Mistaken for Wayne “Whitefish”

Musical pursuits in the heart of rural Canadian life.

Not only outside the music industry but within its margins (much less frequently at its very core), there are those for whom music is one of several activities to pursue. It’s a question not only related to the increasing difficulty of living off music without a head start, but also to personal circumstances and lifestyle choices. In the case of Wade Montpellier, he’s both a small-scale organic farmer by trade and the creative force behind his project, Mistaken For Wayne. However, he’s not alone in his musical efforts, as Mistaken For Wayne, the band, also benefits from the presence of Olivier Palkovits (lead guitar and backing vocals), Jonathan Danyliw (bass and backing vocals), Dylan Kelly (drums), and Matthew Wiewel (pedal steel).

Mistaken For Wayne’s debut album is titled Whitefish, and was recorded live off the floor at Studio Le Grease Trap in Sudbury, Ontario. There are hints of Neil Young and The Tragically Hip, but thematically the record takes a distinct direction of its own. Given Wade’s professional background, nature is unsurprisingly a key component of his personal imagery. Water, especially, is a recurring motif (even trickling its way into the song titles), though there are plenty of other allusions to the environment he grew up in. Even without this information, the lyrics come across as genuine accounts of his interests and preoccupations. Here, the embellishing nature of songwriting helps distil the torrent of real experience into succinct sketches that portray, with great honesty, the complex internal life of a young man who returns to his rural hometown.

“It’s been hard since the day I turned my back on the land”, he sings in one of many moments of candid rumination. Life as described by the narrator (or narrators) is inextricably tied to the natural world and one’s relationship to the past. And what is more closely linked to the lives of preceding generations than the toiling of the land and communion with nature? It may seem these are progressively archaic notions, but for many, like Mistaken for Wayne, it remains an undeniable reality. In the album’s penultimate track, the many-voiced choruses of This Time of Year reinforce a communal feeling you can easily imagine stretching back in time. And at the very end, once the last note is played, the whisper of running water takes you away into a natural soundscape as the album fades into silence.