Nelson area based musician Steve Brockley and his trio including drummer/ mandolinist Leon Power and new bassist Erik Nielsen are coming back to rock the folk out of the Slice, March 29.
“ It’s nice. We’re very excited about it. We’re playing a weekday night and we’re coming at the right time of the year when the students are still there,” said Brockley, visiting his folks on the Gabriola Islands before beginning a brief tour Revelstoke, March 27.
“It will be a high energy night. It will not be a quiet, sombre night,” he predicted.
They have been moving from a more straight ahead folk sound to a more rock and roll sound.
“It’s more rock and roll but even rock and roll is a broad based term. But it feels like we find the more we tour, the louder we get,” Brockley said.
His last CD “Le Boeuf” was released last April and started to show the transition.
“Response has been really positive. We were impressed. When we were recording the album, we had a lot of people telling us how much they enjoyed the first one. So we feel like we didn’t let anybody down, because they liked something they weren’t sure they were going to like,” he continued.
Along the way, they welcomed Erik Nielsen, who was assistant engineer on “Le Boeuf.”
“ It was nice to have somebody who was already in the family, rather than a stranger who just auditions. So we didn’t audition. We just called him up. He’s an engineer and he’s based in Vancouver, but he’s also a great bass player, and he sang background vocals on a couple of the songs. So he already knew what we were all about.”
They are working on a new album, which shows their transition into a more rock and roll sound.
“Like the second one wasn’t like the first, the next one won’t be a carbon copy of the last one,” he said.
“We only have a half album’s worth of material so far. But we hope to get recording pretty soon,” he said.
“ We’re just starting to play the new songs. It is always exciting for the band to play new stuff because it stops things from becoming repetitive when we play every night,” he said.
The trio was just in Kansas City for the Folk Alliance conference where they played seven shows. He was impressed with the variety of music at the conference.
“ Folk music itself is a pretty broad term now. There was trad and bluegrass and there were people like us who plug in. And it was international — people from all over the world,” he said.
The Steve Brockley Band with special guest Gillian and Ryland Moranz play the Slice, March 27.
There is a $10 cover for the show, which begins at 9:30 p.m.
