Friday, Sept. 13, 9 p.m.
Dickens Pub, 1000 9th Ave. S.W.
Cover charge: $10
There’s a fine line between genius and crazy – and toiling for 15-plus years in the Calgary music scene is definitely right on that line. For the three members of The Evidence, though, finding the balancing point stems from focusing on their music’s potential.
Hence the name of The Evidence’s third and latest album. (Hint: it’s called “Potential.”)
Drummer and lead singer Casey Lewis, bassist-vocalist Dean Rud and guitarist-vocalist Tyler Pickering began playing in various local bands in the 1990s, eventually coming together in 2002 to form The Failure. Predictably, that name didn’t stick.
“After five or six years and two records we decided that The Failure as a band name just wasn’t working,” Pickering says. Aside from being negative, the name was prone to be confused with American ’90s grunge act Failure.
“But the biggest problem,” he says, “was that all of our moms hated the name.”
And so, The Evidence was born. The band’s accessible, radio-friendly brand of rock (“Foo Fighters, Green Day and Bad Religion buy a house together, and then have Queen and Rush over on the weekends,” is how Pickering describes it) has earned fans all over the world, thanks to constant hard work and a couple of European tours. The band plans to head overseas again to promote “Potential.”
“We’re planning to go back with our new record to get it into as many hands as possible.”
But Calgary will get first crack at hearing the new album live. Friday’s show at Dickens Pub will also feature melodic Medicine Hat power-rockers The Robertson Privilege, Edmonton’s pop-punk Old Wives and Calgary indie-rock quartet Deluge.
For a taste of The Evidence, check out the superbly edited brand-new video for Lies, a key track from the new album.
The Evidence in the iTunes store.