The creative scene in Calgary is growing and becoming a stronger community everyday. With such a young and influential artist culture, great things keep happening. Todays feature is a collection of some very talented musicians who decided to make a band, heres a Q&A with the Bleachers. 

When did you start playing together as a band?

A few of us were tinkering with some ideas a month or so prior, but we really started in May of 2012 with the full line-up we have now. Lauchlin (our lead guitarist) was the last piece to fall into place. I just remember sitting on a patio with Jourdan and he pointed Lauchlin out and said “Hey, I know that guy and he plays guitar—he can play lead too. Should we ask him??” We went over and talked to Lauchlin for about 30 seconds and it was done. Once we had everyone in place it took a couple weeks to nail down the sound we were looking for, then things started to move pretty quickly.

Inspiration comes from all over the place. We come from a few different backgrounds—Jourdan fronts a folk-rock band called The Mountaineer; Lauchlin has another band called Violence which is really heavy; Andrew records all types of stuff at his studio Chaos Theory Recordings; and Logan and I came from a post punk band called Young Ones. The sounds and ideas are from all over the place, but somehow when you put them all together it seems to work. I remember listening to these superstars of the 50’s and 60’s tapes when I was a little kid, and it was a goal to have some sounds like that in there too. I guess we wanted to have a garage rock band that had some of those 1950’s-60’s sounds, but still wanted it to sound like straight up rock and roll and still include some elements of the stuff we were currently listening to. Sounds like a complete mess, but ideas come from everywhere and some how it all seems to come together. On the lyric side of things, it’s all about what’s going on around us. We all live right downtown and so much happens down here everyday, good and bad.

You guys have had some music come out recently, what’s the story?

Well we had a lull with Andrew going away on vacation with his family for a few weeks in August, so we decided to record before he left. We piled into the jam space and recorded a 3 track mini EP called “Half the Time I’d Rather Be Waiting” in the middle of the night, live off the floor. These were the first three songs we wrote and we really couldn’t be much happier with how they sound. The title track and “The Witching Hours” are pretty snappy and we all love “Rooks” cause it kind of brings to mind some 1950’s style slow jams.  

Where can we hear it?

You can download/stream everything for free from our bandcamp site— http://thisisbleachers.bandcamp.com or from our facebook page,http://www.facebook.com/thisisbleachers

We have our first shows coming up right away! It’s so exciting to be in a new band and playing all new songs. We have fast ones, we have slow ones, we have medium ones—they’re all so much fun to play. We’ve been fortunate enough to already be offered some really great shows out of the gate. It really does help to have some recordings to get to people; it’s much easier to get booked. The promoter and booking folks here in Calgary are all really great people here too. We’re excited to get out and play as much as we can, and have a nice time doing it.

What’s next for Bleachers?

We’re gonna try to play as much as possible through the fall, and try to write a few more songs and get out on the road a little bit before the New Year. We’ll likely get into some more recording too with a longer EP over the winter and be ready to get out there for spring.