Pop Rock Trio WIESINGER Document a Mental Health Journey on Compelling Sophomore Album Stuck in Your Head
WIESINGER‘s motto is Fun Music for Fun People. Despite being located in the rural county of Barrhead, WIESINGER is quickly carving a name for themselves as being one of the hardest working and catchiest up-and-coming pop rock acts in Western Canada. While only having begun releasing songs in early 2022, they have already performed alongside Tyler Shaw, The Royal Foundry, Martin Kerr, Jon Bryant, and many more amazing acts.
The trio consists of husband and wife duo Justin (lead singer/bass/keys/songwriter/video guy) and Chelsey Wiesinger (drums/percussion/samples) with Daniel Bellerose on lead guitar. Numerous songs on their sophomore album, Stuck in Your Head, are based on experiences from Justin’s award-winning memoir The Childlike Heist (2019). He dealt with mental health struggles for much of his young adult life and used a few songs from those seasons, as well as newly penned ones, to help share hope and his journey of recovery with listeners.
There’s freedom in laughing at yourself and choosing to get off the couch and live your life. The record’s lead single, “Sitcom,” tackles the realization that we are characters living our own story – we don’t have to be stuck living through a character on television.
First off, care to introduce yourself to our readers?
You bet! Hi, I’m Justin Wiesinger, I’m the lead singer, bassist, and songwriter mastermind of WIESINGER. I bus drive part-time for the school in Barrhead when we aren’t playing and planning shows or recording, and YES I even wrote a song about being the coolest driver ever. My wife Chelsey is our drummer, spreadsheet wizard, graphic designer, and merch-maker extraordinaire. My best bud Daniel Bellerose is our lead guitarist, father and wins the “friend you can’t live without” award. We make all of our own music videos and marketing posters and video content ourselves. We’re both authors, and we are proud parents (I’m the stepfather) of two amazing awesome elementary-aged daughters. We own a giant goat named Ivan who pulls a candy kart, and he has his own children’s book. We live in a quaint summer village in northern Alberta, south of Barrhead. We love thrifting locally and making homemade Kombucha. We run a fun AirBNB on our property too called Peaceful Paradise Barn at the Lake. We have chickens and way too many eggs to give to our friends. Our jam space and recording area has completely taken over our living room. We are having way too much fun being anything but a typical rural family!
Tell us a bit about your most recent release.
Stuck in Your Head is an album all about mental health. It’s about the struggle, finding hope, connection, and meaning. Some of the songs were written in the darkest moments of my own mental health journey nearly a decade ago while on visits to the psych ward. The rest of the songs were written out of a place of healing and reflection. We ran a successful Crowd Fundr campaign for this record so the way the community and our friends and fans got involved was extraordinary. The album was a pre-sold success before it was ever released. I wrote these songs for anyone who feels stuck. jaded, or burnt out and lonely in life. If you’re on the verge of giving up or losing out these songs are meant to be a healthy form of audio medication for you with zero negative side effects. The feature single Sitcom is the first song on the record – pulling us into this world of mundanity, boredom, escapism, and loneliness. I wanted people to be able to relate to the idea of having a dead-end job, watching too much TV, or just hanging around with the same friend group that’s holding you back. We’ve all been there, but I wanted to remind the listeners that we can’t stay there. There’s so much more life to live outside of our comfort zones. We need a catchy tune to kickstart the next phase of our character on a journey.
Do you have any upcoming shows you’d like to tell us about?
We just played a super fun Pumpkin Walk event show on the day of our album release Oct 27th to a few thousand people. We have planned an epic album release party (two shows back to back on the same day) on Sunday, November 26th in Barrhead, Alberta at the Roxy Movie Theatre. That 245-seat theatre is close to our hearts because it’s where we did our first album release last summer for Wonderlove.
If given the chance, which Canadian artist would you love to work with in the future?
I think it would be so cool to collab or work with JESSIA, Virginia to Vegas, or The Royal Foundry. I look up to these artists a lot and what they are releasing to the world is very cool and original.
What’s your goal for 2024?
Is it time to start thinking about 2024 yet?! Jeepers! One of our big goals is to partake in a Western Canada Tour and do a run of 10-12 dates next summer. We’re also hoping (fingers crossed) that we will get to do a major showcase out East such as Canada Music Week or North by North West. We’ve only done a show as far as Winnipeg this past winter and would love to explore the scene and make friends in the greater Toronto region. We’re working on a fun covers EP we will be releasing next year too!
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