The Slocan Ramblers are making their way back to Fernie to play at the Arts Station on Nov. 25. The performance is the last in the Fall Concert Series, curated by the Arts Station.
Adrian Gross, mandolin player for the group, said the band is looking forward to playing back in Western Canada.
“We all grew up out east but somehow there is a bit of a B.C. connection through that and through touring out there, so it’s always fun to get to B.C.,” he said.
The Fernie performance is the only B.C. date on the band’s two-week tour, with most of the performances scheduled for Alberta and Saskatchewan. The mini-tour is in support of their new album, Coffee Creek, which was released in July.
“We were touring around Canada a lot and were writing music on the road and arranging it and when it came time to make a new record, we had all of this new music that we had been kind of work shopping for audiences and we had a pretty clear idea of what we wanted to do,” he said. “We went into the studio and recorded live – very few studio tricks or edits – pretty much just recorded the same way we perform to try and capture the way we play music in the first place. I think it came it well, and we are happy with it.”
Although the four-piece band has strong B.C. connections, all members are from Toronto, where they started playing together about five years ago. Now the tight-knit group play music described as “Homegrown Canadian Bluegrass”.
“It’s bluegrass music, a big kind of folk element. It’s a bluegrass band, that’s how it was formed and that’s what it still is but a lot of other influences help colour it and help make it unique to what we want to do with it,” Gross said.
The Slocan Ramblers were here twice in the summer, playing public shows outside of the Arts Station.
“We’ve done two shows so far outside at the Arts Station like a summer patio series, which we’ve always had a lot of fun with and had really cool crowds for but this is our first time kind of playing the indoor theatre there, so we are really excited to do it. It was one of the first shows that we got that we built this tour around.”
The Slocan Ramblers are set to take the stage on Nov. 25 at 8 p.m. Tickets are available at the Arts Station and at Freshies.