Punk Mod Rockers Seven Story Redhead & Show # 398

Forming around 2004, Calgary’s Seven Story Redhead takes their influences from bands such as The Velvet Underground, The Kinks, The Who, The Jam and The Clash which makes up their own brand of Rock and Roll. Consisting of Kelly Sutherland on vocals/guitar, Franklin D on bass, Lonnie James on drums and Chris Bell on additional guitar, the band first release was the self recorded Super Fancy Hobo, which was followed by the Live From The At Work Home Institute in 2006. The song “I Was Yer Mate” received significant commercial radio airplay for a five month span, which only broadened their fan base. During this time the bands sound is often described as The Kinks, The Who, The Clash and Velvet Underground with a 60s Proto Punk R&B sound, became a fixture amongst the Calgary Garage Rock scene. A full length album simply entitled Seven Story Redhead followed in 2008, which was followed a years worth of touring across Canada. In 2010, the band released their Shake It Out! EP, and in 2011 the released their Uptight/Downlow 10 inch release.

For Uptight/Downlow, the band slimmed down to a three piece with guitarist Chris Bell moving on to other things. The band took a primary influence for this release from a trip that Sutherland took to Paris and London. The result was a British invasion of their influences reflecting an early Kinks Garage sound, while at the same time including the other influences that help round out their sound. Kelly Sutherland had this to say of Uptight/Downlow from an interview with CJSW’s Christine Leonard-Cripps:

“The whole process of assembling the album took a half-year,” reports Sutherland. “I didn’t write anything for quite about while because I had nothing to write about. Then, my significant other and I took a trip to Paris and London. It was a fantastic hanging around Soho and Camden and all of Pete Dougherty, the Libertines and Amy Winehouse’s favourite pubs. Travelling is the best source of inspiration and the trip really got things moving along for me in my songwriting. You can hear that in the lyrics: the British vernacular, the tube stations… Uptight/Downlow is a direct attack, like The Kinks’ early stuff. We’re not trying to reinvent wheel or create new genre here, we’re moving backwards in time. Rock and roll was perfected a long time ago rather than trying to be modern, we chose to revel in that.”

At any rate, the band shows no signs of slowing down as they head out to Western Canada to promote and play live shows. You can check them out  at sevenstoryredhead.com or via their facebook page.

This Week's Play List:

1. 999 – Quite Disappointing

2. Weirdonia – Masked Boy

3. Satelliters – Get Outta Here

4. Garage Sale – Ain’t So Groovy

5. Ghost Bikini – Spooks

6. Long Distance Runners – Election Day

7. Yukon Blonde – My Girl

8. Learning – There Is A limit

9. Ramblin’ Ambassadors – Pine Beetle Express

10. Mind Spiders – Wait For Us

11. ELK – Shaking Hands

12. Raised By Weeds – Money For The Grave (CJAM Session Jan 24, 2012)

13. Ex-Girlfriends Club – The Witch

14. The Wipers – Wait A Minute

15. Mudhoney – Good Enough

16. C’Mon – Easier Said Than Done

17. Seven Story Redhead - Punk Mod Rockers

18. Malibu Kens – Crude City

19. Wire – Moreover

20. Television – Prove It

21. The Rezillos - I Can't Stand My Baby

22. The Saints - One Way Street

To download this weeks program, visit CJAM's schedule page for Revolution Rock and download the file for April 3. Or subscribe to Revolution Rock as a Podcast.