Tonight The Spot in Yorkton hosts City Streets.
The band is a group of westerners, now living in Eastern Canada. Mark Chmilar on drums, Rick Reid, vocals and guitar, and Matt Leddy, bass and vocals, are all from Edmonton, Alberta but now living in Montreal, Quebec.
Like many bands City Streets had its birth when other bands folded.
Reid and Leddy's previous punk rock band 'Half Cut' broke up a week before a tour was scheduled to begin.
"The two didn't want to cancel the dates," said Leddy, so he switched to playing bass from guitar and asked friend Mark Chmilar if he was interested in learning 20-songs in six-days and hitting the road. "Mark eventually decided to join full time and the group decided that the songs they were writing were different than Half Cut's so they decided to start a new project 'The City Streets'."
City Streets brings together the sounds of past decades said Leddy, "70s punk rock, 80s power trash, 90s college rock, Motown, Sigur Ros. The music could be described as melodic bliss power pop with the spirit of punk rock always shining a light."
Together now for a half-decade, Leddy said City Streets has kept busy.
"In those five-years we've done nearly 400 shows everywhere in North America from Vancouver to Juarez, Mexico, LA, New Orleans, Thunder Bay, SXSW, NXNE, and a gig at CBGB's in New York City."
Amid the busy schedule the band has also found time to record.
"The album was recorded with friend Jesse Gander at The Hive Creative Labs in Vancouver, B.C.," said Leddy. "The recording sessions were different from our previous record we did with Jesse on 'Concentrated Living' in the way that these songs were not road tested like the previous record. We had all of the arrangements beforehand but many of the overdubs were created at the time of recording.
"We play live as a three-piece but many of the songs on 'The Jazz Age' have two, or more guitars, if not keyboards or extra percussion.
"The way we view recording is that you make the best record you can regardless of how you're going to have to perform them live."
In terms of the music Rick Reid writes all the songs/lyrics and the band collectively makes the music/arrangements. The 13-songs on the record, cut down from about 20, were written over 18-months before the recording.
Leddy said the new disk is a success in their minds.
"We are extremely happy with the way the record turned out," he said. "The difference between it and the other records is that when we made our first full length 'These Things Happen' we were a band for three-months and didn't know each other musically very well.
"With 'Concentrated Living' we had tightened our songs up, road tested them and were recording at a new studio.
"With 'The Jazz Age' we have been playing so much together and knowing the recording process better we finally made what sounds we've been hearing in our heads."
To promote the album it has been sent to radio with the single being 'Last Waltz Party'.You can buy the album through the band's website at www.citystreetsband.com
