Welcome to the site of Tunnel Six, a Canadian-American collective jazz sextet. We’ve been playing together since 2009 when we all met at the Banff Centre in Alberta, Canada.
We had a great year in 2011 starting off with the release of our debut album “Lake Superior” on OA2 records (see link in right sidebar!) and an accompanying Western Canada tour with performances in Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver, Victoria, Gibsons, and Roberts Creek. We even had some legitimate band photos taken in the Sunshine Coast (see above!)
We traveled out to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland in July to perform at the Halifax Jazz Festival and the Wreckhouse International Jazz and Blues Festival in St. John’s, NL. It was many of our first times out in Eastern Canada and we had a wonderful time.
We’ve also gotten some attention in the past month on several end-of-year lists from emusic (right ahead of Brittany Spears!) and All About Jazz. Several more publications have reviewed our album including All Music Guide, Cadence, and a full review at emusic as well.
Thanks to everyone for your support and we’re really looking forward to lots of good music in 2012, we’re planning a western Canada tour which will also reach down into Washington and Oregon and hopefully a fall tour in Ontario as well! You can always find us over at Facebook as well. Cheers and happy new year to everyone.
We’re very excited to have been invited to two great festivals in Eastern Canada this year, the Halifax Jazz Festival and the Wreckhouse International Jazz and Blues Festival (in St. John’s, Newfoundland). We’ll be in Halifax on the 14th of July and St. John’s on the 16th. It’ll be our first appearance in both cities so spread the word out east and we’ll see you there! Full details at the “Performances” page.
Also, we finally have some new band photos from a great shoot in the Sunshine Coast with Raquel Fors:
We’ve just finished up a great Spring tour of Alberta and BC and although we had the best of intentions to blog and post photos throughout the tour, we did not completely succeed at that task. However, here is a second photo entry of the stretch from Edmonton to the Sunshine Coast, thanks to tour photographer Tyson.
We were very excited to return to the Yardbird Suite in Edmonton, one of the greatest clubs in all of Canada run by one of the most amazing jazz societies anywhere. They even had a nice feature in their program:
Then began the long drive westward through the Rockies and Cascades:
Ending at last in a suburb of Vancouver (the blurriness of the photo reflects our mental state at the time):
Then we moved on to one of our favorite areas, the Sunshine Coast (off the coast of Vancouver). Ferries and great natural scenery greeted us:
We had some great times in Gibsons and Roberts Creek, and played a wonderful concert at a small recording studio for an amazing audience, where we also gave a community improvisation workshop earlier in the day to a wide diversity of instrumentalists (5 fiddles, drums, voice, harmonica, and piano), which was really a positive experience for us and the participants.
Well as promised, but slightly delayed, here is a bit of a chronicle of our tour so far this year. As noted below, we had a bunch of driving and flying and eventually convened in beautiful Canmore, in the Canadian rockies. We were very happy to see each other again:
We were very lucky to be able to stay at a great timeshare courtesy of Chad’s family. They treated us very well despite our lengthy rehearsals in the main recreation room:
We played a couple of “secret” gigs at restaurants in Canmore to get warmed up for the tour. The first one was at a very wood-filled place called the Iron Goat, with great food and a view of the epic mountains:
The following evening we played at an amazing Spanish restaurant called Tapas, where we were absolutely stuffed with extremely fine food and drink and had a generally great time. Despite our best efforts, more food and drink kept mysteriously appearing, resulting in a fantastic evening for all:
Yesterday we decided to make the first Tunnel Six music video. More on that very soon, but here’s a couple of images to whet your appetite, as it were:
We played a fun but somewhat turbulent gig at the BeatNiq in Calgary last night. We debuted new songs by Chad and Brian, which went very well, and had a pretty good and relatively full house too!
Now we’re on our way to Edmonton where we’re playing at the Yardbird tonight! See below for the really nice preview from the Edmonton Journal. More to come!
