Edmonton based roots/ country/ rock and roll band band Robin Woywitka are including a Lethbridge date on a scattershot tour in support of their new CD “Roots And Roll.”

 They play the Owl Acoustic Lounge, Oct. 3

“ Audiences don’t just want to sit there and watch, they want to be entertained. So we’ve really honed our live show,” said Woywitka, enduring the rain in Edmonton.

The new CD, “Roots & Roll” is his third CD, but the first with his two -year-old band band The Super 92 which includes bassist Greg Colodychuk, lead guitarist Craig Kowalchuk and drummer Alex Jumpsen.
“ It’s nice. Two of them are cousins, so you have that family blood relation and the drummer and bassist went through the Grant MacEwan College jazz program together,” he said.

“ The songs on the CD are close to home. So we kept everything close to home. We recorded with two different producers in Edmonton (Stew Kirkwood at the Sound Extractor studio) and Gavin Dunn of the band Jeff Stuart and the Hearts).

“ It focuses on love, heartbreak, insanity and recovery. So it’s all blended together,” he said.
 The band’s live show has a little bit of everything blended in as well.

“ Our drummer is from Calgary, but the rest of us are northern Edmonton Ukrainian boys. We play roots and country music and one polka. Because our parents wouldn’t allow us be in a band together if we didn’t,” he chuckled adding their live show is really well crafted, including a sit down acoustic section inspired by the Elvis Presley’s 1968 comeback tour.

“We’re all in our 30s, so we’ve really honed our performance,” he said.

“ Interspersed between the hits, he would just sit down with  guys like Scotty Moore and all of the people he played with and played all of the songs from his early career,” he observed.

“ It’s considered to be the best performance of his career. So we try to recreate that feeling. We sit down with  acoustic guitars where there’s room. And that’s where we tell the most jokes,” he said.

 He was influenced a lot by Elvis Presley’s showmanship and audience interaction.

“ I’d like to say he was an influence on my vocal style, but I don’t have those chops yet. He was one of the best interpreters of songs. Even though he didn’t write any songs,  how he interpreted them was an inspiration to me.”

 He noted the rest of the show is builds on the energy.

“We start with an instrumental and get into the pocket, play some rock and pop and old country, give you a break and then hit you with a bang and really let go for the rest of the show,” he described.

They don’t tour a lot. Woywitka is an archaeologist by day. So they play Edmonton a lot, are starting to get a following in Calgary and are working on getting to Lloydminster, Slave Lake and Saskatoon.

 Robn Woywitka and the Super 92 play the Owl Acoustic Lounge, Oct. 3. There is no cover for the show, which begins at 9 p.m.

— By Richard Amery, L.A Beat Editor