Regina based progressive rock trio Black Thunder return to Lethbridge to rock the Slice again with the Supervoid, Feb. 18.
They released their most recent CD “III” last July and are already working on new music.
“We’re just starting a new album. We’ve been playing these songs for a while now so I need to play something new,” said guitarist Tony Frank, who has been playing with drummer Neil Lutz since 2009. bassist Dustin Wiebe joined a few years later.
“We toured on it and sold a few copies, so I’m happy with it. People seem to like it, so I think it’s doing okay,” said Frank, taking a quick break from his day job building commercial doors and windows.
“ Our drummer just got a job a a brewery, so we get discounts on booze and our bass player works in scaffolding,” Frank said, adding they need to work around touring schedules, recording, rehearsing and songwriting around day jobs.
“We practice in the basement where there are a lot of folk and acoustic shows, so often security form the show upstairs will come down and tell us to turn down, which is disappointing when you get into the zone. But you can’t get mad about these things,” he said.
“We loving doing this and making music, so we always make time for it. So we make it work,” he continued.
They haven’t been playing as much as usual, though they have had shows with bands like Truckfighters, Monster Love and The electric Revival, who are big on the prog rock/stoner rock scene.
They are also playing Calgary the Sunday after their Lethbridge show, where they will share a stage with Electric Revival and fellow Saskatchewanites Johnny 2 Fingers.
He noted the new music has a ’60s feel, though it is still progressive rock.
“ I’ve been listening to a lot of ’60s pop. But the new music won’t be totally pop, it will be more verse, chorus, verse, but it will still be progressive rock, because that’s what I always listen to, though I listen to everything like funk and ’60s pop,” he said, noting they we’ll be playing three of the new songs.
“We’re still chipping away at the others,” he said.
They love playing Lethbridge.
“ We always have fun when we come there and people seem to like us, so we’ll keep coming back,” he said.
“ Though the last time we were there, we were playing with the Supervoid and the Slice flooded, so the show got moved to a house, which was fun, but we really missed the Slice,” he said. The Supervoid and Black Thunder play the Slice, Feb. 18 at 9 p.m.
— By Richard Amery, L.A. Beat Editor
