A quartet that has been described as a must-see act will perform in Nanaimo for the first time this week.
The Unfaithful Servants, which boasts an original and exciting approach to acoustic music, takes the Unitarian Hall stage on Saturday, Feb. 17.
After releasing their debut album, Deliver Me, the band earned a Canadian Folk Music Award nomination for New Group of the Year in 2020. Since forming with their current lineup, they have performed at the Vancouver Island Musicfest, the Salmon Arm Roots and Blues and the Islands Folk Festival.
Guitarist and group co-founder, Dylan Stone, said they have a “pretty solid show they’ve been building over the years lined up” and are excited to debut in Nanaimo. As the predominant songwriter for the Unfaithful Servants, Stone said he likes to write about classic themes such as death, love and the human experience.
“For songwriting, I find it’s a life commitment,” he said. “You kind of have to have one foot in this creative zone all the time in order to be ready to receive the song when it comes to you … For me, a lot of it is keeping myself busy, musically. And staying open to new experiences … And keeping my guitar ready in my hand to play it.”
Since the addition of Quin Etheridge as the group’s fiddler, Stone has had some help in the writing department.
“He’s really influenced our set list,” Stone said of Etheridge, adding that he is also an alum of Nanaimo’s youth fiddle group Fiddelium and has been playing the instrument since he was eight years old. “We do some music that features him and a sort of re-vamped live show.”
The Unfaithful Servants first started, Stone said, when he was invited to a jam at a Victoria bar.
“I walked in and I heard some of the best mandolin playing I’ve ever heard in my life,” he said of the band’s other co-founder, Jesse Cobb – a “world-class Nashville transplant musician.”
After that fateful jam, the group acquired two additional members, a fiddler and bassist, who both departed during the COVID-19 pandemic which brought about a three-year hiatus for the Unfaithful Servants. Through the multi-instrumentalist and composer Adrian Dolan, they were introduced to Etheridge. The three “hit it off” right away, personally and musically.
“He essentially brought our band back from the ashes, so to speak. We were more or less moving on to other stuff,” Stone said.
Following the addition of the fiddler, “one of the best and busiest bass players in Victoria” Louis Rudner joined the group, completing the quartet once again.
After the Nanaimo show, the group will play at Victoria’s Upstairs Lounge on March 23.
Tickets for the Nanaimo show can be purchased at www.eventbrite.com.
Stone will return to the Hub City in mid March for a Gordon Lightfoot tribute show.
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