The five members of Make Your Exit were excitedly handling and examining their new EP, Remind Me The Reason I Came when I arrived at the Red Room. I think only two of the five looked up as I joined their table and it reminded me of children opening Christmas presents. They were excited and it was cool to watch.

On top of that, while I had mentioned that I only needed one or two members to be there they had insisted on all coming to meet me. While it makes it harder for me to transcribe (there are seriously three Mikes in the band), it shows a group solidarity that really shines on stage when all members of an ensemble are so committed and eager.

Remind Me The Reason I Came is actually Make Your Exit's second release. About a year ago they released a self-titled EP, but what really got them started was discovering who would handle lead vocals. They all sing; their style is what I would call a raw, without-borders Midlake sound, but initially no one would take the lead mic. Mike Dellios (bass) spoke a bit about it.

"We played in high school together, but broke up at the end of it. I guess we've been playing together for two years now as Make Your Exit, and although we played great together right away, we struggled with bigger issues... like who was going to sing. Lucky for us, [Jeff] Buckley stepped up to the plate and that's when things really got going."

Buckley jumped in to explain how he'd interjected. "I was like, 'this is ridiculous that we can't find a singer, I'm going to try singing,'" while Dellios added "I remember he came in with some recordings to jams we had done. We told him 'you're going to be our singer now.' It's working out really well."

What I was most fascinated with was the recording process that this band endured with their new EP. I'm not sure that I've ever heard anything like it. A friend of a friend bought an old church, gutted it, installed a recording studio and the "sickest amount of gear". Buckley told me about their experience: "Buddies of ours [ProvincialParks] told us about this guy in Trenton who set up a studio in a church, so we went out there for ten days. We slept in the church; we basically lived and breathed recording for ten days straight. It was amazing; we barely knew the guy. But by the end we were close and had this awesome heartfelt good-bye. He understood what we were going for and that's part of why this album feels so good."

Dellios continued, with more on their church friend: "The first day we met him, we show up with our gear. He's got like hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment in that church, and he's just like 'You guys can crash here, I've got some beds set up. To us, that's the way our whole band dynamic works. We're all super-tight like brothers, so he just fit right in with our goals."

Although they are very excited for their CD release show at Sneaky Dee's on Friday, September 25th, one of their members will be less capable of the craziness that generally ensues on stage. Mike (guitars) has seriously injured his ankle: "I went up to a friend's cottage last weekend for a bachelor party and I fell off some stairs and broke my ankle. It's pretty bad."

What Mike meant to say, according to his bandmates, is that he shattered his ankle and it is very literally only being held together by a series of nuts 'n' bolts. Bachelor parties: one of the many reasons I object to marriage and everything that it involves.

Photo by Jonathan Loek.