Janowskii announce debut album, new lineup, spring tour and share the single ‘Treat Everybody The Same’.
Matt Carter
Janowskii | FACEBOOK
Guitarist Keith Hallett and drummer Drew Budovitch (DBudd) have been playing together as Janowskii since 2016. Born out of the Shifty Bits Cult’s final days, the duo began making music in an attempt to dial back their weekend partying by making some noise together on Sunday mornings.
“We were both coming out of a bender, starting to sober up and decided we should start jamming on Sunday mornings so that we’d keep our shit together on Saturday nights,” said Hallett. “At the time, I didn’t have a band and I was craving to play with other people after only doing solo shows for a couple of years. I was missing the comradery of having a family in that way.”
“We’d go in at like 10:30 or 11 a.m. and play until the mid-afternoon and that just felt a lot better than being hungover every Sunday morning,” adds Budovitch.
After a few months of jamming and figuring out how to work together as a duo, the two approached Flourish Festival’s Jane Blanchard and Stefan Westner about playing the festival and made their live debut as part of the 2016 lineup.
A year later they booked some time at the Memramcook Recording Company and recorded nine tracks with friend and fellow musician Mike Trask engineering the project.
Nearly a year after those initial recordings were made, Janowskii are finally getting around to releasing their debut.
“As soon as we finished recording I went on the road for five weeks playing solo shows,” said Hallett. “By the time I got back we had a whole bunch of shows booked and a busy summer planned. After that, we were into the fall and still had to get it mastered.”
“We also spent a long time brainstorming ideas of what to do with the album, how to approach putting it out and do we want to tour this thing,” said Budovitch. “Now we’re working with Zach [Atkinson] and Penny [Stevens] to help us out instead of just Keith and I saying ‘Hey internet’ and posting it on our Instagrams. We’ve worked hard on this and we’re proud of it so why not take it as far as we can take it?”
While the full album release won’t happen until the end of August (August 31 to be exact), the band have released the first single from the album in advance of their upcoming spring tour. Treat Everybody The Same is a perfect introduction to the band’s murky combination of backwoods blues and trashy rock and roll.
In addition to finally sharing some recorded music, the band have also announced the addition of Matt Legere (The Waking Night) on bass.
“I feel like now there’s a little more space for me to lay back a bit as opposed to feeling like we have to just keep things winding all the time,” said Hallett. “With Matt, I no longer feel like I have to keep the low end going all the time so that frees me up to maybe hit some feedback for a bit while they’re grooving. He’s seen us play probably 10 or 15 times now so he knows what we’re trying to do. It seems to be a perfect fit really.”
Janowskii will be announcing a cross country tour later this summer with plans to hit the road in early September in support of their self-titled debut.
Upcoming Performances:
May 18 | Paddlefest | St. Andrews, NB
May 20 | Taco Pica | Saint John, NB
May 23 | Brasserie Beaubien | Montreal, QC
May 24 | The Garnet | Peterborough, ON
May 26 | Grickle Grass Festival | London, ON
June 1 | Thunder & Lightning | Sackville, NB
June 8 | The Capital | Fredericton, NB
July | No Funswick | Moncton, NB
