For years, they’ve been the house band backing performers in Quest for the Best champions in their pursuit of the title, playing one show a year. But more recently, the local legends who once walked the halls of the town’s schools have had more time to show up at different venues in the Rainy River District and beyond; one such show will be at Rainy Lake Square on July 29.
Drummer Jim Newman says many of the members have played together for decades in various configurations as members of pit bands for high school musicals.
“Rob, Chris and I used to play high school musicals as far back as the old high school,” Newman said from behind a drum kit in the garage they were rehearsing in ahead of this year’s edition of local talent competition Quest for the Best.
Keyboard and guitar player Chris Denby said that work in musicals may have led to them becoming the backing band for the singing contest that has long been associated with the Fort Frances Canadian Bass Championship.
“We were asked if we could be the backing band for Quest, which involves a lot of learning songs in a hurry, but in our musical work, that’s what we did; we learned songs in a hurry. So we took on the Quest for the Best gig, one gig a year for quite a few years,” Chris said.
The other members of the band are Steve Denby, Chris’s brother and Rob Donaldson.
Initially it was difficult to play more gigs because they were all working as teachers and Steve lives in Winnipeg, but now that three of the four have retired, they have a bit more time to play an expanded calendar of gigs.
“We just came back from doing a thing in Manitoba; we’ve played the Legion a couple times over the course of the year,” Chris said. “Steve’s from Winnipeg so it was designed for doing this show where he would come and stay, and we’d work on this show. But we learned enough music to do full gigs a bunch of years ago.”
When they take to Rainy Lake Square, you won’t hear too many of the songs they’ve played with Quest contestants.
“It’s interesting because we’ve all played in various bands outside of Quest,” Steve said. “So Chris and I played in bands growing up, and bands as adults, and then he’s played in bands and has been learning music.”
Being a member of The Faculty can be a little like being a session musician—a seasoned pro who can join in with a band and immediately pick up what they’re putting down.
“You learn all this music your entire life, and then we would get together and say, ‘Okay, what songs would you like to do?’ It’s like, ‘oh, I know that one, I know that one.’ So occasionally we’d have to really sit down and work hard to learn a song, but a lot of the time it’s like, ‘Yeah, I played that, and yeah, I played that,’ so we can just sit down and run through it and work out the little details.”
While they played some much more recent music at Kids Quest for the Best, including the song Taylor Swift released in June alongside the film Toy Story 5, their typical style is much older music. Kids Quest also had them going back to their roots as a couple of the participants sang songs from musicals as well.
“We tend not to play brand-new music,” Chris said. “We don’t really have any brand-new music. The newest music we have would be from 10 years ago, 15 years ago. Into the 2010s. And of course, it’s really easy for us to do ‘70s and ‘80s stuff because it’s in our brains, whether we played it before, you hear it enough. If it’s popular enough for wanting to do it, you’ve probably heard it a bunch on the radio or whatever. So, and that’s that’s the audience that we play for.”
Steve said the bands’ skill also plays into the songs in their repertoire.
“Another consideration when we’re doing music is vocals because we’re pretty strong with vocals, and so The Eagles is a favourite because just the blend is there naturally. And then a lot of times you get together, and it’s like, okay which harmony do you want to sing?” he said.
“Because it’s not like you sit down and learn one harmony; just if you know how to sing harmony, then you just say ‘I’ll take this one, I’ll take that one,’ so the vocal part is a pretty important thing too. I think you want to show off the band.”
The band has a special skillset in that many of them are multi-instrumentalists who can bring a lot of different sounds to the stage.
“I had this young woman, my nephew’s girlfriend. I was doing some construction. She said, ‘So, how did you learn that? Did you take courses on designing buildings and stuff?’ I said, ‘No, I’m just old. All it is is time.’ Like if you sit down and say, OK, I’ve got to figure out how to put a window in, I had an afternoon so I learned how to do that back when I was 32, and now I’ve learned all these other things,” Chris said.
“It’s the same thing with the band. We’ve just been playing in so many varied types of environments, and you’re challenged to do something new, and again the next year, and again the next year, and then when you come together and we can pick up music pretty quickly.”
They’ve put in years of work to learn to do what they know how to do now, Steve said.
“The other part of it is we’re multi-instrumentalists, right? We have three people here that move around from strings to keyboards to banjo to mandolin to whatever, that kind of opens the door a little bit,” he added. “That kind of allows you to do a lot of things. You can’t train to do that without putting in the hours, that’s for sure.”
When they play at Summer Sounds in the Square, they’ll be bringing a setlist of classic rock music with a sprinkling of newer songs as well, but Steve said the band tries to play different songs than other local bands as well.
“I think another thing the audience can look forward to is songs that you wouldn’t typically hear bands do,” he said. “I guess because of the personnel, we’re able to take stuff where people say ‘I always love that song, but nobody ever plays it,’ and so we’ve got things in the repertoire that I’ve never heard any other band play.”
“Again, sometimes it’s because it’s a really challenging song, which we enjoy doing anyway. And other times it’s just not something that people would even think of doing. You know, if you hear, a band that plays the Bangles, they have a girl singer. We do “Walk Like an Egyptian”. It’s a pretty cool arrangement. So that’s another thing, there’s a lot of repertoire that’s just unique.”
They also want to play different songs from the other bands in the area
“The other part is, you know, I play in two, three bands. He plays in a number of bands. These guys have another band going on,” Chris said. “We don’t want to play the same tunes as those bands.”
Chris Denby is a member of Thinking of Pinky, and Jim Newman and Rob Donaldson are both members of Rough Cut Pine, the two bands which will follow The Faculty in the Summer Sounds in the Square series on Aug. 5 and Aug. 12, respectively.
The Faculty hits the stage again on Wednesday, July 29 at 6 p.m. in Rainy Lake Square. Music fans are encouraged to bring a chair to sit on and some money for food and drinks.
