L.A. Beat

With two-thirds of scrappy garage rockers the Stellar Radio Choir touring overseas  as Broken Down Suitcase, bassist Todd Menzies got bored and decided to form another band — the southern rock outfit Willhorse which comes to  the Owl Acoustic Lounge, July 26.

“It’s a little different than the Stellar Radio Choir, it’s more southern rock and blues like the Rolling Stones and the Allman Brothers. It’s good stuff. It’s the stuff I grew up on,” he said.

While waiting for Stellar Radio Choir band mates Ben Caldwell and Eric Larocque to return from touring Europe, last September Menzies started jamming with people in town and eventually ran into drum and double guitar trio Whiskey Highway and was happy to lend his bass.
 “We still play a few old Whiskey Highway songs,” he said.

“ We started playing together and we just clicked,” he said.

They have gigged a lot around B.C. and Alberta and just completed a 12 show in 15 day tour which was supposed to take them to Swift Current until their bus broke down in Banff.

“We had to cancel that show, but luckily we got another gig in Banff and we were close enough to home that we could get our own mechanic to work on it,” he said adding after cancelling Swift Current, they were considering coming down to Lethbridge to hang out with friends here but instead decided to hang out at home.

 They are  looking forward to their Lethbridge debut.

“ It’s a good, high energy show, and ’70s style rock seems to be getting popular again. We all rock the Fenders,” he said.

“It feels like we’ve been playing together for years, not months,” he said, adding  the Stellar Radio Choir is not  done.
“We’d like to do some work with the Coal Creek Boys,” he said.

— By Richard Amery, L.A. Beat Editor