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BESTiE at Two Acre Shaker for more than just the scenery

Vancouver band has its first Pemberton gig
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BESTiE The Vancouver group will be performing at this weekend's Two Acre Shaker. Photo Submitted

Twenty minutes before he was due to be interviewed for this story, singer Tristran Orchard of Vancouver band BESTiE was locked in the trunk of a car.

This news came out thanks to the wonder that is Twitter and a little judicious texting on Orchard's part.

So how the heck did it happen?

"My girlfriend runs an organic raw nuts-milk company, Nuez Milk, and she is running a farmers' market in East Vancouver and, yeah, she's transporting all this stuff and I get in the back trunk. I was holding onto the handrail things," he says.

Happily he got out, made the call, and should have no trouble finding his way to Pemberton for the Two Acre Shaker, where BESTiE is scheduled to perform on Saturday, Aug. 16.

"We were just up at the Pemberton festival and it was so beautiful, but we haven't performed there or Whistler yet," Orchard says.

BESTiE is just over two years old. They released their first album, No Bad Days, in April this year with a nod to the Pacific Ocean vibe, albeit a little more tropical than the region around the Salish Sea. The album has been described as "a melodic merging of surf, Afrobeat, Cumbia and Calypso."

BESTiE has a "pretty energetic live show," Orchard adds.

"We always say that if people don't dance at our show we're going to be really, really depressed. But that hasn't happened so far. We like to keep it pretty fun, too. Sometimes we bring some dancers in chicken suits or whatever. Any costume we can strap together."

And there will be new songs they plan to try out at the Two Acre Shaker.

"We had a really good year last year, we were one of the finalists in the PEAK Performance Project, and we released our album and put out a number of videos. Now, we're getting invited to really cool festivals like this one," he says.

Orchard is modest. The annual music competition, which gives B.C. bands exposure, was more than good for BESTiE. They won $50,000.

The money has made all the difference in establishing the band.

"Prior to the PEAK Performance contest we only had two songs out and that was completely because of the cost of recording stuff properly. It's really expensive to get a good, talented producer and book studio time and everything else that goes along with creating music," Orchard says.

It really taught the bands the business and promotion side as well as the music, and how important it is.

"I think it's really successful, it both gives you exposure and the coaching that bigger acts on major labels would typically get. We learned how to position ourselves, simple things like getting a website. We didn't have one before. We learned how to reach out and have people aware of what you are doing and not just make art," says Orchard.

And the money also allowed BESTiE to shoot their videos in exotic locales, such as Downtown Vancouver (for Pineapple), a transit bus (for Asleep On the Bus)... and on a beach in Colombia, where they shot the video for their single Sriracha.

"We were at South By Southwest Festival and our drummer is from Colombia. He hadn't been back to visit his family in over four years and we wanted to shoot the video here because it's about Third Beach in Vancouver. But it became winter and we couldn't shoot the video here. The idea to go to Colombia came up and we thought it would be great and create something exotic," says Orchard.

With any luck you'll see them running around Pemberton soon making a new video, inspired by what they find during the Two Acre Shaker.

No Bad Days is available on their website at bbbestie.com, iTunes, bandcamp and Amazon.