Road Waves relish being Niagara’s resident jam band
So, you want to form a jam band?
Take it from Ji Sharp Yehia of Road Waves, you’ll make some mistakes. You’ll be exhausted. You’ll play songs that seem to never end.
But then you’ll hit that sweet spot during a show when you realize it’s all worth it.
“(I love) the moment where we’re in a completely uncharted territory of a jam, and then we find our way back and it resolves in a way that feels super energetic,” says Yehia, who formed the freewheeling Niagara band four years ago.
“Even when you’re in the audience, that’s a magical moment. ‘Oh, they’re back in the song.’ There’s a lot of talking we do beforehand — music theory nerd kind of stuff — but we’re still using our ears a lot.”
From local festivals to epic late night club gigs, Road Waves proudly waves its freak flag — a spacey, jazzy foursome known for filling your head as much as the dance floor. And now, the two-time Niagara Music Award winners are taking their act across the country.
To mark the release of their second album, “Red Son Rising,” on May 11, Yahia and bandmates Yo Izumita (bass), Matt Maxwell (drums) and Don Letourneau (keyboards) start a five-month Canadian tour Saturday that will see them hit both the east and west coast before wrapping up in Niagara Falls at the annual Livestock Festival Sept. 9.
The tour includes two stops at The Warehouse Concert Hall in St. Catharines, this Friday and June 9.
Yahia says he liked the usual “teenage stuff” in high school before a random visit from a friend in the U.S. introduced him to a whole new world.
Phish. Miles Davis. The Grateful Dead. The Allman Brothers Band. Artists who didn’t just play, they jammed. They created on the spot. No two shows were the same.
He knew what he wanted to play, he just needed the players to pull it off. It took time, but he eventually found a lineup that can play a four-hour show one night, and a completely different four-hour show the next.
“I will say, because we improvise a lot, there are still a lot of screw-ups,” he says. “That’s part of it. We risk screwing up for all those magical moments that we don’t plan.
“But it’s getting now to a point where the good moments are happening more than the bad moments, musically. It definitely took a while. We went through a couple lineups. Our old guitarist is now our bassist. And honestly, the reason we do so well musically is because of our drummer — he’s a Neil Peart-head, man. Impeccable timing.”
Trying to capture the band’s exhilarating live show on an album posed a challenge. Under producer Joe Lapinski, Yahia says the band avoided an “overpolished” sound, while still sounding tight.
The key, he laughs, was making a commercial album that didn’t look or sound commercial.
“We try to do things our own way in a way that still can sell … we’re smart enough on the business end to know you have to be somewhat commercial for it to work.”