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Dwayne’s World Vol. 1 features twenty standout performances from your popular YouTube series, Dwayne’s World. How do you feel knowing that it’s going to be collected together as your first-ever live covers album?

Tyler: Yeah, it feels like it’s been years in the making. You know, we’ve been playing live for fifteen years, and a lot of these songs are songs we’ve been playing for quite a long time. We did make a record back in 2019 of sort of reimagined covers, where we put different clothes on the song to see how it might feel. But this is just the songs as we play them. So yeah, it feels like it’s been years in the making, and I’m excited for people to hear it.

Nick: Yeah, and it wasn’t even really our intention to do this. We had the idea to make the YouTube series first, to make our set at our rehearsal space and shoot videos of us performing these songs. I think they turned out so well; we were so happy with how the audio sounded, as well as the videos. They capture the live energy of a Dwayne Gretzky concert because we recorded them live in front of cameras. So there’s that pressure of performing for an audience of some kind, and I think they sounded great and captured the energy of a show. So we thought, well, why not put it out as a vinyl?

The set of your YouTube series is a meticulously recreated Wayne’s World-inspired basement that started with friends having fun and building fake wood panelling and a staircase inside their rehearsal space. At what point did you realize that this could be something bigger than just a fun visual concept?

Tyler: We moved into that space at the end of 2019, and then the pandemic hit, and we livestreamed our New Year’s Eve show for two years from that space just as it was kind of a mishmash of whoever’s stuff got brought in. It was last year that Nick and I thought, how can we spruce this up? How can we make this feel a little more like our clubhouse? We bounced around some ideas and thought, well, what if we built the Wayne’s World set here and called it Dwayne’s World? It was just a fun idea, and we all kind of ran with it. We’re still growing this YouTube series, and it’s been really fun so far. We’ve gotten to connect with people we otherwise wouldn’t have been able to connect with, all around the world, and that’s been really exciting. So far, so good. I’m excited to see what the future of Dwayne’s World brings us.

Is there a connection between the set of Dwayne’s World and the band’s own beginnings, in that apartment basement?

Nick: Yeah. Actually, in the artwork of the vinyl, we wrote a bit of an origin story for Dwayne. Part of the reason for that is that when the band first started, back in 2010, it was born out of this clubhouse. Tyler and I lived in an apartment building in downtown Toronto, and there was what we called “the bunker,” the basement of that building, which our friends had sort of made into a space. That was the genesis of Dwayne Gretzky. We’d just go down there, a group of friends, and for fun, play covers of songs. So in a way, without that first clubhouse, I don’t know if the band would have ever existed. Then last year, when we decided to remake our space and build it into a set connected to the Wayne’s World theme, it just seemed fitting bringing these songs to life in our new clubhouse. There is a connection there: reflecting on the band’s history, this idea of the clubhouse, where we gather to have fun together, is kind of at the core of our band, and in many ways, how the band started.

The album was recorded completely live. Why was preserving that spontaneity so important to you? Do you feel there’s a major difference between a studio version and what the live recording offers?

Nick: Like I said, we didn’t start out with the idea of making a record; we started with the idea of recording videos of us performing the songs live. Then, once we put them all together and started putting the videos up online… Ian, one of our guitar players, is a really talented engineer, mixer, and producer. He’s the one who mixes all the songs, and he does such a great job; he really elevates them, and they sound so clear, punchy, and exciting. That’s when we decided to put it out as a vinyl, to make it an album. And I think the charm of it is that we’ve always been a live band. We’ve been a word-of-mouth cover band; we’re not relying on records to be the focus of what we do. We’ve probably played close to a thousand shows since 2010. That’s who we are; that’s our identity: performing in front of an audience and bringing these classic songs to life on stage. That’s what we really focus on, and that’s what brings us joy. So if we’re going to cover these songs, the only way to do it, for us, is live, to have that live energy.

Tyler: And if we were being nitpicky about the recordings, we’d start doing overdubs and rerecording things, and if we saw it through that lens, we’d still be recording the album now, because there are just so many people involved and everyone has such high standards. The fact that it’s live means there are mistakes in a lot of these performances, but the energy is there at its core. The studio version already exists; Queen made it, Paul Simon made it. This is our version: us in the rehearsal space, just playing it live. Hopefully there’s a real charm to that.

When you were recording, how did you get through the really long shoot days? Did you have any snacks, or what kept the energy up?

