I Heart the Music: Your Online Source for Live Music Reviews and Interviews in Toronto!

We here at iheartthemusic like to think that we aren’t bias when it comes to posts. Well we THOUGHT we weren’t bias but that however changed as we realized we have covered Toronto based band Rebel Emergency THREE times already! So what’s one more time, right? Just in time for the holidays Live Nation presents the Rock Your Stocking Christmas Bash featuring Rebel Emergency with special guests Street Pharmacy, Dodger, Walk Off The Earth and Ko Kapches. This festive bash will take place on Wednesday, December 23rd at the Sound Academy. This is an all ages event so be sure to show up early! Tickets are $15 and are available at ticketmaster,  Rotate This and Soundscapes in Toronto.

Check out the facebook event page

Also, check out our chat with the boys from Rebel Emergency here.

Happy holidays and see ya there!!

xo iheartthemusic team

Rebel Emergency are a dynamic Toronto based rock, reggae band that iheartthemusic have had the honour AND pleasure of covering twice already. For a music website that has only been around for a couple of months, this may seem a tad bit much, however, we seriously cannot get enough of these boys. When we heard that they were hosting their debut album release on Thursday, August 27th at The Mod Club, we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see these boys put on another stellar performance.

We arrived at The Mod Club to an overwhelmingly packed house of fans, family and friends (we aren’t really sure which category we fell into-perhaps all three) that were all waiting anxiously for the boys to hit the stage. Unfortunately we did not arrive in time to catch the opening acts (Dane Hartsell, Street Pharmacy and King Sunshine), however we heard great things from fellow concertgoers!

When the boys did take to the stage, the entire venue erupted in chants and cheers and you knew this was going to be a performance to remember! The show was in support of their album release of Love Ain’t Free; a continuation of the reggae vibe off of their previous EP. With this album they travelled all the way to New York to record with legendary (and Grammy Award winning) producer/engineer Commissioner Gordon and spent six months back and forth from Toronto to New York to produce an epic piece of music for your listening pleasure; something that you will surely want to have in your collection! The crowd in attendance were definitely there to party and so were the boys on stage! Their energy and passion spread through the crowd like wildfire and by the end of their set everyone was either singing or dancing along to Roddy’s eclectic mix of rock, reggae and ska stylings. A highlight of the night was seeing them come back onstage for a special encore of their single “Wander Far Away” which was played up with Roddy’s signature move of surfing the crowd. As we have said before and will say again, if you haven’t seen Rebel Emergency perform live, please let our THIRD review of them be the push you need to check them out!

iheartthemusic  got the opportunity to sit and have a chat with a band that have been riding the reggae/rock circuit for quite some time. Rebel Emergency consists of Roddy (vocals), Geoff (guitar), Neil (bass) and Jeremy (drums). After persevering through tough times at the beginning of their career,  these guys have proved that what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger. With a new album in the works and tons of show dates to come we are sure that Rebel Emergency will be infiltrating your ears very soon.

 iheartthemusic: How did you guys form as a band?

Roddy: I started messing around in a basement with Neil, the bass player, and another dude named Adam, who is no longer in the band. We started out just for fun, writing bad songs and stuff, and I actually went to school with this guy right here [points to Geoff] and saw him play guitar a few times and he was awesome so I invited him to come jam with us. We hit it off and started a group from there.

iheartthemusic: The style of music that you play is quite unique, how did you decide on that?

Roddy: We actually had an opportunity to go and record in New York at a place called John Shop Studio. It’s a place where they record a lot of dance hall and reggae. At that time we were a little more of a rock band, so when we were down there we started to mess around with dance hall beats and a bit more of the reggae style. When we came back to Toronto and played a bit of that style, everyone loved it so we kind of just stuck with it. We grew up loving reggae though, so that sound has always been with us.

Geoff: We were in this environment [in New York] where everyone was creating a completely different style of music than what we were used to playing and so we just jumped on and decided to try it. It was just for fun at first, the same way that we started the band, but then it morphed into this rock/reggae thing and people started hearing it and saying that that is what we should be doing. At the time we were like, “really? That was just messing around.” But Roddy and I grew up in Scarborough around a lot of reggae music, that influence was huge in our high school and circle of friends, so I’ve always had a lot of reggae CDs at home and always loved it.

Roddy: Right after that we moved back to New York to do a full album because we only did a few songs the first time and ended up hanging out with a ton of Jamaicans. They were pretty much our whole circle of people while we were there so we eventually went to Jamaica and played a bunch of festivals and stuff.  It really got engrained in us more and more as we lived it.

 iheartthemusic: When you were in Jamaica, did being submersed in that whole culture influence your sound even more?

Geoff: After seeing the real deal over there, we tried our very best to hold that authenticity. Other bands come from a punk background and then they merge into ska and then maybe English beats, but we’ve tried to take what we experienced directly from the Jamaican culture and the Jamaican dance hall culture and infuse that style into our music. So we aren’t necessarily coming from a punk background but more of a straight rock, straight Jamaican, straight dub sound and have tried to uniquely put that into our music as it is. I mean, we love English music, and of course it’s going to come out in our sound, but our standard has always been to keep it authentic and true to the roots of music that we were engulfed in at the time when we were down there and in New York as well.

 iheartthemusic: Do you find it tough to promote yourselves with that genre of music, not being so mainstream?

