Muse

Wood were a Saskatoon rock band of the late 1990s, built around singer, guitarist and songwriter Chris Besenski. They made two albums for Rockin’ Rod Records, became one of the city’s strongest local draws, and counted a young Andrea Menard among their singers.

The band was recording by the summer of 1995. Sessions for the first album, Muse, ran at Silverwood Studios in August and September 1995 and again in January 1996, with Allan Ayers engineering. Besenski produced the record and wrote all fourteen songs, sharing credit with lead guitarist Neil Hendry on ‘Tomorrow Morning’ and ‘If You Could’. The band was Besenski, Hendry, Jeff Dyck on bass, Damon Tupper on drums and Menard on vocals, with Ayla Brook adding wah wah guitar, Vincent Spilchuk trumpet, Marek Tyler drums and congas, and Jeff Gantner bass. Dean Friesen mastered the album at Cyan Digital Media, and Rockin’ Rod Records released it in 1996.

That summer Wood played the first Flatland Music Festival, organized by the Saskatchewan Recording Industry Association (now SaskMusic), on a bill of Saskatchewan acts that included Breach of Trust, Polly-Esther, Bent and New Sky Embrace. The same year ‘Kissing You’, the opening track from Muse, was picked for SUN 102 FM’s Home Grown Volume 2: Saskatoon’s Hottest New Talent, a ten-song showcase of Saskatoon-area bands.

Menard went on to a long career as a Métis singer-songwriter, actor and writer, with five albums, five Gemini nominations and stage works including The Velvet Devil and Rubaboo. Her vocals with Wood come from her early years on the Saskatoon scene.

By the next album the lineup had largely turned over. Sprite, released by Rockin’ Rod Records in 1997, paired Besenski and Tupper with guitarist Dean Person and bassist John Sanche, all four of them singing, with Menard back on vocals and Ross Nykiforuk on keyboards, percussion and programming. Besenski still wrote the lyrics and seven of the songs on his own, among them ‘Cruel World’, ‘Hope’ and ‘Time Will Tell’. Several tracks were worked up by the full band, with music credited to Besenski, Person, Sanche and Tupper, and Person wrote the music for ‘100 Mile An Hour Barb’.

Recording ran from July 1996 to January 1997, mostly at Cyan Digital Media with Dean Friesen engineering and mastering. Nykiforuk co-produced most of the album with the band and produced the title track himself at his Cosmic Pad Studio. Sprite was an enhanced CD: it played normally in a stereo, and on a Windows 95 or Macintosh computer it opened a QuickTime presentation with music, video and an introduction to the band.

By the end of the decade Wood could fill a big room at home. At a CRTC licensing hearing in Saskatoon in November 1999, Marianne Yurchuk described Wood as “very popular locally” and said they had “put out three CDs” and performed before crowds as large as 7,000. Sharon Taylor named Wood alongside Calm and Feederchain as Saskatchewan acts that could share major concert bills with national headliners. The Museum has identified Muse, Sprite and Wood’s appearance on Home Grown Volume 2, but has found no evidence of a third Wood album.

Three members of the Sprite lineup kept playing together. Person, Sanche and Tupper joined singer and guitarist Tyler Penny in the Saskatoon alternative rock band Butterfinger, whose self-titled album came out in 2002 and was nominated for Outstanding Rock Recording at the 2003 Western Canadian Music Awards.

Person and Tupper are still working musicians in Saskatchewan. Person has spent more than thirty years recording and touring in Canada and the United States, and Tupper has played with Tyler Lewis, Lisa Moen and many other Saskatchewan artists. The two were still performing together in Saskatoon in 2025.

-Robert Williston