The Crowleys

Rock
Hamilton is basically the last stop on the Highway to hell. Right now the scene has lots and lots of fresh, young blood. Some of the young blood that stand out from the pack are White Crowleys, WTCHS and the Dirty Nil. Goth rock legends, The Birthday Massacre, also have their roots firmly planted in Dundas, Hamilton's suburb and home of the Dundas Cactus Festival, but like many Hamilton musicians they moved to Toronto years ago. - BlogTO

One of the best ways to discover new music is randomly. Going to a show to see a band and then being blown away by the opening act is a common way that I’ve discovered new-to-me music. A similar thing happened at the It’s Your Festival a few weeks ago. I went to the New Music Expo stage with a few bands I wanted to see and I walked away being really impressed with the White Crowleys. Easily the highlight of the day, these guys filled the park with their timeless version of surf/fuzz rock.

Cohen Wylie, Stuart Downie, Justyn Horlick, and Collin Horlick are a group of adorable young guys who play the kind of music their parents must have listened to when they were teenagers. I mean that in the best way possible. These guys are seriously talented, kind, and enthusiastic. It isn’t hard to imagine a bright successful future for them. White Crowleys are playing a show later this month (details to come), and you can expect to see a lot more of them in the future. The well deserved buzz is growing!

Q - Can you tell us a bit about how you guys got together?
We started playing together in the beginning of high school. Justyn (Guitar) and Kaulin (Bass) are brothers, so they’ve known each other for a while and we are all best friends inside and outside of the band. It slowly grew from friends hanging out, into what it is now.

Q – Where does the name “White Crowley’s” come from?
White Crowley’s comes from a fascination with Aleister Crowley a magician and poet among other things. The White kind of balances out the darkness that goes along with the Crowley name.

Q – How does song writing work in your band? Do you take turns writing, or does one person do the majority of it?
Normally one person presents an idea for a song, chords maybe a melody, or maybe a full song. Normally that’s Cohen (guitar, vocals) but not always. Then we’ll work on it together and write our own parts for our instruments and work on the arrangement. This usually goes pretty smoothly as we can often get a collective vision of where we wanna go with the song.

Q – How did you guys come up with your sound?
Doing drugs, listening to music, and dreaming of another generation.

Q - What / who are some of your musical influences?
Well the 60′s and 70′s are huge for us, from Dylan, Neil Young, Hendrix, Santana, Stones, Zeppelin, not to mention the Beatles and Pink Floyd. We’re also into some newer stuff like Brian Jonestown Massacre, John Frusciante, Tame Impala, Radiohead, and The Strokes.

Q - What’s the coolest thing that’s happened to you guys since the White Crowleys formed?
Every time we hear someone likes our music or digs our sound, especially people we don’t know who don’t owe us anything, is the coolest thing.
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Q - It was really sweet to see how many friends and, especially, family members came out to watch you guys at the Festival of Friends. What do your parents make of your music?
Stuarts (Drums) dad Gary played in a great rock band in high school and he’s one of our biggest fans and critics. Justyn and Collin’s parents have a nice big minivan so they are our ride to a lot of shows. All our parents are real supportive of the music and seem to enjoy it as well.

Q – Where would you like to be one year from now, in your music careers?
In White Crowleys, with our EP out, playing shows and working on a full LP.

Q - What’s it like being a young band in Hamilton these days?
It’s pretty great, there are a lot of great venues and bands in the area, its sometimes a bit tough for our sound because Hamilton has always been more punk based and now has a pretty big hardcore following, but there’s always room for some surfer spaceman fuzz rock.

Q – What are you guys listening to? Do you have any recommendations for tracks / artists we should check out?
Tame Impala, The Temptations, Alt J and go listen to Led Zeppelins Physical Graffitti again. MEMORIEZ new album Huntin’ a Hurricane came out a few months ago and is a great rock-pop-soul album . SINS new album came out last week and is great dark electronic music And if you want something heavier Watershed Hour just dropped an EP and they’re a manly all girl 2 piece from Whitby.

Thanks, guys! - Cut From Steel