motel void

Walk Me Home is a band formed in Boston, Massachusetts, currently splayed between Boston and Hamilton, Ontario. They released their debut album What Do You Think this April.

MOTEL VOID: You’ve just released your debut album ‘What Do You Think’. You worked on it since late 2022. Was it a difficult process? I ask mostly because your members live in 2 different cities – in Boston and in Hamilton, Ontario (they’re like 500 miles from each other…), that sounds a bit complicated to me!

JADEN (WALK ME HOME): It was a super fun process with a few specific challenges. It was all self-produced and home recorded which gave us a lot of freedom and flexibility to experiment and explore in a low-pressure environment. Ben, our drummer, was going to be home in Wisconsin for the summer that we were planning on recording the album so we recorded all the drum parts on the album in one day in Boston before he left then me and Gavi spent the summer recording his main guitar and vocal parts in Boston and Hamilton.

In the subsequent months I recorded the rest of the instruments and experimented with all sorts of sounds alone in my room (a lot of sweating, writhing, screaming, experimenting with ear splitting feedback, hitting and bowing any object I could find—I wanted to give it my all haha) and performed a lot of sound surgery on all the stuff that was already recorded to add or change sections. Once I had around a hundred tracks recorded on each song, I gave my best attempt at mixing it all into something coherent and Gavi would come up to Hamilton periodically to hang out and work on stuff with me to get it sounding how we want. Unorthodox methods, but we are very happy with the result.

MOTEL VOID: How hard is it for you to write songs and rehearse them when you don’t live in the same city?

JADEN (WALK ME HOME): Originally we were all living in Boston and we were able to rehearse pretty often to work on new material. Me and Gavi were the only constant members for a bit there as people were leaving Boston periodically either being done with school and going back to hometowns or being away for summers. Right now we have a lineup of beautiful and unbelievably talented people that will hopefully last a while.

We have Ben on drums (who played on the album) and we have Eva on guitar and Noah on bass along with me and Gavi. I had to go back to Canada in late 2023 due to visa complications but we’re planning to have a band retreat here in Canada this summer to hash out some new tunes and experiment. For this past album, Gavi wrote all the tunes on classical guitar and then I arranged them for the full band context. I’m excited to see what direction we end up taking with this new set of minds crafting the songs together!

MOTEL VOID: This April you had a long US/Canada tour, playing 13 shows in a row. How was it? What was the reception? Do you have your favorite venues in Boston/Hamilton?

JADEN (WALK ME HOME): This was only our second tour (first one was this past fall) and it went really well! This was the longest stretch of consecutive shows that we did; 13 shows with no break days but we held up well! It was very emotionally and physically intense and vulnerable, we had a lot of personal hardships and sorrows that we were going through and it felt nice to be able to let it out and share it with people and let people in. The reception has been amazing, I feel so lucky to be able to be part of this project that is able to connect with people on such a real level—giving an audience the space to be terrified, cry, be held, introspect in a safe and loving environment. Gavi booked the whole tour himself which was a massive amount of work and he did a phenomenal job.

MOTEL VOID: I’m always curious about new bands and projects. Could you recommend 3-5 best acts you played with on this tour?

JADEN (WALK ME HOME): Yes! We are so lucky to play with so many amazing bands, many of them we look up to greatly. Rong in Boston is one of the most exciting off the wall crazy bands we have ever witnessed that inspire us constantly. A must see live show. Bruiser and Bicycle from Albany are extremely good it’s so cool to see them taking off they are easily one of the most fun and interesting bands coming out with music right now, especially for fans of the weirdo side of neo-psychedelia (Animal Collective, Elephant 6). Public Health from Hamilton just started as a band and our show with them was their third show but they are one to look out for!! Their set completely blew us away! They will be huge someday, I’m certain. It is really worth noting that all the people in these bands are extremely lovely kind people and we are so lucky to call them our friends.

MOTEL VOID: I must say that I really admire your merch! You released 50 beautiful handmade tapes and CDs, you’ve got other handmade items… Are they still available? Did you consider joining a label?

JADEN (WALK ME HOME): Thank you so much! It took a long time and effort to make all of the tapes and CDs, I did them myself right after I finished mixing the album and Gavi made all the clothing items right in the middle of some of the most intense moments of his life so they were real labours of love! The CD and cassette covers were made on recycled cardstock and I carved linocut stamps for the covers and prints on the media itself. There are items still available! Anyone can DM us on instagram with interest and we can sort out shipping something to you instagram.com/walkmeh0me/ !!

These days it seems the bigger indie labels are more on a “don’t call us, we’ll call you” basis with artists and we’re down to do everything ourselves as long as it is feasible in the meantime, so it all works out for now. We don’t want to sign to a label just for the sake of it, but we definitely want our music to be heard by and connect to as many people as possible so we will hop on any opportunity that helps with this goal while maintaining our values. We believe in our music a lot and we give ourselves completely to it.

Inside by Walk Me Home is also featured on our Spotify playlist: