Music News
One Night Band Plays On
By Steve McLean
One Night Band
What started five years ago as a one-off show has led to more than 300 of them and two albums for Montreal's One Night Band, whose new release is called Hit & Run.
The former sextet has been pared down to a quartet and, while vintage ska and reggae remain at the heart of their music, they've added bigger elements of soul and garage rock to what they recorded on their Way Back Home debut album. It's not the only change, either, according to lead singer/guitarist Alex Giguere.
"The new record is much different from Way Back Home. The first thing people will notice is that I'm the only singer in the band. On the first record, there was a girl singing. There are less horns and it's more organ-oriented. It's more raw than pop."
The group recorded 22 songs in nine days live off the floor using antique ribbon microphones with producer Brian Dixon, the guitarist for Los Angeles "dirty reggae" group The Aggrolites and an engineer for records by The Slackers, Hepcat and Tim Armstrong - all of whom are One Night Band favourites. Fifteen of those made it on to the excellent Hit & Run, a title taken from a soul song that the group members all enjoy.
Ska originated in Jamaica in the '60s, and its popularity spread to England, where bands like The Specials, The Selecter and The English Beat launched ska's second wave of popularity in the late '70s and early '80s. The music's most popular period in North America, dubbed the third wave, occurred from the late '80s through the mid-'90s when groups incorporated ska into pop and punk to create favourite hybrid genres with teenagers for a few years. There was a dip after that, but Giguere believes the vintage style is making another comeback.
"I think that the ska and reggae bands who are having the most success right now are bands that are revisiting what was done in Jamaica back in the '60s, like Westbound Train or The Aggrolites. You can say that ska and reggae is way more popular than it was maybe three or four years ago, because we've noticed that there are a lot more people at shows than there used to be five years ago, but I don't think it will reach the point of the third wave with bands like No Doubt and The Mighty Mighty Bosstones.
"But I don't play music for fame. I would like to play music as a living, but I don't need to sell a million records to do that. I just need to write good songs, put out good records and be on the road, and I'm sure we'll get to that point."
One Night Band have acted as a backing group for both Chris Murray and JFK, and have shared stages with such heavy hitters as The Toasters, The Planet Smashers and members of The Specials at venues across North America. With the high quality of the new material, and a stronger work ethic and more singular purpose now that less committed members of the group have dropped out, it shouldn't be too long before One Night Band are deservingly headlining large shows of their own.