Current Swell’s beginnings are firmly rooted on Vancouver Island.
The Indie Rock band began in Victoria as a group of friends just hanging out, jamming and writing original music. They progressed to playing on beaches and backyard parties and created an on-line presence that quickly grew their fan base.
“We just really enjoyed creating music and we were lucky to have this fan base that seemed to appreciate what we were doing,” says the group’s frontman, Scott Stanton.
Stanton comes by his love for music honestly as his mother was a piano teacher and his father was an avid guitar player.
“I used to pick up his guitar and try different things and started writing songs when I was in my teens,” Stanton recalls. “There was always music in my home when I was growing up.”
These days Stanton is joined by Dave Lang on vocals, guitar and harmonica, Louis Sadava on bass and vocals, and Chris Petersen on drums and vocals, and together Current Swell has created some of the most innovative and exciting music seen in the Indie genre for years.
The group's organic beginnings are illustrated by their first concert. They had booked a gig at a local coffee shop, hoping to play for a handful of people and ended up playing in front of a packed house. It seems that the short five-song EP they’d released on the internet had hit home for Vancouver Island young people and the group discovered that they already had a solid fan base.
Since then, Current Swell has opened for bands like The Beach Boys, Xavier Rudd, Dispatch, Bedouin Soundclash and The Beautiful Girls, and has made appearances at the 2010 Winter Olympics and the Ottawa Bluesfest.
They won Vancouver’s Peak Performance Project in 2011 and played at Victoria’s Canada Day concert to an enthusiastic crowd of 45,000 cheering fans.
The band now has seven studio albums to its name and members continue to write, record and perform. They're currently working on another EP that will, you guessed it, be released online later this month.
But the band’s true love still lies in live performances.
“We’ve seen the world a hundred times over by now, but we really don’t have any massive expectations. We just love writing songs that combine folk, rock and indie styles. It’s all about the joy of doing it,” Stanton says, before continuing in his own modest self-deprecating style.
“I don’t expect that our music is going to change the world, but the band is in a happy place, and we love what we do. I love what we do.”
The band is embarking on a European tour in June and Stanton says that playing in Europe has been some of the most fun the band has had during their career.
“We were there in 2020 and they treat you so well and the fans were just great. But I have to say, our fans everywhere are just great. We put on a really fun show, and we always get this amazing response. That’s what it’s all about, after all.”
Before heading off to their European tour, the band will be treating their hometown audiences with a concert at the Royal Theatre on March 1. Find tickets and details for their other Canadian appearances at currentswell.com/tour.
