L.A. Beat

Vancouver folk/rock band Echo Nebraska have embraced their  more pop side on their sophomore  CD “Hold up to the Fire.”
 They visit the Owl Acoustic Lounge, June 8. as part of a two week tour of Alberta and B.C.

“ Though I flew in to Regina to do a solo show,” said frontman Devon Christoudoulou, back with his band mates Carly Frey, Mike Lauder, Dan Ponich and Andy Schichternear, just outside of Kamloops.

“We’ve been working on this new record. We recorded it with Jeff Dawson. We’re really excited about it, so we want to play it for people,” he said, adding it marks a change in direction for the band.

“It feels a lot poppier. It’s a lot of fun. Our earlier music was a lot more folkier with a lot of  fiddle. But there has always been that pop element to our music. We consider ourselves to be a pop folk band,” he said.

 

“We are all really big fans of the Beatles,” he said adding they like to spread positivity to a wider audience stems from heartbreak within the band itself. In September 2016, bassist and founding member, Gunn Park passed away after a battle with cancer. Even though this was a difficult time for the band, they focused on channeling this loss in a positive direction.

Devan, Gunn and multi-instrumentalist Andy Schichter started Echo Nebraska in the fall of 2014, with the release of a music video for ‘Hey, Allison’. Within a week of the video premiering, CBC Music added the video to their list of Best New Music Videos. Their debut EP, Send the Ships, would eventually chart across several campus stations, reaching a high of #3 on CJSF.
The band spent the next couple of years touring Send the Ships across Canada with drummer Mike Lauder, violinist Carly Frey and bassist Dan Ponich. After showcasing at BreakOut West 2016 in Regina, SK and CMW 2017 in Toronto, ON, Echo Nebraska started writing the songs that would eventually make up the new record. The title track, ‘Hold up to the Fire’ was written in honour of Park, weeks after his passing. Though Park never got to perform on Hold up to the Fire, his presence is felt throughout the record.
Echo Nebraska returned to the studio last winter with producer Jeff Dawson (Daniel Powter, Holly McNarland, The Dudes), who helped hone in on the direction the band was taking with their new collection of songs. Colin Stewart (Dan Mangan, Yukon Blonde, New Pornographers) was brought on to mix the album.

They are in the middle of a 17  show tour including Lethbridge before returning to Vancouver on June 16. Then they plan to take a little break before embarking on a tour on Eastern Canada starting in Manitoba later in the summer
“ We‘re very excited to come to Lethbridge, he said.