Wild Strawberries (band)

Wild Strawberries is a Canadian pop band made up of married couple Roberta Carter-Harrison (vocals) and Ken Harrison, who are also, respectively, a physiotherapist and a doctor by trade. They have released a number of albums, their latest being Go Project (2013).

History

The band's early releases were produced independently, leading to the founding of the Strawberry Records label. After the successful Bet You Think I'm Lonely album, the band partnered with Nettwerk for the production of their albums. Two albums were released under that label; a third album, Twist, was initially sponsored by Nettwerk, but creative differences resulted in the dissolution of the partnership.

The band has since eliminated all dependence on record labels, preferring instead independent production and promotion; the band has adopted a strategy to promote themselves directly to fans. With the release of Deformative Years, the band simultaneously released an extended web film utilizing music from the album. The costs of producing this video were substantially lower than a music video production for television music stations, such as MTV or MuchMusic.

The success of Bet You Think I'm Lonely also earned the band a Juno Award nomination for Best New Band. Other early hits for the duo included "Life-Sized Marilyn Monroe" and "Crying Shame".

Collaborations

One of the band's most-heard songs, "Wrong to Let You Go", was preceded and followed by collaborations with other musicians. The concept for the track was defined by Alan Fletcher, executive producer at Warner Music Canada, after Roberta Carter-Harrison sang at his wedding alongside flamenco guitarist Robert Michaels. It was then recorded with Michaels for volume 3 of the Women & Songs compilation album series and later appeared as an unnumbered track on the Twist album.^[1]

Subsequently, Alan Fletcher from Warner put the band in contact with German electronic dance producer and DJ André Tanneberger (ATB). Tanneberger produced a remix of the song, released as an ATB single re-titled "Let U Go". This popularized the song on both continents, as the single reached number 18 on the U.S. Billboard Hot Dance Music/Club Play charts^[2] and number 7 on the German Singles Chart.^[3] The song also marked the point in ATB's musical output when he began to produce songs with full vocal tracks, as opposed to sampled and looped vocals.^[4]

The Wild Strawberries and ATB went on to collaborate on further songs, including the following ATB single "Hold You" and album tracks from the 2002 ATB album Dedicated,^[5] and multiple subsequent singles ("I Don't Wanna Stop", "Long Way Home") and album tracks from the 2003 ATB album Addicted to Music. All songs were co-written between Ken and Tanneberger, with vocals by Roberta.

Tanneberger later produced a new recording of "Let U Go" for the 2005 greatest hits compilation Seven Years: 1998-2005, with new male vocalist Jan Löchel.

Sarah McLachlan played guitar on and appeared in the video for "I Don't Want to Think About It". The band participated in all three years of the Lilith Fair music festival, which McLachlan founded.

Discography

• Carving Wood Spectacles (independent release, 1989)
• Grace (1991)
• Life Sized Marilyn Monroe (EP, 1993)
• Bet You Think I'm Lonely (Strawberry Records, 1994)
• Heroine (Nettwerk, 1995)
• Quiver (Nettwerk, 1998)
• Twist (independent release, 2000)
• Deformative Years (independent release, 2005)
• Go Project (independent release, 2013)

Singles

• Crying Shame (1994) [#23 CAN]
• Bet You Think I'm Lonely (1994) [#24 CAN]
• I Don't Want To Think About It (1996) [#9 CAN]

Notes and references

External links

• Wild Strawberries official website
• Wild Strawberries 2002 interview