• MuzicNotez: First off, it’s an honor to be doing this interview with you, thanks for taking the time to sit down with us.

  Introduce yourselves, what are your names and rolls in the band?

  • MONOWHALES: We’re MONOWHALES! I’m Jordan, the drummer in the band. We also have Sally on vocals and Zach on guitar.

• MuzicNotez: How did you meet and form up? How long have you been together?
  • MONOWHALES: I met Sally at a bonfire when we were still in high school. We ended up going to college together to study music and that’s where we met Zach. I had a rehearsal space in a condemned building in Toronto’s east end at the time so we started getting together there to make music and the rest is history! We’ve been playing together for most of our adult lives, but we only started MONOWHALES about 3 years ago.

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  Website: www.MONOWHALES.com
  Instagram: @monowhales
  Twitter: @monowhales
  Facebook.com/MONOWHALES

  MuzicNotez: How did you come up with the name MONOWHALES?

  • MONOWHALES: The honest truth is, no one remembers! We’ve never been able to agree on where it actually came from, but we know we came up with it in a rush because we booked a show before we had agreed on a band name. It’s a weird name and no one knows what it means, including us, so we’ll leave it up to you to come up with your own interpretation.

• MuzicNotez: Who were your musical influences, idols, or bands growing up that have helped mold you into the band you are today? Or helped mold the music that you create?
  • MONOWHALES: From day one Sally and I connected over a mutual love of Bright Eyes and Queen. Sally’s always been a huge fan of The Flaming Lips along stuff like Mort Garson’s Plantasia. Zach brought a lot of the rock sensibility to the band with influences like Queens of the Stone Age and The Hives. Personally I’m all over the place, listening to stuff like Daniel Lanois’s solo albums to ambient electronic like Tycho. Spotify once sent me a notification that told me I’m in the top 1% of Van Morrison fans worldwide so…yeah.

• MuzicNotez: What’s the greatest concert you’ve ever been to or performed?
  • MONOWHALES: The greatest concert I’ve seen in recent memory would be a contest between Nick Cave at Massey Hall and Bon Iver at Scotiabank Centre.

    My favourite show with MONOWHALES would be the Toronto date on our last tour. We played a sold-out Horseshoe Tavern, one of our favourite venues in the city. I was super sick at the time, having caught a cold the day before in Kitchener, but that show breathed new life into me and the positivity and love emanating from the crowd was so intense I forgot I was feeling bad and ended up playing one of the best shows of my life.

• MuzicNotez: What’s the ultimate goal you want your music to achieve, or for you to achieve in your career as a band? Any particular message you wish to send?
  • MONOWHALES: Every time we get up on stage and see people in the crowd singing along to our songs our hearts are full and we feel our goal has been achieved. We just want to keep bringing that experience to more and more people in other parts of the world!

• MuzicNotez: The pandemic has had a big impact on the entertainment industry, how have you been impacted and what have you done to adapt?
  
  • MONOWHALES: Alone with everyone else, the biggest impact the pandemic had for us was the loss of all our live events. We’re performers first – playing live is the reason we got together, and we sort of pieced together all the other skills involved in doing what we do out of necessity. Now we love the studio, and releasing our music as our own independent label is super rewarding, but the core of it all is all about getting up on stage and playing music for people. We did our best to adapt to the pandemic by adjusting our release plans and scheduling a few live-stream performances. We’ve been writing like crazy so it’s actually turning out to be a very fruitful time creatively!

PRE-ORDER The New Album ‘Daytona Bleach’ »

• MuzicNotez: You have a new album coming out March 5th entitled ‘Daytona Bleach’, how long have you been working on this? What can you tell us about it?
  • MONOWHALES: We recorded Daytona Bleach in sessions in Toronto and Vancouver in 2019. The whole album only took about four weeks to make. We feel it’s our strongest work to date. It’s the result of a period of growth that was as painful as it was rewarding. I think that’s why we ended up playing with the idea of opposite extremes with song titles like “All or Nothing”, “Out With The Old” (and in with the new), “He Said/She Said”, – even the name “Daytona Bleach” is a contradiction – you can almost picture palm trees swaying in a chemical breeze. We are a group of people that deal in extremes. We’re either way up, or way down, but no matter what we are always moving forward. This album is about accepting who we are, and holding it up for all to see.

• MuzicNotez: What else are you working on? What can we expect to see and hear from you in the future?
  • MONOWHALES: We have some really fun stuff planned around the release of Daytona Bleach. Limited edition march bundles are available for pre-order through our website, and we have a storefront installation launching soon and a pretty crazy guerrilla projection campaign hitting Toronto on release day. We’ll also be doing a live-streamed release party where we’ll be taking questions from fans and doing some sweet giveaways, ending with the premiere of our new music video. There’s always something going on over here in MONOWHALES-land so if you want to stay in the loop just follow us on socials – @monowhales!

• MuzicNotez: Anything else you wish to say about yourself or your music? Any message for your fans?
  • MONOWHALES: Daytona Bleach drops March 5th so pre-save/add it on your streaming service of choice and keep your eyes peeled for all the things I mentioned above! Feel free to comment or DM us whenever you want to, we love hearing from you!