With the amount of writing, recording and touring Edmonton’s Dawn in the City (DITC) has accomplished in the last year, you would think the funk, rock and blues ensemble would be ready for a break, but Banff is calling and DITC can’t wait to showcase their hard work on stage.
“Banff’s Rose and Crown has always given us great crowds,” DITC member Bernal Ibarra said. “People just love live music and dancing there, and that’s something that’s always been hot whenever we’ve played there.”
Dawn in the City will be at the Banff Rose and Crown March 20-22.
The band is ready to showcase material from its latest album, Burnt Shades, that further explores the band’s need to balance its connection between retro roots and contemporary technology.
“I came up with the idea Burnt Shades because I wanted to keep with the natural groove, burned motif; kind of like the concept we had for the first record and sort of a continuation of that,” Ibarra said. “Later it kind of struck me that there was a second meaning to it as well. Shades also means sunglasses, something that is over your eyes. The title Burnt Shades represents tradition to that natural motif; the shedding of one’s blinders, the taking off of one’s blinders, removing the things from oneself that keep you from seeing clearly.
“The whole concept of DITC is it represents there’s an all-seeing wisdom and natural power of cosmic forces that basically surround all of the earthly and busy constructs that we surround ourselves with. So it’s always been a juxtaposition of the natural with the urban and I guess our music is kind of geared to reflect that.”
DITC offers a lot of natural, earthy, funky retro styles that are mixed in against a backdrop of a very technological metropolitan world by not being afraid to push the digital envelope when in the studio.
Recording it was a lot of fun. It gave us a chance to use a lot of creative techniques in the studio,” Ibarra said. “We have one track where we turn some guitar harmony lines basically into mock horn lines by using a special combination of effects to create some horn sounds.
“We have another song, actually one of the last songs we recorded, that needed something in the bridge part, so we decided to write a three-voice choral section for it. I was able to supply some of the music education I got at U of A to instrument a choral section I wrote a score for.”
Ibarra said the album is full of Easter eggs and twists and turns to keep listeners hitting repeat on Burnt Shades. “There’s some classical in it, there’s some Latin in it as well and, of course, also a healthy helping of blues and funk and soul.
“For all of the members of DITC it’s been a pretty big year, re-evaluating our priorities and our values and there’s been a lot of opportunities to change who we are as a band and to find a more commercial sound. But all the way through, we knew we had to stay true to ourselves and make things less complicated and more real because basically that’s who we are.”
The official release for Burnt Shades is May 9, but Ibarra promises a sampler that has some of the tracks from the album will be available at the show.
Dawn in the City will be at the Banff Rose and Crown March 20-22.
