LET’S GET YOU UP TO SPEED
Yukon band teaches kids how to rock
Speed Control is “a real live rock band from Whitehorse, Yukon.” That is far north of the border hugging city circuit Canadian indie musicians typically tour. So how is it that the modern rockers have already lined up 210plus shows in B.C. and Alberta in support of its third self-released album, Still Standing, with more being added weekly?
Guitarist/vocalist Graeme Peters, brother Jody Peters ( bass) and towering drummer Ian March know a lot about building a fan base.
In their case, it’s 80,000-plus schoolchildren — ages five to 18 — who will take in the band’s RAWK EDU programs that include Rock ’n’ roll: Canada vs. The World, Rock Anthem Workshop and Speed Control Rock Camps. In a set that has played to K-12, the band plays hits by Canadian artists of the last 50 years and shows how their music influenced both their generation and generations to come. With tunes from Paul Anka and Steppenwolf to Loverboy and, naturally, Speed Control, audiences gain greater understanding of Canada’s importance to global pop.
The idea was born from necessity.
“We formed in 2010 and did our first western Canadian tour that summer where I think I called 318 places; 18 said yes and we went on the road and lost over $3,000,” said Graeme Peters. “So that was dumb, didn’t work and wasn’t going to. But then the idea of taking this history of jazz show a group I played in that toured to elementary and secondary schools and making it into one about rock came to me.”
As a member of the critically acclaimed Peters Drury Trio, Graeme was performing and recording professionally at age 16. He went on to back such notable artists as jazz trumpeter Ingrid Jensen and Polaris Prize-winning Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq before Speed Control became his primary focus. It was with the Peters Drury Trio that the initial seed was planted. The three had ample expertise to develop something to pitch to school boards.
Graeme had studied education specializing in working with behaviourally challenged youth. Jody Peters taught music in two schools in the Whitehorse district, and was on faculty and the administrator of the Yukon Summer Music Camp, and served on the board of the Canadian Music Educators Association. Capilano University Music Program grad March had a dozen years of drumming under his belt and had been a substitute teacher.
“So, yeah, we pitched the history of rock ’n’ roll show to a bunch of schools, wound up playing 27 of those and the word on the street went around that these guys know what they’re doing and the next year looked better,” he said. “Then summer came and we were too new to stand any chance of getting any festivals, so we called a bunch of community centres and said we could teach a weeklong rock camp to kids. Then, at the end of the week, the kids could put on a show and be the opening band and we would follow with a free community concert.”
Program-hungry facilities jumped on this idea. Speed Control loaded up a rented trailer with gear rented from various students and the band added such locales as Fort Nelson, Terrace and Fort McMurray to its tour list. The list has grown every year. And unlike the rock circuit, these shows tended to include room and board as well as payment in something other than cheap beer and promises of exposure.
“Now we have this army of little Speed Controllers that has grown every single year for the past six and, by the time we hit this Christmas, we will have played over 1,000 school shows in front of over 400,000 kids,” he said. “Today, we have awesome gear sponsorships from Yamaha Canada, Enterprise Trade Fund, Government of Yukon and others and can show up anywhere with everything we need to do the full camp and performances.”
Today, all three musicians are retired from teaching — in schools, at least. Along with the music comes a dedicated workout schedule to maintain peak physical fitness. The members all want to be sure that along with the music comes a message of health and fitness rather than the whole myth of rock debauchery. Thanks to the success of the education model, Speed Control is incredibly busy.
The only problem? Getting time to play Speed Control shows to grown-ups.
“We always finish all of our shows with our song Tent City, which is the greatest single that you’ve never heard, but your kid may have,” said Graeme Peters. “And that is the issue we are trying to figure out, because we are trying to transition it to where we have it at about 50-50 because we would all like to play with our favourite bands in bigger venues. The industry keeps saying we need to transplant and start working the grind and I’m like ‘we are working the grind, maybe harder than most.’ ”
Peters admits that it is a strange situation that Speed Control finds itself in. Here they are making money purely as musicians and getting seen by an ever-expanding potential fan base, but getting that exposure to be able to work into doing a school show in the afternoon and an adult club show in the evening is a challenge. Festivals, on the other hand, have noted how cool it is to have an act that can do something family-oriented on one stage and then turn its amps to 11 on another.
“Some people have laughed at us and called us an educational band as though actually having accomplished all this, being fully sponsored and so forth, is somehow embarrassing,” said Peters. “I’m having trouble seeing that, but I’d also love to play the Commodore.”
The 11 songs on Still Standing certainly hold their own compared to the rest of the crop of melodic modern rock bands trying to break it big. Very much in line with such charting acts as Jimmy Eat World, the group plays super tight, riff-heavy harmony rock such as This Time or the title track with the occasional mid-tempo ballad such as the impressive Are We Too Late.
It remains to be seen if Speed Control will get its chance to school the grown-ups in RAWK. The band plays across Alberta and B.C. this month. In the meantime, the kids are all right.