If you didn‘t get enough of New Orleans style piano powered blues, make sure you catch Edmonton musicians Rooster Davis, Ann Vriend and trombonist Brad Shigeta at the Slice, June 25.
Edmonton pianist Rooster Davies aka David Aide in real life is excited about his latest CD “ For Saints & Sinners.”
“ I got a grant fr
om the AFA so I made the CD of 10 songs,” he said.
It has been about a year since he was last in lethbridge. He has since toured Europe, returning home on March 27.
“I also planted my garden, but I won’t get to see much of it. We’re doing an Alberta tour and we have to be in Australia in August,” he said.
They began working on the new CD last October and November, planning to make it sound as close to their live show as they could.
“We recorded 13 songs over two days and kept 10 of them,” he said,
“We wanted to keep it real simple— the way we’ve been playing live,” he said, noting they kept most of the sessions but had to re record some of the vocals as they were bleeding over into the piano tracks.
He has been playing with fellow Edmontonian Ann Vriend for seven years, but seriously for the past four years, so they can provide two shows in one.
“That makes it easier to get into festivals. Whether it is an Ann heavy or a Rooster heavy show, they look at it l as ‘if we can get one artist, we can get both,’” he said.
He said it took some time for him to work out how a two keyboard act would work between Vriend and himself.
“We decided Hammond organ and piano would work and it grew from there,” he said , noting fitting two 88 key keyboards on stage can be a challenge.
“ They take up a lot of real estate on stage. When we play a place like Mikey’s (Juke Joint in Calgary), they don’t fit on stage,” he said, suggested he may convince Vriend to use a smaller keyboard.
He noted he hasn’t applied to any festivals this year, but will concentrate on that for next year now he has the CD out.
He said the new CD has received a lot of positive response from CBC and CKUA but more importantly from the music industry.
“ They’ve done it before. They know the application process for festivals. We’d like to do a festival tour in Europe. If you think there’s a lot of festivals here, there’s 85 million people in Germany alone. Just think of how many festival there are,” he said.
He is excited to play the first date of a quick Alberta tour in the last week of June and first week of July.
The Lethbridge show and most of the Canadian tour will be equal amounts of both musicians.
“ We’re playing two full sets. We’ll be playing the whole album, plus songs from Ann’s album plus songs she recorded in Europe but hasn’t released yet,” he said.
He is pleased to have Brad Shigeta on trombone.
“He played with Duke Ellington’s orchestra for seven or eight years when he was living in New York before he move d back here. It was run by Duke Ellington’s son Mercer,” he said.
He really loves the New Orleans sound just as much as I do,” he said.
“ Ann Vriend plays percussion and sings lead on many of the songs. She sings lead on two of the songs on the CD and sings harmonies on all the others plus she plays the shit out of the tambourine and she looks pretty good too,” he said.
The show begins at 9 p.m. There is a $10 cover.