Nick: They’re challenging days. Tyler and I both love doing it; it’s a fun challenge. Typically, we shoot five songs in a day, and we do about three or four takes of each. We start around noon, do a couple of songs, three takes of each and change our outfits so it seems like another day. Then we shoot another song, break for lunch, and do three more songs. The full shoot day usually runs from about noon until five or six p.m., and by that point we’re quite loopy; it’s a demanding day for everybody. I’d like to think that pressure — making five hopefully really good-sounding and good-looking videos in one day, within six hours, gets the best out of people. I really do think it does. Staying loose and having fun and being playful in that environment can be a challenge, but I think our group is really good at that, and at trusting one another to stay loose, have fun, and still get a lot of good work done in a short period of time.

For someone who’s never attended one of your live shows, what do you hope they take away from listening to this album, or understand about the band?

Tyler: There are so many songs we could have picked, so why these? I think if someone listens to the record, hopefully what they take away is: what a well-curated record. There are lots of really fun songs, some pretty straight-down-the-middle, obvious choices, and some that are more out of left field, a little deeper cut, but somehow they work together. If we were an original band and this was our album, it’d be pretty amazing. There’s some sort of connection between these songs because we’ve been playing them for so long. They resonate with us as a group, and I think they complement each other when you hear them back to back. So hopefully people take away that it’s a well-curated, high-energy, power-packed album that they want to keep listening to.

Nick: And I hope it makes a listener seek us out, come see us live, and want to see these songs brought to life right in front of them. That’s our hope.

Your rendition of “You Can Call Me Al” has reached audiences around the world and has surpassed 1.3 million views. What’s it like watching your work reach thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of people from all over the world, kilometres away?

Tyler Kyte: It’s exciting; that’s what we want. We’re proud of what we do, and we want to reach people and share this, so it feels really good. When we meet people at our shows who are from outside Toronto and came because they saw the Dwayne’s World video series, it’s really encouraging.

Has this growth online changed the way you think about your audience?

Nick: I’m not sure. I think we’re just really excited by the opportunity to bring this further and wider, the opportunity to travel and reach new audiences. It’s encouraging that the Dwayne’s World videos seem to have connected on some level and are growing in viewership, because it means we get to broaden our horizons a bit. That’s exciting.

What do you think makes a great cover, and how do you put enough of your own personality into it, without changing the original, but bringing your own flair to each song?

Nick: It’s a really fine line, one we’ve thought a lot about over the years. There are all sorts of ways of doing it; you can reimagine a cover and make it really different from the original, and that can be amazing. That’s just not been our approach. Typically, we’ve tried to faithfully bring these songs to life as we all know and love them, really trying to capture the beautiful details from the original recordings and be pretty accurate in recreating them. But in terms of performing them, it’s a delicate balancing act: owning the songs as yourself, interpreting them through your own lens, honestly trying to capture some of the beautiful idiosyncrasies of the songs, all the little details, without going too far into caricature or doing an impression of the original. That’s the fine balance we’re always trying to strike: capturing the essence of the song and its details, while making it honest and truthful to ourselves not just dressing up as Freddie Mercury and doing a Freddie Mercury impression. How do we own the songs ourselves while still being faithful to them?

Tyler Kyte: I think that’s great. And because we have such a big group, and everyone has different skills and talents to bring to the table, we get to choose songs strategically to showcase some of those talents, which allows people to put themselves into it. But yeah, I agree, Nick.

Nick: And going back to your previous question about how we choose songs — because we’re covering other people’s material, not our own, I think the creative thing we get to do, like a DJ curating a whole experience, is deciding what songs to play and how to go from A to B to C to D. That curation is really the creative element of what we get to do, because we didn’t write the songs — we get to perform them and try to bring them to life, and tell the story of what we’re choosing to do. That’s a really fun part of it. Normally it’s about choosing songs we love, and songs that play to the strengths of the people in the band, so everyone gets a chance to shine — it really is an ensemble cast, like a big band with lots of different characters, and the show and the album showcase all of those different people.

After playing together for so many years, what do you feel you’ve learned about each other that’s allowed you to work so well together, with the chemistry shining through even on camera?

