LooPS Find An Endpoint To Sorrow In New Single “Mourning Girl” And Announce New Tour Dates
One of the hardest things about a relationship is realizing when to let go. And when the relationship is with a song you’re writing, you can sometimes have just as much trouble knowing when it’s finished.
Both scenarios are at play in “Mourning Girl,” the latest single from British Columbia’s favorite acoustic-pop duo, LooPS. A sad farewell to a love that’s run its course, the song has an arrow-through-the-heart immediacy that belies the long and involved path it took to reach its final form.
In a full-on show of tearjerking balladry, lead singer Kevin Roy pours out a metaphorical 40 to a girl who isn’t coming back, while partner Jon Fennell chimes in with piano and backing vocals that provide a poignant echo:
Mourning girl, filled with dreams left incomplete
A shattered soul left on my own
Mourning girl, I wish I could have seen the sign
She’s left me now, she’s never coming home
The song was first written years ago, when Roy was finding the strength to move on from a long-distance situation, he knew couldn’t survive his stint in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. As a writing exercise, “Mourning Girl” served its purpose, and Roy quickly filed it away, part of a chapter in his life that was closing before his eyes.
Flash-forward to years later, by which time the relationship was long defunct and Roy had developed severe PTSD and retired from the RCMP to pursue music full-time. He was working by then with partner Fennell, who came upon Roy’s old demo of the tune and suggested they dust it off, with some key tweaks like replacing Roy’s acoustic guitar with his own keys. A full-fledged LooPS song was born.
It was typical, they say, of the way they work. Hence the name of the band itself, which signifies the unbreakable interdependence of equal parts—and also their use of loop pedals, like the ones that insinuate themselves into “Mourning Girl” as its melancholic tensions mount. Not for nothing, the name is also an homage to Kamloops, BC, the town where the two men met and formed a full-time musical partnership in 2019.
“Mourning Girl” made it to the group’s self-titled first album, which was produced by JUNO- nominated producer and BC Music Hall of Famer Doug Cox and released in spring 2022. But Roy and Fennell had always considered the 11-track LooPS to be basically a demo, and when it came time to step up their game by working at EchoPlant studios with producer/engineer David Ziehr, revisiting the song was one of their first priorities.
The newly re-redone and polished version of the number is actually the second recording to emerge from those sessions. The first was “Last Goodbye,” a summer 2023 single that was slightly sprightlier from a musical standpoint but explored similarly forlorn thematic terrain. That track has generated over 35,000 streams on Spotify alone. While “Mourning Girl” is more obviously and uniformly doleful, both numbers live up to the thumbnail Roy and Fennell commonly use to describe their music: what it would sound like if Ed Sheeran and Lewis Capaldi were to have a musical baby.
Their live shows, though, are anything but somber. In addition to their world-class originals, LooPS maintains a repertoire of literally hundreds of covers, from hits of the 1960s to today’s top 40. It’s why they always go down a treat, whether they’re playing intimate gigs in small venues or high-energy, large-scale shows. And with “Mourning Girl” now out, they’re back on the concert trail to prove it. Current dates are as follows:
June 27 – Deadfall Brewing, Prince George
June 30 – Valhalla Music Fest, Terrace
July 5 – Summerland Waterfront Resort, Summerland
July 12 – Scotch Creek Hub, Scotch Creek
July 19 – Portside Pub in Gastown, Vancouver
July 21 – Overlander Day, Kamloops
July 27 – Stoneboat Vineyards, Oliver
August 2 – Summerland Waterfront Resort, Summerland
These summer shows find Roy and Fennell cruising on the momentum they began to build upon their first BC-wide tour in 2021-22, which saw them playing 12 shows over three weeks in 10 different cities. But that’s nothing compared to the feat they pulled off on July 8, 2023, when they broke a Guinness World Record by performing nine concerts in as many cities starting in Squamish and finishing in Langley within the space of 12 hours. The effort raised $18,402 for the BC Children’s Hospital Foundation.
LooPS has a proud history of supporting charities: On Remembrance Day 2020, at the height of Covid-19, they performed three separate 90-minute live-streamed shows to raise money for the Kamloops Legion poppy fund, and in December of that year, they created a 24-day “musical advent calendar” to benefit The Salvation Army. They ended 2020 with a marathon five-hour livestream in which they rang in the New Year for every time zone in Canada, offering a sense of community and solidarity to their fans in the midst of the countrywide lockdown. Other prestigious appearances by the group have included a six-song set in the Vancouver Island MusicFest, Scotties Tournament of Hearts and Memorial Cup.
All that activity and accrued good will have paid off in spades. LooPS made the top 100 in the 2021 CBC Music Searchlight competition, and they were named Best Band/Singer in the 2022 and 2023 Kamloops This Week Readers’ Choice Awards. Their loyal and rapidly expanding Canadian fanbase now numbers over 6,000 followers spread across all relevant social media platforms.
To keep the ties with their followers strong, they’ve spent the last two years hosting a weekly podcast series, “LooPS: Diary of an Indie Band”—a personal “accountability journal” in which they tell stories, share their progress as a group and promote other musicians. As of this writing, the podcast has reached over a dozen countries, with over 35 episodes released thus far.
“Mourning Girl” and the current shows are an episode all their own—another installment in LooPS’ ever-deepening romance with the listening public. But unlike the doomed love that inspired the song in the first place, this is an affair that happily has no end in sight.
Hi guys, good to see you again! Care to introduce yourself to the newer readers?
