A brief note on The Secret Beach’s recent Juno nomination:
There has been a lot of love coming our way since our recent Juno nomination, so I wanted to say thanks and provide a little context into how truly unbelievable it is.
”We were born here, what’s your excuse?” was entirely homemade, from the recording to the mixing to the mastering. It was made with rickety old gear in sheds, living rooms, and basements.
It is not a major label album. We did not receive any funding to make it. We still book our own tours and have applied for many festivals and conferences this year that we did not get into.  It has now been nominated in what I am told is one of the hardest categories to get into. There are hundreds of applicants, many of whom are very successful artists.

When I set out to make this record, I had one goal in mind: to create music that I wanted to make with the people I wanted to play it with. There was no tailoring the music to anyone other than the artists.
I initially mixed the album with Rob Fraboni, who taught me how to really mix and challenged me to go home and do it myself.
I had the album mastered, but again, wanted to experience the process and challenged myself to do that part, too. I spent months learning how to master just to know that I could make an album from start to finish on my own.

The record features songs written by two virtually unknown songwriters: The Famous Sandhogs and Daniel Diamond. I didn’t include their songs on the album because I thought people would like them (though I knew they would); I included them because it was necessary that those artists be part of this album. They embody the “outsider” artist, which to me is the heart of this project.

All this said, the chances of this record even being considered for a Juno, and in this category (AAA?), are next to nil. I’m not sure a record like this has ever done such a thing. So yeah, it’s weird.

We’ve had a lot of support along the way—Victory Pool, Lost Cat, Manitoba Film & Music, and of course, the listeners. But I am fairly certain that all of these folks have supported us with the understanding that this is a project that would likely always exist in the underground. But anything can happen and now it seems the secret is at least somewhat out. Guess we’ll have to change the band name…

In hiding,
Micah