A B.C. rock band with blues influences will perform as part of the Halloween Triple Bill at the Flying Steamshovel on Saturday, Oct. 28.
Band of Rascals is from the Cowichan Valley on Vancouver Island, but the quartet is headed to the mountains to celebrate Halloween with local bands Dizzy Spell and Giant Water Bug.
The band first got together back in May of 2013.
“Malcolm [Owen-Flood], the guitarist, and I, we used to play together when we were probably like 11 or 12. We used to play covers in my garage,” says Marcus Manhas, drummer for Band of Rascals. “And we lost touch, we went to different schools, and then he just messaged me one day, I think it was sometime in May of 2013, and just asked me if I wanted to get together and jam.”
Owen-Flood brought along lead singer Sam Trainor, Manhas invited bassist Sean Marcy and Band of Rascals began.
“It’s funny because we just went into it totally for fun, with no expectations and it ended up being the most serious project we’d been in, so it’s kind of funny how that works out,” says Manhas.
He adds that the band really started getting serious at the beginning of 2014, though the majority of their first, self-titled EP, which was released in November 2014, had been written before then.
The band describes its style as “nuts and bolts rock and roll,” a phrase given to them by Victoria blues musician Jesse Roper.
“That’s pretty much the only way I can describe it. It’s rock and roll, a little bit of a blues influence at times, and then a lot of our new stuff has a lot more of a modern edge,” says Manhas.
Band of Rascals is now touring its new EP, Tempest, which Manhas says was written with more focus than the band’s first EP.
“The first EP was funny because it was a huge mix of different stuff. … When we were writing it, we didn’t have any expectations or any idea what we really wanted the band to be at that point. We just kind of wrote whatever felt good, and then with Tempest, it was a little bit more focused,” he says. “We knew what we wanted out of the songs and we knew the sound that we were kind of going for.”
The tour started on Saturday in Camrose, but Tempest doesn’t officially release until Friday, Oct. 13.
Band of Rascals will be travelling across Western Canada in an RV and stopping in Rossland on Oct. 28.
We spoke with Manhas the Friday before the band left on tour — literally minutes before they were about to leave — and he said that the band had only just recently learned the Rossland stop was a Halloween show, but they might come up with costumes.
“We frequent Value Villages when we go on tour so we might pick something up for that show,” he said.