Hell Bent Rockers

Bringing rockabilly to the Black Swan tonight (Nov. 20), the Hell Bent Rockers celebrates the release of their debut, original album. The Crooked Cowboy, Shawn Brush, will also perform.

The Hell Bent Rockers — consisting of Bill Thornberry, vocalist and acoustic guitarist, David Nicoloff, guitarist, and Max Lloyd, stand-up bassist — are joined tonight by saxophonist Sirr Mack, guitarist Henry Doepel and drummer Jay Langdon.

These musicians, along with Craig Nicoloff on bass guitar, also helped with the album, which aimed to recreate the Hell Bent Rockers high-energy live performance.

“We recorded live from the floor at Porcelain Studios in Hamilton,” said Thornberry, about the band’s first, self-titled album. “We wanted it done old-style; mic us up and play live. This studio had a great feel with large rooms, hardwood floors — it all worked with what we wanted to accomplish. We wanted to portray what we sound like when people see a show as we are a live band. We like to get people up and dancing, how they did it back in the 50s.”

The band’s style of music pays homage to the era, creating music pulling from the classic rock and country-blues sounds of rockabilly.

With Nicoloff heading most of the album’s song writing, and Thornberry and Craig Nicoloff contributing, the 11 songs showcase the vintage style of authentic rockabilly.

“It revolves back to the basics: cars, girls, simpler times,” added Thornberry. “We had written half the songs from the beginning of the band and the other half of the album we wrote in the last year.”

The Hell Bent Rockers formed almost five years ago with Thornberry, Nicoloff and Lloyd uniting to bring their love of the era to life through music. The band has performed the Sound of Music Festival, as well as at vintage car festivals throughout North America, and recently performed at the Cadillac Lounge in Toronto.

“David is already working on songs for a second album but that will be a little while yet,” explained Thornberry. “One thing about the genre is you want to play songs people are familiar with so we perform some covers as well. The sound includes blues, country and rock and roll so we make sure to bring it all around to the different styles when playing live.”

For more information, visit www.hellbentrockers.com and find them on Facebook. - Metroland Media