Close Talker: Pause on life, forget about everything and just get lost.

In 2019, Close Talker embarked on an exhausting but fulfilling Canada-wide tour, more than a year and a half in the making. The groundbreaking, immersive headphone-only shows were painstakingly planned and executed, and since that time the band has been pretty quiet. We recently caught up with band member Matt Kopperud to see what the guys have been up to lately.

Blundstone: Tell us a bit about that tour.

Kopperud: It was amazing. Just really, really cool. Ahead of the curve, cutting-edge. We were really privileged to be able to spearhead this concept, and it worked so well with our music. We’re very intentional with our sound, and these shows were completely immersive, limited to about 60 headphones. The sound was mixed to put every person right in the middle of the band. It was identical for everyone, so there was no bad seat in the house.

The beautiful part about music is everyone sharing in a single moment that’s just fleeting. You were in it, and it’s gone. We wanted to capture that part of live music, where you just pause on life, forget about everything and just get lost.

Blundstone: What’s been happening since then?

Kopperud: We were hustling so hard for a few years, and decided to zoom out a bit. A couple of us have started having children. It’s amazing how everything comes into focus when something is all of the sudden the most important thing in your life.

We each still created things, both outside of the band and as a band. We have pretty solid artistic integrity and love the creative process and it’s a healthy outlet for us.

Will [Quiring] has been scoring at his day job, and he’s been involved in cool, creative documentaries as well. He’s pretty deep down the rabbit hole with production, technology and music. We’ve taken advantage of his skills and we record at his house.

When Chris [Morien] comes home [from Victoria], we binge-write together; when he’s away we do the postal service thing to collaborate. Everything takes a little bit longer, but it’s kind of been refreshing. He runs our record label, Slow Weather Music. It was a real labour of love to put as much sweat equity behind Close Talker as we could, and we’ve since signed on some other really exciting artists who we are quite certain are going to explode.

Blundstone: What’s coming next?

Kopperud: Lately we’ve been back at it, and we’re finishing up a record this summer. After that we’ll be mixing, pressing vinyl and shooting videos. Probably next summer we’ll release it. It’s gonna be really, really good. As a humble prairie kid, I’m really excited about it.

We’ll still play live and still tour, but with little children at home I don't know if we’ll go on another 30-show tour again. If we can scratch our creative itches, collaborate and work well together, our souls will be satisfied.