Who: Quoia, w/ The Arbutus Collective; Dougal & The Weapon; and Mike Edel
When: Saturday, Jan. 15
Where: Merlin's
Cost: $10
Though their name may be a bit of a tongue twister (it's pronounced "Kwoi - a," FYI), this Victoria-based band's music is simple, approachable and frankly, downright danceable. The five-piece has been around for a little over two years now, and in that time, they've managed to cultivate a solid on-stage vibe, putting on a very high-energy live show.
"We have pulled away from doing the weekly thing in order to keep it fresh," their lead vocalist and guitar player, Mike Hann, said in a recent interview, "But I think we've always come up with new material - we have close to 40 original songs that go through our repertoire - and when we're playing in a live atmosphere, most of the time when you're playing clubs and these festivals and whatnot, if people are partying, they want to dance and shake it, and the vibe that we have as a band seems to translate into danceable music!"
Alongside Hann is Alex Nicholls on mandolin, violin and vocals, Mike Roma on guitar, lap slide, banjo and vocals, Keith Gallant on drums, percussion and vocals, and Jeff Scotney on bass and vocals. The roots of their band can be traced back to a popular Victoria hotspot called the Canoe Club, where Hann used to play a weekly gig.
"I was doing an acoustic duo thing with my friend, Tyler Harvey, and then he left town and I started inviting my friends Alex Nicholls and Mike Roma down to play with me," Hann explained, "...Our mandate was to make it an original music night. And then we started adding the other members and became a five-piece, and it just grew out of there!"
They soon started to fill the club on a weekly basis.
"The Victoria scene is very supportive of original music and I think we were definitely shown that, doing it every week and having people come out and the word would spread, and by the time we actually stepped away from it, we had line-ups out the door each week."
It was time to record, and give people a way to take the weekly party at the Canoe Club home with them.
"We just wanted to get some of our music out there," Hann said of their first full-length, "Five Feathers," "...A lot of the people that were coming down and enjoying our vibe at Canoe Club ... they were saying that these songs were becoming like a soundtrack to these good times that they were having."
While that album was just released in early 2010, there's already another as-yet unnamed album on the way, with a tentative release scheduled for early spring.
"I think we've just grown as a band. It sounds like a cliché answer," he laughed, "but it's fairly true."
From a production standpoint, everything just seems to be coming together in a much more fluid way, this time around.
"We're in the latter stages of putting this together, and you can just see the development as not only a band, but as individual musicians, from the first one to this one."
Yes, these musicians certainly seem to have their hands full these days: not only do they have their Quoia gigs and projects on the go, but a few of their members are also working with the events management operation, Radio Contact Productions, which books shows and coordinates festivals.
"What we wanted to do was create these parties and this atmosphere: this is how it all started in Victoria, where we were encompassing all different art forms and what we've done around Victoria is we've had parties that include visual artists, DJs and then also bands," Hann explained.
Those parties evolved into last year's Tall Tree Music Festival in Port Renfrew, B.C, which featured many acts from the thriving music scene on southern Vancouver Island (think: Kuba Oms, Current Swell, Jon and Roy, The Racoons, Vince Vaccaro, Aiden Knight and more.)
"It's great! I mean, they're both labours of love, right? There are so many good bands that we like to work with, and they sort of enable us to do so, like the ones we're traveling up to Whistler with," Hann said of Radio Contact.
"So being able to work with both sort of enables us to do that: travel with a lot of great bands and play with other great bands, as well, without having a 'middle-man.'"
Last summer, Quoia hit the festival circuit in a big way, as well, playing the TD Victoria International Jazz Festival with Toshi Raegon, Blue Sky Festival with Tom Cochrane, Colin James and Barney Bentall, Sunshine Music Festival, and Rifflandia 3 with Tommy Guererro. They've also shared the stage with Nazareth and the legendary Taj Mahal at the Royal Theatre.
"Our gig with Taj Mahal was an incredible experience, just playing at the Royal Theatre and also the fact that that guy has been so instrumental in the music industry," he said, pointing out that the blues legend discovered Ben Harper, "...So just sitting down with him and chatting after the show was a very humbling experience."
They even landed a gig playing at Merlin's last summer, as part of Whistler's own Deraylor Music Festival.
"That was great, we thoroughly enjoyed it! Obviously, the atmosphere with Crankworx and all that was just off the hook!"
Now, they've decided to head back up this way, and have assembled a pretty impressive bill that also includes the roots group, The Arbutus Collective, Dougal & The Weapon (which features former members of Jon & Roy and Current Swell) and Mike Edel.
"They do all fit together really well," Hann reflected, explaining that they all have a similar vibe, "The Arbutus Collective are using mostly acoustic instruments, as are we for the most part - we play we through two amps, so we're jacked up a bit."
