Music Beat
Canadian Classic rock icons the Stampeders return to Lethbridge for kick off their latest tour in Lethbridge at the Yates Theatre with two shows, May 2 and 3.
Drummer Kim Berly is looking forward to touring with long time band mates and friends, guitarist Rich Dodson and bassist Ronnie King.
The Juno Award winning band had numerous hits in the early ’70s including their signature songs “ Sweet City Woman,” “ Wild Eyes,” “ Carry Me,” “Devil You,” “Oh My Lady “ Then Came the White Man” and “ Hit the Road Jack ” to name a few.
They formed in Calgary in the mid ’60s trimmed down to a trio in the early ’70s, moved on the other projects, scattered all over the country then reunited in the ’90s on the Didi Petty Show and played the Calgary Stampede and have been together ever since.
“I’ve got some rehearsal under my belt already and it only noon,” said Berly from his home Vernon, B.C, where he has been living for at least a dozen years.
“Ronnies in Calgary, Richard stayed in Toronto, since we came there in 1966, that’s been his home. I lived in Toronto for 30 years. I stayed there for a long time too. and Ronnie too. He was the first to go back to Calgary. I stayed in Toronto too. My life was there until about 14, 15 years ago and everything shifted and I started to move around, now my wife and I are here in Vernon. Which is a very nice place to be,” Berly said , adding expect the Lethbridge shows to be full of hits.
“You’re going to be hearing all the stuff you’ve come to hear. You’re going to hear all the hit songs that people remember from the radio. And also people have told us over the years what their favourite album cuts because a lot of the really good songs weren't’ released as singles. Maybe they were too long or maybe they just didn’t have pop hooks, but they were good songs. So we do a number of album cuts, but all the hits. So it’s a pretty entertaining evening , lot of stories. We’re old guys now. We just show up with our guitars. We have a really nice sound system and a really good sound man up front. It’s easy. We somehow manage to summon 25 year old energy for 90 minutes, then we go back to the hotel and go to bed. The parties just aren”t what they used to be,” Berly laughed.
The Stampeders have a long history in Lethbridge.
“Lethbridge was prominent. One of our main gigs was the Henderson Lake Dance pavilion in the summers of 64 and 65 and it was. When we headed east at the end of June in 1966 . We stopped there on maybe a Thursday or Friday night. I guess we’d play on A Friday night and get a few bucks in cash for gas and then we headed on to Regina where we were supposed to play again and then head in Ontario. We had a series of gigs booked for the whole summer and that’s a another story, he said adding that story could take a while.
“I was 16 and 17 then. There was a six piece band. It was an odd band. We had the four man instrumentals like the Beatles, two guitars bass and drums and then two guys singing up front. Two frontmen. That was the regular stuff. We‘d go play Henderson Lake. That was a summer thing so maybe two or three times over the summer.”
They switched to a three piece after a few summers of that.
“That was after two years on the road. We got to Ontario with a six piece band. And basically the other guys, they were all older. Ronnie, Rich and I were all late teenagers. I’m the youngest by a year. They would have been about 19. I was 18 when we go to Ontario. We were all summer babies. So we all had our birthdays down there. The other guys were anywhere between 25 to 27. And after a couple years on the road they realized that if it didn’t work and we managed to get a deal with MGM records in New York. That was what we waited for. We went down there and recorded and nothing came of it. It didn't turn into a hit. It was just a one off. If we managed to crank out a hit single then they would do an album, but we didn’t. And the other guys decided well, this was our shot, we didn’t hit, we’re going home. And that]s what they did. One by one they kind of fell away. So by the autumn of 1968 we were a trio and another two-and-a-half, three years, we had a hit record,” he said, adding things took off from there as a trio.
“ That really was the whole deal. All the years that we had hits we were a trio. We made a bigger band in the latter ’70s and all that did was kick up our expenses. And that’s not the thing to do. Bands cycle, right, it’s a sine wave. You have your high times and your low times and we were heading into a low time. So we thought we‘d beef up the band with more players which just ate up whatever revenue we were collecting and bit by bit we fell apart at that point. Richard had gone and finally I left the band to have my own band. And the Stampeders with Ronnie went on for maybe another year. And then he was being too burnt out and went back home to Calgary and started a band there, which he maintained for a number of years. And we were actually apart for almost 14 years and got back together on the (daytime entertainment talk show) Dini Petty show on CFTV,” Berly related.
