Waves In April’s Dierks Canada Reveals Plans For Debut Full-Length Album — Exclusive Interview

On Thursday (June 18), Dierks Canada joined Loudwire Nights to bring listeners into the world of his band Waves In April. You can listen to the full interview in the audio player near the end of this article.

"I've been playing guitar since I was five years old because my dad got me super into it and just kind of pushed it on me in a good, healthy way," Canada shared with Loudwire Nights' Chuck Armstrong. (His dad is Cody Canada, frontman of Cross Canadian Ragweed.)

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"I fell in love with it. And then my mom opened a School of Rock and I met a bunch of awesome people there. I eventually met Luke [Wilson, bass], Elle [Gorman, vocalist and keys] and [drummer] Willie is my brother. So we met through School of Rock and just started jamming as a cover band, playing Green Day and Metallica. You know, how kids start."

The more the four friends jammed together, the more they realized they wanted to write and record their own original songs. When they were around 14 years old, they made their first EP.

"It's a cute thing to me to look back on because we're still here, we're still the same band," Canada shared about the pop punk vibes of that early recording. It didn't take long, though, for Waves In April to evolve into a much heavier and darker sound.

"It just kind of happened," Canada admitted.

"In 2022, me and Luke got really, really into metalcore. We saw Ice Nine Kills live and it just kind of changed it for us. It was like, wait, this stuff can be dumb heavy but also still have emotional weight to it? ... It was supernatural for us. It feels like our calling."

That calling has led the band to experience some amazing things already, including playing Rocklahoma in 2025 and recently opening for Powerman 5000. On July 25, Waves In April will support Cross Canadian Ragweed at a sold-out show at Red Rocks and then they will make their return to Rocklahoma over Labor Day weekend.

"We just got in-ear monitors and really upgraded our show," Canada said.

"I'm so proud of it. I'm so psyched to show everybody at Rocklahoma. We're going to be on tracks and we have a full production show and it's really cool. It's what I've wanted for so long. It's what I've seen when I was a teenager going to shows."

READ MORE: Enter to Win VIP Trip to Rocklahoma!

And as Canada talked about the Red Rocks gig, he broke some news on Loudwire Nights, too.

"We are putting out an album the day before Red Rocks, we just haven't announced anything yet," he revealed.

"We haven't said anything about it publicly yet, I was kind of hoping to break it here and talk about it. We just put out our single called 'Uzumaki' on the 30th of April and that is the fourth song going into this album."

Canada said Waves In April have been working on this new album for the better part of five years.

"I'm so glad that we waited for so long because a lot of these songs we had back whenever we were still pop punk," he expressed.

"We were like, 'Okay, this song still hits, we need to not abandon it.' I just need to rework it a little bit. So those specific songs, you'll be able to tell. You'll definitely be able to tell which songs are older, which songs are newer, because the newer ones are very heavy focused and the older ones have pop punk tendencies — it's almost like you took pop punk and gave it a little bit of grit and it became post-grunge and then somehow became metalcore at the same time."

As that description came out of his mouth, Canada admitted it sounded weird, but he wasn't backing down on it either.

"I genuinely don't know how to describe it and I'm very stoked about that specifically."

What Else Did Waves In April's Dierks Canada Discuss on Loudwire Nights?

• What runs through his head now as he thinks about the early days and his hopes and dreams for the future: "It's a lot more, not as much of a dream, more of a, how do I execute this and how do I do it without nudging myself in an annoying way. I'm going to shows and talking to people and getting to know people [and] just making friends along the way. And that's kind of where my mind is, I need to focus on the friendship part and the communal part of it and then things will come our way."
• What it was like opening for Powerman 5000: "I had my first rock star interaction moment that I was like, 'Whoa, that was cool,' that wasn't a forced interaction with somebody, you know what I mean? I was backstage unloading all my stuff. We were local support and we were just trying to get all the stuff out of the way, trying to be as easy as possible as the local band...Spider, I was outside putting everything together and he walked by [and] was like, 'What's up, man?' I was like, 'Hey, I've been listening to your music for a long time,' and he was like, 'Yeah, I caught your set. Killer shit, man.' And he gave me a little handshake. I was like, 'Oh my God, that was insane.'"
• What it's like playing for a crowd that is there to see Cross Canadian Ragweed: "[It's] a slugger. It's always such a gamble. It's always such a gamble because they're either going to absolutely love it or they're going to absolutely hate it. There's just no in-between usually. And the people that love it are like the Pantera fans from down here [in Texas], Corrosion of Conformity, stuff like that...a lot of Ragweed fan are also Pantera fans, which is really cool. And whenever they see us, they're like, 'Oh my God, this is what I've been looking for for a minute.'"

Listen to the Full Interview in the Podcast Player Below or the Video at the Top of the Page

Dierks Canada joined Loudwire Nights on Thursday, June 18; the show replays online here, and you can tune in live every weeknight at 7PM ET or on the Loudwire app; you can also see if the show is available on your local radio station and listen to interviews on-demand.