Back in the late 1980s, Darlana and Frank Moffatt moved to Tumbler Ridge with their family in tow. Darlana, who loved to sing, taught her sons to love music.
Somewhere along the line, they got better than they had any right to, and the family moved to Victoria so the boys could pursue their passion.
Then, they outgrew Victoria, and moved to Branson, Missouri and, in 1993, to Nashville Tennessee.
In 1995, they released their first album, It’s a Wonderful World, and were doing well as teenage country musicians, even appearing on Good Morning America.
But it was in 1998 that the boys—Scott, Clint, Bob and Dave—decided to ditch the country image and recorded Chapter 1: A New Beginning. Over the next couple years, the album sold six million copies and just about broke the double platinum mark in Canada, putting them in the rarefied air, alongside artists like Alanis Morissette, Shania Twain and Celine Dion.
Two years later, they released Submodalities. Produced by Bob Rock, the album stepped away from the boy band image they had created with Chapter 1. It didn’t do as well as their previous album, but still went platinum in Canada, selling over 100,000 copies.
But if they were big in Canada, they were huge in Southeast Asia, staying at the top of the charts in Thailand, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Indonesia for the better part of two years.
Then, in 2001, the band broke up.
They had been touring for 13 years, and were now 18 years old, with diverging musical tastes.
A year later, Frank and the boys came back to Tumbler Ridge on a road trip to Alaska. That was the last time they were in town. “We did a little road trip to Alaska with Dad, camping and fishing,” says Clint Moffatt. “Dad used to mine in Faro and Tumbler Ridge. and we went up to some of those places that we grew up in. It was kind of nice to get back and see the house we grew up in.”
Since then, an entire lifetime of things have happened, from families to reunion tours. “With the Moffatts, we had a couple year run, got signed to a major label,” says Clint. “We were kinda at that age. By the time the label got involved, we were all getting a little bit tired. Getting to the age where you want to try different things. The Moffatts came to a really complete end, but none of us regretted that decision. We’ve always kept in touch with each other. That’s been our journey.”
While the four brothers have come together in various forms and combinations over the years, the two that have been the most inseparable have been Clint and his identical twin Bob. (Brother Dave completed the trio, but was a fraternal triplet. Eldest brother Scott was born less than a year earlier.)
After the Moffatts, Bob and Clint were in the short-lived band Pusch, which performed at the 2002 Winter Olympics.
After a few musical incarnations, Bob moved to Thailand. Clint followed shortly after and in 2006, they formed the band Same Same, which lasted about a year.
The two found their way back to Nashville, where they performed as Two Bullet Parade and Like Strangers.
In 2016, they tried something new, changing their name to Endless Summer, and starting recording a mix of covers and originals with a portable studio, shooting videos of them performing in a variety of locations around the globe.
“Over the last couple years we had trying to make a dent here in Nashville and convince people to give us a chance,” says Clint. “Bob and I were driving around, had a new album, were going to shop it around to the labels. And it dawned on us that we were 35 years old. The lifestyle of being an industry artist wasn’t what we wanted. Spending time with my family was taking precedent over that. I know a lot of people in the industry and I know that once you get in there, you’re gone for an extended period of time. You’re out touring, you’re doing radio tours, press tours… We asked ourselves, what were the three most important things, to us? Obviously family popped up. And music is something that we love to get into. And we love travel. We love going out and meeting people from other cultures. It really was that simple.”
So Bob and Clint changed the band name one more time, from Endless Summer to Music, Travel, Love.
“We have this youTube channel, and TikTok and all these different social platforms which I never even thought about, which is growing in a really nice way. So we’re completely independent, and we like it that way. We can release things whenever we feel like it, when we feel good about it, as opposed to having 15 calling and tell us they need it now. We can do it at our own leisure, which makes us more proud of the work we’re doing.”
Brother Scott, says Clint, is also still in the music industry, living in Toronto and producing Luke Combs after a turn with shoe gaze rock band The Boston Post. Other brother Dave still dabbles in music, but spends most of his time as a yoga instructor in Toronto.
Bob Moffatt says that the music industry has changed dramatically since they began. “We were young back then,” he says. “It was new and exciting. Looking back on things, we have a better idea on what was happening, but when you’re living it in real time, you’re not really thinking too much, you’re just going with the flow. Looking back, you kinda wish you could go back and tell your younger self how to navigate. Even around decision making. Each decision is so important. When you’re young, you don’t really think about the decisions. Looking back, had we been a little older, had a bit more under our belt, we’d have made some decisions different. Our decision at that age was only around the music. The reason a lot of people were making music back in the ‘sex drugs and rock and roll’ era was influenced by other people. Other people were in for the girls. Fame is totally a different thing than when we grew up.”
He says they’re proud of the fact they are able to make a living without being a part of the industry. “We enjoy making music, but the other aspects? They are not nearly as fun to us, because they take on a whole new set of responsibilities. ‘Keeping up’ with the industry adds pressure and anxiety; we’re all going to get older, and all those things are going to fade. They add stress and anxiety. We’re happy to not be a part of the industry. We don’t want to have those pressures.”
A lot of that has to do with their ability to use technology to reach fans that they would otherwise not be able to reach. “YouTube and Facebook re a huge part of our reach. Basically everything you relied on the record label to do for you, you have now. These companies were distribution companies. Now you can do that on the Internet. We just took a chance, we thought the idea was worthy, and we’ve created something we were proud about. Created Music Travel Love, put up videos on YouTube.”
The videos feature the two brothers with their guitars in some scenic spot (like Abraham Lake in Alberta, or Iligan City in the Philippines, or Thailand or Indonesia or on the rim of the Grande Canyon), playing a song, recording into a laptop.
