Scapegrace

The word “scapegrace”, an uncommon but pithy term for a reckless person who acts without thought, originates with the merging of two words, escape and grace. Lithely able to effortlessly elude from any situation, a scapegrace is wild and free, leaping from danger with the greatest of ease. In such a manner the band Scapegrace, formed by the merger of Canadian and Mexican musicians in Mexico City in 2003, leaps from musical style to musical style with a delicious melding of radically distinct backgrounds. Drawing influences from hard rock, heavy metal, rap, country, funk, and grunge, Scapegrace seeks to redefine what direction new metal can lead to with melodic ballads, screaming orgies of fury, 90's grunge infused acoustic tracks, and floating phantom voices and whispers overtop spoken rap sections. Influences can be traced to Guns 'n Roses, Dream Theater, Evanescence, Metallica, Linkin Park, Megadeth, Tool, Nine Inch Nails, Fate's Warning, and Pearl Jam, as well as a host of lesser known musicians in the English speaking world such as Qbo and Molotov.
Many histories of famous musicians involve tragic accidents of some kind, almost a rite of passage in the history of a group. A touch of luck has already put Scapegrace past this hurdle, in that the band was essentially formed as the result of a nasty car accident. The lead singer, Ian Kelk, was on a brief vacation in Mexico City visiting friends when a car speeding at 80 km/h crossing the street hit him. Thrown over 50 feet by the vehicle, amazingly his only injuries were a nasty concussion, several scrapes, and a badly broken leg. Learning that the leg would take at least six months to heal, and realizing that the conditions in Toronto in mid December hardly made it possible to leave his home on crutches, he decided to spend his convalescence in Mexico City, and attained a job teaching English in a world-wide chain of English schools called Wall Street Institute. It was there that he met Oskar Villarreal, an extremely talented guitarist and music producer working as a technician in the school computer laboratory. Over time their friendship grew, and Oskar invited him to stay with him in his apartment, albeit in the living room sleeping on a bed created out of the kitchen door.

Shocked by listening to Oskar's amazingly well performed solo pieces, recorded simply using an effect box and SoundBlaster, Ian began writing lyrics to the music, and the two began recording songs together. Realizing the potential of what they had created, the two began searching for like-minded musicians, and recruited Toño "Warner" Tejeda, a phenomenal guitarist who had played with Oskar in the metal band "Erogena" (http://www.erogena.net/espanol/) to play the drums. This was soon changed when they discovered the hidden talents of Angel Villarreal, Oskar's younger brother, when it came to hitting the skins, and Toño was sent back to playing the guitar to complement Oskar. With the final addition of Ricardo Villarreal on the bass, the band was humorously composed of four people all working at the same English school in different locations, and briefly tossed around the joke name "The Wall Street Boys" before realizing that they didn't have the proper Indian and police costumes to make that name truly work.

After playing a number of shows in Mexico City, the band has relocated to Toronto in search of opportunity and a larger audience for their music than exists in Mexico. Now working on a second album, Scapegrace is eager to explore this new world for their music.