It has been a creative year for Hinton blues rock band WestHaven.
And while it’s a fresh gig for these old-time music buds, the genre is one they’ve grown up with and been inspired by all their lives here in the Rockies.
This weekend, Ty Lehne, Eric Hebert, Nick Sweet and Kolton Stennes will perform here in Jasper to celebrate the launch of their debut album, Loaded Valdor. Fuchsia Dragon, worried the album title sounds too much like Lord Voldemort, treaded lightly with Kolton, drummer and confirmed muggle.
Fitzhugh: Tell me a little about the band’s history
Kolton Stennes: The lead singer Ty and I grew up playing music together since elementary school until about a year after high school, with the bass player Nick too, and ended up having high school bands. Ty moved to Vancouver to pursue audio engineering, Nick went to Edmonton to join a punk band called Unban Jace. Through a mutual friend, me and Eric met and started playing together and had a metal band called Rocky Mountain Massacre.
Then Ty came back to town and texted me, I just said ‘Right, what are we doing?’.
That was last September, almost a year ago.
Fitz: What brought you to blues rock for this band?
Kolton: It’s pretty much for Ty. He had this project back in Vancouver and had a lot of these songs already written. He grew up on country and blues rock, that’s his domain. That’s just what he loves to do. He’s a big fan of Led Zeppelin and The Black Crowes and ended up being very good at writing it.
Fitz: What was your process for getting the album together?
Kolton: For the song writing, most of the songs were pretty much pre-written from Ty but when he came to us with these songs and we played them then we started putting our own style to it. Eric is very heavily influenced by blues rock as well. He put his own style on the guitar and I have my own style of drumming.
For recording, we rented recording gear ourselves and recorded in our jam space and found a producer in Vancouver who is close friends with Ty and he produced it for us.
Fitz: What should we look out for on there?
Kolton: Oh man, this album is pretty versatile - it is a good variety. We released one single, Hard Hearted, and that is more of a song that’s pretty catchy with a chorus. It has that hook that people can sing along to and learn quite quickly.
We have a nice slow song on there that the girls will love, probably. Then two songs very rock, they have a good heavy groove to them.
It shows each of our individual talents in the songs. Ty goes hard with his singing, Eric rips the solos, Nick has great bass lines. We make sure it has the best of our ability in each song.
Fitz: Have you had many gigs yet?
Kolton: We have played a few. We had our first show in February, played the Wild Mountain Music Festival for the Mashup and ended up winning that so we have a paid spot for next year, and had an acoustic show at Folding Mountain Brewery.
We have just been mainly staying local for this year to focus on writing and getting this album done.
Next year we will go throughout the whole country and a bit into the States, see where the album hits.
Fitz: What can we expect from your show in Jasper?
Kolton: Definitely expect me being very loud, probably obnoxious. Even though I’m behind the kit I like to try to be involved with the crowd as much as possible.
Expect our stage presence, we go crazy, wild. We like to rock out very hard.
A lot of crowd participation, dancing - our music is good for people to dance to.
It will be a show definitely filled with good vibes.
WestHaven perform on Saturday, August 10 at The Stand Easy with supporting acts Cozen Indigo from Jasper and Dawson William from Calgary.
Doors @ 9 p.m. Tickets are $10.
