Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 30/10/2020 (953 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

One step forward became two steps back for the Bloodshots.

The hard-driving Selkirk rockers had just signed with the Australian label Golden Robot Records in early 2020. What would have been the five-piece group’s big break screeched to a halt, owing to the pandemic.

“It really messed things up,” says CJ Loane, the Bloodshots’ frontman and guitarist. “One of the things we were excited about signing with them is they were offering tour support, which is huge. We’d get out on the road more.”

The group, which includes Loane, Keith Skazyk, Garret Evans, Jared Masters and Orvis Thomas, released a self-titled EP in 2017 that earned a Indigenous Music Award nomination. Thomas and Loane are Indigenous while Skazyk and Masters are Métis.

Besides their gigs in and around Winnipeg, they’d opened shows for grunge and metal mainstays such as Slash, Buckcherry, Danko Jones, Finger Eleven and Moist, giving them the chance to take the stage at venues such as the Club Regent Event Centre and the Centennial Concert Hall. 

A view of the rock lifestyle from the more famous groups kept them going.

“We figured that everything with this band has been going on an incline year after year. Maybe we’ve taken it as far as we can ourselves an maybe we need to go the next step,” Loane says.

So once the deal with Golden Robot was finalized, the Bloodshots were told to hit the studio and record some singles. The label would send the singles out and they’d send the band on tour wherever the songs found an audience, Loane says.

“If they catch on in the U.K. or in Japan or wherever, he said. ‘We gotta send our bands wherever they’re peaking, so get ready and we’ll see how it goes.’ We were excited about going to play over the pond.”

But instead of performing at gigs all summer, they’ve had to work away from the stage. Loane, 37, for instance, works two jobs these days, as an educational assistant at a high school and picked up work helping out at a group home for people with intellectual disabilities.

“We had plans to be trying to make a full-time go of the band thing in the fall and all of that has stopped for who knows how long. It is what it is and you got to do what you have to do,” he says.

Nearly eight months later, they’ve begun picking themselves up off the ground after the pandemic knockout. Instead of a tour to Europe, Australia or Asia though, their label is releasing one Bloodshot single every month or so to drum up some interest. The first, No Way Out, comes out Nov. 9.

“Our guy at the label told us to just focus on singles right now because that’s the way the world is going,” Loane says. “If we can hit it with one good single off the bat and keep the momentum going, who knows where the world will be in the spring and we’ll see what we can do at that point.”

The new song is a bit of a change for the group, which followed the well-worn grunge path in its early days.

“This one came out with a more of a punky feel I think. We tested it out at a few shows we were allowed to do and it was received really well,” Loane says.

The only way to go is up, Loane believes. Many of those big-name bands they’d open for would encourage them, saying they might have a chance in Europe with its dedicated hard-rock and metal community. 

“Right now we’re actually getting a lot of press there,” he says. “We have the single over there on some radio shows so we’re getting tagged a lot on social media. That’s exciting.”

 

alan.small@freepress.mb.ca  

Twitter:@AlanDSmall

If you value coverage of Manitoba’s arts scene, help us do more.
Your contribution of $10, $25 or more will allow the Free Press to deepen our reporting on theatre, dance, music and galleries while also ensuring the broadest possible audience can access our arts journalism. BECOME AN ARTS JOURNALISM SUPPORTER Click here to learn more about the project.