Nanaimo’s Wise Youngblood is one of the top 10 Vancouver Island bands competing in CBC’s Searchlight 2017 competition, which features 200 solo artists and bands from across Canada.
“Being in the top 200 for the CBC Searchlight shows that Canada as a whole is supporting upcoming talent and opportunity,” said Myles Nowik, a member of Wise Youngblood, in an e-mail. “We are extremely proud to be in the top 10 from Vancouver Island. There is a lot of talent here and representing Nanaimo is important to us.”
The band needs votes to make it to the next round. People can cast their votes by visiting www.cbcmusic.ca/searchlight/entries. Voting for Round 2 ends Monday (March 13) at 11:59 a.m.
A searchlight panel will select one winner from each region, but the two acts who receive the highest number of votes will automatically advance to the top 25. The top 25 will be announced Tuesday (March 14).
The group’s featured song on the competition website is Pyromaniac, one of the first songs the band wrote.
“We are thrilled with the response we have been getting from it. Pyromaniac is a song with a lot of imagery built into it,” said Nowik. “If (you)really listen to it, it definitely has a twisted love story vibe.”
Nowik said what drives the band members forward is their “love and passion for making music.
“Most importantly we couldn’t do it without our home town support,” he said.
For more information about Wise Youngblood, please visit the band’s Facebook page www.facebook.com/wiseyoungblood.