As any boxer will tell you, it’s the roadwork you have to put in that will get you in fighting condition, and this sage advice is also true for a touring band.
Saskatoon’s The Pistolwhips have been relentless with their touring schedule over the last year. Crisscrossing the country from one coast to the other, the four piece blues-indie rockers – Rylan Schultz (vocals), Paul Kuzbik (guitar), Zach Davies (bass) and Tallus Scott (drums) – are now ready to make a stop at Banff’s Elk and Oarsman on Aug. 21 to show the local crowd what persistent touring and playing can do to tighten up an already impressive act.
The Banff gig is part of the band’s 12-show Western Canada tour, which will keep the band as busy on the road as on the stages they’re heading to.
“We’re doing Golden Sound Fest (Golden, B.C.) right after we do Banff the next day,” Davies said from the band’s tour van. “This is our third big tour this year; we did a spring one out west, but we also did another eastern tour as well.”
The four-piece, which made waves last year with its album release On Your Side, which offered up the catchy single “Watcha Doin,” also squeezed in an eastern tour, taking them all the way to Charlottetown, P.E.I.
“We’ve been touring relentlessly, and it all started with a festival in Toronto for Canadian Music Week,” Davies said. “Then we also got another festival in Charlottetown at the May Run Music Festival, so between those two dates we just filled up a bunch of shows before and after and everywhere between those two dates.”
Nonstop travelling and playing has led to an almost psychic connection between the members, the kind of connectedness that develops and only really makes sense to musicians who have also spent a vast amount of time in a band.
“It just happened last night,” Davies said. “Our lead singer (Schultz) cut one of the songs and we talked about it today and it was funny because we were all feeling the same way, that we should cut that one song and we were happy that he did it. But there was no word spoken, he just skipped and we went right into the next song.”
All of these back-to-back shows have pretty much made traditional rehearsing nonexistent for the band. There really is no point and/or time for rehearsals before a show if you’re too busy driving to the next location for that night’s performance.
“We don’t have to practice as much, so that’s really good and it’s actually really helping our live show because we can really gauge the crowd,” Davies said. “We’re able to know which song will fit really well in a lineup – we’ve played the songs so many times that we’re able to just do that and feel really comfortable.”
During The Pistolwhips Charlottetown stop at the May Run Music Festival, the band found itself recruited into an all-nighter, finding themselves in the middle of a bar on a three-day open run. “We played at a bar called Hunter’s Ale House which was open for 72 hours or something like that. They had a permit to basically stay open 24 hours a day for all of the festival,” Davies said. “We had our spot at around 1:30 a.m. and it was just wild in there because all the other bars were slowing down and everybody was going to Hunter’s and that party lasted all night, so that was pretty fun.
“We always have a good time and we might have a few drinks here and there, but we’re so busy and you don’t really get a chance to go too crazy when you have a seven-hour drive and a show the next day.”
