PICKLE JUICE Share “Halfway,” A Turbulent Alternative Rock Track Exploring the Dark Side of Ski Town Dreams
Alt-rock outfit PICKLE JUICE share their brand new single “Halfway,” a raw and restless track that digs beneath the postcard-perfect image of ski town-living to expose the emotional turbulence that often hides beneath the surface. Driven by gritty guitars and a relentless pulse, “Halfway” captures the uneasy tension between daytime freedom and the darker cycles that can follow once the adrenaline fades. It’s the first single to drop from PICKLE JUICE’s upcoming sophomore EP, The Whiteroom, officially out June 12th, 2026.
“We’re a band that met while chasing winter, bonded over a shared love of snowboarding and the ski town lifestyle,” explains vocalist Tim van der Krogt. “On the surface, it’s this dream world, somewhere people spend thousands of dollars to visit for a week. It looks like pure freedom and happiness. But when you actually live there full time, especially within the seasonal and transient worker communities, depression and substance abuse rates can be really high.”
“People live these active, healthy lifestyles during the day, and then completely unravel at night,” Tim continues. “A lot of us are wired for that adrenaline rush, and we chase it however we can get it. This song is about getting stuck in that cycle, the highs and the lows, and feeling trapped in something that should feel like a dream.”
Written in fragments over time, “Halfway” began in humble surroundings before eventually evolving into one of the band’s most powerful recordings.
“I wrote the melody and chord progression in our shitty band shed while [drummer] Pete [Lavery] was practicing a completely different song,” Tim recalls. “We fleshed it out a little that evening and then ended up putting it aside for almost a year. When we finally revisited it, we weren’t even in the same place geographically, so it came together in chunks. I never once thought it had single potential, but once we recorded it and heard it back properly, it was undeniable.”
Sonically, “Halfway” leans into the band’s alternative and garage rock roots, embracing the unpolished urgency that has become central to their sound.
“This song has always carried a raw punch,” says guitarist Ben Matsis. “When it came time to record it, preserving that energy was essential. The final track doesn’t shy away from that intensity. We knew that pushing the song any further would risk making it feel forced rather than natural.”
First off, care to introduce yourselves to our readers?
Thanks so much for having us back on Canadian beats, we are PICKLE JUICE a group of snowboard bums from around the world that got together and started playing music.
We are based in Revelstoke Bc where we met and live, we play alternative rock with clear punk and indie influences. We are currently releasing our second EP “The Whiteroom” and are touring western Canada to promote that project.
“Halfway” really pulls back the curtain on ski town life—what made you want to tell that side of the story?
Honestly, growing up in the ski industry, I have seen that side of things a lot. People get caught in cycles of depression and addiction while they are supposed to be living the dream. I have been guilty of it too.
We didn’t really set out to tell a specific story with “Halfway.” It was more about expressing our own highs and lows, just writing what we know.
There is a really interesting contrast in ski towns between people on holiday spending money and having the time of their lives, and the locals or seasonal workers just trying to get by. There is a bit of a dark underbelly to those places. Just because you live somewhere beautiful doesn’t mean you’re not dealing with struggles yourself.
I think we wanted to capture that without sounding pretentious or like a “woe is me”. Which is why It’s not super on the nose, if you don’t know our history you could listen to it and apply the lyrics to life in any town.
The track feels both personal and universal—was there a specific moment or experience that sparked it?
Yeah exactly, this kind of leads on from my last answer. I don’t really think too much about what I’m trying to evoke or what themes I’m expressing when I write, I kind of just write and then figure out what it means later. So I didn’t sit down and think I’m going to write a song about ski town life, it just kind of became that because that’s my life and that’s what I’m around all the time.
It’s personal because it’s about getting stuck in cycles of bad habits and not really being able to get out of them because everyone around you is kind of doing the same thing. That’s definitely something I’ve struggled with.
But it’s also universal because I think everyone’s experienced that in one way or another. Whether it’s eating like shit, drinking too much, neglecting the things you should be doing , or just scrolling your life away. It’s all kind of the same feeling.
You’ve said the song is about feeling stuck in a cycle—what does “Halfway” represent to you emotionally?
Yeah, for sure it’s about being stuck in the cycle and being painfully self aware that a lot of your actions and habits are self destructive, but at the same time not really being able to make the changes you know you probably should make.
Emotionally I think “Halfway” kind of sits in a bunch of contradicting feelings. It’s a bit defiant but also tired, a bit hopeful but also pretty stuck. It’s like you know you could be doing better and living differently, but you are also kind of caught up in the lifestyle and the people around you and it’s hard to step away from it.
So I think “Halfway” emotionally is that feeling of being in between two versions of yourself.
“Halfway” came together in fragments over time—how did that pieced-together process shape the final sound?
Pete, our drummer and I first jammed it one night around the same time we wrote “Toxic and Sweet,” our debut single. I went home after that and wrote the rest of the lyrics and a basic structure, and then we kind of just put it aside and didn’t work on it for almost two years.
A few of us went away for a bit, and the lads who stayed behind started Working on it again. They ended up writing the intro and the bridge during that time, which gave them space to take it in some fun directions, from the rhythm of the intro to that almost 80s feel in the bridge.
It shaped the final sound in two ways which are kind of related. It gave everyone time to really put their own stamp on the song, and it gave us time to bring a new level of confidence and understanding of each other into our songwriting.
Your band formed around snowboarding and ski culture—how has that lifestyle shaped your identity as a band?
Yeah, it’s been really cool because it’s given us something we all share outside of music, but it’s also given us a way to connect with audiences.
Like we were saying, ski towns are pretty notorious for their party scenes, which can be a blessing and a curse. For us it’s definitely been a blessing. We’ve always had a solid community of friends and fans who bring the energy and get the pit going, moshing their hearts away to last call and beyond, then hitting the slopes first thing the next morning.
We started in Revelstoke, and since then we’ve played all over Western Canada at different hills and resort towns, and it’s kind of the same energy everywhere. People just get it, and that’s been huge for us. and now we are excited to bring that energy to everyone not just to ski towns and snowboard bums.
Looking back, what has been the biggest evolution for PICKLE JUICE leading into this new era?
“Halfway” is the first single from our new EP The Whiteroom, a darker and more dynamic project that’s still very much PICKLE JUICE. The biggest evolution for us in this new era is confidence, confidence in our songwriting, in how we play and work together as a band, in our live performance, and in digging deeper to tell the stories we actually want to tell to an even wider audience.
It’s about staying true to ourselves while taking things more seriously and having the
confidence to back ourselves and know we’ve got something great going. We’re not stopping anytime soon, and we want people to be part of it. We’ve got a bunch of live shows lined up to promote the EP, so grab a ticket, come say hi. you won’t regret it.
Upcoming Shows:
April 28 – Ucluelet
May 1st – Nanaimo
May 2nd – Victoria
May 22nd – Penticton
May 23rd – Kelowna
May 28 – Kamloops
May 29 – Vancouver
May 30 – Squamish
June 12 – Revelstoke
July 24 – Lethbridge
July 25 – Calgary
July 30 – Invermere
July 31 – Cranbrook
August 1st – Nelson