Long Time No Time is a 5 piece horn-based band in Calgary Alberta.Who focus on performance and keeping the horn scene alive in Calgary. They recently released their second album “Next Time” (2020) streaming on all music apps.We had the privilege of talking to Daniel and Tom – two members of the band who shared their stories and countless exciting adventures.

The Meet “Cute” of Long Time No Time.

How did you meet?

Dan– We were all specifically in the University of Calgary’s jazz Orchestra – we all met there. I’m a person who likes to go out and see shows (Daniel), I’m not so much into the academic music world. I play the saxophone, and there are no saxophones in the orchestra – so I don’t get too involved in that realm of the music world. I was frustrated by the lack of horn music in Calgary, and I eventually went like, “Hey! I know a whole bunch of cool guys who play horns, and we can write music and play shows.”
That was it.

The Jazz, Hip-Hop & Heavy Metal Band.

What is your sound?

Dan – We get asked this question all the time, and we don’t know (laugh) – we’ve never known. WE don’t know what’s happening, haha. Yeah, we have jazz origins – and we met in a jazz band, but we are not a jazz band. We are very strict about saying that. We feel that we don’t capture the jazz feel to call ourselves a jazz band – we just don’t sound like that. We have these hip-hop vibes; we have all these different vibes going on. I (Daniel) write most of the music, and I grew up listening to heavy metal but played saxophone.

Tom – I was definitely heavily influenced by my older brothers, and especially my second oldest brother. Which was a lot of hip-hop, like Joey bada$$, Chance the rapper, and I would usually listen to the radio, and was probably somewhat in touch with the top 100’s. I would say those were the largest variety of music I would listen to. It took me a long time to get into jazz.

What scene do you guys play to?

Dan – Well, right now, there’s no scene.

Tom– We are not being seen, haha.

Dan– Typically, the palomino was a big staple for us, and hopefully will be again. We play most of our shows there. It’s not where we try to play – I just send emails to every conceivable venue, and whoever emails me back will be where we play.

Tom– We’ve played at libraries – we’ve played at six libraries, which is pretty funny. We learned that pretty quick “get up” and “tombone” is not the place to be playing those songs. That was pretty funny. We’ll play wherever they’ll have us, dan will ask anyone with a stage if we can use it.
We also played an old country bar, and we got booed a far bit. When our bases played Bach, and they were not having it. Sadly, I wasn’t there to hear any of it.

Tom – I think as long as your enlisting a response from people you’re doing something right so,

Dan – If someone doesn’t like you, that means that they’ve listened to you.

Tom – You’re making them feel something, it might not be great. Hopefully, that’s not what everyone feels like when they listen to our music, but you know, if a couple of people get really hot and bothered by it, I say that’s a testament to a job well done.

How do you go about writing music?

Dan– There’s not a whole lot of collective writing effort, mostly for the sake of expediency. It’s a lot easier because most of us studied music we can think of a song, write it down, and then hand out charts and learn them. So, we aren’t spending our practice thinking about what to do; instead, we are already doing it. Sometimes we will collaborate when it comes to harmonies and such, but it doesn’t happen often because we all like the way we write music.

We grew a lot as a group when I wrote “tombone” – because I thought “hey tom likes to rap; he can rap over that” – so we were able to work that in

On the other hand, we are all really big fans of improve, we all like to do improvised solos and that – the song “Slumbers Gump” is 90% no written down, we just do whatever we want for the last 5 minutes of the chart. We are all collectively good at improvisation… sometimes.

What’s the Tea behind the friend in all of your interlude recordings?

Dan – that was my idea, which like may or may not have been a good idea. We have received so many mixed responses to that. The idea is Long Time No Time. Especially in performance, we strive to be more than “listen to our music” we want to entertain. Can we make people laugh, bring them along with a joke? What else can we get out of this?

Long Time No Time was named when our friend messed up a phone call, someone would you usually say “hey long time no see” but instead they said ” hey long time no time’ – and we can never let a joke go, so that’s what we named our band. So then for the first album, I had the idea for it to be like that stupid voice mail, it was funny…

Tom– Yeah, and you pulled that all together outside of writing the album.

Next Time Album (2020).

You released an album before an EP-why?

Dan – We had booked one day of studio time because I had written all of these charts and we rehearsed them – at a certain point as a band you want people to hear your music. We didn’t really have any goals, we thought we would record, and whatever we get done, we get done. We kind of got really hyped on the whole experience. You can tell while listening to the album. None of those takes were perfect or even approaching perfect, but we were really excited to record something.

Tom– Yeah, and it was the first time even hearing stuff together. I don’t listen to our first album much. That was four years of learning how to play trombone in university ago. So I’m completely biased now.

Dan – Another fun thing about that is that it was the first time some of us heard the lyrics to our songs. I hadn’t really been listening to them in rehearsal, and now I could hear them.

To put it in perspective, we recorded our 2018 in 6 hours and our 2020 album was recorded in 3 full days.

Starting A Band.

What’s your advice for people who are interested in making a band? How do you start?

Tom – It was nothing before it was something, this guy from the jazz band last year asked me if I rapped and if I wanted to join a band, and I showed up.
Be prepared
Do the work
Be easy on yourself – because writing your own music, I think it’s very easy to find flaws in it. Simple is best

Dan– I think we can break it down into 2 points.
First, have specific goals.
If you’re going to start a group, think of what kind of group you want to have. There are two kinds of groups. The one that’s like “we all play instruments lets hang out and have some beers and play our instruments.” – that’s totally fine. Such an awesome thing to do. But that’s different than, “let’s start a group, let’s play some shows, let’s get somethings done.” Which is a completely different type of thing.

And be absolutely shameless about what you’re doing, because you and your friends can get together and work really hard, make the best music that’s ever been written in the world, but if you’re all too shy to send emails and book shows… It’s not going anywhere.

You can’t wait around for someone to decide that your good, especially in the arts. You have to sell yourself.

Eunice: That’s some solid advice and I think many artists forget that we have to create opportunities for yourself and not expect it to be offered to us. Thank you guys for sharing with us!

Lauren: Yeah, this was a lot of fun!

Tom: We should do this again maybe swap in the other members hahaha

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