Like a thunderbolt of sound, the mighty Zeus will strike Banff this Sunday (June 30).
The pre-Canada Day performance, which is also the first show of the season for the Shaw Amphitheatre, is being touted by The Banff Centre as a mini-festival, and will also include performances by Classified, Elk Run Riot and The Eerie Green.
Gates open at 4 p.m. and tickets are $25.
While the band has previously played both the Canmore Hotel and Communitea Café in Canmore, this will be their first time on a big stage in the Bow Valley.
Based in Toronto, Zeus consists of Rob Drake, Carlin Nicholson, Mike O’Brien and Neil Quin. O’Brien spoke on behalf of the band in an interview Thursday (June 20).
“It’s been a little while since we’ve played your area,” he confessed. “The most memorable tour was doing a show with Jason Collette and with our other buddy, Bahamas — we called it the Bonfire Ball — we all played together, and did two big long sets were we switched around and played each other’s songs. That was a lot of fun at Communitea Café, it was packed in there.”
Zeus formed about five years ago, and has released three albums, including last year’s Busting Visions.
“We’re now working on a new record — we’re constantly recording — we have our own studio in Toronto, called Ill Eagle,” he said. “That’s our hub, our home base, and it’s nice to have time at home and be in that creative space.
“We have a few shows this summer, but it’s a very relaxed schedule in terms of touring, which is nice.”
Though the last album was just a year ago, the time is right to head back into the studio, he said.
“Recording is just what we like to do — it felt like the time to start making a new record for us,” said O’Brien. “We did a tour in April across Canada with Yukon Blonde and after getting back from that, we felt the time was right to start working on a new record.
“The last one had come out a year before, and we had been working on it the year before that, so it’d already been several years since putting out a new album of new material.”
There are three songwriters in the band, he said.
“We all contribute in that way, so you can imagine that there’s a backlog of songs written whenever it’s time to make a new record. Everyone was ready to go,” he said. “It works differently for each guy and for each song, but generally this time it’s been really different for each song, because we seem to be giving ourselves the time to experiment.
“A guy will come in with an idea for a song and we’ll work on it from there, or another time a guy will have a song fully fleshed out in his mind and will do most of it, and we’ll build it up from there. Sometimes we’ll jam on a song and it’s just a matter of building it up from something simple. Having a studio of our own let’s us do that more easily.”
Though not familiar with the other acts of the lineup, O’Brien is looking forward to the show.
“It’s a strange bill, but in summertime when it’s festival season people are used to different acts playing from across the genres,” he said. “To do that kind of thing at this time of year, people are up for it.”
This Banff show was an interesting offer, he said, and for that reason Zeus seized it.
“It was just an offer that came in, and it seemed like a really fun time,” he explained. “We’ve heard a lot about The Banff Centre. Our friend Kevin Drew of Broken Social Scene just did some recording there, so we’ve been hearing through different people it’s a really nice space to play, so we figured why not?”
Among the other acts are Classified, a Toronto-based hip-hop artist, Banff band Elk Run Riot and The Eerie Green, who hails from Canmore.
