Mark Lorenz is bringing his band back to Banff.
“Besides being the prettiest place in the world? I love coming to Banff, we always have a good time,” said the Calgary-based musician in an interview with the Outlook.
The Mark Lorenz Band plays Wild Bill’s tonight, tomorrow and Saturday (Dec. 20-22).
“There’s a little excitement about playing at Wild Bill’s because we’re an hour away from our home town and there’s people from all over the world coming in,” he explained. “It’s like playing to an international crowd.”
Since 1997, Lorenz’s band has released two albums and an EP, the most recent being 2006’s Route 72.
“We’re working on brand new material we’re planning to have out in the spring, 2013,” said Lorenz, explaining the long gap between albums. “It’s been a little while. We usually do quite a bit of touring between albums, and we’re planning on doing another album sooner, but out tour schedule kept us pretty busy.
“We managed to get six radio singles off Route 72, so it worked pretty good for us.”
While the band often has long stretches of touring, the roadwork has slowed down lately as the new project progresses.
“We’ve been staying home lately to work on this new project,” said Lorenz. “You can do it on the road, but it’s really tough.
“Man, when you’re getting off planes and getting into town, running into the studio… so we decided to stay close to home and work on the new project.”
Though the band’s music started out in the traditional country genre, a progression has led to their sound being more of a rock-country hybrid.
“I was predominantly a country artist when we first started out, and then with the last couple of albums we’ve progressed,” said Lorenz. “We’re not country, we’re not pop, we’re not rock ‘n’ roll, we’re somewhere in the middle of it.
“With this new project we’re going to try a few singles that can crossover between genres and play both sides of the airwaves, both rock and country. Nowadays, genres of music aren’t as cut and dry as it used to be. We just try to write good, catchy music.”
As for what he writes about, everyday life is the key, he explained.
“Family, life, everything – it’s really hard to pinpoint what I like to write about,” he said. “I like to write about real life, real emotions and things we all go through every day, and that’s always been my writing style.
“Everyone can relate to it, we’ve all loved and lost, we all know what it’s like to get up and go to work on a Monday morning.”
While the group has Lorenz’s name on it, it is a band effort, he stressed.
“I’ve been blessed up until this point in my career,” he said. “Three of the guys I play with have been with me for the last seven years, and one for 12, so even though it’s my name on the billboard, I always say we. It’s all of us who go out and play, we’ve been through hell and back again.”
Rounding out the lineup are Doug Camire on lead guitar, Rob Boland on bass and Charlie Hase on drums. Lorenz also plays guitar.
“When you first start out playing, you tend to run in circles with a lot of other bands and you start to develop close relationships with players on the circuit,” he said. “A band’s just like a family, you gotta be able to get along with these people 24/7. Sometime when we’ve been out touring, we’ve spent more time together than we have with our families.”
For the show at Wild Bill’s, the band will play a mix of old and new material.
“We play stuff from all of the albums and we are playing some new material that I’ve been testing live, to see what reaction we’re getting from people,” said Lorenz. “A lot of what we’re writing now isn’t really the diehard country or the rock, it’s right in the middle, so it’s really cool to get that out there to play for people.
“We call our show The Redneck Party, and what we mean by that is we play a little bit of everything, a mix of our stuff and some covers. But we do those covers not quite like the originals, but our take of them. We get people that come to the show that are diehard country fans, and we get heavy metal rockers, and it’s funny because we get people who will come up to us and say ‘Mark, I’m not a big country music fan, I’m an AC/DC kind of guy, but I like your kind of country.’ ”
Among the band’s favourite covers to play are “Every Rose Has It’s Thorn” by Poison, “Stand By Me” by Ben E. King and “Centerfield” by John Fogerty.
“I try to play songs that make people want to tap their toes, get up and move,” said Lorenz. “Soft-seater shows are the hardest to play because we like when people are up and moving and having fun.
“But we won’t have that to worry about at Wild Bill’s.”
For more information on the band, visit marklorenz.ca
