Band brings bluegrass to La Ronge
The key to The Roaring Borealis's old-timey percussion might be found in a dump or in your grandmother's attic.
The key to The Roaring Borealis's old-timey percussion might be found in a dump or in your grandmother's attic.
An old suitcase. A washboard. A tin can. A cowbell.
All that's left of Colin Jolly's standard drum kit is the snare – which he plays with brushes, not sticks – and the kick pedal, which now beats against a hardcover valise.
The wood-and-corrugated-metal washboard at his chest is decorated with a cowbell and a tin can for more diverse sounds.
"The nice thing is you can get pretty creative; you can add whatever you want" to the washboard, said guitarist Kyle Faulkner, Jolly's bandmate in the La Ronge-based folk band.
"There's people who've added bicycle horns and hotel lobby bells and all kinds of things."
The instrument presented a learning curve for Jolly, "With the washboard, there's not a whole lot of guidance out there for a new player. Mostly it was just Colin getting creative," Faulkner said in a phone interview from Parry Sound, Ont., where he was waiting out the northern Saskatchewan wildfires.
The Roaring Borealis got its start as Faulkner and Jolly, two Ontario ex-pats, started playing music together in La Ronge a few years ago.
They jammed for the odd show, playing typical rock covers at curling bonspiel after-parties. Their band name then was a reflection of that – The Bonspielers.
They found their bluegrassy niche about a year and a half ago after Pat Hanley joined in. Hanley, with his fiddle and mandolin, "had a vision of what he thought our
sound could be," said Faulkner.
"We were up for something new, so it just kind of worked out that way."
The band's "country-folk-bluegrass kind of mix" was rounded out a few months later when the trio of school teachers added husband and wife Jim and Tabitha Burr, who each play bass and guitar.
The band bills as playing "hurtin' music for happy people," harmonizing on slower songs and picking up the pace with hand-clapping, footstomping numbers.
The bluegrass niche makes for a challenge in songwriting, said Faulkner, "trying to match a style that's so much older … a lot just based on raw emotion."
But covering songs presents a different challenge: Putting a country spin on pop-rock songs like Baba O'Riley (The Who) and So Lonely (The Police) doesn't always work out.
"A song that sounds really interesting in the original style can sound really monotonous" as a cover, said Faulkner.
The Roaring Borealis is part of a burgeoning northern music scene; Jolly specifically is a big contributor, said Faulkner.
Jolly started a youth music program at Churchill High School, which is fostering the next generation of local musicians.
"It's kind of developing a bigger music scene in La Ronge," said Faulkner.
Jolly has also hosted touring musicians in house concerts every couple of months, which three years ago led to the foundation of the Napatak Ramble music festival in the forest south of La Ronge.
"Other communities our size … you'd have to travel to go see some of these acts. It's pretty special," said Faulkner. "Talking to some of the musicians who are from Saskatchewan who haven't really made their way up north before, I think they're not really sure what to expect. La Ronge is small but it's definitely a thriving community."
The Roaring Borealis is past its bonspiel origins; now it plays mostly charity and community fundraisers. Its next gig is at the mid-August Northern Lights festival near Big River.
In spite of demand, there are no plans to record an in-studio album.
"For us it's a lot of fun playing, but we're all happy with the amount that we're doing and I don't know if we're going to take the next step and start selling."
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