Counting down to Wake the Giant Music Festival

Toronto band July Talk will have some special guests with them on stage when they perform at the Wake the Giant Music Festival on Saturday night.

Two years ago, the band visited Thunder Bay's Dennis Franklin Cromarty First Nations High School (DFC), where they conducted a songwriting workshop. That produced the beginnings of atune that ended up being recorded by the band and the students, titledMourning Keeps Coming Back.

And some of those students will join July Talk on stage at Wake the Giant to perform it.

"DFC, I would say, punches way above its class in terms of artistic integrity and creative work," July Talk'sPeter Dreimanistold CBC's Superior Morning on Friday. "The program there is quite amazing."

July Talk and the students didn't finish Mourning Keeps Coming Back during that first visit. Rather, they continued working with the students at DFC until it was complete.

"We had something unfinished that had to finish," Dreimanissaid. "We kind of left the school being like 'oh, that song was really good, we've gotta do something with it.'"

July Talk would return to DFC to record part of the song, and then some DFC students made the trip to Toronto and the song was finished there.

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One of the students involved is Kayden Angeconeb, who was there two years ago when the process started.

Angeconebsaid he wrote one of the song's verses.

"I have never written music before," he said with a chuckle. "But I put all my heartinto that verse, and so I feel like it has a positive message for all Indigenous students like me."

Angeconebsaid he'll be on stage with July Talk on Saturday, where he'll sing that verse, and join with a number of other students during the chorus.

The recording process, too, allowed the students to build confidence.

"The best part about a microphoneis that you don't have to sing too loud, you can just crank the volume," said Leah Fay-Goldsteinof July Talk. "But those few days in the studio, it's just about making people comfortable."

"We had students who needed to hold hands with each other, and sing together to get through certain things," she said. "It's pretty nerve-wracking hearing your recorded voice for the first time, but you just do a couple of takes, you do whatever you need to do."

July Talk plays Saturday night at the Wake the Giant Music Festival.

Other performers include Wolf Saga, Coleman Hell and Metric. Tickets are available at the festival's website.