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Time to get Slushed

Long-time local punk band to release latest album at upcoming show
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Who's Who Gavin McDermott, Adam Leggett, Jamie Weatherbie and Bryce MacDiarmid make up Whistler's long-time punk band Slush.

Who: Slush

Where: Garfinkel’s

When: Sunday, March 23

It’s not hard to find music in Whistler — whether you’re into rock, hip hop, reggae or rap, you’re bound to find some form of live act to entertain on any given night.

But Whistler isn’t exactly the best place to be if you’re trying to keep a band together — with a largely transient population people tend to drift in and out of town, and finding a suitable venue isn’t always easy.

But at least one local group seems to have discovered how to make it work.

Slush has been in Whistler for almost 10 years now, bringing their special blend of melodic punk to the music scene.

Jamie Weatherbie, the drummer, and Adam Leggett, the singer and songwriter, are two of the founding members of the band, which was born in 1992.

“We started off with me and a drumset, and him screaming behind me and then he kind of… learned to sing, and then he kind of somewhat learned how to play guitar, and then everyone just got better,” Weatherbie recalls.

He hesitates to label their music as pop or hardcore punk, saying they are more of a “happy medium” between the two.

They’ve been playing in Whistler since 1998, during which time they’ve recorded 10 albums.

“We’re definitely one of the longest running bands in this town,” said Weatherbie.

The secret to their success seems quite simple: they’re passionate about music.

“We play for fun, so when you actually play for fun instead of as a career, then it’s a lot easier to stay as a band for 15 years,” Weatherbie explained, adding that most bands tend to break up while they’re on tour.

“The moment that it’s not fun, we’ll stop doing it,” Weatherbie added.

They also don’t play often in Whistler — only once every three or four months — because it’s easy to play yourself out in this town.

“As transient as Whistler is, we’ve been playing here so long now and people come out to our show and know the songs — it’s good,” said Weatherbie.

All four members of the band — Weatherbie, Leggett, Bryce MacDiarmid, and Gavin McDermott — are from the same small town in Northern Ontario, wedged between North Bay and Timmons, with a population of about 5,000. Over the years, they’ve had to replace a few members, but have always managed to keep their roots in Northern Ontario.

“Considering we come from a small little redneck town, we’ve always kept the band members from our own hometown, which is really strange, but it’s always worked out like that.”

Slush also takes a bit of a different approach to recording — for almost six years they’ve been giving their music away to fans through their website, where you can download their songs for free, and through CD giveaways at their live shows. The rationale behind this, as Weatherbie explains it, is to encourage more people to come out to see the shows, rather than depend on record sales.

They just got out of the studio, where they finished recording their latest 10-song album in time to take the stage for Punk Night at Garfinkel’s this Sunday night.

This time around, they recorded with one guy who both engineered and produced, and they spent a lot more time on vocals, experimenting with effects. The result is a slightly heavier, faster album.

“I don’t think we got older and slower, so that’s a bonus. I think our music has definitely gotten better every year,” said Weatherbie.

While they used to release a new album every year and a half, this time, there was a three-year gap.

“We still practice, but the songs aren’t coming out as quickly, probably because they’re a little more dynamic than they were before,” Weatherbie explained.

Over the years, Weatherbie says he has definitely seen Whistler’s live music scene go downhill, and the lack of practice space available to musicians is really holding back the local scene.

“Since the Boot closed down, a lot has changed in this town.”

He points out that Slush used to practice at Millennium Place, but they recently raised their rental rates, and began asking for $100 per hour instead of the $20 they used to charge.

“If there were more places to practice, there probably would be more bands,” says Weatherbie. “There are probably a lot of musicians that move to this town, probably from Ontario or Quebec, that are here to snowboard and want to start something, but there’s no where to start it.”

Their bass player is building a house in Mount Currie, so the other band members are trying to convince him to include a practice room in his construction plans.

They also recently received some bad news from the local music scene — this will be their last performance at Punk Night, as Garf’s is canceling the weekly event.

Weatherbie says Slush will still do the occasional show in town, but they’ll have to organize it themselves now, which makes the process a bit more difficult.

Now, they plan to shop their new CD around to record companies, begin work on another, and plan some tours that will take them to other areas of the province during the summer months.

Their newest album will be available to download from their website on March 20, and 150 copies will be given away at Slush’s upcoming show.