The fact Hamilton rock band the Reason have been together for 10 years is as much of a surprise to frontman Adam White as it is to anybody else.
“It’s been great. It’s not something we really thought of. The last six years have gone by a lot faster than the first four. It's just something we realized like ‘Holy Crap,’ this is tenth year,” said White from his Hamilton home, getting ready to begin a western Canada tour, which comes to Bo Diddly’s, Nov. 23 with Danish rock band Thee Attack and Fort Macleod pop-punk band Sophmore Jakes.
They have opened for a variety of big names like the Tragically Hip and
the Headstones and played some major festivals and have had several
songs on the radio including ‘The Longest Highway Home’ and their latest
single ‘Drive Me Home.’
But when they realized their tenth year was coming up, they decided to tour Canada by train playing nothing but house concerts.
“I still work in a pub in my hometown and people will recognize me from the Reason and ask me what I’m doing there. They hear us on the radio and they think I’m famous. So it’s more awkward (than frustrating),” he said.
“ A lot of people think that because we’re in a band, we’re always touring. Some bands do, but it never happened that way for us. So we wanted to make a film that was a lot more realistic rather than us playing the same club each night,” he said.
He added the documentary is coming together well, though they are still shooting footage and editing.
“We got some great footage,” he said.
The current tour will be by van, though they toured by train for the documentary.
“That tour was all acoustic, so we could take a train. This time we have a lot more gear and more production,” he continued.
“We put on clown costumes and play circus music and throw hot dogs at the crowd,” he joked.
“No. Actually it's a lot of sitting around in a van and then sitting around waiting for a soundcheck. This is our release, so we give it our all in the 90 minutes we‘re on. It’s just an honest show with no gimmicks, just a great time,” he said.
They played a house party in Lethbridge on the train tour.“I don’t think we’ve done a proper show in Lethbridge in three or four years,“ he said.
Their latest release is the ‘Hollow Tree Ep.”
I think it’s doing okay. But thing have changes. You used be able to say ‘I’ve sold 7,000 copies of it,’ but now I have no idea how many people paid for it and how many people just have it. But people seem to have it and they seem to like it,” he said adding they band’s sound hasn’t changed.
““It’s just different. It’s more of a reflective album. It came out in 2013 and the last one came out in 2010. it’s just where we were then. but we don’t deliberately change our sound,” he said.
They are excited about returning to Lethbridge.
“We like Alberta, so we spend a lot of time there. And we have a lot of friends in Lethbridge now. We have a good little posse there,” he said.
The Reason, with Thee Attacks and Sophmore Jakes play Bo Diddly’s at 9 p.m. Advance tickets are $20
— By Richard Amery, L.A. Beat Editor
