A Nanaimo band born from a special blend of musical influences is a featured performer on the 2017 Vancouver Island Exhibition main stage.
VIEX happens Friday to Sunday (Aug. 18-20) when alternative rock band Lawn Social takes to the stage, backing Friday night’s headliner Led Zepagain.
James Boileau, bass, and his brother Sam, drums, formed the band with guitarists Drew Vissers and Jordan Wende and vocalist Jordan McDonald 10 years ago for a high school talent show.
“We didn’t win the talent show, but we continued on after that and we just never really seemed to stop,” said James Boileau.
The band members were all about 16 and 17 years old when they got together at a time when Nanaimo’s music scene was vibrant and featured all-ages shows that inspired young local musicians. Musical influences of the day blended with local creative experiments that became the recipes for a distinct sound and style of composition.
“To say who we sound like – most of the bands we were influenced by, I guess I could say, Matthew Good, Incubus, Tool, they were big when we started, also Brand New and, I think Thrice, a lot of people say we sound like Thrice,” Boileau said.
Over the years, the band released EPs containing three or four songs, but it would be nearly a decade before Lawn Social finally released its first full-length album Ghosts last Halloween. The three-year album project forced the band to focus on writing.
“We realized we were getting older and we wanted to get an album out there before we kind of stopped without ever having released an album … It’s been out for a few months now, so it’s just been promoting it and playing shows and just seeing how that goes,” he said.
These days the band plays in Nanaimo, Victoria and Vancouver, but Lawn Social has remained a hobby for its members who practise together weekly and play shows every couple of months.
“Yeah, the music industry is really weird right now,” Boileau said. “We kind of chose other career paths, but it’s mostly just for fun. It would be fun to do some tours and maybe partner up with a more famous band that we could open for and do that one or two times a year – do little tours like that. That would be cool.”
Playing the VIEX has been a long-time goal.
“We’ve been trying to get on that for years and years and, finally, I think because we have an album out now and we’re just a little more credible, we’ve finally been allowed to play,” Boileau said.
Lawn Social takes the stage at 7 p.m. Friday.