Get ready to get stoked this week with Shred Kelly.
The Fernie based “stoke folk” band will be playing the Slice, Jan. 5 with Sweet Tea, for a fantastic show of blues rock and stoke folk.
“We’ll just be playing some oldies ( in Lethbridge.) It will be a high energy, foot-stomping dance party all night long,” described Sage McBride, Shred Kelly’s vocalist/ keyboardist/ percussionist.
They are most often described as a “stoke folk” band.
“When we were playing our first tour in Newfoundland, we were always being asked to described our music and we were having trouble. We’d say ‘it’s folk rock but really high energy,’ and everyone was trying to help us. Then someone said ‘ it’s stoke folk because you get stoked on it, ’ And that seemed like the perfect description,” chuckled McBride, completing a sound check for their New Year’s Eve gig in Nelson.
“It was named one of the top five New Year’s Eve gigs in Canada by CBC, so we hope we can live up to that,” she enthused adding they always look forward to playing to Lethbridge.
“We’re lucky Lethbridge is so close, because we love playing it,” she said adding they are looking forward to sharing the stage with Sweet Tea (Darryl Duus, Leight Doerksen and Dan Püurveen).
“ We always look forward to playing with new bands,” she said.
She noted the band has to get back into writing mode, though their second CD, “In The Hills,” was just released in September.
After they released the CD and playing several shows to support it, they took some time off in November to travel and build up their bank accounts through odd jobs.
“ I went to Florida. I can totally see why the snowbirds all go there. But after recording the new CD, it left us all a little bit broke, so we all had to take regular playing jobs,” McBride continued.
Taking a break allows most of the band to pursue their other passion— skiing.
“Well I don’t, but the guys do. Their odd jobs are all at night. So they can go skiing during the day,” said McBride, who works with children during the day. She noted it is easy for the band members to pick up odd jobs in Fernie.
“We couldn’t be from anywhere else. We have connections here. If we were to move to a larger centre, it would be difficult to find people people who would deal with our odd, mismatched schedules,” McBride chuckled.
She said the band was pleasantly surprised by the response to “In the Hills.”
“We were a little worried about what people would think because a lot of the fans really like the first CD and this is a little different so we weren’t sure what the reception would be like,” she said adding they sent copies out of it to media, radio and blogs and received an overwhelmingly positive response.
They are planning more gigs for 2013.
“In the fall we want to organize a tour Stateside, and we want to go back to Newfoundland in the summer and play festivals along the way. And maybe play somewhere else on the globe,” she said.
“2012 was pretty good to us, and we think 2013 will be even better,” she said.
Lethbridge blues rock band Sweet Tea ( Darryl Düus, Leigh Doerksen and Dan Puurveen) — an amalgamation of the Darryl Düus band and Church will be opening the show.
— By Richard Amery, L.A. Beat Editor
