Rambling across the prairies in a black minivan with a Juno nomination under their belts, The Slocan Ramblers are set bring their energetic bluegrass to the Athabasca United Church March 20.
Playing in the third concert of the Heartwood Folk Club’s spring 2019 season, The Ramblers are stopping in town on their western tour that started in Winnipeg and rolls onto Vancouver Island in April.
In an interview, banjo master Frank Evans said the band has toured pretty extensively in Alberta, but this will be their first time in Athabasca.
“We’re excited to come and play some bluegrass,” he said. “The audiences we’ve had have always been really amazing.”
Evans said the Slocan Ramblers play a pretty lively, energetic music, with three-part harmonies and fast solos.
“We all sing around one microphone, kind of a traditional style, so there’s lots of choreography within the show,” he said. “I think it’s a fun show.”
A Heartwood Folk Club press release states the band has three albums out. Shaking Down the Acorns came out in 2012, followed in 2015 by Coffee Creek, which received a Canadian Folk Music Award nomination for Best Traditional Album.
Their 2018 album Queen City Jubilee was nominated for the 2019 Juno Award for Traditional Roots Album of the Year, and Evans said they will be mostly showcasing the album.
Evans noted that the band has “really appreciated” folk clubs across Alberta, ticketed series events where he finds people support folk music and are really enthusiastic about it.
“It’s been really amazing,” he said. “I’ve never really seen anywhere else that has had such an appetite for it. It’s pretty unique, I would say. Definitely everywhere across Alberta seems to be hungry for folk music — or acoustic music, I would say, and that usually goes over well for us.”
Evans — who was described by Banjo Newsletter as “one of the top banjo players of his generation” — said he has been playing for about 17 years and took lessons with Chris Coole when he was younger.
“He was playing when I was nine or ten years old,” he said. “Then I went up to him and asked if he taught lessons, and he did. I only took lessons for about a year or so, and within that time he said, ‘You’ve got to go down to Clifftop.’”
Evans did. He won the youth banjo contest at the Clifftop Appalachian String Band Festival when he was 13 and later placed second over all.
He also also said bluegrass is a really fun community to be a part of now.
“There are a lot of younger bands that are getting into it,” he said, noting that universities and schools are now investing in traditional and roots wings to their programming where people can study bluegrass and folk music. “I think that’s really breathed some new life into it, and so there’s lots of amazing bands. One of the fun things about it is going to festivals and seeing our friends, and just seeing all the new bands that are popping up and really getting blown away all the time.”
Presale tickets cost $27 for adults and $24 for youth or seniors. At the door, tickets are $31 for adults and $27 for youth or seniors.
