Dead City Soul Revue

When I think of swamp rock I think of New Orleans and the dirty south. I’ve never associated that sound with the North. Until I found out about Dead City Soul Revue. After the demise of The Hook Up, Montreal based musical couple David Gilbert and Jamie Haraldson connected with Hamilton’s mustachioed Kevin Delaney. If you’ve been to the Baltimore House in the past year you will have undoubtedly seen Kevin. These three musical minds have gotten together to give the world Dead City Soul Revue. A Montreal x Hamilton swampy, soul, blues outfit that has a huge sound.The band performed at the New Music Expo tent at this years “It’s Your Festival” as the festival came to an end. Watching these guys was the perfect way to end a music packed long weekend.

Dead City Soul Revue have only played a few shows, and they are currently working to get their website up, so for all intents and purposes they are a new band. Check out their music on the CBC music page. Dead City Soul Revue are playing this weekend in Hamilton, and you can find all of those details on our events page. Look out for their website, and more shows in the near future.

Q - After The Hook Up ended – Dead City Soul Revue was formed. Can you tell us a bit about why, and how, you settled on the current sound, and the current band?
Dave: Jaime and I spent last summer in rural Saskatchewan, which allowed me to re-think The Hook Up’s sound away from the touring circuit and the city. We were finishing the tracking of our second album and I noticed the sound had evolved further than The Hook Up’s sound. I was listening to a lot of different music podcasts at that time, which featured old gospel, early 50s rhythm and blues and other styles of American music. I found these new (old) sounds had a profound affect on me and the opened up the possibilities of trying new musical approaches. We returned home and went on tour and it was clear this approach wasn’t going to work with The Hook Up. It was time to put The Hook Up aside. I felt we had done everything we could do and things just seemed to be going around in circles. We needed a change. Something new and fresh

Jaime: It started with The Hook Up. We were working on what was to be our second album and were getting farther and farther away from the garage sound we had as The Hook Up. We took those tracks with us out west, worked on them in Saskatchewan and just played different music, a lot of acoustic music. When we came back out east, it was pretty evident on our last tour that we were becoming a very different band and no longer fit the niche we had created. When our drummer left for BC we realized we were at a crossroads so we decided we needed to change everything, our band, our home, our perspective and everything. Dead City Soul Revue comes out of that experience and the sound is much more of a mash up of influences.

Q – Your bio says that you guys focus on bringing back ‘good forgotten forms of American music’. How do you define ‘American Music’?
Dave: American music is about a sound and a feel you can’t describe. It’s a part of the fabric of American culture and describes certain images and places, past and present. Like tremolo describes either the swamp or the desert, surf music describes surfing etc.

Jaime: I define it as anything rooted in and original to the culture of this continent… coming out of the blues, roots and soul traditions of the south, connected to things like rock n roll culture, the automobile, the road trip, and the whole tradition of taking and recombining old ideas, traditions and peoples to generate something wholly new.

Q – Tell us a bit about busking? What do you, as artists, get out of that? Is it rewarding in a different way than a traditional show – on a stage?
Jaime: $$$ to cover beer and snacks! But seriously, its much more naked to perform acoustically, without all that drive behind you. I find it makes the songs better to reduce them to essentials. It requires a certain rethink of the song. It also makes me a better performer… performing in front of people is hard! The first time is hardest and it gets easier after but every opportunity you take to put yourself out there and shake a bit, makes every time after better.

Q – Tell us a bit about your recording process? How do you create your sound?
Jaime: Very few microphones and echo sounds on every track with eerie vocal sounds. Pretty basic approach three mics for the drums and one mic each for the guitar and bass. I love adding odd guitar overdubs to add to the sound of the song. We’re all about basic, quick recordings that catch the moment rather than constantly re-taking. If the moment is there, we take it.

Dave set up the recording on the tracks that we have right now, most were done in our old rehearsal space in Montreal, with overdubs added over the summer out west. Minimal being operative. We record off the floor, we experiment with odd set-ups and what effects we can create in the room with mics and amps. We don’t have a computer that runs fast enough to track with so that’s out. We are heading to the studio in October to work with Andy Macgoffin again (House of Miracles) and that will be more of the same… he’s been really great to work with in the past… basically letting us have run of the place and do it up our way with the benefit of his expertise and creativity.

Q – Where do you guys draw your inspirations from?
Dave: Movies, crime stories, guitar sounds, old vocal sounds, scratchy 45 rpm records.

Jaime: French cinema, spy movies, Tarantino films, Any Warhol, Justified, Jim Jones Revue, Tav Falco, dancers… and Dave.

Kevin: wicked Guitar tone, solid rhythmic foundation.

Q – For the uninitiated – can you recommend any ‘Swamp rock / blues / roots’ to listen to – to help understand the genre?
Dave: Slim Harpo, Tony Joe White, Duane Eddy, Link Wray, some early Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Cramps, early Staple Singers, Dale Hawkins (“Suzy Q”), Sun Records R&B,

Jaime: Dead City Soul Revue?

Q - What are you guys listening to these days? Do you have any tracks / artists to recommend?
Dave: Dick Dale and The Deltones, Slim Harpo, Five Royales, Little Richard, Mickey Baker, Carl Perkins, The Animals, The Rolling Stones, JD McPherson.

Jaime: I listen to whatever cd Dave puts on in the car…. I’m listening to the Animals this week.

Kevin: Mark from Dr. Disc turned me on to Kid Koala’s 12 bit Blues Young Rival Record.

Q – What’s it like being a new band in Hamilton, these days? How would you describe the current state of our music scene?
Dave: Refreshing. Everyone we’ve met so far has been very open, supportive and welcoming. Hamilton bands are more about support than competition, which is a great feeling because at the end of the day, we’re playing music to entertain people and make the happy and have a good time.

