Wild Light

By Meredith Turits
Photos by Lara Woolfson

It's part blessing, part curse to be labeled a "Boston band." Boston operates like something of an anomalous factory under the heavy machinery of its venues and fans. Many bands gain an immense amount of steam. However, Boston also has a tendency to suffocate bands, confining acts to its limited square milage and incestuous network. It's not strange to see an act sell out the Middle East Downstairs, but never make the transition to a national forum.

Maybe that's one of the reasons that Wild Light, the Boston/New Hampshire four-pleoe, get a little uncomfortable with the phrase "Boston band."

While the band - drummer Seth Kasper, and multi-instrumentalists Jordan Alexander, Timothy Kyle, and Seth Pitman - may base their operations out of the Northeast hub, it’s never been their intention to become a Boston band. Quite the opposite.

“When we started this, there really wasn’t any other goal in mind other than doing this as a full-time job,” Kyle says. “I think a lot of people are in bands for fun and to hang out with friends. And it’s part of a social life kind of network. For us, we just knew from the beginning that if we weren’t going to be making records that were coming out all over the world, then what’s the point?”

It could be that mentality that has put Wild Light ahead of the game, or just the “serendipitous” chain of events that has them poised to break out nationally. It seems that literally overnight, the Boston/New Hampshire four-piece has arisen from the depths of absolute obscurity and carved out a niche in the limelight.

“People probably think, ‘Who are these guys? They haven’t done anything to deserve this.’ But we had our two years of like, camping in our icebox house in Quincy and not having a car. We’ve paid our dues,” Kyle asserts.

Wild Light saw their first incarnation in the spring of 2005, adding Kasper in the fall to finalize the lineup. Crawling under the hedge of anonymity, the band focused on writing and, didn’t tour and had only a quick demo thrown together in December of 2005. In Summer 2006, Wild Light snagged Bob Logan of Small Church Recording Studios to help them initiate several tracks for their first studio effort.

“A bunch of stuff started to happen with us so it put a different twist on things,” says Kyle. “We were going to do a seven song EP and then we did an eighth one on a whim. We weren’t yet done when an avalanche of activity happened,” Kyle says.
The crest of the avalanche was an offer from long-time friends (and ex-bandmates) The Arcade Fire, with whom members of Wild Light grew up in Amherst, N.H., to join the band as openers on New York and West Coast dates in September.

“We quickly mixed four of the songs because we wanted to have something to sell for The Arcade Fire tour in September,” Kyle continues. The effort became the Wild Light EP.

From there, things continued to zip along at lightning pace — the band was approached by Mark Kates of Fenway Recordings to consider partnering with him as a manager, and The Arcade Fire extended their invitation to include Wild Light as openers on their European tour for Neon Bible.

“Everything started to happen very quickly,” Kyle recounts, a level of excitement brimming. “A record deal was on the table 10 minutes into our first meeting with Mark. One thing that we’re finding out is that there are an insane amount of logistics involved in being in a professional band.”

“It’s one thing with a U.S. tour, but in Europe, we would have been fucking dead in the water,” Kasper says of the fortuitous timing of adding Kates into the mix.

Pitman continues, “Management and the opportunity to play bigger shows came into place at the same time, so it was this juggling of dealing with both sides and making everything could happen.”

With the flood of hype surrounding them, Wild Light took the step that they’d been dying to take: the one that signifies the transition where music crosses the line from being a hobby to becoming a job.

“The very first moment that I thought that I could not have a job and treat my band as a job, I was ready to jump on that,” Alexander says. No longer stuck in retail, coffee shops, bars, and cubicles, Alexander, Pitman, and Kyle jumped ship from their employers.

“When everything presents itself to you like the way it has to us, it’s a pretty simple decision,” Kasper says. “When you’re working on a record deal, you’re talking about what producers you want to use on an album, you’re talking about where you’re going to record — like, in what country — it’s pretty clear that it’s going to be inevitable that your working world and dealing with life the way you’ve dealt with it is going to fall apart. It’s a thing that’s inherent to having a band that someone’s actually pulled the trigger on.”

Laughing, Kasper recognizes the irony in his statement, seeing as the 26-year-old Northeastern graduate still spends his daytimes working as a mechanical engineer, while the other members have moved home in order to “eliminate the bills.” (“It’s easier to go home without your tail between your legs when you tell your parents that you have a record deal,” Kyle justifies.)

“It’s really interesting to be in a position where you know that all of this stuff is going on. I had to take an hour out of my work day at 10 in the morning to go into the parking lot, start my car up in the freezing cold, get on the cell phone, and talk with Boston, New York, and London and start designing something.”

Indeed, the day after the Arcade Fire tour wrapped, Kasper was back at work.
“It’s frustrating to think of all that time and energy that you have to spend over those two years to pay rent, and now that we don’t have to do that, things go so much faster. But it’s just the reality,” Kyle says. “Now we’ve got major booking agents in Europe and the US and we’re negotiating a record deal and have had lots of label interest. Everything’s ready to fire at full speed.”

Music will be a full-time job for Wild Light come February, when the band will begin recording with the label that is on the cusp of integrating them into their lineup (though Wild Light is careful to keep the details as hush as possible).

“Suddenly, there’s this whole part of being in a band that has nothing to do with making music,” Kyle says. “We had to get a whirlwind education about how a record contract works. We get an email with all of these terms, and we didn’t know what anything meant,” Kyle says. “It’s weird because with most jobs, you learn how to do the technical stuff and get training before you face it, but with a band, you just write songs and be in a band and suddenly there’s this whole other side of how things are going to go for you.”

With types of attention and offers that the band had never seen, they’ve been caught up in a rapid maelstrom of industry.

“It’s exactly what you wanted, but it’s backwards, and it arrives and comes upon you, and you’re like, ‘What the fuck?’” Alexander muses. “We had to stop the process and slow it down. You’re offstage and you get a call and [people] are asking you to make these huge decisions, and you’re about to play to 2,000 people.”

While the sangfroid and network to do all of the right things are in place, Wild Light still has a lot of territory to trudge. And some of it’s extremely untraditional, such as breaking out of the stereotype of being a diet-Arcade Fire that’s developed through media exposure as a result of their tour.

“We’re not the most thick-skinned dudes, but we’re anticipating The Arcade Fire thing being a bit of a monkey on our back for a while. We have to accept the benefits of it, but also what comes with it,” Kyle says. The band admits that they’re preemptively defensive about the subject of The Arcade Fire, and Kyle says they’re training themselves to be ready to block out whatever vilification is tossed their way.

“We can’t downplay the fact that we’ve had some very helpful connections,” he says, “but ultimately we know that stuff can get you in the door, but it’s not going to keep you there for very long.”

And as for Boston? Strangely enough, the buzz hasn’t quite made its way up to the city, despite the band’s appearances at CMJ, Kasper’s place in locals Hooray for Earth, and, of course, the national recognition they’ve gained.

“Our local profile still doesn’t really exist,” Kyle says. “The things that happen to local bands happened to us, we just didn’t make any fans along the way.” He shrugs, smiling. It’s been a bit of a strange journey for a band whose home is a rock town with a very concrete way of doing things. But perhaps Wild Light is just the breath of fresh air for which Boston’s looking; a band in pursuit for the light at the end of the tunnel.

www.myspace.com/wildlight