Imagine travelling 2,707 km to play a gig with your band. That’s exactly what Lyndon Lalonde did for an October show at a popular bar in Calgary’s Beltline.
Having the bass player fly in from across the country is a reality the Calgary band, Cheer, has been adapting to with gusto. Lalonde, a founding member of the psychedelic rock group, moved to Toronto in August yet remains an active player. Through friendship and modern technology, this independent music project is finding ways to collaborate, even if it means catching a flight for a weekend of shows.
“I flew in Thursday morning, we did a rehearsal, and then we played the show,” said Lalonde, standing outside Modern Love, minutes after performing on the bar’s stage. “You look at the calendar and we realize we haven’t practised for a full month.”
Within 24 hours of our interview, Lalonde was on the road to play another show in Edmonton at The Buckingham. A week later, he was on a plane back to Toronto.
“Maybe it’s because it had only been seven weeks since we’d last seen each other, but it didn’t feel like it had been that long,” said Gus Rendell, guitarist and fellow founding member of Cheer. “The muscle memory was all there.”
The entire weekend, he said, was a flurry of playing that brought them back together. “First practice was practise for the second practice. The second practice was practise for the first show. The first show was practise for the second show. And by the second show, it felt pretty good,” he said. “It felt like we’d come together pretty good, honestly.”
Cheer was born out of a two-man project helmed by lifelong friends Rendell and Lalonde. The two were playing throughout the early 2010s in Calgary as Planned Bastard. before meeting guitarist Dylan Gibbs in 2017.
“For the first year of our existence, we played improvisational Legend of Zelda jams,” said Rendell, referencing the famous videogame series.
By 2018, Cheer was composing original songs and released its debut recording, the EP Time and Space. Following a scrappy tour across Canada, the trio recorded a full-length album, Cardinal Directions, released early in 2021. It was around this time that drummer Ethan Muzychka was added to the lineup, developing their sound into something they describe as “wonk rock.”
This new lineup recorded an (as of writing, unreleased) new album Palingenesis, and made appearances at festivals such as Frogfest, Big Winter Classic, and Sled Island throughout 2022 and 2023.
It was amidst this momentum for the band that Lalonde dropped the bombshell.
“I moved for love,” he laughed. His partner, Megan Hamilton, was accepted to a master’s degree program at the Ontario College of Art & Design University after months of uncertainty and waitlisting, and Lalonde wanted to support her.
“We learned about it in the middle of June and by the end of August, they were gone,” recounts Rendell.
Many bands navigate situations like this by replacing the departing member, but it is not something Cheer is interested in. Instead, the group is finding ways to use technology to help the process.
“There’s a zero-latency mode with some of these video call apps like Zoom that was developed with this sort of purpose in mind; people trying to play music with each other,” said Rendell.
Each member of Cheer is adept with recording technology, which makes it easy to record a song idea on one side of the country and send it to a band member on the other.
“We have a healthy, active message board,” says Lalonde. “Stupid memes, ‘What did you have for breakfast.’ It’s good to continue to be friends.”
Rendell shares a similar sentiment. “I feel like we both appreciate each other more and want to spend time with each other,” he said.
For these two longtime artists, a week together playing music is the best way to reconnect. The future of Cheer is unclear, but there are opportunities amid the chaos.
“I think (Lynden being gone) increases the amount of personal dedication that needs to come forward for it to not fall apart,” said Rendell. “We all want this to do well, and we’re all very dedicated and invested in the band and each other. I hope that that sees us through this murky period.”
For Lalonde, distance makes the heart grow fonder. “It’s cool to go to a different Canadian city and see different Canadians,” he says. “It just hardens my love for Calgary and southern Alberta.”
That love is evident as he soulfully sings into a microphone in Calgary on a Friday night.
