The Stolen Organ Family

The Stolen Organs on The Morning After Show with Oswaldo! - CiTR, www.vanmusic.com

Conor and Kelly from The Stolen Organs play songs and chat with Oswaldo live on The Morning After Show, CITR 101.9 - CiTR, www.vanmusic.com

PODCAST LINK: http://live.civl.ca:8085/podcast/2010/12/13/13.mp3 - CIVL Radio 101.7 FM

The words “avant garde” should bring to the forefront of the mind a certain caution because it can be accompanied by almost anything from a dude strung out on crack uni-cycling across a college campus or a truly inspiring piece of performance art. What West Coast Canadian rockers Stolen Organ Family Band have done with the term could, as well, enlighten or annoy. What I find worthwhile is the trip away from the mainstream, popular style of music heard all too often on the radio and from pop artists vying for a position on the almighty Billboard charts. Track titles like, “There R 2 Many Hours in the Day” bring a smile to mouths of those about to ingest the electronic and rhythmic music which follows, but the moving sensation of the song itself proves the songwriters in Stolen Organ Family Band have vision to work with melody. The harmonies in “Bread and Butter” could easily sweep one away to dreams of the countryside and family members fashioning instruments out of household items. Truly, the collection of songs on Cooking With Joyboy may well annoy and bring puzzled looks to fans faces, but, trust me, within the tracks lies melody, rhythm and harmony. Don't think you won't necessarily find yourself singing along! What's more, is a truly avant garde attitude and fearless ability to do something new makes Stolen Organ Family Band something worthwhile and inspiring in itself.

Visit online at: www.ourstage.com/profile/thestolenorganfamilyband

Review by Ellen Eldridge - Target Audience Magazine

Review: The Stolen Organ Family Band - HorseTreats by www.weirdcanada.com
It’d be pretty dim to call ‘em Proggy, but with their multiple movements, tempo changes and quickly shifting moods, the tweaked, twangy tunes of the Stolen Organ Family Band come across like some backwoods strain of “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Lyrically, singer, songwriter and six-string slinger Conor Mack shares campfire stories of shitty hometowns, divorce and excitable puppies with syrupy sweet choruses that’ll get wedged in your brainpan and rattle around for weeks. With back-up vocals, blown-out Casio FX and suitcase percussion by the lovely Miss Kelly Badger plus the Zen-like steadiness of bassist Ari Cipes, the Stolen Organs bring to mind Jonathan Richman and his Modern Lovers slumming it as subway buskers. You might also think of the Meat Puppets when you’re listening to these country-fried home-recorded rambles, but the shadow of the almighty Ween looms the largest. Horse Treats is a kind of ‘greatest hits so far,’ and the manifesto on the back might just say it best: “Ain’t down with hiss, ain’t down with this.” [Levin's Note: Never underestimate the power of Casio.] Jesse Locke, October 15th, 2009 - Weird Canada 2009

http://playlist.citr.ca/podcasting/audio/20100611-073012-to-20100611-090000.mp3 - CiTR Radio 101.9 FM

The heart and soul of a good roots record is the storytelling, how the artists deftly weave
melody and narrative together. Some bands just fuse them with a bit more je ne sais quoi than others. The Stolen Organ Family Band certainly has a knack for the yarn and the adjective and their songs paint a delightfully eccentric portrait of the psychedelic-folk trio. Their sound is a DIY-combination of lush, wrenching vocals, snappy percussion loops, and guitar ranging from old school twang to heavy distortion. These raconteurs crash into Calgary on February 19th for a show at Broken City. BeatRoute tracked down frontman Conor Mack in Kelowna to talk divorce, the Temptations, and the trouble with drummers.

BeatRoute: How did you wind up playing psychedelic folk?
Conor Mack: I like to use effects, and ever since I started I’ve always liked a bit of chunky guitar going on. At the same time, I’ve always been resistant to having a full-time drummer in the band because you’ve got the big bass drum to lug around, and they often have big attitudes, so we just try to go a bit farther out to fill out the sound without a rhythm section. I like to keep it psychedelic without it being too meandering. It was just a result of a desire to play sloppy rock without a drummer.

BR: So what are you working on right now?
CM: We started an album last summer that we’re finishing right now. One of our band members kind of disappeared off the face of the earth. I’m told this is a recurring theme in a musician’s existence. I’ve never been in any other bands before, so I don’t have the grizzled hide of some seasoned veterans on the scene who have been in bands since they were teenagers, so it hit me hard and I took it like a real baby. So, I started writing an album called Divorce and I would say I’ve already reached some sort of catharsis by this point, but the theme is still ongoing, so we’re just finishing up. We’ve got a song called “Let’s Get Divorced,” a song called “Shitty Town,” which is a devotion to Kelowna, which we just moved from a while ago. It proves to be a quaint visit, now that I live elsewhere, but we were there about eight months too long. It’s like Riverdale, USA down here.

