describe your music to someone who hasn't heard the album yet?
Meghan Parnell
I always have difficulty with that question. Where I've put it is like blues-influenced southern-soul roots-rock. But if I had to keep it to like 6 or 7 words, we’d incorporate funk. We like a bit of funk and we incorporate in some gospel, and there are elements of jam band. It's hard to keep it succinct, but southern-soul, roots-rock, I feel does an OK job.
Ken Wallis
Do you feel that this album is different from your previous album?
Meghan Parnell
Yeah, it is. I felt like we leaned a bit more into a bit of a quirky side, with some of the tunes. I mean, we've always had a selection of eclectic stuff since we started writing the albums, but I feel like we leaned into it a little bit more this time. We tried to get a little bit rootsy here, a little bit more soul, while still incorporating the rock and blues elements that that we started with.
Ken Wallis
And who writes the songs?
Meghan Parnell
Most of them start initially with Dave. He'll have a chord progression on guitar. Sometimes he'll have a lyric or a melodic idea that he brings to me, and then we throw ideas back and forth a bunch and then when there's some sort of structure there, we bring it to the band and we all kind of develop it. On this album, a couple of the tunes were brought to us by our keyboard player John, which was nice. It was the first time we had tunes brought in by one of the other players in the band and John let us take the ideas he brought in and develop them in the style that felt right for the band.
Ken Wallis
How do you go about selecting the order of tracks on an album?
Meghan Parnell
It's hard to know whether you're getting it right. For us we want it to flow nicely from one tune to the next. I think in the first album we put like three rock tunes back-to-back and that just didn't upon reflection work. Even off the top, we want to give a little bit of ebb and flow to the vibe of the tunes and try to some somehow create a bit of a story in the order. Putting stuff that you think is strong forward, we put Colours second, because we think it is a beautiful strong tune and we want to make sure that people hear it. Unfortunately the stuff at the end of the album does have a tendency to not get heard as much, so keeping that in mind too, it's a lot of different things, and we'll just cut and paste it and put it in an order and send it around to the guys and see how everybody feels about it.
Ken Wallis
Did you record more songs than are on the album? I've heard a lot of musicians say that they record a bunch more songs, but they then whittle it down.
Meghan Parnell
We stuck with what we had, though we have tons of scraps of tunes that are on the cutting room floor. Stuff that was like, okay, this is an idea, but it's not ready yet so we're not going to spend too much time on it right now, and maybe we'll come back to it when it feels right, or maybe we won't. We're trying to get better at it, but if a tune is taking a really long time to pull together then it's just maybe not the right time for it.
Ken Wallis
Bywater Call is becoming very successful, and you have toured through Europe extensively. Do you feel audiences are any different over there than they are in Canada?
Meghan Parnell
We do. It was our first year, it was our first opportunity touring and unfortunately we still feel like we're catching up in terms of stuff that we had booked in Canada in 2020 and still haven't really had the opportunity to play certain parts of the country. But going out as a band who had just recorded their first album, nobody really knew who we were in Europe.
They're a bit more willing to take a chance on a band. They've never heard it before and they kind of just trust the venues and the promoters and the bookers that something will be good. They'll check it out and then if they do like it, what happens there, because things are closer together, is you play in one place and you know if you're going for a four or five week tour, you're probably gonna be somewhere kind of close by again and when you play well and they like it, they'll let all their friends know and that helps you as the tour progresses.
Ken Wallis
There must be quite a challenge traveling with such a large band.
Meghan Parnell
It’s a lot. Yeah, we make it work, but certainly when we're in Europe, we're in a Mercedes Sprinter, there's just enough seats for everybody and nobody complains too much. But it's tight. And then when we're touring in North America, we have a a little short school bus that we bought which is more spacious, but it's way bumpier and has no air conditioning.
Ken Wallis
Well, it's a fabulous album and I really wish the band great success, and I think that's starting to knock on your door pretty heavy right now. You guys are really doing well. Where can fans get a hold of your new album?
Meghan Parnell
Well, if you're at a show, we'll have it off stage at all of our shows. And then if you go to bywatercall.com there are links to take you to the album store.
Ken Wallis
Meghan, it's been a real pleasure talking with you again and we will keep in touch.
Meghan Parnell
Awesome. Thank you.
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