Winnipeg based psychedelic jazz rock band Apollo Suns are ready to bring the jazz with a slice of rock to the Slice, May 11.
“ We’re going out to the Pacific Northwest and Montana, Washington area. And Lethbridge is becoming a really nice spot for us. Last time we were there we were opening for Five Alarm Funk in November and we’ve hit the Slice a couple of times. And it’s been a lot of fun so we just thought it would be a really great way to kick off the tour, and have some great pizza and play some good music and then head on to upstate Washington the next day,” said Apollo Suns guitarist Ed Durocher, tying up loose ends and running errands before embarking on a 18 date tour.
They enjoyed playing with Five Alarm Funk.
“That was part of a six day tour. We did six shows with them through Saskatchewan and Alberta. It was a lot of fun. Those guys are a hoot . We get compared to them quite a bit because we have horns. If you have horns in Canada you’re either a funk band, a jazz band and if you’re like instrumental you might get called a post rock band, but we don’t get that a lot.
There was a lot of fun, the crowds were packed. I feel like we made a lot of new fans through that and they’re so much fun to tour with. So they’re great,” he said.
The six piece band features Aaron Bartel on alto sax , Benjamin Hill on trombone, Ed Durocher on guitar, keyboardist Anatol Rennie , bassist Fred Warner and drummer Tim Iskierski.
“ We usually bring seven, but we had some member changes. The sound is just really big, but more cost effective I guess, touring the U,.S And Canada you can rack up quite a bit of expenses. We just tried to wangle to arrangements to make them suitable for a six piece and have a little more leg room for the band,” he continued.
“The set will be a mix of some our earlier work. What’s been so nice is that we’re so comfortable after several years of heavily touring minus that little break in the middle, we’ve been stretching out and free-forming a lot more and taking songs that we like, like for instance the Voodoo Chile riff from Jimi Hendrix is the basis for a jam in the middle of one of our new songs and we switch keys then we throw in the “Paranoid Android” bass-line from Radiohead into one of the jams. We’re just trying to make every tour sound a little different especially since we record every set,” he said.
“It’s a lot of fun. We call it heads up jamming like heads up hockey cause you have to be watching and listening very closely because we will change grooves on a dime or change keys or someone will call a different thing and we’ll have to go there. It’s a lot of fun and it makes it interesting. We don’t just play the same set every night,” he said.
They recorded a new album over 10 days last March in Winnipeg with producer Ben Kaplan who has worked with Mother Mother and Five Alarm Funk, Alexisonfire and even Snoop Dogg and Bootsy Collins, to name a few.
“He’s won a Juno he’s worked on Grammy nominated stuff. It’s nice because he got where we were coming from for that album. We wanted that live energy, kind of looseness but also really tight sounding so we drilled really hard,” he said, adding their first full length, 12 song album to be called “Departures” will be dropping in the Fall on vinyl thorough a Toronto based label on Sept. 22.
“It’s a step up sonically. it sounds really good. I wish we had more time to tour on these songs, but we started writing a lot of that when the pandemic hit so weren’t able to live test those songs as much, so we ended up revising them over a couple of years we weren’t allowed to tour in order to refine them. With the new stuff we‘re writing it’s totally different because we’re able to crowd test them every day and try different things and see what works on the crowd and what we’re digging. And we’re recording every show so we’re able t listen back. And it’s like a different thing. Music feels different when you’re not playing it to when you are playing it because you’re less attached to it and your perception of what’s happening is so different when you’re not in the moment.
So some things you think sounded good or felt good in the moment might of felt good but you’re like Oh, that doesn’t actually sound that good or it didn’t sound as good as I thought it was going to, not that it’s good or bad, it’s just different. Whereas when you’re listening a couple days after to the show, that thing I didn’t really care for at the moment is so good. So that’s kind of interesting. It’s a whole different writing process.The album that we’re releasing in the fall sounds great. I think people are going to dig it and if not, well I dig it. It will be so nice to have a thing on vinyl that I’ve helped create,” he said, adding they have released three EPs.
He said the Lethbridge show will definitely feature some of the songs from the album.
“Other songs have been in and out of the setlist over the past year. A lot of bands keep their new songs close to their chest, but I’m like you have a new song, you’re excited, you want to play it. Let’s put it in the set,” he said adding response to the new songs has been really good.
“We’re playing a lot of them and like stretching them out. Even now they’ve changed from the recorded stuff from a year ago to how we’re playing them now. We’re amalgamating three of the songs into one with one section of an older song. I think we’re trying to go from apiece of music for a show. I don’t want have any breaks in the music. I don’t want the music to stop for an hour. Because we’re all instrumental and I just talk over lower volume parts and say hello to the crowd and stuff,” he said.
“It’s been great. Crowds have been responding well to the new stuff and then we’re figuring out ways to update the old stuff with the new. That way we can keep playing songs from ‘Dawn Offerings’ and ‘Each Day a Different Sun ’ and keeping them fresh for us because people now know those songs if they are fans , which is pretty crazy,” he continued.
“We’ll go into an old song and people will hear that riff and we’ll just see an applause and a roar like oh my God, like they know this. That’s crazy to me. But I guess I know songs from people I dig , so why wouldn’t people like our music. it’s just kind of funny when you’re on the receiving end of it. You guys actually listen to our music outside of this concert,” he said.
“ We’re releasing a new single ‘Pluto’ so that will be out. It will be our first new studio release in about a year,” he said.
He said people can expect to have a good time at the show.
“A lot of sweat, solos. It’s really funky, it’s jazzy, it’s dancy. It’s high energy for sure. We all move a lot and we really like it when the audience responds to that but experience it however you’d like. I think that when people see us, if they haven’t seen us, they become fans very quickly. We’re just trying to having a good time and trying to spread a positive influence to our audiences,” he said.
Check them out online at https://www.apollosuns.ca, or on bandcamp https://apollosunsmusic.bandcamp.com/album/pluto-single
“Support it anyway you can. It takes a community to raise a child. it takes a community to support a band,” he said.
Apollo Suns and Makiisma play the Slice, Thursday, May 11. Doors open at 7 p.m.
Tickets are $14.11.
— by Richard Amery, L.A. Beat Editor
