It’s not every day that a band, materialized out of jam sessions in university, goes halfway across Canada on tour.
It’s an amazing opportunity for Fergus artist Matt Rappolt and his band I, the Mountain.
The band has released two EPs, which are albums that have only a few songs, and they are gearing up for a full album release later this year.
But first, Rappolt and his bandmate Matt Lamers are heading to the East Coast, where they’ll make 22 stops in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, Prince Edward Island, and Ontario.
They will even be returning to Fergus to play at the end of their tour.
“It’s pretty surreal. It’s something where like every band wants to do this, every one who makes a band in high school or who has a band in university, or even just into playing music, dreams about being able to take their music and go and showcase it to other people in a cool place,” said Rappolt.
He was a musician from a young age. After five years of forced piano lessons, he got his hand on a pair of drums sticks. Once in high school, he started a band with three other friends, the Unbreakable Clocks, which played in a few local shows.
“I still have all our CDs. Sometimes I listen to them, they are so funny… it’s embarrassing but it’s also kind of cool because you can see all the things that impacted you and how it changed you,” Rappolt said.
Rappolt and Lamers started the band during their time at Trent University in Peterborough. One summer the duo decided to start busking.
“We just started busking downtown and that was our job for the summer. That was the greatest experience,” said Rappolt.
“Every day we would get up in the morning and play NHL ’97 or ’93 on the Super Nintendo and then like around noon we would go down and start busking in downtown or in farmer’s markets and stuff.
“We made enough money to live.”
After a few jam sessions led to playing cover songs, then playing a few shows, they started thinking seriously about producing music. They even teamed up with another Matt, Matt Morgan, to play bass. Morgan won’t be in this year’s tour; he’s gone off to train falcons.
“We love playing music and we love doing shows and it’s still amazing that people want to come out to our shows… I find it amazing that people would actually say ‘hey, I, the Mountain is playing, I want to go see them’ to me.
“For me it is just I want to go play with them if people show up that’s incredible. If not, we’re still going to play we’re still going to have a great time,” said Rappolt.
While producing the song Land, it hit Rappolt that they were a band.
“When we were sitting in the studio recording that song, and we heard it play back with all the instrumentation we’d done, that was kind of the moment we realized we were actually a band,” he said.
While Lamers primarily wrote the songs on their EPs Land & Sea and Two Birds, Rappolt has taken a more front seat role in the writing process on the new album.
“I’ve never really been comfortable sharing my writing with people before so it will be interesting to see how those songs evolve,” he said.
I, the Mountain’s east coast tour starts June 20 in Gravenhurst. The band will be returning to Fergus at the Brewhouse on July 30.
“I love playing in Fergus, because it’s my home,” said Rappolt.
