Some things are better left a secret. Like in the spirit of that Built to Spill album title, Keep It Like a Secret—you gotta keep those special things close, treat them with tenderness. Things like righteous surf breaks or bountiful fiddlehead patches. Or beaches. The best beaches are secret. With this in mind, it might be the most prudent move to tell you what The Secret Beach is not. Because we are supposed to tell you something. 

The Secret Beach is not really a band (though it sometimes is), and it’s not a studio (although that’s part of it). It’s also not, like, an umbrella entity for Matlock, Manitoba-born songwriter Micah Erenberg to place all his recordings and endeavours under (but he is a major component of the thing). The Secret Beach resists simple definition; it may be that its nature is too nebulous, too shifting, too opposed to being bound by category and genre and marketing-speak to pin down. We can tell you music is the thing. The Secret Beach is pure makin’ stuff. And that stuff is music and things adjacent to music (love, connection, friendship, etc.). 

There are some facts in the positive that are easily available to the public. In 2025, The Secret Beach’s we were born here, what’s your excuse? was nominated for a JUNO Award for Adult Alternative Album of the Year, truly a shocking turn of events when one considers the record was put together as grassroots and DIY as a record can be, and released without much fuss or any expectation that those outside a close circle of friends might hear it. But the album’s laidback, left-of-the-dial blend of country, folk, and slacker rock, buoyed by thoughtful slice-of-life lyricism that oscillates between sweet, sad, and funny clearly resonated with the people. And Erenberg’s rich production—gloriously low-key with an impossible-to-fake handcrafted feel, and learned during the recording process thanks to a chance friendship with Rob Fraboni (Bob Dylan, The Band, Bonnie Raitt)—provided the warm embrace they needed to feel welcome.

Okay, okay, we’ll let you in on a little secret. Besides the aforementioned Micah Erenberg, there are (at least and for now) two other major contributors writing and playing songs in the makin’ stuff department of The Secret Beach. They are Daniel Diamond, Erenberg’s long-running dear friend who he grew up making trouble with, and his sweetheart Kacy Lee Anderson, who is also one half of the critically-acclaimed Saskatchewan country duo Kacy & Clayton. There’s a real ease to The Secret Beach’s musical moods that comes from these close connections, like songs that aren’t in a hurry to get anywhere and harmonies that sound so lived-in that it’s almost as if the blissful notes could be two voices in one throat. Together, they are really doing whatever they want. Perhaps the group will welcome other contributors or have completely different artists sing and play their music. On stage, it's sometimes a band, sometimes just Micah, and usually Micah and Kacy; but whether the personnel count is one or many, the live experience conjures the same feeling of spontaneity, charged intimacy, and casual camaraderie as the band does on record. The studio itself flits between Saskatchewan and Manitoba and god knows where else. But there is music coming. Music is always of prime concern on the shoreline of The Secret Beach.

“There are no rules anymore,” Erenberg says over a smoothie in his temporary Winnipeg neighbourhood. “Commercial success is not something you can attend to. You have no control over it. So you might as well take care of the things you can control—the things you make.”

As we said, The Secret Beach is pure makin’ stuff. What could that stuff be, you ask? For now that’s a secret, being tenderly cared for.