Imagine being a teenager with a nameless band and suddenly you have a gig lined up and the promoter is demanding you give them a name—any name. What do you do?
In the case of Manitoba root-rockers, Until Red, the answer is to type “band name generator” into Google and to roll with whatever comes out the other end.
“It was a horrible idea,” Roman Clarke, the band’s drummer, said with a laugh, “and ever since then, kind of after every gig, we’ve been like, we should change our name. But then we’d be like, well, a bunch of people just saw us as Until Red.
“We totally should have changed it because no one really cared about us at that point, but it goes on and on and we’re so big now it’s just impossible to change it,” he said, still laughing.
So, for better or worse, the band remains Until Red.
Clarke has been playing music with his bandmates Dylan MacDonald (lead vocals and guitar) and Liam Duncan (keys, rhythm guitar and backup vocals) for the past six years, starting the band when they were 14 years old.
“We like to say we’ve been dating for four or five years, but it’s only really been a serious thing for two,” he said.
The relationship reached new heights when MacDonald and Duncan dropped out of music school to pursue life as full-time musicians, making Until Red their top priority.
“It was the best decision I’ve ever made,” said Duncan.
During the past two “serious” years, the trio has recorded an EP called Joanna, after a girl that MacDonald meets each summer at the Winnipeg Folk Festival, and it has undertaken three tours. (The latest will take them through Manitoba, Alberta and British Columbia and then back again.) And it has also begun working on a full length album that’s expected out in the fall.
They’ve come a long way since their first extended tour a year ago, when they were out on the streets of Moosejaw trying to coax people into a cafe to see them play.
“The first tour was a learning experience,” said Clarke with a laugh. “I’ll never forget our first show on our tour. It was a Friday night and we were really excited, because it was the first time we’d done this, and we were going around the town handing out hand outs to get people out to the show.
“Then showtime rolls around at 7:30 and there’s one guy in the coffee shop and not many more people came in after that. So, really, we played to just one guy.
“After that we were questioning our own existence, but then after that the rest of the tour was, in comparison, much better and all the tours after that have been amazing.”
As well as touring Western Canada in their van, the band has also played the Winnipeg Folk Festival, Brandon Folk Festival, Harvest Sun Festival, Dauphin Countryfest and Rockin’ the Fields of Minnedosa.
Until Red will play the Jasper Legion March 20, bringing its roots-rock grooves and storytelling skills to the stage for a night of good music and laughs.
Nicole Veerman
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