Roddy: It’s tough but I think that reggae is such a likeable genre. I mean, you can’t really not like it because most of the time it’s just easy listening and a good vibe. It’s what you would listen to if you’re at a cottage or on a beach, it just adds to the good time.

Geoff: You didn’t answer her question at all [laughs].

Roddy: What was the question again?

iheartthemusic: [laughs] Where do you see rock/reggae music right now?

Roddy: I think there is definitely an audience for it and I think there’s room for more good rock reggae bands out there.

Geoff: The industry is very strange these days and I’m not quite sure what to do with it.

Roddy: There are a few good bands out there that have made it though like illScarlett and Bedouin Soundclash and they have been very successful doing it, also tons of bands in the States and overseas. There is a market for it, you just have to know how to present it and put yourself out there.

iheartthemusic: Speaking of illScarlett, you guys are opening for them tonight, who else have you been able to share the stage with?

Roddy: A lot of the big reggae artists like the Marley sons; Damian and Stephen.

Geoff: We played in LA with Ky-Mani and Rohan Marley as well. We also played Sumfest in Jamaica, which is a huge festival and that was jaw-dropping.

Roddy: Also Fantasia and T-Pain.

Geoff: Jadakiss and T-Pain a few times. In Jamaica they just throw all the international acts together. We’ve been really fortunate in the reggae genre of stuff.

Roddy: We did a song with Bounty Killer actually, which was really cool.

Geoff: We’ve played some great Canadian gigs as well. We played with The Trews and illScarlett was great, Down With Webster is also awesome, we love them. We are fans, I do listen to them.

iheartthemsic: You’ve also played with Ubiquitous Synergy Seeker (USS), who have a completely different sound to you guys. Does the genre or style of music of other acts ever come into play when you are booking shows?

Roddy: Not really, we are open to whatever. I like shows sometimes where there are different styles but they are both good bands. With USS it’s just a good night because you know they are going to be awesome so it makes you want to bring your game up too.

Geoff: We played one or two shows with them, just off the cuff, when we were both pretty small and when we played with them we kind of just looked at each other and were like, “you guys are fucking awesome,” and they were like, “no you are awesome.”

Roddy: It’s become more of a friendship with them. They are probably our best friends band wise.

Geoff: It’s weird because it just works. I know we are polar opposites when we play, but at the end [of the show] everybody is like, “that was amazing.”

Roddy: It’s the same with playing with Down With Webster. They bring so much energy and we feed off each other.

Geoff: I think it’s great when you have different genres that almost compliment each other because when you have the same sounding bands, after a while the sound starts to blend. When we play with USS they get on and sound nothing like what we just did and visa versa.

Roddy: It’s still the same energy though.

iheartthemusic: What can we expect from your stage performance then?

Roddy: Energy, passion and good looking dudes.

Geoff: Good looking dudes for sure.

Roddy: We come across best live because we really feed off the audience and we love it.

Geoff: We try to leave it all out there. We love to see a band that is basically falling over when they walk off stage so that’s what we try to do.

iheartthemusic: You must have some crazy stories from performing.

Roddy: There have been a few mishaps for sure. I fell off this [Sound Academy] stage a couple of times before because there was a gap between the speakers and the stage and I fell in the gap.

iheartthemusic: So did you just try to act all cool after that?

Roddy: Yah I did. I thought I broke my thumb actually. Neil, our bass player, has fallen off the stage before as well.

Geoff: Watch, something is going to happen to me tonight now.

 iheartthemusic: That’s always the way it goes, you are next I guess! Where has been your favourite place in Toronto to play?

Roddy: Sound Academy is probably up there. We have played here a few times. I also like Mod Club just because the vibe is great there and the lighting and stuff.

Geoff: We did a show at Kool Haus with 311 one time which was awesome too. It was a great venue.

Roddy: That was a wicked show. Horseshoe is always fun, it’s got that legendary thing going for it.

iheartthemusic: What crowd blew your mind?

Roddy: Montreal is always good. I think they have that European mentality in that they aren’t too cool to clap. They just have fun and they’ll clap along, sing along, and dance along to anything.

Geoff: We did a show in New York City which was a part of the Irie Jamboree Festival a few years ago, which is a huge festival. When we played that we just saw people as far as the eye could see. We only had about 20 minutes on stage, but just to see that many people was incredible. There were probably 10 to 15 thousand people there.

Roddy: That was our biggest show. Actually another band that we forgot about was Gogol Bordello who are from New York and are like a gypsy punk kind of band, but that’s probably the best live show I’ve ever seen. We got to tour with them a bit.

iheartthemusic: So you have a new album coming out soon, do you care to leak anything about that with us?

Roddy: Hopefully you can expect it out next month and we think it’s going to be called Love Ain’t Free. That’s one of the song titles from the album and also a theme we have going on that corresponds with the artwork as well.

Geoff: It’s a big leap forward for us as you might say.

iheartthemusic: Anything else you want to add?

Geoff: I’ve had a wonderful time. This is the highlight of my day so far.

If you missed out on their show during CMW then don’t worry, these boys are back THIS Friday (March 27th) at the Sound Academy to rock the house and surf the crowd. Check out their MySpace for dates and show information!

Photography provided by Matt Vardy

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