“We’re not a jam band, we’re getting played on rock and folk stations. Bluessmyth is forging all of those different influences,” said guitarist/vocalist Chris Yaholkoski, who is bringing his high octane trio to the Slice, Oct. 22.
“We’re getting played on a jazz station in Toronto and we’re not jazz. Then we’re getting played on a rock station at the university. I like how it’s not genre specific,” he continued
“We’re not pinning ourselves down. We’re in no way a traditional blues band though we have elements of blues in our music,” Yaholkoski continued adding his brother Jason plays bass and they added new drummer Celene Yohemas about a year ago after their former drummer decided to concentrate on raising his family.
They released their third CD, “Sola Gratia” in April with producer Mark Berry, who has worked with everyone from the Headstones to Duran Duran, over two weeks at the Beach studio in Calgary.
“He’s a great engineer. It turned out really great. People are excited about it,” he continued.
“We had already been playing the songs every chance we got. All we had to do was record them. That’s how we usually work,” he continued.
“This CD is a little heavier but there are crisper songs which are definitely more radio friendly,” he said adding the last CD was a bit of a concept album, which had three separate stories of related songs.
“We’re basically just doing the promotion for it in the west now and in November we’ll do promotion out east,” he continued, adding they haven’t played Lethbridge very often other than the roots and blues festival back in February.
Their set will be 80 per cent originals with a few well known classics tossed in for variety.
— By Richard Amery, L.A. Beat editor