Of course, being in one of the top five bands in the world wasn’t a guarantee of success. “When we started, it wasn’t necessarily catching on, but we were proud of it,” says Bob. “At some point in time we got rewarded. Brazil was first company that caught on; Southeast Asia really caught on. Then Canada.”
Their breakthrough moment was when a video of their cover of the Ben E. King song, ‘Stand By Me’ caught on. The video—released in October of 2018, when they were still calling themselves Endless Summer—is pushing 38-million views. (Their cover of Ronan Keating’s ‘When You Say Nothing at All’ has topped 40 million views).
Clint says it’s rewarding to have this success with all the work and energy they’ve put into it. “We decided we were going to put out a new video every two week for a year. That’s a lot of work. After a year, we said ‘that is insane.’” He laughs. “From this point forward the plan is not to put out that much content, but to make sure everything we put out is something we are proud of. For us, we want the videos to look better, the songs to be better.”
So the duo is in the studio in Nashville recording a new album, which should be out later this year.
That’s the music and travel, but what about the love? How does travelling around the world fit in with the family lifestyle? Clint says better than it would being an industry artist. “When we first started off, it was money coming out of our own pockets,” he says. “If you want to make money as a musician, you have a better chance working at McDonald’s than touring. So It was us and our camera guy. That was all we could afford. Now, we can add to the budget. There are moments that we are able to bring our families with us and have them spend three or four days.”
As well, he says, they are able to plan their schedules themselves, which allows them to go out for a week or two and film three or four song at a time. “If we are releasing something every month, that’s three or four months where we can be at home.”
Still, being independent doesn’t mean that everything is perfect. “My youngest song took his first steps a few days ago,” says Clint. “I missed that, because they are quarantining in Canada, but I’ve caught most first things. We haven’t missed out on a lot”
How is the quarantine affecting a group that has Travel in its name? “It’s kinda crazy; it’s been affecting and impacting the music industry in general. A lot of artists didn’t expect this. I feel for up and coming artists. But for some industries it has helped and for us it has helped. We’re not travelling, but more people have eyeballs on our content, because everybody is at home, and online. Because we do film in bulk, we have content to release. We cut songs last year like ‘Lean on Me’ or ‘Heal the World,’ way before this happened. And it Just so happened that when this thing happened, this was a message that people wanted to lean in on.”
He says the two are missing the ability to go out and tour. “It has affected our ability to connect with people, but it hasn’t affected our business. When we travel and go to the Philippines, we meet people along the way and that’s a large part of what we do. Hopefully we’re able to go up to Canada soon after the quarantine is over to film some stuff. There’s a lot of people that have it a lot worse than us, a lot of people for who touring is 100 percent of their business. When you can’t tour and you don’t have another avenue of income, it’s really difficult. We know a lot of people who are struggling with that, and we’re very grateful for what we do.”
“We asked ourselves what we wanted out of our lives, and Music Travel Love answered that for us,” says Bob. “And if you ask the question, you’re going to find the answer. It’s going to come with a sense of fear. There were a lot of what ifs? Are we giving up the possibility of success? All those fears, they’re not overtaking the process. Any time you leave the structure you’ve been doing for ten years, there are fears. It’s freeing, but at the same time you don’t know what’s around the corner. You know that you’re heading down a path that is going to be more honest, because you asked those questions and that’s more important and important than failing. It gave us a chance to pursue something that could give us the quality of life that we wanted, and that was more exciting.”
Despite the freedom they are experiencing now, Clint says he’s glad for the experience he had back in the early days. “The Moffatts brought us so many relations ships, and lifelong friendships. There were a lot of feelings that we didn’t recognize at the time. I don’t know if we’re going to be doing this in ten or 15 years, because we might want different things. There were a lot of positive things that came from being the Moffatts, and there was a lot of other things that came with it as well and that’s just a great part of life. I wouldn’t change a single thing about it.
“When you have success, there’s many different ways you can deal with that. You can become a person who feels more important, who forgets how they got there. Or you can be the opposite, someone who knows that success is fleeting. It ebbs and flows. If you can find that, you’re going to be happier in life. If you’re too consumed with going viral or having success, it’s tough…we’ve all felt those emotions. Our goals are different than the Moffatts, because we didn’t have those tools at the time. When things were going really good, we felt really good. And then when things were going bad, we felt really bad. We didn’t realize why we were having those ups and now. For us now, when things are going well, we remind ourselves there are going to be ups and downs. We remind ourselves that things will go down. It’s important for us to limit our expectations. Expectations create feelings and unnecessary decision making. When we release a video now, the only expectation we put on ourselves is ‘did we do the best job we could at that moment in time? Are we happy to put it out?’ that’s the only expectation. We have no expectations on how it’s going to be received.
“When we were younger, there was an expectation that everyone would love you. You have these expectations that it’s going to be a number one song. We don’t have those expectations anymore.”
And what does the future hold for the two? They say they’ve recently been reminded of how great Canadian Music is, and would love to start collaborating with Canadian Artists. “We were at an Edmonton Eskimos game last year, and Tom Cochrane was doing the half time show. And we got to talking with him a little bit, and it just reminded us how much Canadians have been a part of the music industry. One of our goals is to be able to talk to people and work with them. It would be super cool to find a cool highway, something that isn’t used much, and just rock out to ‘Life is a Highway’ with Tom Cochrane. That would be something that took this project further, to bring other people into the fold. Reminding people how great these songs are. We don’t cut a lot of new songs, not that we don’t like the new music, but just reminding people that there are still great songs from every decade. It would be amazing to get people like Tom and other artists to collaborate with down the road.”
