Echos Project Episode 1: Luke Doucet on Distance Running

For the Echos Project the pair decided to take a different approach to interviewing artists, as Kaija explains. “Our inspiration for the project was to speak to artists about passions outside of making music, to engage them with topics that really excite them and reveal a side maybe not often seen by fans…not to sound cliché but all the interviews we did for the Echos Project were great. We were often invited into the artist's homes and had full days of chatting and performances.”

The first episode of the series focuses on Luke Doucet of Whitehorse and his passion for long distance running, a hobby that began as a way of getting healthy, then quickly became a major influence for his career and life as a whole. Soon after he started, he began to notice the running tempos feed into his records. “I fall into a rhythm where it’s very musical. It’s almost like you’re dancing”.

’Emerald Isle’, the song played during the film, is about Luke running one of his first marathons and his wife and family flying to see him run. Today marks the second anniversary of his run in the Boston Marathon in 2013, which he finished with a time of 2h55, just 12 minutes before the terrorist attack. Melissa McClelland, Doucet’s wife and partner in Whitehorse, explains that those brief moments changed the meaning of the song forever, now acting as a “dedication to the ones that hold us up & push us forward; the ones that will follow us to the ends of the earth.”

A live version of the song recorded at Massey Hall has been released to raise funds for Onefundboston and can be purchased at the Six Shooter Records Store.