Toronto-based folk rockers The Rural Alberta Advantage would never be accused of rushing a record out.

"Departing," the follow-up to the band's debut "Hometowns," came out four years after the first album was officially completed. The group's latest album, "Mended With Gold," comes three years after "Departing" thanks to a process of testing out old songs in front of live audiences, digging back into the band's vault of ideas and even heading out into the Canadian wilderness for a creative spark. The rocking results, however, seem to have been worth the wait for fans. 

The band is now taking the new album on the road, including a return stop at Turner Hall Ballroom on Wednesday, Oct. 15 at 8 p.m. Before then, however, OnMilwaukee.com chatted with the band's drummer Paul Banwatt about the process behind "Mended With Gold," looking back at the band's past and spending some time in a creepy Canadian cabin. And, of course, hockey.

OnMilwaukee.com: Earlier in the year, I talked with Amy (Cole, the band's multi-instrumentalist), and we talked a bit about the songwriting dynamic and how you were kind of testing out some of the songs live. How did that process go for you guys for "Mended With Gold"?

Paul Banwatt: It was different on every song, to be honest. There were songs where we were playing them for a little while live and shopping them in a live setting. There’s ones that kind of came about mostly in the studio, so like "...On The Run" would be one that we’ve really ever played live (and still haven’t to be honest). Versus a song like "On The Rocks," which is a song we’ve had for years, and we’ve tried different forms for a long time. "45/33" is the same thing; we tried it live a bunch of different ways before we decided on its final form.

And then there’s even some songs on this record that are some of the oldest things we’ve ever had. "The Build" predates "Hometowns" (the band’s debut album) in one way, and we worked on them all. "This City" is actually older than "Hometowns," too. They changed a lot by the time they came out on this record, but the core of them came from way back then.

OMC: Which of those songs is the oldest that you can recall?

PB: I think "The Build." The reason "The Build" is on the record is that, before we go into the writing process, we took stock of everything we had – every little snippet of an idea, everything we’ve been working on. Nils (Edenloff, lead singer and guitarist) unearthed some early demos that we had too, and we thought it would be fun to listen to what the band sounded like right at the beginning, just for some inspiration.

There was this demo that we’d recorded in this practice space of that song. And honestly, it sounded like this horrible cacophony; it was just mess that sounded terrible. But we heard it, and we were like, "There’s something in there that’s kind of cool and kind of beautiful." So we definitely wanted it.

It ties us back to the beginning of the band. That song – or at least parts of it – are about Nils moving to Toronto, and the first day he moved to Toronto, his car got broken into. He was literally just going up to see this new apartment and came down, and his stuff was all stolen. So that’s why there’s a reference to his stuff being stolen in the song.

OMC: Going back to your early music and your first album to now, it sounds like you’ve really cleaned up your sound. That first album had a really raw recording quality to it, and now it seems cleaned up over the years.

PB: Yeah, I think that’s one way of looking at it for sure. I mean, we’ve gotten a little bit tighter as a band, I’d like to think. (laughs) I don’t know if "cleaner" is necessarily the word I would use.

The comment we always got early on when we were playing "Hometowns" live was that our live shows sounded so much bigger than our record did. I know a lot of people love that record – and so do we – but it just wasn’t matching what we were exactly doing live. Even with "Departing," a part of me still kind of felt the same way, that we hadn’t captured the fullness of the sound we were creating live on a record yet. So that was what we kind of set out to do this time.

OMC: Do you feel like you guys are closer now to that kind of bigger live sound?

PB: It’s not the same. It’s funny, right? There’s two ways of looking at it. "Hometowns," we did record it in a studio, but there are parts of it that sound really scrappy and DIY despite that. So, like, in that sense, you could say that it has a live feeling. But then, in terms of just the power of the show, I think we got closer to it on this record than on either "Hometowns" or "Departing."

OMC: Nils went out into the wilderness for a period of time while making this record, correct?

