Tommy's Pub and Grill's annual Battle of the Bands is now in full swing. Local acts Human Stain and Mountain Morning performed last Wednesday (Nov. 18), while No Sudden Moves and The Ladder Mic's took the stage last night (Nov.
Tommy's Pub and Grill's annual Battle of the Bands is now in full swing.
Local acts Human Stain and Mountain Morning performed last Wednesday (Nov. 18), while No Sudden Moves and The Ladder Mic's took the stage last night (Nov. 25) for the first rounds leading towards the Dec. 9 semifinals.
Human Stain's metal duo consisting of Nick Christou (guitar) and Nick Tessier (drums) made a fierce impression on Nov. 18, thanks to feeling right at home thanks in part to having participated in last year's contest.
“We played last year, the concept is great, and something like this is just so good for the local scene around here,” Christou said. “There isn't a lot of places besides open mics where this sort of thing's going on. At this point, we just have to see how it stacks up against the rest of the bands that are going to play.”
The local band's performances are based on a points system tallied from three categories: original material, musicianship and stage presence.
The duo played four instrumental songs, all original material, a necessity to compete in the contest.
“We're loud and heavy, we get asked what genre we are a lot and it's hard to answer,” Christou said. “I would say instrumental progressive. We don't have vocals, so it's just us and the instruments.”
The duo now has to play a waiting game to see how their score matches up to upcoming contenders, but the pair is confident their catalogue of original material can hold its own if they arrive at the semifinals.
“We have a pretty good repertoire, we have enough material to get through a couple of rounds, and we're just basically getting things together to record an album in Calgary in the new year.”
One of last night's contenders, The Ladder Mics are also no stranger to the annual contest, and actually met each other and formed thanks to the annual event.
“It's the four of us, all from different countries here and we actually met here at Tommy's Battle of the Bands three years ago at the first one,” said Ladder Mics bass player Zoltan Varga (bass). Mike Provencher (guitar) and Todd Clarkson (vocals) started as a duo at The Banff Centre and they entered the battle. I was in a different band at that time and they were playing without a bass player, so I offered my services for them and they gladly accepted it.”
Drummer Ryan Hobbs was recruited to hit the skins and another popular local Bow Valley act was born thanks to Battle of the Bands.
“We all work in the valley in Banff and we've been together ever since, three years now. We entered two years ago and we've been playing in the valley quite often. It's really a good place to meet people that are great musicians, so that worked out really well for us,” Varga said.
“We decided to do something new; we've been working on a couple of songs lately that we're going to test out, and we'll also be doing some older, original material that we know the crowd will enjoy and I'm pretty sure we're going to put up a strong set.”
Tommy's Pub and Grill's Battle of the Bands takes place every Wednesday night, leading to the final battle slated for Dec. 16.
