Bands & Activities

Harlan Pepper

Saturday, June 18th - OLG Stage - 1:00pm

Formed in 2008, Harlan Pepper are four young men from Hamilton playing music with an old soul. Channeling the ghosts of long-gone AM car radios and haunting the dusty aisles of small town vinyl record bins, Jimmy Hayes (guitar, pedal steel, harmonica), Dan Edmonds (banjo, keys, vocals), Thompson Wilson (bass, vocals), and Marlon Nicolle (drums, vocals) are barely out of high school.

Recorded at Hamilton’s Vibewrangler Studio with Aaron Goldstein (Huron, Espanola) Young And Old conjures up a session where Gram Parsons, Buck Owens and Hank Williams pay a Basement Tapes visit to sit in with contemporaries like Joel Plaskett and Jeff Tweedy. Moving from the wind-in-your-hair banjo-led opener Great Lakes, to the road-ready, hook and head nod of Little Miss Sunshine, to the singalong crowd favourite of Reefer, this is a set of nine songs that roll along with the top down.

Already an accomplished live band Harlan Pepper has shared the stage with the likes of the Sadies, Born Ruffians, Two Hours Traffic, Lee Harvey Osmond, Huron, the Arkells, and Feist. With the AM radio crackling out a distant signal and a stack of instruments older than all of them in the back of the van, the band will be touring all through 2011 in support of their debut album, Young And Old.

“After just a few songs, you forget how odd it is to see such young musicians successfully channel 60s and 70s folk rock sounds. Once over the initial shock, though, it’s obvious that they’ve got the chops to pull it off better than many bands who’ve spent decades trying for the same vibe.” NNNN Now Magazine

“… – alt–country, hard rock, blues and folk all blend together but it’s the enunciation in vocals, the cadence of phrasing, both songs and performance, while simple in structure, betray some serious crafting in lyric and arrangement.” View Magazine

“These young men write and play like old souls. There are roots in traditional country, the Grateful Dead, and the great folk rock and alt-country bands of the past like the Flying Burrito Brothers, the Band, and Buffalo Springfield.” Bob Segarini (FYI Music Weekly)

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