It’s great to catch up with you too! We are the acoustic-pop duo LooPS and consist of lead vocalist myself Kevin Roy, and instrumentalist/backing vocals Jon Fennell, having been performing together as LooPS since 2019! We are currently based out of the interior in BC, but with me growing up in Ontario and Jon from Manitoba, we are a nice mix of all over the country! For the newer readers unfamiliar with us, we like to playfully describe our sound as what would happen if Ed Sheeran and Lewis Capaldi were to have a musical baby…if just that thought experiment alone intrigues you, then you may have just found your new favourite indie musicians!
Could you share more about the personal experiences that influenced the lyrics of “Mourning Girl”?
“Mourning Girl” was a song that was written after I went through a breakup with a long-term girlfriend back in London, Ontario. I had joined the RCMP and was posted out in Kamloops BC post-breakup, starting a new career, and attempting to get a fresh start in life. After being in the “on-again/off-again” stage of the relationship for almost 3 years, while now across the country from each other, I realized if I didn’t let go I would never truly be able to move on. The song was written as a closure song to help end that chapter of my life and once recorded into my phone I didn’t give it much thought to be honest.
What made you decide to revisit “Mourning Girl” years after its initial writing?
During the height of COVID-19, we were in each other’s “bubble” (remember those days??) and one night drinking whiskey and going through old material to show to the other guy, we passed “Mourning Girl” in a folder of a bunch of songs I had previously recorded. What I actually described to Jon as “a throwaway song”, immediately struck a chord with him and he couldn’t get it out of his head. The original recording has the same lyrics as today’s version, but was accompanied by acoustic guitar and Jon it needed piano to really make the feel come out and capture the essence of the song itself! The track was one that was included in our self titled 11 song demo album “LooPS” and 2 years later when we started recording with David Ziehr at Echoplant studio in Vancouver BC, we knew it needed to be remade to give it the quality upgrade it deserves. Add in some classic LooPS harmonies and additional layers such as haunting “goodbyes” that run as a thread through the song, and you have the polished commercial version you can hear today!
What has been the most memorable experience from your Guinness World Record-breaking day of nine concerts in 12 hours?
This answer is a clear one for us. As fun and challenging as the record itself was, by FAR the most memorable experience of it all was raising $18,402 for the BC Children’s Hospital Foundation. When we decided on the record we would attempt to break, one of the requirements was to sell a minimum of 10 tickets to each show. I personally grew up with a younger brother who was born with a serious immune disease called Neutropenia. His version of the disease, Kostmann Syndrome, is extremely rare and he passed away at the age of 6 ½ years old (when I was only 18). Having spent the vast majority of his life at Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto, Ontario, I pledged then that one day I would do something BIG to help repay the hospital for the work they did keeping my brother not only alive all those years but also happy and comfortable. Fast forward to summer 2023 when we were going to break the record, and now living out in BC with 2 nieces who have Cystic Fibrosis and have themselves spent a large amount of both their teenage lives in the BC Children’s Hospital (the west coast equivalent to Sick Kids), the opportunity to finally fulfill that lifelong pledge came together. We are a competitive pair of guys, always striving to better ourselves as artists and be the best we can, so the world record attempt and eventual success were amazing. Don’t get me wrong. But knowing that even if we failed the attempt that day, we would still be able to raise money for the sick kids made the entire event a true success. The fact we raised as much as we did and the community of BC itself rallied behind our attempt as much as they did was even better!!
Could you share more about your charitable initiatives and how they have shaped your identity as a band?
Absolutely. As mentioned before, we started playing full-time as a duo shortly before Covid-19 shut the world down. Having sick family members and knowing the value of strong charity work to the community, when there were no LIVE shows to be booked in late 2020, we decided to use our skills and abundance of free time to do livestreamed fundraising events. The first one was 3 separate 1.5-hour shows on remembrance day for all the seniors who could not attend the veterans parade they look forward to each year. We did that one to raise money for the local Legion. After the success of that project and realizing that those same seniors could not do fundraising for the Salvation Army that winter due to restrictions with Covid, we undertook a much larger project that December. Every day until Christmas we released a music video on social media and YouTube, which in the captions and thumbnail for the video contained just the date and the title “LooPS Musical Advent Calendar: Day ___”. The viewers had no idea what the song was and watching the video was the same as opening the date for chocolate in a typical advent calendar. We got local sponsors to help with prize packs for winners drawn at the conclusion of the 24 days and donors to our virtual Salvation Army fundraiser page were entered to win. It was another fun venture to help out a larger cause using our skills. As discussed already, the world record-breaking day in 2023 was all designed to raise money for the BCCHF and was our biggest charitable initiative yet, and in 2024 we have made an extra point of volunteering our time and skills to local fundraisers to help them on the entertainment end until our next BIG and crazy fundraising idea.
How it has shaped our identity as a band has been immense. What started out for us as a LooPS dream to play Wembley Stadium one day and have an Ed Sheeran-level career touring the world with our music, has now turned into a drive to still succeed on a commercial level but also make charities and help others along the way a CORE foundational principle to what we do as a band. If we “make it” by our own metrics or we do not… If we play sold-out tours or we have already reached our peak where we are today (Which we are still proud of and happy doing), we are going to make sure that we help as many people along the way as we can. Together as LooPS we see this as the ultimate win-win, and if we eventually are known simply as the “music/charity guys” and some of those larger more aggressive goals do not come to fruition, that is OK by us. We still would have used our talents for the greater good!!