The two-piece Whitehorse doom/sludge band will perform at Lefty’s Well on April 17, with guest appearances from local artists
Franklin came together as a pandemic hobby when drummer and co-vocalist Evan Joel moved to Whitehorse from Vancouver and linked up with bassist and co-vocalist Kirsty Wells. Though Wells hadn’t picked up her bass in some years, she was tinkering with it during her lockdown-imposed free time and the two started getting together to jam some cover songs, just for fun.
“Kirsty had been gifted this really cool bass fuzz pedal that just sounded crazy and disgusting, in a great way,” says Joel. “Eventually, we came to the decision to cover [The Go-Go’s’] ‘Our Lips Are Sealed,’ because we could play it really heavy and really slow, and sometimes we say that was the birth of Franklin. That worked, and it was really cool; it just kind of snowballed and it’s continuing to snowball.”
Over the years since pandemic restrictions were lifted, Wells and Joel have brought Franklin from a garage pastime into a recording and touring act, often performing between Whitehorse and Vancouver and sharing the stage with other travelling bands.
In January, the duo released its debut full-length album, Decay. Franklin recorded the first four songs in Whitehorse with Gregory McLaughlin, before flying down to Vancouver to record six more songs with Jesse Gander at Rain City Recorders.
“Jesse and Greg are two different engineers, but I feel like they did a good job of making the album sound uniform,” Joel says. “It doesn’t sound jarring, like there are two different people working on it.”
On April 17, Franklin will perform Decay at Lefty’s Well in Whitehorse, but with a twist: each of the album’s 10 songs will feature a guest spot from at least one different local musician.
“There are twelve artists,” Wells says. “Some of them are classically-trained pianists, some of them play in metal bands currently, some of them are retired from the stage and making a special appearance just for us and some of them don’t get to perform as often as they’d like. But there are twelve individuals and one entire band, and we’re going to have one or a few folks on every single song.”
The show will mirror the format of the double vinyl records, which will be available for purchase at the event alongside other merchandise designed by Wells herself. The featured performers include Andy Slade, Brent Gallant, Bria Rose, Rob Jones, Fiona Solon, Gregory McLaughlin, John From Dawson, Mack Smith, Ray MacDonald, Sarah Murphey, Willow Gamberg and The Bleeders.
“I feel like sometimes I’m lucky and get to come up with annoying ideas and then Kirsty handles a lot of the wrangling,” Joel says. “We were talking about making it reality community-based.
“We have a really fun little music community up here. We’re really proud of this and we worked really hard on it, so we wanted to share the experience with a lot of people.”
Showcasing and celebrating the variety across the Yukon’s artistic community is important to both Wells and Joel. While Franklin is the only femme-fronted heavy-music group, Wells says she hopes to see more female and femme-identifying folks getting into metal, hardcore and other types of heavy music.
“If you don’t have someone to help you work through band dynamics, especially if you’re a girl or a femme person working with youth of the opposite gender, it can feel really intimidating,” she says. “And in heavy music, there’s even less room for us, and in the Yukon, there are even fewer people making that kind of music.
“There weren’t a lot of opportunities for me to engage with it when I was trying to, so coming back and being true to my own form, carving out a space for me to make that in is important because I want other people to see that they can do it too.”
Franklin has a simple mission statement: Make noise, be kind and have fun. Visit franklintheband.com to keep up with the band and listen to Decay.