BR: What are you guys listening to these days?
CM: We recently discovered Wanda Jackson, she’s an old rockabilly lady from the Elvis days. The Temptations have also had a renaissance in our lives. We watched the excellent made-for-TV biopic from the ’90s, which is so awesome. We really like when David Ruffin keeps coming back to steal the microphone after they fire him. I hope there are some David Ruffin moments on tour. I’m not sure how it could be orchestrated since we all get along fine, but it’s definitely something we’d like to emulate. - Beatroute

A Wake Human with 2 Apple Tobacco, Evan Symons and The Stolen Organ Family Band by The BackStage Lounge
Stolen Organ Family Band played a duo show at the Purple Crab. Conor Mack plays a slender guitar while Miss Kelly wears vintage clothes and glasses. Their songs are upbeat and fast-paced, but often contain rather negative lyrics (from what I can hear). They are professionally eccentric, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Conor’s voice ranges from falsetto to low-pitched, while Kelly’s voice is a good compliment to his. She begins their set on what looks like a mini-Rock Band drum kit, while Conor plays the keyboard. Their first song is “Here Comes Baby,” a cute song with a circus feel. Then he switches to acoustic guitar for the rest of the set and she rotates between keys and various percussion, including a vintage suitcase that she beats with a soft mallet (the kind you’d use on a cymbal). Mic placement is a bit of a problem when they play the keyboard, but it’s not the end of the world. The harmony in “There R 2 Many Hours in the Day” is most impressive. - The Backstage Lounge Online, February 2010

Published July 8, 2010 by Jesse Locke in CD Reviews
Freaky B.C. twang-rock troupe the Stolen Organ Family Band has long showcased surprising ambition, especially for banditos writing, recording and releasing albums from home. Cooking with Joyboy, the follow up to 2009’s greatest hits compilation, Horse Treats, finds these Ween-loving weirdos dropping their grandest statement to date, a near hour-long epic complete with string arrangements, although these are likely as canned as the band’s trademark trash-fi keyboard beats.

Opener “A Horse Don’t Need Whiskey (No More)” sets the tone, as duelling vocalists Conor Mack and Kelly Badger harmonize howls and honey-sweet croons over a rollicking backdrop reminiscent of Yello’s “Oh Yeah” (a.k.a. the Ferris Bueller’s Day Off theme). Other highlights include the seven-minute slacker slow-jam “I Don’t Care About Anything,” hushed ode to infants “Here Comes the Baby” and the frenetically paced punnery of “Francis Alexander Cassiopia.” Best of all is the Stevie Wonder cover “Never Had a Dream Come True,” a lovingly faithful reading despite its oddball instrumentation. Joy rarely sounds this bizarre.
- FFWD Calgary

by Robert M Strachan
Kelowna's darlings of raunchy twang have finally released a collection of cerebral western lullabies to put the children to bed to. Baby Bucket Slops is an excursion into obscure absurdity that goes down well with punch and pie. It's a flashback to simpler times when country music was the only type of music.

It's as if an old bluegrass band were stranded on a deserted island with nothing but a few guitars, banjos, synthesizers and lovely voices. Then, after decades of isolation, they were suddenly rescued and exposed to the horrific spectacle that our world has become. The culture shock would be too much to bear and they would voluntarily recluse into a basement with nothing more then their instruments, some canned food and an audio recording device.

As the guitars strum a swinging drone throughout the album Conor Mack's strained voice itches with a strange mix of emotions. It's sort of like elated frustration. In his signature song "Special Boy" he squeezes the lyric "I am a special boy that's what they tell me" out of what seems to be a collapsed larynx. Luckily, there are always the feminine vocal harmonies of Family members Buckler and Badger popping up throughout the disc.

This album is completely DIY so it might be hard to find in stores, but you can probably track the Family down somewhere west of the Rockies by a watering hole and barter for one. It is also online on the CBC Radio 3 website.

- Beatroute (Calgary)

The Stolen Organ Family Band
Baby Bucket Slops
(Babynuts Records)

Like so many other outsider musicians, The Stolen Organ Family Band define themselves against their mainstream peers by keeping it straight-up weird. Hailing from Kelowna, B.C. this three-piece has put together a debut that is equal parts sonic slop-fest and well conceived� album. From the abrasive guitar squawks of “Allo Hezus Locale” to the odd jangling hooks of mega-cute ditty “Hans,” Baby Bucket Slops revels in the off-key singing, twisted blues and lofi hum that characterize most zealous garage band experiments. The arrangement and musicality of the songs hold their frail structures together in a way that smacks definitively of Ween, or the odd orchestral folk of the Magical String Band. The trio do play mostly within the vein of rock, but manage to traverse through diverse territory, such as hollering mangled ballad that is “Special Boy,” or near up-tempo punk, like� “The Beast is Wild!.” Despite a couple of drawn out numbers, and demo quality cover art, The Stolen Organ kids have etched out an admirable draft of their vision that promises great things for the future.
Justin Langille - Discorder (Vancouver)

The Stolen Organ Family Band
Horse Treats (Indie)

It pays to have an open mind in this business of writing about music and putting it to press, especially when you’re grabbing at albums from bands you’ve never heard of. I took to Stolen Organ because the name tickled me, thinking they might be some kind of crazy shit stomping dust kicking fiddle band from the country. Now, this isn’t totally off base. There is definitely some stomping as well as quite a bit of kicking, though it’s shit that’s being kicked and it’s a little too muggy for dust down here on this crazy farm where moonshine and LSD flow from the taps like milk from the mother immaculate.
This Vancouver based country fried crust pop for the slightly off kilter carries shades of Ween and little Sunset Rubdown/Wolf Parade. Between the lines I can smell dirty punk-house kitchens and the faint scent of Afghan hash smoked from a corncob pipe. The recording levels are extra high in some songs and in others the sound just drops away completely. Then there are these moments of beauty where a vocal chorus sweeps you from your feet as beefy guitar riffs sandwich you in with their hot sloppy wetness. Horse Treats is a pretty chunky platter that offers its challenges but gleefully celebrates in its borderline idiot savant-like strangeness.
~Nathan Pike - The Skinny Magazine, April 9th, 2010