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Photos By: Markus Eliance

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February 13, 2010: How do you define a band that bends genre standards between pop, rock, reggae, funk, and a splash of punk? You define them by the pure crowd response. The boys from Redeye Empire did just that at the House of Blues Sunset, at their first show in California while touring to promote their new album Sea To Sky, which was released in January.

Hailing from America’s top hat, Canada, Redeye seamlessly mixes an ecelectic sound that’s part Sugar Ray, Sublime, with a sprinkle of Green Day and a dash of Parliament Funkadelic. The American leg of their tour is shared with indie heavyweights G Love & Special Sauce, and they’ll be hitting up clubs across the west coast and leading into the mid-west in the coming months. The 300-plus crowd showed their love for the opening act, grooving to tracks that ranged from mosh pit guitar rushes, to smile-inducing, margarita-sipping melodies.

After their power-packed set at H.O.B., I met up with Gabe Davis, one of the band’s lead vocalist/guitarists. With a laid-back smile and genuine attitude, Gabe grabbed us a couple beers, as we headed backstage for a one-on-one chat about the band’s origins, and a crazy story behind one of the tracks on their new album.

Markus Eliance: RedEye Empire; you guys are from Vancouver. When did you all hook up?

Gabe Davis: Four years ago. It started with myself and Mike [Redmond], the other singer. He lived in Whistler, I lived in Vancouver, and we both had our separate bands. What happened was I’d go up to Whistler, and we’d just jam. We wrote, like, ten songs. I went, “We’ve got some good shit here. Let’s record an album.” No band, no nothing. We just recorded it. Then we got a couple buddies from Vancouver who were just great musicians, and they’re in the band now. The album kicked ass, and within six months we ended up  on a coast-to-coast tour.

ME: How did you meet up with G Love and Special Sauce?

GD: [G Love] came up to Vancouver a couple of times, and I met him through friends. We ended up hanging out a bunch of times, and just became buddies. Now we hang out periodically, and we have some adventures together. [laughs]. He’s a good friend. And now he was cool enough to invite us on this tour with him. We were supposed to play at the Olypmic ceremonies this year, actually.

ME: That’s right! The Winter Olympics were in your hometown this year.

GD: Yup. But we were like, “Winter in Canada?” or “Let’s head down south!” Done.

ME: Since you guys have been together, what are some of the crazy things you’ve seen on the road?

GD: Oh, man… I don’t know if I could say that. Shit… are you talking about onstage, backstage, in the bus…?

ME: Tell me about the bus.

GD: Man, those walls are silent. If those walls could speak…

ME: How about onstage?

GD: Well, I don’t even know where to start. Mishaps, women… Crazy shit like falling offstage. Sometimes I’ll jump offstage and do a little freestyle in the pit. A couple of times I got absolutely pulled into the pit. [But I guess] that’s part of the territory.  I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy it.

ME: At this point in the game, do you have any of the majors interested, or you plan on staying independent?

GD: We’re not interested in majors. It’s not them not interested in us, we’re just not interested in them. We don’t need money, we don’t want their money; they can’t really do anything for us. In our genre of music, because we don’t play a type of music that really fits “the formula” of radio, we just do what we want to do. So, we have the resources on our own to promote it. We want distribution… that’s what we’re working with. Really, you’ve got to do it organic now. You gotta do it from the ground up — you gotta tour.

ME: So what’s the next step for Redeye Empire? Tell me about the new album.

GD: We just dropped our new album a few weeks ago, and it went to number one on iTunes for Reggae, even though we’re not really a reggae band.  Then I noticed we were on the charts for hip-hop too, but we’re not really hip-hop either. They don’t even know where to put us. This album is big for us, so we really got to push it hard.

ME: That last track you guys did on stage, I really dug it. What was the name of that song?

GD: Oh, yeah – Gaucho. That one has a good story. Me and Mike were in Mexico; we went down there for a surfing trip. That was a fucked-up day. We rented a car that was stolen. Well, it turned out to be stolen. We drove down this beach… and we’re peaceful guys, you know? It was not a peaceful day in the water — we almost got in a fight with a bunch of locals.  Then on our way back, we see this guy on the other side of the street, picked him up…he was a sketch guy, but we’re like, “[Screw it], Let’s have an adventure!” He opened up his bag and he had, like, a fuckin’ gang of “Mexico’s Finest”. Next thing we know, we’re on the road and the federales are following us the whole way, and we’re freaking out. We drop this guy off in some place, and go inside this club on the beach. We walk in there, and a couple of girls are hanging out, and they ended up buying us bottle service, which was weird. By this point, we’re all paranoid because the shit had started to kick in, and we jumped out a small window and started running as fast as we could. It was a long day. One day in Mexico, and out of that came “El Gaucho.” As you listen to the song, it kind of tells the story. – Download “Gaucho”

ME: That is, by far, the best origin story of a song that I’ve ever heard.

GD: The name of the album, actually, Sea To Sky, is the name of the highway from Vancouver to Whistler. Since I lived in Vancouver, and Mike lived in Whistler, that highway is what brought everything together. So if anyone was wondering what the album title was about, now you know.²

Redeye Empire are currently on the Canadian leg of their tour, and their album is currently available on iTunes. Here’s some of their upcoming tour dates:

(Courtesy of MySpace.com)

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