Soggy Beard

What happens when you’re feeling down and your life isn’t really going anywhere? You start a band with a total stranger who is stuck at home with a broken ankle. From there you go into the subway stations and play some tunes until your entire body hurts with nothing much to show for it. Then, you convince a friend to play bass and another to play drums. You add some childhood memories of playing by the Atlantic Ocean and being pushed around in parks.  Write some more angry songs about how you can’t believe you actually did the things you did. Try to keep it together during practice and somehow it comes together and you call it Soggy Beard.  Live to see another soggy rainy day.

Formed by Samuel Laroche and Laurence Möller in the summer of 2016, Soggy Beard attacks the subject of mental illness with a passion.  The character Soggy Beard comes from Sam’s experiences playing in empty bars and cafés and ultimately getting so frustrated that his personality is split between bitter old man and a struggling young adult. Soggy sets out to confront each of his demons head on by personifying each of his emotions and arguing with them at length. He sometimes finds himself so manic that he loses track of whom he is confronting and changes the tone almost on a dime allowing for a startling live performance.

The band is composed of singer-songwriter Samuel Laroche from Nova Scotia. Laurence Möller a classically-trained violinist with a Bachelors of Music degree from Université de Montréal (UdeM). Laurence has toured China with the Orchestre Symphonique des Jeunes de Montréal. She was awarded the Supporting Arts Bursary of Laval. Thomas Saulnier joined the band in June of 2016, Thomas has played bass with numerous bands such as Kwet and has led his own project Peter Pansbridge a Low-Fi Punk band out of his hometown of Clare, Nova Scotia.  Phil Legentil was the most recent addition joining in October 2016. Phil has a Bachelor of Music Degree from UdeM where he majored in jazz drumming. Phil is no stranger to genre swapping having played with bands that range from Klezmer to Hip Hop. Together they form a powerhouse of creativity that take songs from folk to punk, to free jazz and power ballads. They continue to push each others limits both musically and mentally.