The Greenbank Trio can’t count.
Or at least that’s what people in the crowd sometimes yell before the oddly-named quartet takes the stage. But once the young band of Lakehead University music students start their show, there is no doubt in anyone’s mind that they can play.
The band has been taking the local music scene by storm over the past few months, playing every stage they can from better known music venues like the Black Pirates Pub and The Apollo to places rarely played like a recent shag at the Current River Community Centre.
They’ve also been opening up for acts like Yukon Blonde and The Weber Brothers. It’s all in an effort to be heard by as many people as possible.
“We’ve just been trying to take as many gigs as we can and play as well as we can,” 22-year-old stand-up bassist and vocalist Chris Lamont said.
And they deserve to be heard. Greenbank, while not sounding too polished, has a work-ethic and musical knowledge you can hear.
Their influences, from classical folk like Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young to newer bands like Mumford and Sons, can also be heard but the group still makes the sound their own.
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They also focus on harmony, something that can be heard on tracks like “Here Before”, which features four-part voices that almost sound as though they were recorded 40 years ago.
Lamont, guitarist and vocalist Jimmy Breslin and drummer Luke Blair all started playing together in high school in their hometown of Oshawa.
Breslin was the first to come to Thunder Bay but he always went back home and the band kept playing, transforming from 16-year-olds playing punk and metal to a folk-rock bar band that would play around the Greater Toronto Area during the summer.
Blair and Lamont eventually made the trek north and this past October, they finally found the man that would make their trio a quartet, 23-year-old keyboardist Craig Smyth. The band decided to keep the name because they already had a website and following under The Greenbank Trio.
“We always get chirps from the crowd like ‘you guys can’t even count,’” laughs Lamont.
With a recently recorded five-song EP and an upcoming East Coast tour, the band says they’re ready to take Greenbank to the next level. Recorded at Thunder Bay’s Dining Room Studios, which has recorded artists like Shy-Anne Havorka, Breslin said they really wanted to capture the live sound they’re quickly getting noticed for.
“We tried to keep it as live as we could,” he said. “Nothing added in.”
Breslin said he’s seeing a resurgence in folk-based music.
“It’s coming back. Everybody’s so tired of this recycled-studio-core-perfect-pitch-auto-tuned stuff that they’re just ready to see real good sounding live music on stage again.”
Their music can be heard here
