There’s certainly something in the lyrics of the new single from Canadian band Freightliner that rings painfully true here at Americana UK Towers: “I’m up all night playing these songs/…/ ’til the dawn then I’m back to the farm.” It’s the perils of the unbalanced work-life balance, and in Freightliner’s case they aren’t even adding in the gruelling grind of the touring musician – they’re just playing down the local bar.
Innes Wilson of the band explains that “The truth is, we have to go to work to pay bills and keep this dream alive. That means we might only get a couple hours of sleep after playing in a bar before we go back to work, like our guitarist R.P. McMurphy whose daily routine starts at 3 a.m. But this is more of a romanticized version of what we go through to live this double life of rock and roll and working 9 to 5. We really tried to encapsulate the energy and passion we have to play music. It’s guaranteed that all of us in the band are thinking about music for 90 per cent of our workdays—apologies to our bosses!”
Freightliner formed in 2019 to serve as Wilson’s backing band, and has now fully embraced Americana, with Wilson’s guitar and vocals augmented by guitarist R.P. McMurphy, drummer Joshua Osmond and bassist Liam Vickery. Based in the university town of Guelph, Ontario, Freightliner recorded ‘Up All Night’ with engineer Richie Gregor at his studio in nearby Puslinch, Ontario.
