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The Phantastic Phases of Pharm
Kelowna’s Popular Progressive Stoner-Metal Lunatics Hit the Pub May 6
By Ferdy Belland
“We formed the band in 2019, just in time to experience the wonderful golden years of the pandemic,” said Lucas Segall (bassist-vocalist for Kelowna’s notable prog-metal rascals Pharm) with droll humour.
“I first met our drummer Tegan when he was 14, and we’ve been jamming ever since. Tegan knew our guitarist Matt from their previous band. The three of us were hanging out at a metal show in Kelowna and decided we should test the waters with a jam, and off we went! And so far, so good. Now that things are more or less back on track post-pandemic, it’s been better for us, and for everyone else. We just won the Battle of the Bands competition for the great Wacken Festival, and we’re off to the Western Canadian finals! Our upcoming Cranbrook show is part of a big two-month Canadian tour, and we’re looking forward to our debut performance in the Kootenays!”
Pharm takes the stage at the Cranbrook Hotel Pub on Saturday, May 6 through Arctic Front Productions, with opening support from Kamloops’ hard-rocking nutjobs Rad Dog and a special set from the Kootenays’ own psychedelic rockers Garuda.
“We released our first album Vortex in October 2022, which coincided with a self-promoted festival in Kelowna we called Pharmfest – which was really successful; we got together nine different bands from across BC and Alberta, as well as a few standup comedians, and everyone had a whale of a good time! By the time we hit Cranbrook we’ll have a followup EP released. Things are really erupting for us now, post-pandemic, and we’re just jumping into everything head-first!”
The trials and tribulations of Canadian musicians finding their new fit in the still-shaky post-pandemic age apply to musicians living and operating in the provincial interiors, not just in the major urban centers.
“The music scene in Kelowna is as bustling as it’s ever been, but it hasn’t been easy,” says Segall. “The entire Okanagan region is just bubbling with dozens of active bands, representing any wide styles of music you can list off.
“Our favourite venues in Kelowna are Jackknife Brewing, which showcases heavy metal music almost exclusively and who’ve been very supportive of us, and Runaways Lounge – which sort of popped out of nowhere and saved the day for a lot of live music in our town. After Fernando’s closed down, Runaways really picked up the torch and kept things alive and rolling…three to four shows every week, a wide-open space which they’re continuously improving, and any style or genre is welcome there. Runaways has been really keen on keeping the scene going.”
Segall reflects on the frustrations of 21st-Century gentrification taking its toll on Kelowna’s culture.
“The loss of Fernando’s Pub was a big kick to the guts for Kelowna music,” Segall (pictured right) explained. “Those corporate so-and-sos from Leopold’s Tavern needed to have a 14th or 15th location, right? And so they took advantage of pandemic crisis and took away our Home-Away-From-Home. And Doc Willoughby’s is dead too. Another corporate takeover from the Nixon Hospitality Group, who bought up nearly every bar in Kelowna’s downtown core and turned them all into a bunch of homogenized identity-free douchebag salons for the in-town-on-business set, where you don’t fit in unless you’ve all got identical hundred-dollar haircuts, and mustache wax and cycle grease, and the parking lot’s full of Subarus. But there have been new venues rising from the ruins, so to speak, so there’s always hope. And good times!
“We’ve been gigging heavily over the past year all around the Okanagan,” says Segall. “Not just Kelowna, but Kamloops and Vernon and Penticton too – all the major centres in the region. Things got colourful at the Kami Inn in Kamloops when our guitar player got into a fight in the washroom! He got a real good goose-egg on his eye. Everybody else in the bar was really welcoming…except for that one guy! We had a great time nonetheless.
“Record City in Vernon was awesome – they’ve got a back room behind the main retail space that hosts live shows, where they can stuff 90 people into it, and that was off the hook too. We played Clancy’s Pub in Penticton not too long ago, and Slackwater Brewing is another good Penticton venue for proggy bands and metalheads. The Okanagan always had this great pocket-circuit going on for local music, and it’s so good to see it come back to life.”
“We do have new material currently on the boil,” says Segall. “We’re going on this tour to support the release of the Vortex album, but the hope is to have a new EP out before the end of 2023. It took a lot of time to make the album, seeing how it was hard for us and the studio staff to safely work due to pandemic restrictions and such, but on our back-burner we have at least three other songs that didn’t end up on record, and other new stuff that has yet to be played live.
“So there’s basically three separate tiers of music we’ll be touring here. Our songwriting process is definitely a process of collaboration among the three of us. Somebody will bring in a riff or an idea, and our drummer will even demonstrate rhythms and beats he’s composed for us to work riffs into. We’ll hash it all out together. We might come into the jamspace with one particular idea in already in our heads, but oftentimes by the time we leave the jamspace the song-in-progress has gone totally sideways into a Willy Wonka version! In the studio, we add little sprinkles and flavours overtop of the main power-trio recordings. I’ll add some keyboards. Matt adds extra guitar shimmers. But the core of the songs are always a group effort.”
Arctic Front Productions presents Kelowna’s exciting prog-metal scallywags PHARM live at the Cranbrook Hotel Pub (719 Baker Street) Saturday, May 6, with opening support from Kamloops’ RADDOG and the Kootenays’ own psychedelic rockers GARUDA.
Admission: $10 advance (tickets available at the Pub during regular business hours), $15 door, showtime 9:30 p.m.
The latest in a long string of quality entertainment from your friends at Cranbrook’s funkiest downtown dive! See You There!
Photos submitted
