Will Rendall released a CD called Keep on Smiling on May 22, 2024. Some Cortes Island residents will remember him as Julia Rendall’s son. He was 7 when he moved to Squirrel Cove in 1976.

He emailed, “I had always liked music but it wasn’t until I heard Billy Joel in 1978 that i became a rock and roll fan. I always thought his lyrics were amazing. I think it would have been around 1981 when I started writing songs. To me lyrics were the most important part of a song. 

“I used to take a bunch of 5 gallon buckets we used for digging clams and would make a drum set out of them with a couple of pieces of kindling for drum sticks. I would set it up by a salal bush and that would become my hi-hat. Then I would sing my songs and pretend I was in a rock band. I would build guitars for my two brothers out of wood and they would pretend to play them.”

Julia gave Will a real drum set after they moved to Mansons Landing in 1987. He started jammming with a few of the local Cortes musicians after that. 

Cortes Currents asks musicians to send three MP3s when I interview them. The first of Will’s songs is ‘Keep on Smiling,’ which he wrote after listening to a fellow employee complain about having to do overtime.  

“It got me thinking about some of the things that me, my family and some of my friends have gone through in our lives and how it would have been easy to get mad and say ‘screw it, I give up,’ but life goes on and sometimes you just have to put the past behind and carry on.”

When he was 20, Will moved to Quadra Island, where he met his first wife and they had a child. He put the drum set to rest. 

“I had written tons of lyrics and always had a tune in my head, but not being a guitar player I didn’t know how to convey them to other people. I always had a passion for singing and remembered the words to most songs but did not have much confidence in my singing voice.” 

“One night I went to a kareoke bar. Most of the singers there were terrible so I thought ‘what do I have to lose?’ After doing a couple of tunes people kept asking me to sing. After that I started to go to open mic jam sessions and became the ‘Rock and Roll Guy’ on Quadra.” 

“I hooked up with Duane Hanson, an old friend from Cortes Island and started a band. Our first gig was at the Quadra Legion.

Rendall either started, or helped start a number of bands in the years that followed: the Iron Pyrates, Electric Lemonade, Arabella Drummond and finally Queen Anne’s Revenge in 2015, That last band was a reformation of the Iron Pyrates which was active up until the time COVID reached Campbell River, 

Will Rendall’s second song, ‘Phone Slaves,’ was inspired by the spreading addiction to cell phones. He writes that he would ask people at work a question and they wouldn’t answer. “Or they would be texting and not doing their job. Then I was at a mall in Nanaimo once waiting for my wife to come out. I started to count the people who either walked out the door with a phone in their hand or pulled one out of their pocket after they walked through the door. I got to 44 before someone came out without a phone.”

Ironically, Rendall purchased a cell phone himself. 

He writes,  “I remember playing ‘Phone Slaves’ for my son Chris and when I finished he looked at me and said ‘as you slowly turn into one.’”

We return to Rendall’s narrative in 2020. 

“On my birthday that year, my wife Yvette bought me a Squier Starcaster hollowbody guitar. I learned how to play a few basic chords and started to write more songs with music this time, as well as figure out the chords to songs I had written when I was younger.” 

“When the Covid restrictions were lifted and we were allowed in the bars I would bring an acoustic giutar and play some of my original songs.” 

“My friend Dylan Alps, a songwriter who could play any instrument, told me he would like to record me. So I would go to his little trailor where he had an interface hooked up to a laptop. He would then go to his studio in Campbell River, re-record the music and then I would sing along with his recording. It took about a year of me going to his trailor once a week for a couple of hours before the album was finally released.” 

Most of the songs on the album were written over the past 4 years with a couple from the 80’s and one song I had written in the 90’s. All in all I am pretty proud of the final product. I feel there are a variety of topics as well as different styles on this album. I have just put it on BAND CAMP and also have some CDs for sale at $15 each. I can be contacted at 236-997-3265 via phone, text or e-mail at will.vette@outlook.com

This broadcast ends with ‘Cultivation,’ which Rendall wrote in response to   his friend the late Steve Traylor’s request for a song about growing pot.

Top image credit: Cover of Will Rendall: Keep on Smiling

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