With a Facebook band page description that reads, “Six people from across the province, here in Ottawa spending our time making music,” much is left up to the imagination. That is, if you’re not a Carleton student.
Childhood friends from Sault Ste. Marie, Jesse Harding, Patrick Bonne, and Josh White have been playing music together since high school in a band they called The Tenagens.
First-year humanities students Adam Finlay and Alexandre Pilon attended high school together in Ottawa and were part of a few musical ventures that never really took off.
It’s not a coincidence that half the members of Carleton band Paterson Hall, are studying humanities. Quite fittingly, the group met at a Humanities Music Night held in room 303 of Paterson Hall early on in their first semester, said bassist Finlay.
Including Kelsey Miki, vocalist and aspiring percussionist from Kingsville, Ont., the group officially began jamming together in early November.
“We’ve had mixed reactions [to our name], but it’s got a good cadence to it,” Finlay said.
“You hear ‘Paterson Hall’ and you’re like, ‘What is a Paterson Hall?’” pianist and synth rocker Bonne added. “There’s already no pre-conceived association with it, it’s like we’re giving the name meaning instead of it giving us meaning.”
“It doesn’t presuppose anything,” guitarist and vocalist White said. “We’re able to grow organically on that name rather than giving it something that’s going to steer us.”
The band’s genre and writing style comes from a cultivation of musical influences including Radiohead, Modest Mouse, and Built to Spill. But they also have pop cultural homages in their musical repertoire.
“I’m A Lion,” a Paterson Hall original written by Harding, is a song dedicated to Game of Thrones character Tyrion Lannister.
The bandmates joke about how their schedules have shifted since starting the project, as they juggle their time between being musicians and full-time students.
“Band and school, that’s kinda what we do,” White said. “And I find they influence each other, I mean my music wouldn’t be anywhere near where it is without the school. Especially humanities with it being a really good liberal arts education, it really influences that.”
At Carleton’s Battle of the Bands on March 26 at campus bar Oliver’s Pub, the audience’s support earned Paterson Hall a spot in this year’s Pandamonium lineup.
The band also played a 30-minute electric set at this year’s Bands For Berna hosted at Café Alt on March 27, a benefit concert where proceeds go to the Free the Children foundation.
As far as an EP release goes, the band says with school out of the way, summer holds nothing but opportunities.
“We’ve been working on networking right now, that’s the main thing, but we are staring an EP right in the face and we are all really excited about it,” said Finlay, who praises Ottawa’s Music Index (OMI) for making networking with other bands more accessible.
Paterson Hall will perform alongside Carleton band Hungry Animals at Shanghai Restaurant in Chinatown on April 10.
