Open Letters Escaped the Suburbs and Found Solace in Straight Edge

The members of Open Letters grew up in a Vancouver suburb by the name of Abbotsford, a place whose official website offers a rough outline of the kind of place this sleepy town is, with the most exciting part being the leisure section that mentions a designated dog walking park—though the page on tree by-laws is also compelling and informative. Self described as “the hub of the Fraser Valley,” Abbotsford is home to rolling meadows, approximately 133,497 people, and a red-hot punk scene. The Abbotsford work ethic is a bit of a legend in Vancouver, and with not much else to do, bands from the suburbs practice hard and come to the city in their early twenties playing like seasoned professionals. “The music scene there is so strong. I was never bored growing up, because I always had friends playing music and going to shows,” explains Reuben Houweling of Open Letters. When passivity became a threat in Houweling’s life, he used lessons the DIY scene taught him, wrote some sad songs, and recruited two of his Abbotsford friends to get his thoughts on tape. This was the beginning of Open Letters. “The punk scene gave me all my morals and attitudes towards things. It gave me the idea that nobody will ever really care about your music, so you should just do it for yourself,” says Houweling. With suburban punk ethos weighing heavily on the project’s moral compass, they decided to stick to a strict all ages policy, by only playing shows that were completely inclusive. Houweling feels he would’ve turned out to be a pretty shitty kid if he didn’t have a punk scene to grow up with. “I owe it to my scene to provide music to all ages,” he explains.

The contents of an Open Letters song are reliably dark, steeped in isolated emotion and existentialism, with enough guitar to represent the tear-your-hair out frustration felt when it feels like life keeps beating you down. Though the music continues to cover a broad range of less pleasant emotions, the darkest parts were most saturated in the project’s early days. Guitarist Kyle Shields, and drummer Trent Otter had already given up drinking and drugs by this point, but Houweling continued to wrestle with his demons. “I was still drinking a lot and stuff. I became sober because I had a lot of depression issues. In August of 2014 I was doing pretty bad so I stopped all that in hopes I would become more balanced. I was really suicidal and couldn’t do it anymore, so I became sober through that. It just happened that I was in a band with two other guys doing the same thing,” Houweling explains. Though they all came to the decision for different reasons, by the end of the first year coincidentally all the members of Open Letters donned the X over palm oath of straight edge commitment. Veganism quickly followed suit. With these things in mind, three clear eyed punks with compassion for animals and some twisted emotional issues trekked on through the low stakes high intensity life of a band in the suburban DIY jungle.

Last year around Christmas, time they spent five days in Houweling’s bedroom recording their first full length album 10-23. “We had a guy from Vancouver named Curtis Buckoll come out to my house, and we just banged them all out. I live in this shop barn thing. It’s a massive tin shed. A portion of it is built into a suite, and I’ve got wood panels all across the walls. It sounds really good in there, the acoustics are amazing,” explains Houweling. The album itself is made up of songs created over the entire Open Letters history, from some of the first songs ever written for the project, to more recent numbers. This provides a bit of a colour gradient to the record, from the blackest depths to monotone greys, the songs range from the pits of disparity to light existentialism.

Open Letters wear their most intimate personal beliefs on their sleeves. It is evident in their sometimes suicidal lyrics, evident in their proud veganism, evident in the free beers they refuse. They do all this partly for their own sanity, but also partly with the hope that their actions will inspire others to follow in this honest pursuit. By committing to only playing all-ages shows it means their music reaches a different, more impressionable audience. “I do get emails sometimes from people who’ve listened to the album who say it helped them through a nasty breakup, or when they’re feeling sad. That makes me feel really cool. I pat myself on the back for that. If my one shitty little situation can make someone else feel better, then that’s mint,” says Houweling. In the end, making music with Open Letters has been a great help to Houweling’s “shitty little situation.” He describes the process as therapeutic: “It’s taking something that’s hard for me in everyday life and then I’m turning it into something I can be proud of. That’s definitely cathartic. It’s hard to write them and sing them, but down the road it pays off.”

Going forward Open Letters will continue to air their emotional laundry in the form of pop-punk jams, with the hopes of recording another album later this year. Their most recent release is available for purchase, with all of the proceeds being donated to WISH, a drop-in centre in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. “It’s a drop-in center for sex workers. They provide a much needed service for people who basically have it the hardest in the city. We researched charities, and that was the one that called out to us the most. All our releases have been and will be, as far as I can see in the future, in support of that organization,” Houweling explains. In the past year they have donated $722.49 to the centre. Open Letters will continue to spin their shitty feelings into altruistic actions, laying down records in a tin shack in the suburbs, surrounded by the neighbourhood scene that made them who they are.

Maya Rosin-Slater is a writer living in Vancouver. Follow her on Twitter.