Tyler: People in our group are genuinely happy for each other and are each other’s cheerleaders a lot. When somebody has an opportunity to grab the spotlight and shine, everyone else in the band is behind them, enjoying it more than anybody. That’s a huge part of it. Something we’ve learned about each other is that, as a group, we naturally care about each other and want to see each other succeed. Nick and I work together a lot on this, and we’re learning about ourselves and each other all the time. We’re very different in our personalities, but there’s a lot of trust that’s been the consistent thing over the years, and I think that’s what’s allowed us to keep growing. We complement each other, the two of us, and when you add a ten-piece band where that’s happening all over the place, it can be pretty magical.

Nick: Yeah, I think when people come to see our shows, they often comment on how the energy is contagious, and how it looks like we’re all having such a good time up there, enjoying each other’s company, sharing the spotlight, good at passing the ball around. I think that’s very genuine with this group of people. It’s a very supportive group, which is amazing, and I’m grateful for that. What I’ve learned over the years is: wow, we have a really special team, and we’re really lucky to get to do this fun, weird job together.

Looking back at everything the band has accomplished since it was formed in 2010, does this new album feel more like a culmination of the past sixteen years, or the beginning of an entirely new chapter?

Tyler: I guess it’s both. I’m excited about the new chapter, and I’m excited that Dwayne’s World has given us a platform to put our energy into; we see growth in different ways. I’d like to think it’s the beginning of a new chapter, but of course it’s the result of the last sixteen years of gigging and work that created it. It’s called Dwayne’s World Volume 1, so my guess is at some point…

Nick: It’s quite a presumptuous title, but we did it deliberately, because the truth is, we’ve played so many songs over the years. We’re now putting out two videos a month; that’s twenty-four songs a year, but we’ve learned and played almost nine hundred songs together in our career. There’s just a ton of material we’ve already learned and played together. We could do this for a long time, and we hope to. So yeah, even though it was a bit presumptuous, we made it Volume 1 because we’re already thinking about Volume 2.

If you could bring one artist whose song you’ve covered onto stage with you, who would it be?

Tyler: If Alanis Morissette came out and sang a song with us, that would be so cool and so fun, and I’d be very proud. I’m going to go with Alanis.

Nick: So many people, it’s hard to say. A personal favourite of mine is Paul Simon; “You Can Call Me Al” has been a staple in our set for many years, and he’s an idol of mine. So that would be cool. We had the great pleasure: we haven’t done this too much, but this past spring, on our nineties tour, we connected with Brad Roberts, the lead singer of Crash Test Dummies, and invited him to come out to one of our shows at the Phoenix when we were doing an all-nineties set. He came out to do a song. That was really cool, announcing him to the stage as a surprise for everyone in the audience. He walked out to huge cheers, and he was so awesome, such a delight to work with. That was a really fun experience, so I hope to do more of that — getting to bring out special guests, the original singers or artists from the songs we cover, and play them together. It’s pretty special.

Tyler: So, Alanis, if you’re listening to this and you want to come, it’s an open invitation.

What’s your favourite spot in Toronto to grab a drink, listen to live music, or just hang out?

Nick: Wow, okay, let me think. Tyler, you answer first.

Tyler: I live in Hamilton now, so I’m not going out as much in Toronto. I’ll have to think about that. The Bell and the Beacon is a spot on Queen West; they do a honky-tonk Wednesday night up there, and I’ve seen a couple of artists there. Great food downstairs, fun bar upstairs; it’s cozy and intimate. So I’m going with the Bell and the Beacon.

Nick: I was thinking the same thing. It feels like when our band started in 2010, the Dakota Tavern was kind of our home base a small club, felt very homey, kind of an extension of the bunker I told you about, where we started. We had a bit of a residency there, and it felt like a special little place that something can grow out of. The Bell and the Beacon has sort of taken over that feeling: a small space with lots of great musicians doing fun work upstairs, good weekly programming, well curated, a good place to see music. So I’ll double down on the Bell and the Beacon.

Was there anything else you’d like to add?

Tyler: I hope people out there listen to the record, throw it on, and call into radio stations to request the Dwayne version of the song. “Hey, play Tina Turner’s ‘The Best’ but play the Dwayne version.” That’s what I hope happens.

Nick: Yeah, and I hope it just reaches people and resonates with them, and that the live energy is infectious enough to make them want to check out the videos, if they haven’t already, or come to a Dwayne Gretzky show. It’s all about the joy of celebrating these great songs; I think it’s a very pure and wholesome thing to do. So I hope it brings people joy.

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