Sam Roberts Band

The real bio is on our website, www.samrobertsband.com but here's some info which may or may not come in handy. The band has been playing around Montreal since we were in high school. Actually it was a splinter group of an earlier grade8 band called The Happy Death Men, half of which became a goth band, the other half of which became ours. We used to sing songs by Jesus And Mary Chain, Jimi Hendrix, the Stone Roses, the Beatles and a few of our own creations. At first, our own songs were unlistenable, even to tone-deaf people. We were consistently denied admission to the talent show, "talent" apparently being a basic requirement. So we retreated to the edge of high school band society, playing at a few drunken parties and realizing that our shows were far better when the audience was impaired. James, Eric and I, along with Ivan Juretic (founding member, drummer and wordsmith), Danielle Dids Duval (cousin, songwriter and bassplayer) and George El Condor Donoso (now drummer for The Dears) formed the core of the band's first decade. Our manager was - and still is - a fellow named Dave Spencer whom we met while getting drunk in a bar. Such booze sessions often lead to meaningful relationships and this was no exception. All we wanted was to make it onto the cover of the Hour and/or the Mirror weekly- which for years has marked the pinnacle of achievement for any Montreal Band. The best we could do was to land up in a mudslinging match in the Rant Line with a band named Thelma after a heated altercation at a show. Playing under a series of unfortunate names - from Grover, to William, to The Minnesota North Stars, to just Northstar, we assumed that this lack of tangible success was a direct result of bad band names and eventually (ten years later) we took a break. During this time (2 years or so),I wrote songs in our old jam space on St-Antoine in Montreal, with Eric Fares helping to produce and engineer our demos. Jordon Zadorozny,a musician and friend, invited us out to Pembroke, Ontario to record in his studio. Over the next few months and several trips to Pemmy Town on the ol' Greyhound, we recorded six songs which became the Inhuman Condition (released 2002). It started getting played on the radio after our friend Matt STS Lemay sent it in to a couple of Ottawa stations. We got a band together with a few Ottawa Valley locals - David A. Nugent and Corey Cuddy Dawson-Zadorozny - and started touring. James came back from Korea where he was teaching English. We released We Were Born In A Flame in 2003 and stayed on the road, building a fan-base that will hopefully stay loyal to us until we drop dead. Playing live is as real a connection as you can create between a band and an audience- no smoke-screens, no filters, no hype. We couldn't bring ourselves to stop, what if we never go the chance again? Earlier this year we started recording a new album and finally we put the breaks on touring, realizing that the only thing worse than not playing is to stunt the flow of creavity which should lie at the heart of any band. After four years of hard work, love, dedication and more great memories than one can imagine, Corey has since moved on. Our newest member is Josh Trager a.k.a. Clarence Beaujolais. After a mandatory six month initiation period, which he passed with mainly good grades, he is now a tried and tested part of La Familia. Known to some as "Mr. Cote St. Luc," he has brought a lot to the band as a drummer and scapegoat for almost any trouble we find ourselves in.
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