Brydon Crain, front man of Fredericton’s Motherhood and Maiden Names, has been working away at a new musical side project.
“There’s always songs kicking around that I want to do – stuff that might not be right for Motherhood or what used to be Maiden Names.”
Sam Salmon and the Grand Manan Bandits formed just before Christmas and is made up of Matt Fitzgerald, Jake Spencer and Lucas Saunders. Crain says he’s keen on branching out on his own to experiment with new songs and new musicians.
“This is just basically a re-branding. I want to have a full band as much as I can with bigger shows, but I’m still going to be doing a lot of solo acoustic stuff as much as I can.”
Musically, Sam Salmon won’t be veering too far off from the sounds of Crain’s other projects. He says he’s staying true to his darker, country-folk sound.
“I’ve been listening to a lot of Frank Zappa and Beefheart lately. I just like the way that Zappa will take stuff from other styles of music and just put it in a song. It’s a more fractured style of music.”
Like with Motherhood’s latest release, Problems, Crain is continuing to write in a weirder fashion, thinking more about music in pieces rather than one song, or an entire album.
“I’m thinking about rock and roll in smaller segments lately, like how hip-hop gets made but with a band.”
Crain says he’s always trying to make his music a little different.
“There’s just not enough of that. Everyone knows that all songs are in 4/4 time, but everyone still writes their songs in 4/4.”
Sam Salmon’s first official show was at The Capital Complex on Jan. 15. Their next show will be at The Cellar on Jan. 30 with David R. Elliott and another of Fredericton’s newest bands, Fat Camp.
“The last show went well with only two practices in beforehand. It was our first time playing together and I think we got it together pretty quick.”
Sam Salmon will be showing up on Fredericton stages more often. He say he’s planning more shows in the city to display another side of his music making abilities.
“Basically, this is just a channel to do whatever I want. Whatever whims I have I’m going to push through Sam Salmon.”
