Skylar Valli ‘honoured’ to play blues festival
Kitchener’s Skylar Valli are the winners of the 2018 Youth Legacy Challenge
Tyler Shea laughs when he thinks about how he became involved in music.
“That is a pretty uneventful story,” he says. “First I wanted to play guitar and then my cousin had a drum set. We got to borrow the drum set and I started taking lessons. I really loved it so seven years later here I am,” says the young drummer from Kitchener band, Skylar Valli.
The band is the winner of the 2018 Youth Legacy Challenge presented by the Grand River Blues Society and TD Kitchener Blues Festival.
Other members of Skylar Valli include Brad Schnarr on guitar, Bryan Cisneros on keyboards, Jacob Hummel on vocals and bass.
“Believe it or not, my story is even more uneventful than Tyler’s,” notes Hummel.
“Four years ago, just as a challenge, I wanted to see how many instruments I could learn. I started off with piano. I moved over to bass when we started the band,” he says.
“We began playing music in school,” says Shea. “Jacob, Bryan and Brad were all in the same grade. One day we just decided to get together and play a few songs and it went well.”
“We carried that on through the rest of the year and started playing gigs. Our first gig was The Churchill Arms,” recalls Shea, adding the members of the band come from Resurrection Catholic Secondary School.
Shea and Hummel have an eclectic music ear from Shea’s love for vintage Led Zeppelin to Hummel’s latest playlist which includes indie artists like City in Colour and Royal Blood.
The band’s sound on their debut album “Dog Cries” ranges from Beatles meets Green Day acoustic pop tune on “Without You” to reggae-injected blues on “Police Song,” electro-blues seasoned with a taste of Led Zeppelin classic rock on title track “Dog Cries,” plus a slight James Bond riff on rocker “Nobody’s Home.”
“I think we listened to a lot of the older stuff like The Beatles and Led Zeppelin of course, but we always loved the blues,” says Shea. “We listened to John Mayer because he does a lot of blues himself. I guess we have many different influences so coming together was a lot of fun,” notes Shea, adding that Hummel writes most of the songs and then brings them to the rest of the band to play as a group.
“Dog Cries” is being released this week and was put together over the past year with the help of producer Allister Bradley, who was also an old friend they knew from high school.
“Allister is out in Wellesley (Tilted White Shed Studios) and he was great fun to work with,” notes Hummel.
Skylar Valli’s single “Ring in the Head,” which
they performed for Youth Legacy, is also featured on the 2018 Kitchener Blues Festival CD — one of the perks of winning the competition.
For the competition the band went by the name The Roundabouts.
“With that name, we got a lot of comments about the Yes song ‘Roundabout,’” notes Hummel.
“We wanted to branch off and have something that was totally our own more like a Max Webster thing. We picked a name we thought would totally represent the band,” says Hummel.
“We only really signed up for the contest and just for the sake of playing,” he admits. We were not expecting to win, considering we are not a blues band. So when they said The Roundabouts at the end of the day we were a little shocked!”
“For me, it was pretty humbling,” says Shea.
“We were just pretty surprised and really honoured that they chose us. All of the other bands were great and I got to see them all play beforehand,” he notes.
This weekend Skylar Valli is also doing a show at The Boathouse called “History of the Blues” featuring the blues from the 1920s to the present in chronological order including John Lee Hooker, B.B. King, Etta James and Jimi Hendrix.
“We have one or two songs of ours that will be put in The Boathouse show as well, not off “Dog Cries” but some other originals that we decided not to record,” adds Shea.
Shea and Hummel are both 17 and about to graduate from high school.
“We are going our separate ways and right now we are trying to figure out what is going happen after this summer. (Band guitarist) Brad (Schnarr) is actually going to (Grand River) Blues Camp so he is playing the Blues Fest twice,” says Shea, adding the band is definitely staying together and are now focusing on their new album release, with plans to do a lyric video for one of the band’s latest singles, either “Dog Cries” or “Ring in The Eye.”
Hummel and Shea are looking forward to opening the Saturday Blues Festival playbill at City Hall’s YNC Stage.
“We want to take this as an opportunity to promote our new album,” says Shea.
“This would be a great way to kick off the release. We will be playing lots of songs from “Dog Cries” but will keep to the blues as well.”