Artist Glimpse: Mississauga's Darren Flower

Wayward Saints are a Mississauga-based 5-piece built on a shared love for the grit and soul of classic rock. They aren't trying to reinvent the wheel; they’re just trying to keep it turning with authenticity. For founder and guitarist Darren Flower, the band represents a steady climb that began years ago with Stone River. After putting in the work and staying dedicated to the craft locally, they recently took their sound overseas for a string of dates in Spain—a trip that served as a bridge between his musical past and this current chapter. We sat down with him to talk about staying true to the craft, the power of a twin-guitar riff, and what goes into the songwriting on their Survivor EP.

Darren FLower

Rob Aguiar: You’ve said that once you learned a power chord at age twelve, you knew you could write a song. How do you keep that same simple excitement alive today when you're sitting down to write for the band?

Darren Flower: I started to write my own songs at 12 after learning how to play a power chord. It was exciting back then because this was so new to me. Teens usually have a lot of fresh enthusiasm. As a grown man I still get a lot of excitement writing songs but am very hard to please because I have high standards for myself. I am very critical about everything I do in this band but I feel a riff is good if it excites me. What keeps the excitement alive is constantly working on new material. It is important to run through our older material but it's always fun to hear a new idea being worked on by a whole band in real time.

RA: The interplay between you and Justin Bennett is such a core part of the band. When you’re working on a new song, does the "twin-lead" stuff happen naturally in the room, or do you two spend a lot of time mapping out who plays what?

DF: Justin and I have a very different approach to playing the guitar and we seem to compliment each other well. When it comes to "twin leads" we normally map it out at a practice. Writing twin lead parts can be tricky and does require focus and can be fairly time-consuming.

RA: You’ve had a connection with audiences in Spain since your Stone River days. What was it like to go back there recently with Wayward Saints and see those same rooms responding to this new music?

DF: Stone River took me to Spain and beyond. That time helped me find my wife. I like to think I have a pretty strong connection to Spain. I also used to spin a lot of Spanish bands on my mostly-retired radio show Rock It Up! I have made a lot of friends from the SR tour and radio show and during the Wayward Saints tour I did manage to meet some old friends wearing a Stone River and Rock It Up! T shirt. I made it a point to chat with a lot of fans and let them know my wife is from Valencia, Spain and they were very happy to know this about me.

RA: I read that the main riff for 'Pay No Mind' was originally supposed to be the intro before it became the verse. How did that shift happen, and did it change the way the whole song felt to the band?

DF: I had all of "Pay No Mind" mapped out in 2013. I presented the idea to the band and they liked it. At the singer's request we took what I thought was going to be the intro and made it a verse. I was very skeptical because it is somewhat "notey" and was convinced it would be better as the intro but we jammed it and made it work. I wasn't sure it would but it did. 

RA: 'Got To Give In' has such a distinct energy. Can you tell us about how that track came together musically and/or lyrically and why it's such a highlight for you in a live setting?

DF: To be honest while I do connect to the lyrics of this particular song it's the guitar parts that excites me the most. This song came to us in a strange way. My bassist(Bil Bertram) was noodling around on my guitar in the key of G and it caught my attention. I then took the guitar and put it in an "open tuning" in the key of G, and started to work on piecing parts together on my own time, brought it to the table and the whole band worked hard on shaping the song. This is a fun song to play live for me.

RA: You’re currently back in the studio working on new material. What can people expect from this next batch of songs compared to what they heard on the EP?

DF: While we are very proud of the "Survivor" EP I am certain we will top it with our next recording. We have quite a few songs to consider for this next release and I think we have grown as songwriters. I expect the songs to be a little more intricate and maybe even more soulful. I like to think we set the bar very high for ourselves and look forward to eclipsing the success of our debut EP.

Whether it’s in a local club, a summer festival or a room across the ocean, he’s focused on keeping things honest and guitar-driven. With the Survivor EP out and another record in the works, they’re just staying the course and playing the music they love.