When Redeye Empire hits the stage Friday night at the Revelstoke Music Festival they’ll be playing to a crowd they’ve already won over numerous times in town.
“We just really hit it off in town,” said drummer Ryan Davis, who grew up in Revelstoke.
“We have such a great time there we try to get back whenever we can.”
The show will be Redeye Empire’s fourth here in the past year but this time they will be supporting their newest album Last Chance for Sunshine, which is set for official release on July 1 but will be for sale at the show.
The album is the band’s fourth in their five years together and follows hot on the heels of last year’s Sea to Sky. Davis said the band initially intended to record an EP but by the time they were done recording, they had enough songs for a full album so that’s what they went with.
“We spent most of last year down in the California and we just opened right up and all these songs came out,” said Davis.
California is the band’s spiritual home. They’re reggae rock sound is firmly rooted in the state’s music scene and heavily influenced by perennial favourites Sublime. Last year Redeye Empire went down to Santa Barbara to play the West Beach Festival, which is essentially ground zero for their genre of music.
“It’s the pinnacle of reggae rock,” said Davis. “That’s where everybody goes. It’s an incredibly festival on the beach, we spent two days there, met all these incredibly bands and it was hot sunny weather.”
He said the vibe was similar in the ski towns of B.C., which is one of the reasons they keep coming back to Revelstoke.
“When you’re a kid growing up in a small town you can’t wait to leave and see the world,” Davis said. “It didn’t take too long until I realized how incredible Revelstoke was.”