While the name may be new, band members of The Steadies are familiar faces in the Bow Valley.
Earl Pereira, in the early 1990s, was the bass player and a founding member of the popular blues-rock band Wide Mouth Mason. Then in 2005, at the height of WMM success, he started a side project, Mobadass, with more of a reggae and rocksteady-influenced sound.
In 2011, Pereira departed WMM to make his side project his main gig, and in the process changed the name to The Steadies.
Starting tonight (March 28) the Saskatoon-based rock pop band The Steadies play five shows in the Valley, first March 28-30 at the Rose & Crown in Banff, followed by the Drake in Canmore, April 5-6.
“These shows, the Rose & Crown and Drake, were the first places that gave my new band a chance, and I feel I’ll always come back and play for them because of that,” said Pereira. “They treated us really well, even when I was still with Wide Mouth and this was just a side project for me, and I really appreciated that.”
Indeed, The Steadies played shows at both venues at about the same time last year, as well as many shows in 2011.
“I can’t ever remember having a bad gig at those places, and it just seems like the vibe of the people who come out always have a good time and it lends itself well to the style of music that we do, it goes over perfectly,” said Pereira. “We played New Year’s Eve out there and sometimes it gets really crazy.
“The Rose & Crown we almost caved-in the dance floor to the business beneath, and they had to get that fixed – there were too many people jumping around.”
While the music of WMM tended to be blues-based and melancholic, The Steadies’ sound is uplifting, inspiring the crowds to get up and dance.
“We get a really good dancing crowd, it gets crazy, and our fans know that,” said Pereira. “They come from wherever just to experience those shows in Canmore and Banff – it is different than it is anywhere else. It’s something to see.”
Since 2006, the band has released three albums, including two EPs and the first two under the Mobadass name. Now, the first full-length disc for The Steadies – to be called Starcity Shakedown – will hit the streets later this year.
“We call our music island rock, which is a mix of reggae and rocksteady, mixed with those kinds of influences, and dance beats,” said Pereira. “We fuse all that stuff together, stuff we really enjoy playing, and try to make something really unique out of it.
“It seems to be coming into our own, we’ve been honing it the last couple years, and we’ve got a new record coming out – the full-length debut of The Steadies – and we’re really excited about that. We’ll be testing out those songs.”
When it comes to his departure from Wide Mouth Mason, Pereira didn’t hold back, but rather said it was like a divorce.
“I really understand now why this happens to bands,” he said. “You spend so much time together as a band – for us it was 15 years – and you grow apart musically and personally, almost to the point of it being like a divorce.
“A band breakup is almost like that, especially in the music business when you have contracts and things involved.”
Right now his mindset is on the new music, and getting back together with WMM isn’t going to happen.
“I love the fans, I feel most sad for them – the kids in the marriage – I know the guys still aren’t wanting to talk about it much,” he said. “But it wasn’t working anymore and I needed to do my own thing. And it was for the best, because I can honestly say I’m the happiest I’ve ever been.
“It’s weird, because even though I achieved so much success and I was doing a lot of crazy things on such a high level and I was having a lot of fun, the industry was in such control of my life, a lot of me wasn’t really enjoying it as much as I should have. It took the fun out of it and it almost became like a job, where we were forced to do things all the time.”
Now he feels more free and in control of the musical direction of the band.
“It’s purely me, and it’s déjŕ vu a little bit – I’m playing a lot of the same places Wide Mouth played when they started out – and it feels like the same things are happening again,” said Pereira. “But it’s different now, I’m older and wiser and appreciating things a lot more.”
And the music he’s making now is the complete opposite of what WMM was, he added.
“That was blues-based, and the blues can get pretty depressing sometimes, and that’s not me at all, my personality. I try to bring the joy out in my live shows and get people having a lot of fun,” he said. “That’s the ultimate goal, making everyone feeling good, and people know they will every time they see us play.”
Besides making music for himself, Pereira has also gotten into producing.
“I’ve got maybe too many projects at the moment, but it’s great, I love it,” he said. “I did a lot of co-producing with Wide Mouth – I loved sitting and working with the producers, asking too many questions and annoying them sometimes – because deep down I always knew I wanted to do that some day.
“Now I get to, and I can engineer to some degree, and it’s pretty empowering to know I can take an artist, sit down and write with them for a few hours and get the song arranged and ready to go and then record them. I get a lot of joy out of that too, almost as much as playing live. Helping people out and making their music better is a really good feeling.”
That said, he is hard at work on getting Starcity Shakedown finished and ready to be released.
For more information on the band, visit their website at thesteadies.ca
