Ekoti: just a band playing in a room
By Jamie-Leigh Gonzales
The new music project, Ekoti, is the creation of local busker, Davis Steele. Over the last two years, Steele has performed in parks, outside liquor stores, and on street corners all over the Lower Mainland. Known for his melodic loops and folk-inspired riffs, he has also delved into the world of multimedia with the creation of visually striking videos to accompany his songs, an online archive of which can be found here, here and here. With his music career taking off in his teens and running tandem through his time at university, Steele has honed in on his unique sound and passion for songwriting. Although he recently moved to Powell River to teach music to elementary school students, he stays connected to his musical roots on the Lower Mainland.
While his students were on spring break this year, Steele made a trip back to the mainland to record a live video album, a process I was delighted to be a part of. I had the chance to sit down with him after we finished filming the album, and he gave me the inside scoop on his band.
Taking songs he had written in the last couple of months, Steele just needed to put together a band. His first move was to connect with a former bandmate of the rock band Shotgun, bass player and longtime friend, Spencer Dodd. They started their week off with building cajons and looking for a couple of other bandmates. Serendipitously, drummer James Hrankowski was looking to make some new music and sent Steele a text. He showed up the next day to a newly built cajon. “We joked when James showed up that we’d built him a cajon because he said he’d come hang out but we’d actually been working on them for three days”, Steele said of the third addition to Ekoti.
The three of them rehearsed twice before finding their final bandmate, banjo player Joey Levitsky, who had only one rehearsal with the band the night before they began recording.
Typically, each song on an album can take days to record, as guitar, vocals, drums, and bass are all tracked separately. During a live recording, the pressure is on for the band to play as perfectly as they can. While embracing all the unknown possibilities that came along with a week of prep for an album, Steele said, “When you nail it, it feels so good. It’s the best feeling because we just played the song in 5 minutes, and that’s the song.”
Hrankowski, who had a little less time to prepare still felt like he was “Practicing the song. The second everything turned on I thought, ‘okay, still practice, but do it perfectly. Just don’t screw it up this time’.”
Despite nerves and limited prep time, the newly formed Ekoti members set up some semblance of a recording studio in the living room of Steele’s childhood home, and within two hours they had recorded their first EP.
Steele would love to say he just got right into the music but, “It was hard to forget that the mics were going and this was going on record and everything you hear was going to be there. But that’s also what I loved about it, because what I wanted was a sound that sounds like just a band playing in a room and there’s imperfections and I like that.”
Look out this summer for the release of the live video album and an upcoming tour. Ekoti will be performing this album anywhere from Northern Ontario back to Vancouver. Be sure to check your local coffee shops, street corners, and bars to hear them live.
Photo by Kayla Sullivan