Rey Sabatin Jr. lead vocalist /mandolinist of the John Henrys, who play the Slice, May 6, gets asked all the time how a band from Ottawa can play country music.
“We have a lot of woodland around Ottawa. We’re always surrounded by country, but we’re not really a country band, we’re a roots rock band especially on the new CD,” Sabatin chuckled from a hotel in Thunder Bay where he was dedicating the day to doing press interviews.
“We’re a working class rock and roll band,” he continued adding the band’s new CD, their second official CD, ‘White Linen’ is getting good response.
Their debut is long out of print, though some of the songs live on in the live show and one of them, ‘Dawson City’ is even on the latest CD.
“We’re getting a lot of positive feedback. People are already calling out for songs on stage,” he added noting the band spent a lot more time in the studio recording their new CD on analog equipment.
“We must have played them 100 times. But we had a healthier budget so we were able to let the songs create themselves in the studio as well,” he said.
They play a lot in the United States, but have never been to Lethbridge. They are enjoying their tour with Madison Violet.
“We’ve played the southern United States four times already this year but we’ve never been to British Columbia,” he continued.
“It’s pretty interesting to play down there. We do really well in the southern states,” he said adding they played a cluster of shows in Florida from St. Petersburg to Orlando.
“But we thought it was about time we got to tour throughout our homeland. When you play in southern United States you realize just how good Canadian music is,” he said.
If you want a copy of The John Henrys’ latest CD, e-mail me at
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