Things are starting to come together for One Bad Son, who released their fourth CD in September.
They recorded “ Black Buffalo With producer / engineer Eric Ratz, who just won a Juno Award for his work on One Bad Son’s song “ Satellite Hotel.”
“ So we’re Juno award winners with an asterisk,” said guitarist Adam Hicks recovering from a St. Patrick’s Day gig in Oshawa, Ontario.
“ But awards are awards, for us they just mean more opportunities and they open more doors, so that means more shows,“ continued Hicks of the Saskatchewan born, Vancouver based rock and roll quartet which spends most of their year on the road anyway.
The road brings them back to Lethbridge, March 27 with the Wild when they play Bo Diddly’s.
“We must have played there 10 times by now.
I think Lethbridge was the first show we played outside of Saskatoon, so it’s part of One Bad Son”s history,” he said adding Alberta has always been good to the band.
“ Even before we started getting radio play, we had strong crowds in Lethbridge. We’re prairies boys to Alberta is like a homecoming for us, especially after driving through Ontario,” he said.
he noted the show will include some songs from the new album and their previous three.
“ We have some new props and other tricks up our sleeve,” he said.
They enjoyed working with Ratz on their album because he basically just let them do what they do.
“ We wanted to keep it simple. We didn’t want to have keyboards or anything we couldn’t translate on the road. He was great to work with,” he said.
They are pleased with how well the CD has done.
“ I have no idea how well it’s done for sales, but we’re selling a lot of them off the stage. And people are singing along, not just with the singles, but with the deep tracks,” he added.
They had to choose from 30 songs they wrote for the CD plus a version of the Talking Heads’ Psycho Killer.”
“ We hadn’t planned on putting a cover song on the album. But we were just sitting back and listening to music and that song came on. We liked it so during the next rehearsal we jammed on it. We’ve been doing it live for three or four years now and people love it. It sounds like the original, but we feel we’ve made it our own,” he said.
They chose the rest of the songs based on which one fit best as an album.
“ We didn’t just want to think about singles. We wanted to think of the whole album. Some of them were just ideas. And others we recorded the bass and drums, but didn’t make it onto the album, that doesn’t mean it won’t make it onto the next one. And we were fortunately enough to play a lot of the songs live and were able to get some feedback on them” he said adding the original 30 were easily whittled down to 20 then 15, which is where the tough decisions had to be made.
He noted they are already thinking of the next album, but won’t officially get to work on it until next year.
“ This CD still has legs, but we’re always writing. We already have 30 songs, so that will be tough too,” he said.
One Bad Son and the Wild play Bo Diddly’s, March 27 at 9 p.m.. Tickets cost $20 in advance, $25 at the door.