Jaime: Pretty awesome!

Kevin: Incredible. There’s a lot of energy, lots of people doing interesting things. A huge sense of community and potential to make impact culturally.

Q – You guys played the New Music Expo at Gage park for It’s Your Festival recently. What is your favourite festival food?
Dave: Tacos. No question.

Jaime: I heard there’s a vegan food truck?

Kevin: Deep fried elephant ears powdered with just the right amount of sugar.

Q – What is the best band you’ve seen play an out door festival?
Dave: Eli ‘Paperboy’ Reed at the 2009 Montreal Jazz Festival. The crowd was quite sparse (maybe fifty people) when he started and it was pouring rain. By the end of the show, there were over one thousand people cheering him on. He was spectacular that night.

Jaime: Counting Crows in Chicago. I spent a lot of time singing those songs alone in my car as a teenager and it was great to see them and in a great city.

Kevin: Zeus at last SuperCrawl.

Q – What do you have planned for the rest of the year? Can we expect an EP? More shows?
Dave: We have a lot planned. After Sunday’s show, we have a few other shows in July and throughout the summer. In October, we’re going to the House Of Miracles to record a debut record. We’re also planning on going to the Kudzu Ranch Record Company in North Carolina to record a couple songs for a single. Rick Miller of the band, Southern Culture On the Skids, owns kudzu Ranch. We’re having a great time playing and we’re super excited about the next while. We plan to keep rolling.

Jaime: As I mentioned we’ll be recording a full-length this fall and playing a ton of shows. After a really crazy year moving all over the place and starting over I really feel ready to get down to business, so we’ll be busy!

Thanks, guys! - Cut From Steel

SCR are a local three piece band that somehow came together from B.C. to Montreal. Only together for approx. a year, David Ian Gilbert: Vocals, Guitar, Harmonica, Jaime Haraldson: Vocals, Bass, Piano and Ryan Benty: Drums.

They performed at This Ain’t Hollywood www.thisainthollywood.ca/ on James Street North, in Hamilton. They were the opening act for Live How You Live and supplied the audience with a fresh sound.

Some of the guitar work of Dave while using the whammy bar brought back memories of the 60’s instrumental band, http://www.theventures.com/ The Ventures, DSCR grew from the band The Hook Up which also played locally.

All three of them met in Montreal, complete strangers until then and found a common love for music. So strong was the bond that Dave married the bass player. Ryan was the original DCSR drummer and then split for various reasons and was replaced by another drummer. As time went on the new drummer just couldn’t commit to the start of a heavier schedule and luckily for Jaime and Dave, Ryan was again available to rejoin the band.

Now ready to increase their playing dates, here’s a list where they will be playing.

January 10: Baltimore House www.baltimorehouse.ca (Hamilton)

February 9: Cherry Colas www.cherrycolas.com (Toronto)

So if you get the opportunity, check them out. With the drive, focus and always some timely luck thrown in they just might find an audience and be on their way.

https://www.facebook.com/TheDeadCitySoulRevue - Hamilton Musician

A Rockin’ Good Night at the Baltimore House
Text and Photos by Philip C. Perron

Last Friday Jan. 10, 2014 was a great way to kick off the New Year. Dead City Soul Revue was the headline act at the Baltimore House and came through in a big way. But first we need to mention the opening three acts.


Valerie Dour, Saturns and So Young, the first 2 from Toronto and So Young came in from London. Valerie Dour and the 2 cousins who make up the Saturns gave everyone a bit of a psychedelic electronic battle of Electronica. No distinguishing them apart really, they both held their own with some original funky sounds, both with guitars, keyboards and vocally.

I kept thinking this would all make for great soundtracks to some interested film producer. Especially the song The Wave which sounds dark and mysterious, you can hear it at the link above. Valarie Dour with his Synth Pop sounds seems more melodic and trippy. You can get a good feel for what he does on his Soundcloud site with the song Dispel.

Our third band So Young is made up of 4 musicians.

Paterson Hogdson - Lead vocals, rhythm guitar
Ohio Martin - Lead guitar
Dave Lunman - Drums
Mikey Steeves – Bass

Their music, which they describe as Love Pop has a good mix of vocals and rhythms. Check them out here.

Lead vocalist still needs to mature her vocals with maybe a solid year of vocal training, like their name suggests So Young. There’s lots of time to hone that instrument.


Headlining the evening was Dead City Soul Revue and they were great. Solid drumming from Ryan Benty and bass player Jaime Haraldson kept it all together. This was needed as David Ian Gibert played or should I say attacked his Gibson Les Paul and sang his heart out. Jaime and Ryan lent their voices to the harmonizing, and at times Jaime sang solo vocal which was quite good. Describing the music as Rock & Roll, R&B, Soul, Swamp, Blues and Gospel, David was interviewed earlier in the day on McMaster University CFMU 93.3 music station.
As their set was about halfway through Dave started to really feel it. Soon he was out amongst the audience playing his guitar as he lay on the floor, first kneeling then lying flat on his back and then finally going in circles as he laid there. All seemed very genuine and natural. A little while later he was up on the P.A. system doing his best rock star riffs. All in all a very enjoyable set so definitely catch them the next time they are in the area. Their next concert is Thursday Jan. 16 opening up for The Jim Jones Revue at Call The Office in London. Dave was mentioning his excitement for opening for them since he was a huge fan.

It is nice to see musicians writing their own material and performing LIVE. So “good on ya” and keep it grooving and rocking out there. - Hamilton Musician