By: Erica Raley
It’s April of 2023, and the Ottawa music scene, teeming with life and zeal, is ramping up for a summer that local music enthusiasts will not forget. Among the talented bands leading the charge is a long-time, beloved Ottawa contributor: Growing Fires.
Growing Fires was an artistic project started by lead singer, Jeremy Farkas. Jeremy had been in other bands prior to 2016, and as he began writing music that diverged from the soundscapes he was a part of, he decided to make his own individual mark on the scene.
As Jeremy began toying with fresh ideas in the form of Growing Fires, he invited Travis Alguire on as an instrumentalist, and the two got to work on curating their sound. Jeremy and Travis had known each other since 2006. As childhood friends who had discovered the music scene together, finding a musical groove was not an unfamiliar feat.
Jeremy and Travis, having already begun to establish their pop-punk sound, worked with multiple other musicians as temporary bandmates until they eventually found their perfect quartet: Jeremy as the lead singer, Travis on bass, Bentley Roy on lead guitar and Nic Zevenbergen on drums.
Travis had met Nic in college and they bonded over their shared passion for music. Bentley and Jeremy’s friendship dates even farther back to 1999, senior kindergarten. Since they have all known each other as friends for so long, their professional dynamic has evolved into something seamlessly close-knit.
“It’s very much like a family. We’re not so much like friends anymore. More like brothers,” Travis said.
To elaborate, Jeremy provided a fitting allegory, “yes it’s all absolute love, but very brotherly. Like when your little brother does something to annoy you on purpose, and you respond kind of immaturely… our dynamic is exactly like that”.
These four friends officially came together to form what is the current personnel of Growing Fires at the end of 2021, and they’ve since launched themselves into the Ottawa music industry.
“Pop-punk encapsulates it well. There are some other influences in there too, some emo, some hardcore, some country…,” Jeremy said when asked about the genre of their sound.
“It’s a bit of a new spin to pop-punk,” Travis added. “We try to really dig into where we came from, like going back to our childhood influences, so we kind of push the boundaries a little bit.”
In describing those early influences, it is evident Growing Fires has drawn on a breadth of talent from the 80s and 90s. Jeremy grew up surrounded by 90s punk rock with twangy voices and distorted rock guitars. Travis grew up around rock, folk-rock and country, citing the Tragically Hip and Neil Young as some of his parents’ favourite artists. All four of the Growing Fires members had one influence in common: Metal.
“[Our song] ‘Devour’ has a kind of metal feeling to it,” Jeremy said about seeing their past influences in their current music, “But while I listened to metal in high school, I preferred lighter pop punk. That wasn’t too popular then, though.” He added with a laugh.
Growing Fires has given Jeremy the opportunity to really dive into the pop-punk he enjoyed as a high schooler, and amalgamate his ideas with the like-minded ideas of his clan. Their music combines the lighthearted appeal of modern pop with the darker, more serious tones of 90s punk music.
On the surface, their songs are something you can sing along to; they’re fun and catchy. At a second glance, however, the lyrics are gripping and real. Jeremy revealed that writing this type of music is cathartic for him, a way to process hard emotions and turn them into something people can enjoy and love.
Growing Fires brings two blaring opposites together in their music, attempting to reconcile them through one, digestible whole product. “That challenged me a lot. The vibe was bright but the content was dark., Travis said about one such song, “I’m in Hell”, which they released on March 31st of this year.
“Strange Nights”, Growing Fires’ most popular song, demonstrates this exact concept of juxtaposing weighty lyrics with lighthearted musical elements. Jeremy wrote this song 10 years ago, and since its Spotify release in 2020, it has amassed an eye-widening 25,000 streams on Spotify.
Jeremy had written “Strange Nights” for a project in college and had randomly brought it to the band when they performed a show and realized their set list didn’t fill out their allotted playing time.
“Some of our songs take months to create. Years, in the case of ‘Strange Nights’. Everything is pretty much up in the air creatively until we record it,” Jeremy shared about Growing Fires’ creative process, which appears to be constantly in flux, ebbing and flowing with the band’s creative whims. “Very seldom do we write a song ‘one-and-done.’”
For Jeremy, springtime is bringing an influx of inspiration- a time for him to reflect on the bad, experience the good, and put those new thoughts into writing. This energy is being put into a major performance weekend as Growing Fires gears up to play their next two shows: The Dominion Tavern on April 14th and their first headliner show at La Maison Tavern on April 15th.
“And I know we just put out a new track, but I hope people are ready for the next one!” Travis hinted about the near future.
This new song, which should be coming out in the next few months, was a self-proclaimed summer banger, seeing as this is the first Growing Fires song with happy lyrics to match its laid-back composition.
Looking forward, they will also be participating in Canadian Music Week in June and filming a music video in May. “We’re just going ham,” Trevor said. “Writing a lot, performing a lot. It’s awesome.”
He added: “And I just want to shout out the music scene right now. It’s a great time to be a part of this.” This prompted Jeremy and Travis to reminisce about how far the scene has come, describing a shared memory of them as early high schoolers going to see local music shows at Mavericks over 10 years ago.
“They’d have really major bands coming around, touring, who couldn’t pull a crowd some local bands can these days,” Jeremy said.
“Yeah seriously. I’m watching the crowds at these shows: The New Hires, F!TH, Guest Room Status, Pink Cloud Summer. They’re all seriously great people. I haven’t seen the scene this alive in a decade.”