With June shaping up to be one of the soggiest in memory, Kelowna’s Canada Day celebration offers one of the most apropos headliners yet—a down-home act that isn’t afraid to wet.
A week before their debut album release at Vancouver’s creative hub The Waldorf Hotel, bluegrass septet The Washboard Union will take Waterfront Park’s Island Stage to show off the music that’s got the country community in a lather.
“We all grew up through rock and punk and hip hop, but we’ve got a big love of these songs from way, way back,” said vocalist and banjo player Chris Duncombe, who serves as Global Television’s morning news music correspondent in Vancouver and manages the city’s Classic Rock 101 and 99.3 The Fox radio stations.
As old hat as this music may be for Duncombe and his brother, Aaron Grain, watching the pair play and hang out in the area should feel like well-trodden territory for many friends and family in the audience as well. The brothers grew up on the Westside, Duncombe attending Lakeview Elementary and Grain going to Glenrosa Elementary.
These dusty hills are the stomping grounds Duncombe refers to as he recalls listening to Johnny Cash’s drawl and Ralph Stanley’s banjo growing up; and he knows there’s a little bit of country in these beaches—as in most Canadian hometown haunts for that matter.
“We’ll pull out one of those songs and there’s people in the audience that are 25 and don’t realize why they know the song, they just know it,” he said.
Thankfully, the band members are not so musically green.
Originally playing together under the name Run GMC, the group had a friend from the iconic Canadian band The Odds introduce them to Garth Richardson—producer for The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nickelback and Mötley Crüe—and he agreed to produce their first album as The Washboard Union.
They travelled to Richardson’s home studio in Gibsons. The project is his first country album, and he wasn’t the only big name producer in the mix. The single Half Cree also saw Bob Ezrin—mentored by Richardson’s father, Jack Richardson and known for producing Pink Floyd, Alice Cooper and Kiss—provide some oversight.
The resulting sound is a solid bluegrass album on which the four vocalists, banjo, mandolin, dojo (a banjo/guitar), harp, guitar, fiddle, drums and that washboard spark a united sound, passing the melody along from musician to musician in breakdowns built on pure energy.
“This is a one-of-a-kind live show,” said Duncombe. “It’s Canada’s O Brother, Where Art Thou?”
Or Old Crow Medicine Show meets Steve Earle, one might say. Either way, their festival tour, which will hit Victoria’s Rifflandia, Live at Squamish and the Golden Spike Festival along the way, should find the surrounding communities checking seismometers for earthquakes after several rousing rounds of foot-stomping.
The Washboard Union includes Duncombe on banjo, dojo and vocals; Aaron Grain on guitar and vocals; David Roberts on harmonica, the washboard and vocals; Dougal McLean on fiddle and mandolin; Matt Van Dyke on drums; Scott Paulley on bass and Craig MacCaul on the electric guitar.
According to a note on their YouTube channel, the whole effort got started with the purchase of a Willie Nelson cassette in, of all places, the Falkland General Store.
As Falkland is home to the largest Canadian flag in Western Canada, perched over the town on Gyp Mountain, it’s safe to say seeing the band play live will be as easy as flying the Canadian flag on Canada Day.
The group takes the stage in Kelowna’s Waterfront Park at 9 p.m. Admission is by donation.
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