Why it Works

BFTV has pretty much nailed the win­ning com­bi­na­tion: famil­iar faces per­form­ing great covers…with all the pro­ceeds going to char­ity. It’s what attracted Fallsview to them in the first place for an ini­tial run of shows that ended up being a huge launch­ing point for the band.

“We have some­one who looks for shows for us, and he had actu­ally booked some other bands in here to play,” recalls Guiney. “He had men­tioned us to them and they loved the idea that we did it for char­ity; that was the big start­ing point for the shows here. To be hon­est, at the time we weren’t really all that fired up about trav­el­ing to play because of our sched­ules. But it worked out and we had such an amaz­ing time while we were here; they said they wanted to have us come back and we were really excited to get that chance.”

It also helps that they’re clearly a tight knit group, both on and off stage.

“We play together a lot more now,” says Guiney. “And spend a lot more time together. Every­thing we do, we’re closer and closer friends and bet­ter as a team.”

The Music

They also seem to know just what songs to cover that will show­case each band member’s tal­ent best. In these most recent shows, the afore­men­tioned Grimes blew every­one away with The Bea­t­les’ “Oh! Dar­ling” and Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now”. Guiney’s husky, sexy vocals ruled on Van Morrison’s “Wild Night”, Den­ton had all the ladies in a flut­ter with Bruce Springsteen’s “Pink Cadil­lac”, and, in a new twist to the lineup, Pas­dar kicked some Irish jig tail with his ren­di­tion of Char­lie Robison’s “John O’Reilly”. Not to men­tion the team effort, led by Lau­rie, on Billy Preston’s “Will it Go Round in Circles”.

Then there was Jesse Spencer and his fid­dle. From Char­lie Daniels’ “Devil Went Down to Geor­gia” to The Who’s “Baba O’Reilly”, Spencer added such a unique flavour that just isn’t seen with most cover bands. Awesome.

Find­ing the right mate­r­ial takes work, though, and often a few good listens.

Den­ton explains: “When I first heard ‘C’est La Vie’, I sent Chris Kelly (musi­cal direc­tor and gui­tarist for BFTV) a note say­ing ‘You’ve got to be kid­ding me; this is the most redun­dant song I’ve ever heard. But when Hugh does it, and you get a lit­tle funky thing going on, it works and now I love it. We’ll take a song, one that’s kind of a bor­ing, over­done garage band cover and make it cool, and that’s fun.”

The Band…and the Rea­son Why

“Fun” seems to be the gov­ern­ing atmos­phere with these guys. From snort-worthy short jokes tar­get­ing Grimes to con­stant, good-natured rib­bing at Pas­dar (not exactly sure why, but enter­tain­ing nonethe­less), they come off a lot more like broth­ers than band mem­bers. And what seems to unite them above all is their pas­sion for giv­ing back. Now hav­ing con­tributed an astound­ing $3.5 mil­lion to numer­ous char­i­ties, they rock for more rea­sons than their musi­cal tal­ent. These three shows at Fallsview alone saw dona­tions to flood relief in Aus­tralia and orga­ni­za­tions such as Epilepsy Foun­da­tion, The Taia Peace Foun­da­tion, Toronto’s Sick­Kids Hos­pi­tal, and many more.

Which is also the rea­son the band will always be sec­ondary to their day jobs. “Once it becomes a job, it’s over,” explains Pas­dar. “Right now we don’t rely on it for our liveli­hoods, and that’s actu­ally what makes it so much fun; there’s no pressure.”

“Besides,” adds Spencer. “We’d have to change our name and become Band that Used to be on TV”.