A musical love story: They met, fell in love, had kids, and now they’re releasing an album

The bands may have been battling on stage, but love was blossoming in the crowd.

Emily and Kyle Corner met 18 years ago at a Battle of the Bands event at the Gateway at SAIT.

Kyle was a 20-year-old budding musician at the time and attended the event with some bandmates.

But his attention was quickly diverted away from the music.

“Right when I walked in, I saw this very stunning lady,” Kyle recalls, adding there was something about this woman that made him too nervous to approach her.

“I just thought no, she’s out of my league. I’m not going to say a word. She just looked incredible.”

A partnership is formed

As it turns out, the 19-year-old beauty had noticed Kyle, too.

“She tried to make some eye contact with me and some smiles at times. And I thought, well, maybe I have something in my teeth,” Kyle laughs.

Emily took it upon herself to make the first move and say hello. Kyle bought her a drink and the two bonded right away.

“It was very meant to be. We learned that we both have a history in the town of Strathmore where Emily went to high school and I spent some of my younger years. So we’ve been in the same place 100 times before,” Kyle says.

“We knew the same people, but we’d never met. It was super weird,” Emily adds.

And, as the saying goes, the rest is history—that night, a life-long partnership was formed.

Life happens

Emily and Kyle have been married for almost 10 years and have two daughters, aged four and six.

While the two have collaborated creatively on other projects, it wasn’t until recently that they decided to write music together—forming a rock duo called The Wandering Off.

“When we first met, I was in a band and then I learned quickly that she wrote music,” Kyle says.

After going through some mental health struggles brought on by a series of concussions, Kyle put down his guitar and focused on helping Emily behind the scenes on her solo records.

Emily also stopped writing and singing for about a decade after appearing on the MuchMusic TV show disBAND in 2010.

“We started a food truck in Calgary that we ran for a number of years, we've had another creative business where we've done set design and visual arts and stuff,” Kyle says.

Getting back to the music

Then in 2021, the couple decided it was time to get back to their musical roots.

“Musically, this is the first time both of us are putting our musical chops together,” Kyle says.

Emily credits the deep chemistry the two have for helping with the creative process.

“I think the fact that we're so comfortable around each other when we did start writing music together, it was like, there were no egos, there was no fear of what was coming out. It was just like, the most creative experience,” Emily says.

The two recorded the songs for their debut album in a home studio they built themselves amid the pandemic.

“Just having the convenience of recording whenever and however was incredible. We had so much fun making this record. We couldn’t stop writing. It was an outlet and escape for us that got us through the day-to-day of full-time jobs, kids,” Emily says.

Organized chaos

However, the duo admits it was a bit of organized chaos.

“Although we're constantly around each other, we didn’t have the luxury of just sitting there for six hours and just writing together,” Emily says.

They’d have to coordinate recording sessions around the kids’ schedules.

Emily would feed them while Kyle recorded guitar riffs, and she would come up with melodies while driving the kids to school and to work.

It was tough at times, and the pair supported each other through struggles with both physical and mental health.

“The first song on our record, ‘Knick of Time’, is all about that. I went through a particularly bad period with my mental health and Em was there through it all, fixing my brain,” Kyle says.

Capturing raw emotion

Emily’s health also took a bad turn. She caught Covid twice, which led to some chronic pain, cognitive issues, and fatigue. And, on top of everything, their dog died.

“It was such a surge of emotion that needed somewhere to go,” Emily says.

“My writing exploded and it felt like the catalyst for most of the record. Recording and finishing the record kept me going, gave me hope and a surge of energy I didn’t know was inside of me still.”

“We hope we captured a lot of raw emotion on the record,” Kyle says.

“Em was singing about things in real-time, exhausted sometimes, angry other times. Whatever happened in the 9-to-5, we could just go right into a session that evening and lay it all out.”

And lay it all out they did, resulting in a dozen deeply personal songs that are now a time capsule of a very important time in their lives.

Not too polished

The Wandering Off’s sound was influenced by catchy and grungy artists of the ‘90s such as Weezer, Gin Blossoms, and Garbage.

“A lot of modern music is very, very well produced and almost has no imperfections,” Kyle says, adding it was different in the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s when some of their favourite music was made.

“There’s just a real character to the way that they were recorded, and sonically just how they sound.”

While technology allows for a lot of artificial sounds and beats, Emily says things like that and autotune can make things sound too perfect.

“We very consciously made a decision to back away from most of that and do a lot of things raw, real, which makes it sound more rock and roll right, more personal,” she says.

Diamonds need pressure

The band is proud of the finished product, which includes a pair of songs that were added relatively last minute.

“We ended up writing two new songs very quickly, and they ended up being some of our favourite tracks on the record,” Emily says.

“I don't know if it was the pressure or magic or what it was, but it was good pressure.”

There are a few sayings about pressure being needed to create diamonds, and Emily says they have a similar lyric on the song “Long Haul”.

“‘Harder is the pressure, then the stronger the stone’, kind of referring to a long-term relationship. You go through really hard times, but at the end of your life, it's like, wow, we're solid,” she says.

Music videos and live shows

The Wandering Off’s self-titled debut album comes out on March 31.

The first single, “Hey There”, is out now and Emily says they will be filming two more music videos soon.

They will be featuring two prominent Calgary locations: Telus Spark, where Kyle works, and Canada Disc, which means a lot to Emily.

“It's such a wonderful part of Calgary’s history. My first records were pressed there and we thought it would be really cool to film a video there,” she says.

The band is also planning to play live shows in Calgary and across Canada in support of the new album.