ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON NOV. 26, 2008
By Steve Newton
The Canadian winter—or even the late fall—can make things difficult for indie-minded rock bands trying to get around. Just ask Darren Glover, singer-guitarist for Toronto blues-rock trio Flash Lightnin’. When I reach Glover on his cellphone, he’s in a van on a highway approaching Sault Ste. Marie, and the snow has just started to fly.
It’s a travel day between gigs in Sudbury and Thunder Bay, and the group plans to crash in Wawa, Ontario, that night. Not literally, of course, although that’s always a possibility, especially since Glover has just learned that his ride is only outfitted with all-season radials.
He’s taking the news in stride, though, and is confident that, snow tires or not, the band will make it to its northern Ontario destination before heading west for a jaunt that includes supporting Priestess and 3 Inches of Blood at the Commodore on Saturday (November 29). Flash Lightnin’ has been preparing for the tour by honing its chops at a weekly residency at Toronto’s Dakota Tavern, which gets a shout-out in the credits of its six-song EP, Destello.
“It’s a great location,” notes Glover of the wood-panelled basement watering hole. “It’s in the Queen Street West neighbourhood, and that’s pretty much where all the musicians live, so everyone around there comes by.”
Glover cites the members of Metric, Broken Social Scene, and the Feist and Jason Collett bands as Wednesday night regulars who’ll drop in for a taste of Flash Lightnin’s early ZZ Top–influenced boogie-blues.
“We’ve had nothing but a fantastic time bringing this style back,” he cheerfully relates. “I mean, we put the band together based purely upon the records we like to listen to. We got tired of listening to ’em and wanted to play ’em, essentially. I’d heard Tres Hombres enough that I went, ‘Well, I can play that.’ ”
Glover credits Toronto acts such as C’mon and the Illuminati with kick-starting the city’s trend toward straight-up, riff-driven guitar rock.
“They kinda cracked it open for bands like us to take a different angle with it,” he reports, “and the Toronto scene’s really supportive. We were really shocked when we put this concept together-which we did purely just to have fun, drink whiskey, and wind it out a bit-and then it just kinda snowballed.”
Destello’s opening track, “Coming on Strong”, sets the tone for the band’s Texas-fried approach, with bassist Darcy Yates and drummer Chris Henry providing a throbbing backdrop for Glover’s down ’n’ dirty boogie licks. Equipment-wise, he keeps things about as simple as he can.
“A Les Paul plugged into an old Marshall kinda does the job,” he reveals. “Anything else would just be complicated.”
Discover more from earofnewt.com
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.