Fountains Of Youth

Fountains of Youth: Flood Season Review
Chris Morin April 10, 2012 0
Fountains of Youth: Flood Season Review
Saskatoon’s Fountains Of Youth drop new album entitled Flood Season

Fountains of Youth flood season

Fountains Of Youth, headed up by local shredder Paul Kuzbik, have dropped their latest album Flood Season for stream on Bandcamp.

Comprised of 12 songs, Flood Season is surprisingly catchy and well-written given its faux bar rock trappings. The familiar elements are all in place – consider my heart strings tugged by lyrics like “I wished it away and it died today” – but the band never let themselves slide into the individual cliches of their influences. Not quite blues-inspired rock, or whatever, Fountains of Youth are a solid band with a firm grasp on their own sound.

Similarly, Kuzbik is a talented musician and lets you know it with endless ripping guitar solos. Fortunately he also knows when to show restraint, and any given song on Flood Season thankfully never treads the line of wankery.

Easily a contender for summer jams – be sure to check out “Along These Lines”.

- Ominocity (Saskatoon)

A Conversation with Paul Kuzbik about Fountains of Youth
Chad Reynolds's picture

By Chad Reynolds

I met up with local musician Paul Kuzbik on Wednesday night at The Yard and Flagon to discuss the release of his band's first (amazing) album, Flood Season. The band Fountains of Youth is comprised of three additional musicians that Kuzbik is very proud to list off: Finn Day-Wiggins (keys), Jesse Dawson (bass), and Roger Mercier (drums). "We're a band," Kuzbik says. "I've never had this before. I've always had hired guns or played as a hired gun, but after [demo-ing with] these guys, there was no other way I could play these songs."

"This is the first album where I've been so happy with the recording that I want to play it that way live."

Paul has roots in blues music and an affinity for improvisation on guitar, so I asked him about his decision to make a pop/rock record and how the live show would differ from the album. It appears that eveything about this album [and how that will transfer to the stage] was a conscious decision made by the band. This thing was a long time in the making and there is a clear mission behind it.

"I don't go into things lightly" Kuzbik says, and I have no choice but to believe him because a) I've listened to the album and it is beautifully rounded out b) I know that these guys have spent a year doing two practices per week and countless hours in the studio, and c) because Kuzbik has assured me that, on this album, the band sounds exactly the way they want to - on stage and off - "Now I'm just messing with tones to make it sound as close to the album as possible," he says. "I'm so excited to get on the road now."

"The next one is going to be a blues one for sure."

It's hard to sit down with another musician and not get sidetracked - here we expressed our affinity for the for the music of Gary Clark Jr. and although perhaps not relevant to our conversation, it does help you to understand an artist by knowing what they reach for when they do the listening.

Paul admires Gary Clark Jr's ability to bring real blues music to a younger audience. "To do it with that much confidence and swagger is so hard ... it's nice to hear somebody that's obviously a virtuoso that plays strictly by feel, too. When he solos he's not showing off, it's all feel."



We went deeper yet. No one likes to admit it, but the music your parents put through the stereo when you were growing up influences you more than anything else. Despite the efforts every kid makes in high school to push away from anything that resembles their parents' lifestyle, this fact remains true.

This is why we are seeing a re-emergance of that west coast "california rock" laid-back sound made famous by bands like The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, and Tom Petty. "The pendulum is about to swing," Says Kuzbik, "music has gone as commercial as it possibly can, and now it's all going to go back to organic music again."

"that's where I wanna land, man, eventually."



It appears the creativity isn't slowing down either, even with an album that has just been released.

Kuzbik: My new thing is I wanna write a bunch of songs without choruses.

CR: Why?

Kuzbik: Well, not your standard chorus. The chorus could be the song stopping, or a guitar line. Neil Young does that well. Your ear thinks that there's a chorus, but there isn't. The whole song is a chorus.



Although Kuzbik maintains an awareness of his future in music, he and the other members of Fountains of Youth are incredibly (and nearly exclusively) excited about the finished product they now get to show off. The album, in my opinion, ranks with some of the best albums we have ever heard out of Saskatoon and for me, satisfies my love for great musicianship and honest lyrics. From the first Wurlitzer-produced note to the final strum of the acoustic guitar, the album takes you on a very deliberate journey. It includes some gentle grooves and some absolute rockers - The Rooster (Western Canada)

Song writing can be a lonely process, but playing music probably shouldn’t be. That’s the philosophy behind Saskatoon rockers, Fountains of Youth.

Paul Kuzbik has made a name for himself as one of this city’s premier singer/songwriters. When he set out to make his latest record, he thought it would be a lot like his last one — his songs, his music. So when Kuzbik asked a few friends to play on his solo record, he had no idea he had a band on his hands.

“I asked Finn (keyboards) to play on it, then I asked Roger (drums) to play on it, then I asked Jesse (bass) to play on it and I realized it was a band. It’s not my solo project anymore,” he said in an interview.

“And I was like, ‘You guys want to make a record?’ ”

The resulting band is Fountains of Youth and the record is coming out early January. Kuzbik still writes all the lyrics and comes up with the ideas for the songs, but the more they play together, the more Fountains of Youth is becoming a collaborative effort.

“The songs have changed a lot since we started,” said keyboard player Finn Day-Wiggins. “We realized we pumping it out a lot heavier live then the stuff we had recorded so we ditched a lot of songs.”

Aside from Day-Wiggins and Kuzbik, Jesse Dawson plays bass and Roger Mercier plays drums. Fountains of Youth can probably best be described as soulful rock music. It’s guitar-driven rock and roll but there are lots of whirling keyboard leads, which give it a definite hint of psycadellia. But the with the diversity of their individual musical backgrounds, Fountains of Youth sometimes doesn’t sound like anything you’ve heard before.

“I love playing with these guys because everyone comes at it from a different angle,” said Day-Wiggins.

“Jesse loves punk, Roger comes from jazz drumming, I’m come from jazz and classical and Paul is a singer-songwriter with these love of hard ‘90s rock stuff. It’s so fun.”

Kuzbik says his there is no method to the madness of his song writing.

“To me song writing is like fishing. I just sit on the couch and look out the window and something hits me it hits me,” he said. “The other day I was playing electric guitar and this idea came and I swear I ripped the cord out of the amp and dove across the room grabbed my Sharpie (marker) and like in three minutes had a song.”

But these days those songs are never complete until he gets together with the rest of the band and jams it out.

Kuzbik likes that kind of diversity afforded through this organic process. It means he never know what is going to happen next.

“I think our next record will sound totally different than our next one,” he said.

The band is just finishing up recording now and once the record is released they will be touring rural Saskatchewan and Alberta this spring.


- Starphoenix Saskatoon