A concert featuring two stellar musical acts is part of the opening gala for this year’s Brant Wildlife Festival on Feb. 28.
Towers and Trees, an indie-folk collective from Victoria, and Royal Tusk, a five piece pop-rock band out of Edmonton, will be performing at the Parksville Community and Conference Centre in a fundraiser for the 25th annual Brant Wildlife Festival.
Megan Olson of Arbutus Events has partnered with Brant organizers to make the festival’s opening night event epic.
With Towers and Trees as the headliners, the show will have no shortage of energy, and there will be plenty of room for dancing with the PCCC as the venue.
Towers and Trees materialized from Victoria’s music scene on the strength of their infectious live energy, rich sound and earnest song writing.
What started out as an exercise in redemption for Adrian Chalifour, the band’s driving force and front man, has resulted in a brand new full-length CD, the majority of which was recorded in Nanoose Bay and is being released today.
The album which is called The West Coast has been many years in the making and according to Chalifour, a gifted lyricist and performer; in putting their new project together the band has undergone a metamorphosis.
“The music is very dynamic and is what we have evolved into. I feel like as a song writer this is my shot at painting the ceiling in the Sistine Chapel. So we have really big ambitions with this album and that is why it has taken a lot longer than we thought it would. We are realizing we just want to create the biggest, boldest, fullest thing possible so that it is almost a challenge for us to create that scale when we are playing it live,” he emphasized.
It wasn’t that long ago when Chalifour recorded a handful of his songs in the living room of his apartment with the help of some stellar musicians.
That first recording session resulted in the Broken Record EP, a collection of six songs which was released in 2011.
A year later, the group went from a near-solo project to an eight-piece indie-folk powerhouse and in 2013 the group’s single Montreal received significant radio airplay.
He said the new album has taken a lot longer to produce, but tells a full range of stories and encapsulates the sound they have developed on stage.
“There isn’t another Montreal on this album, which is cheeky and groove driven. The new album is a little more emotionally earnest. There are big moments on it and there are high energy moments on it,” he agreed.
He said the flavour and themes of where they are going as a band is reflected in the new album.
“It is like a breath of fresh air from that push period that went through all of 2013 and into 2014 with our tour, to just stop and take a breath and also just turn inward and find the joy and fulfillment of getting creative again.”
2013 was a tide turning year for Towers and Trees. They earned VIMA and M Awards award nominations and appeared at several of BC’s premier music festivals.
They were also finalists in Music BC’s Peak Performance Project which resulted in the band making some important music connections.
Chalifour said meeting and eventually working with producer/engineers Alex Aligizakis, a Peak Performance Project mentor, was serendipitous and their collaboration solidified the flavour of the album.
Aligizakis honed his production skills in the Vancouver studio scene, but now lays down tracks for several BC bands in his Nanoose Bay studio. Chalifour said they recorded quite of bit of their new album with Aligizakis.
“At first I thought he was a Vancouver cat and it turns out he has a full studio in Nanoose Bay,” he said. “We tracked a big chunk of the album at Electric City Sound in Victoria and we have done a lot of the over-dubs and finish ups at Alex’s place in Nanoose. In meeting Alex and already knowing what the themes of the album were … for me in my head that was kind of an acclamation of knowing that this feels right.
“It is amazing when you are tracking vocals and looking out the window at the ocean because it is right on the water.”
Chalifour says now they want to share their new music in their live show and the band is looking forward to celebrating their songs as well as the Brant geese at next month’s concert in Parksville.
Doors open at 7:30 p.m. and the music starts at 8:30 p.m. with Royal Tusk as the opening act.
The early bird ticket price for the 19 plus show is $20 until Jan. 31. On Feb. 1 they will cost $25. To purchase tickets visit arbutusevents.ca or stop by the PCCC, Soak Essentials, Parksville and ReVived Vintage, Qualicum Beach.