Joey Payeur
Ethan Armit wants to strike a chord with hockey and music fans alike across Canada.
The Fort Frances native, who now calls Dryden home, recently teamed up with current town residents Eric Carpenter and Jordan Fournier in a group called the Ethan Armit Project.
The catalyst for the band’s creation was to record “This Game Called Hockey,” which Armit has entered into the Hockey Night in Canada “Songquest” contest.
The winner will get to record their song professionally in early January, with the help of Juno- and East Coast Music Association Award-winning artist and producer Joel Plaskett from The Joel Plaskett Emergency out of Dartmouth, N.S.
The song then will be used in a montage to kick off the “Hockey Day in Canada” broadcast Jan. 18.
The winning act also will be flown out to Lloydminster, Alta., host site for “Hockey Day in Canada” this season, to perform the song live in concert the same day.
Armit, who moved from town to Ignace when he was five and began playing the guitar in Grade 8 during his first year living in Dryden, said the whole process started innocently enough during a holiday get-together with family here over Thanksgiving.
“My uncle knew I was a pretty good guitar player, and he suggested that we sit in the basement and write a song for the contest,” recalled the 20-year-old Armit, who works as a customer sales rep at the CIBC in Dryden.
“I was down with that,” he noted. “So for seven hours straight, we were working on it until we got finished.
“We played it for the family and they thought it worked out great.”
“This Game Called Hockey” is an uptempo rock piece that highlights the litany of action that occurs during a hockey game.
“It’s definitely got a bit of a structure involving how the game starts up until how it ends,” explained Armit, who counts Neil Young, Billy Talent, and James Taylor as some of his musical influences.
Armit, who handled the lead guitar and vocals on the track, had never recorded anything before with Carpenter (drums/engineer/producer) and Fournier (bass).
When it came to the musical arrangement for the track, the budding music star decided simpler was better.
“The genre the contest says it has in mind is something in the rock and pop field,” noted Armit.
“I figured what’s more rock than E, G, and A [chords]?” he reasoned. “So that’s how I made the song sound.”
“This Game Called Hockey” currently is available for listening at music.cbc.ca/#/artists/Ethan-Armit-Project
Positive feedback on the song has been plentiful, said Armit, including one noteworthy thumbs-up on Twitter from Dave Bidini, who played lead guitar in the legendary Canadian rock band Rheostatics from 1980-2007.
“That was awesome,” enthused Armit about Bidini’s support. “I was totally stoked when I saw that.
“The original idea was to enter the contest for fun,” he added.
“But after seeing something like that, now it’s starting to get more serious for me.”
Online fan voting at the contest website from Nov. 23-Dec. 11 will help determine which songs from the original field of entries will make it into the top 50.
Only one vote per day, per artist region, can be cast—unlike the unlimited voting which helped Fort Frances bring the “Kraft Celebration Tour” here this past August.
A judging panel of CBC, music industry, and hockey personalities will select the top 50 based on the voting results, track plays, number of times the music is added to CBC Music playlists, the number of “likes” the song gets on CBC Music, and the panel’s own criteria.
Results will be announced during the Dec. 14 edition of Hockey Night in Canada.
Voting will resume that night, lasting until Dec. 19, to help determine the top 10.
From there, votes will be collected between Dec. 21-30, with the winning song announced during CBC TV’s broadcast of the Winter Classic on Jan. 1.
Armit is crossing his fingers he will hear “This Game Called Hockey” called out on New Year’s Day.
“I would love to win it all,” he said. “It would make all my musical dreams come true.
“There’s so much opportunity for me if I win this thing.”
