On his new single, Lantzville fiddler Quin Etheridge-Pedden aims to recreate the feeling of kicking off one’s shoes and relaxing in the summertime.
“Having shoes is kind of confining and it’s kind of nice just to be free and it’s also grounding as well,” he said.
On April 11, Etheridge-Pedden is releasing BFF (Bare Feet Forever), his call to forswear footwear. The 16-year-old musician plays guitar and fiddle on the record. It also marks the first time he’s sung on a professional release, as his last album, 2017’s Embark, was a purely instrumental EP.
“I’ve done a lot of singing at home and I’ve just in the past year or two started to kind of explore it in performance…” he said. “This was just a little bit out of my comfort zone, but in a good way.”
Etheridge-Pedden’s mother wrote the lyrics, leaving him to come up with the notes and melody. It’s the first time he’s written a full chordal arrangement and he said it was an interesting process. He said it involved a lot of trial and error, because “you don’t always know what the potential of a song is going to be unless you try different things.”
“I would try chord progression to the lyrics and maybe it wouldn’t fit … and then I would try a different set of chords and they would totally reflect the laid-back, uplifting feel that I was going for,” Etheridge-Pedden said.
From there he added vocal harmonies and fiddle parts and brought in Victoria multi-instrumentalist Nick Mintenko, whom he met at a winter solstice concert in Duncan, to play bass.
BFF is available here.
WHAT’S ON … Quin Etheridge-Pedden’s next performance is with his bluegrass trio Queue the Music at the Cowichan Folk Guild April Coffeehouse at Duncan United Church on Saturday, April 13. Doors 7 p.m., show at 7:30. Tickets $10 at the door, $5 for CFG members.
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