Quadra Sound
Quadra Sound — Transcript
Conversation between Eric Chan & Nick Fascione.
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity, spelling, and readability. Music excerpts are noted where they appear in the episode.
Cold open
Nick Fascione: The pursuit of music itself is quite a contradiction. It is a very conflicting feeling, because if you truly love making music like I do, it is so fulfilling when you are creating and you create this thing from nothing. Your next instinct is you want others to feel that too. You want to share it.
Eric Chan: I’m Eric Chan, and this is Inlet Wire, your direct line to BC artists.
In this episode, I’m joined by Nick Fascione from Quadra Sound, a four-piece rock band from Vancouver Island.
I first came across Quadra Sound through a clip of the band covering one of my favourite Alice in Chains songs, and honestly, it sounded so good that I wanted to dig a little deeper.
That led me into how much thought they have been putting not just into the music, but into building the whole world around the band.
Music excerpt
Eric Chan: For Quadra Sound, building a band today means more than just writing songs and playing shows. It also means finding the right vehicle to get the music out into the world.
Here is how Nick sees the role social media plays in that.
Nick Fascione: Well, this is actually quite an amazing thing because it is a vehicle, a visual and audio vehicle direct to consumer with no one in between. There is no middleman. There is no record label you have to go through. So we can reach the people.
It is just going to take a lot of work to get it going and be consistent with it. So once I viewed it like that, it was like, if this is the way bands are blowing up now, getting a following, and they are able to tour by themselves without having to sign half their rights away to get exposed to these people, it is like, well, let’s take advantage of this.
Eric Chan: For Nick, that online side has not really changed the music itself, but it has changed how much of himself he is willing to put out there.
Nick Fascione: I do not think it has influenced the music, but it has influenced getting feedback and seeing people. Because we just started the podcast again, so it is very small, the people who are listening, but getting this little amount of comments and reaction that we are getting, it has influenced me.
It has encouraged me to continue to do it and continue to put myself out there and just be sort of vulnerable.
Music excerpt
Eric Chan: For Quadra Sound, it is not just about sharing the music. It is also about showing more of who they are as people.
Nick Fascione: A year ago, we decided to really push the socials and were not quite sure what to do. We figured anything is probably better than posting nothing.
So I wanted to always showcase our music, but we have also always made silly videos. We did it in middle school because we are all middle school friends. We would do this stuff in school. We do it now. So we do make silly things.
I wanted to showcase that as well, like we do not take ourselves too seriously.
Eric Chan: What started as something playful for the band really connected with people. And somehow, it even went viral.
Nick Fascione: I remember I was just sitting on the couch one evening scrolling through Instagram, and I saw one of those rescue videos, which I have seen before. They have always kind of bugged me because they are just so tugging at people’s heartstrings just to get views, and it seems so fake, all of them.
It just hit me like a lightning bolt, like, “Oh my God, we should make one with an instrument and basically make fun of these videos.”
So the guys came over later that week and we shot it, and we brainstormed different ideas we could be doing with it that might be funny. We drew the face on it, put the legs on it. I knew it needed a face to give it a personality. Aaron drew up a face on it.
We did it in like two hours just around the house, and we just kind of knew as we were making it. We were like, “Oh yeah, this is going to go viral.” There was just a feeling.
Sure enough, we posted it and it went viral. It was our first viral video. We could not believe it. On TikTok as well, it is well over a million views on TikTok and on Instagram.
Such a large percentage of people are seeing that, and it is a very small percentage checking us out and going to listen to the music. So it is like, “Ah, we went viral for the wrong reason,” but it all feeds itself and I see that now. But hey, I’ll take it. I’m happy. I’m proud of it.
Music excerpt
Eric Chan: But Quadra Sound did not get here overnight. By the time those clips started connecting, the band had already been grinding for years. Then came another big turning point.
Nick Fascione: 2023 is when we first got linked up with Brian Howes, who is a legendary producer out of Vancouver and songwriter. When we met him, he really saw something in us, and he was like, “You guys are super close. You are like 80% of the way there. There are just some minor tweaks and stuff we could do to help take the songs to the next level.”
So we spent a lot of time developing with him and writing with him. He basically looked at our whole catalog, picked out songs that he thought had real substance, and then made suggestions: rewrite this and add this. He definitely leveled us up.
When he did that, we re-recorded an EP with him, and then he pitched that around to the industry people he knows. One of them was a management company called Indegoot out of New York. They loved it, so we ended up signing with them.
We actually only officially launched the first one last year in July, the first song we did with Brian. That is how long the development took to put all this stuff together.
So it looks kind of like we are a new band, which we are not. We have ten years of experience under our belts. But that is the cool thing about music: you can just start again. You can just rebrand. You can do whatever you want. You are just trying to find your way through here.
Music excerpt
Eric Chan: After all that talk about building the band, starting again, and finding the right way forward, Nick brought it back to something much more personal.
One of the songs came from that feeling of growing up in Campbell River. Loving where you are from, but also wanting to get out, see more, and make something bigger happen.
Nick Fascione: We grew up in Campbell River on Vancouver Island, a small town. It is the first song I kind of wrote about Campbell River and about growing up in Campbell River. I think any small town could relate.
You watch the town go through all these changes, and as you get older, sometime around high school or so, you either stay locked in or you want to run away from it. I have noticed there are two kinds of people.
I just had this urge to run away and do things. I want to go play music all over the world and experience as many things as I can.
So this song came from that sort of feeling where it was like, there is a small-town trapping that I have seen. People who never leave their hometown. I did not want that.
This song was a way to explain that story, that archetype that happens. But I think, looking back now, it is almost a way I am singing to myself, reminding myself to keep going out there, keep putting yourself out there, trying to be free from the trappings of a small town.
The song, and everyone relates, has a nostalgic sort of feeling. When I first brought it to the guys, they understood the vibe immediately.
It was one of those magical moments where Clayton, our other guitar player, as soon as I played the chords, had this melodic guitar piece that he had since around middle school, just floating around, that he had never used.
He was like, “Dude, this fits perfectly on top of the chord progression of your new song.”
So it was like that sort of moment that you hope would happen. It did. To him, it reminded him of childhood, and to me it did. So it is just this super nostalgic sort of vibe, and Brian really understood that.
He encouraged it so much that when we recorded it — we recorded at Armoury Studios in Vancouver, and then did all the vocals at his house in Comox — he threw a party at the studio, got us to invite as many people from Campbell River as we could, got everyone in the studio, and they all sang background gang vocals.
So at the end of the song there is a whole gang of Campbell River people singing on the track, and I love it. I just love the way it turned out.
Music excerpt
Eric Chan: And that was Nick from Quadra Sound.
I’m Eric Chan, and this is Inlet Wire, your direct line to BC artists.
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and readability. Any transcription errors are ours.