PB: Yeah, he went for a few weekends up to this creepy cabin. We actually went with him the third time, and he went twice by himself. And it really was very creepy. (laughs) Really, the song that was most inspired by that experience was "To Be Scared," although to be honest, we did a bunch of writing up there, and "Terrified" came out of that and a bunch of other songs on the record came a long way because we were up there, just kind of isolated in the middle of nowhere.

But yeah, the first time he went up there, he got there at night, and it was pitch black. He couldn’t figure out how to turn the lights on, and it was just this really creepy horror movie scene. Honestly, it really was terrified. There were wolves howling outside. It was a pretty creepy place for sure.

OMC: It sounds like it brought legitimate songs to the album at least.

PB: Yeah, for real. We had a bunch of ups and downs writing the record in terms of how productive we were being, and that was a good little moment for us. We got a lot out of isolating ourselves and pushing ourselves to try something different.

OMC: The album had about a three-year gestation period, and you said there were some ups and downs. What was that experience like for you? 

PB: That’s always the thing with bands. When you put out your first record, you had all the time in the world to put out those songs. That’s as long as it’s going to take. In our case, we had a lot of back catalogue ideas to make that first record. And then for the second record, we had enough still going – the second record still took us four years to make because we had "Hometowns" basically done in 2007, so I guess that took us just as long.

The thing with us is that we don’t write songs that often. We take the time with them. Like "To Be Scared," the guitar in that is something that Nils and I have been noodling around with in soundchecks for probably four years. It just took the fact that we knew we needed to get a record out to kick our asses to make it into a song. "On The Rocks" we had that for years, and it’s just sort of been this thing that we’ve been trying to get right. It could’ve even been a song on "Departing," but at the time, it was just this folky guitar song that we just didn’t think had any impact.

That’s the whole thing: If Nils ever wanted to make a solo folk record, he could do it. He’s a brilliant folk song writer. But that’s not really what he wants to do right now. He wants to make these band songs. And that’s what we’re always looking for, and that’s what takes a long time to find.

OMC: I have to ask: Do you still work as an intellectual property lawyer on the side?

PB: I work at a startup now. I am technically their lawyer, but I work for a startup called Matter and Form. We make 3-D scanners. There’s some IP involved – the company has patents – and I do other legal stuff for the company, but that’s my main job now.

OMC: Was there any overlap between your life as a musician and your life as an IP lawyer?

PB: I’ll be honest, with the band, I try to stay as far from the legal elements of what we do as I possibly can. It’s funny because when I went to law school, I really did think that it was going to turn into this beautiful marriage of music and law, and that I could somehow turn that into a lifelong career where I’m doing law and doing music on the side. But the closer I got to it – I started to do a little bit of music law while I was at a law firm – I just realized that it was everything I don’t like about music. Music is time for me to not think about that kind of stuff, and as soon as a contract is involved or some kind of licensing issue, I’m like, "Somebody else has to deal with this because I just want to focus on playing music." That’s what I really like about it.

But yeah, it’s a clean divide. I don’t want to touch it. I don’t want to know about. It kind of wrecks it for me in a way.

OMC: So hockey season has started. Are all three of you Maple Leaf fans?

PB: I’m a giant Maple Leafs fan, like relatively obsessed you could say. Amy supports them because she’s a Toronto girl, but I would not say that she’s a big fan or anything. And Nils … Nils is funny because he’s from Alberta, right? So he always gets questions about hockey and whether he’s an Oilers fan. And, it’s like, he kind of couldn’t care less. (laughs) I don’t know if that’s fair to say. He definitely supports the Oilers, if anybody, but he’s just not a hockey fan. 

OMC: Do you have high hopes for your Maple Leafs this year?

PB: I always start that way. But they lost their first two games. They just beat the Rangers, so that was OK. I don’t know; it’s hard to have high hopes. But hey, Phil Kessel is a Wisconsin boy, right? So we’re all in this together.