Interview: Versa (Written)

Versa are an explosive blend of symphonic progressive rock and modern post rock music who will release ‘A Voyage / A Destination, Part 2’, their new album, on October 4th, 2024. We spoke to them to learn a little bit more about who they are and what their plans are.

1. Hello! Thank you for taking the time to chat to us. First things first, tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got started.

We are from Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, and started making music together as students at the University of Victoria School of Music in 2007. We all shared an interest in post rock, indie rock, and prog, and decided to get together to compete in the annual UVIc Battle of the Bands. We’ve been making music together ever since.

2. Someone comes to you and asks you to sum up what kind of music you play – what do you tell them?

We try to make music at the meeting place between 70s symphonic progressive rock, and modern post rock music. Imagine someone threw Jethro Tull, Genesis, Explosions in the Sky, and Godspeed You! Black Emperor in a blender. That’s what Versa aspires to.

3. What’s currently going on in your camp? New releases? Tours? Etc.

We wrote and recorded a lot of music during COVID. We released half of that music in September 2022, our last full-length LP, “A Voyage / A Destination”. We’ve spent the past two years polishing the other half of that music, which is being released on October 4, 2024 as “A Voyage / A Destination, Part 2” on streaming and digital download. A physical double-album release of both parts is also being released on October 4th.

4. What has been the most positive experience of making music to date for you?

There are so many positive aspects of making music – working on your own to figure out the details of a new composition, jamming with bandmates and developing new music together, performing those songs live, recording them and getting them out to a wider audience, making connections with fans and other musicians who play and love similar music – it’s all wonderful.

5. Likewise, what has been some of the more challenging aspects and how have you overcome them?

The most challenging aspects of the modern music scene are, in our experience, finding an audience when there are so many artists releasing so much music (and so much of it is great). Even if you put something great out there, 1,000 other people have put great things out that week too and it can be hard to reach the ears you want to reach.

That’s a problem for everyone. For our band specifically, where we live (on Vancouver Island, on the west coast of British Columbia) makes touring difficult. The only major city within a 20 hour drive without crossing an international border is Vancouver, and even playing Vancouver requires an expensive ferry ride.

6. How do you handle the modern expectations of being in a band? Always online, having to put out content constantly, your success measured in likes and follows?

Versa isn’t the main job or primary income for anyone in the band so we don’t really feel the pressure to measure our success this way. It’s far more important to us to make direct connections with the people who like our music, and with like-minded musicians. We find it much more rewarding to get an e-mail or a DM from one person who listened to one of our songs and really liked it, than to post a photo on Instagram that gets a bunch of likes.

7. What’s something that really ‘grinds your gears’ about the industry/business these days and what would you propose is done to combat it?

Everyone complains about streaming, but streaming is just a reaction to piracy. If I could change anything about music in 2024 it would be the idea among so many people that they’re just entitled to it and should never have to pay for it, but it’ll just keep being made anyway. That’s the attitude that gave rise to piracy, and the streaming models that arose to combat piracy pay a pittance to most artists because they’re ad-supported. It’s never going to happen, but going back to a world where most people are willing to buy albums every month for $15 would make the music industry so much healthier.

8. Speaking directly to listeners – what would you ask they do to help support your music?

If you can, please buy an album through Bandcamp – one $10 digital purchase is worth 5,000 spotify streams, and it really helps us. But if you can’t, because money’s tight or because of where you live or some other reason, just listening means a huge amount to us. Sharing the new single “Flew the Coop” would be pretty awesome, too.

9. Outside of the music, what’s do you do to relax?

Like a surprising (or maybe not so surprising) amount of other musicians in the prog scene, we really like very, very hard video games.

10. Where can people find you?

www.versa-music.com is our linktree where you can connect to our Spotify, Tidal, Apple Music, Bandcamp, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook pages.