Mackenzie First
November 25th, 2009 - Written by melissa—
Although you may have only recently heard about this up and coming Montreal band, Mackenzie First is nowhere near being new to the music industry. Dating back to when the members were still in high school, close to ten years ago, Mackenzie First have slowly been working their way up the musical ladder where they are being met with well deserved acclaim and success. Their first full length, self-titled album hit stores and iTunes world-wide at the beginning of the month of October. Since then, the band has done nothing but grow in popularity here in Montreal. Recently opening for international artist Kate Voegele at the Just for Laughs Theater, these four talented musicians are beginning what they hope to be a long and prosperous career.
In early November, I got the chance to sit down with lead singer and songwriter, David Black, as well as guitarist Dominic Berardi. During our interview, these musicians pieced together a portrait the band’s past, present, and future and through our conversation, I learned the kind of passion, dedication and hard work it takes to really make a successful band work in the long-run.
For Dave and Dominic, Mackenzie First began back in high school by pure coincidence.
“Dom was playing in another band for a talent show, and I was kicked out of class; and Dom heard me singing in the halls and their singer got suspended… so he wasn’t going to be able to play the talent show, and that’s when we decided to work on a project together.” Dave told me about how the two first met.
The singer continued by saying that they liked working together so much, they just kept doing it from then on. Ten years after their first project, Dave only had great things to say about working with one of his closest friends.
“We finish each other’s musical sentences at this point, it’s really bizarre. It’s rare that you find a musician that you can have that experience with.”
Throughout their years together, the band has gone through a few member changes. Their current line-up is four very driven and hardworking musicians: Dave as lead vocalist, Dominic on guitar, Julien Bédard on bass and Graham Leduc on drums.
Despite it having taken ten years for the band to release their first full-length album on Universal/Tab Records, they have been fortunate enough to work with several incredibly influential people in the music business, even early in their career.
One of the people they spent some time working with was Jeff Stinco from Simple Plan. Stinco mainly helped the band at the beginning by word of mouth, which was crucial for Mackenzie First in order to be noticed by the right people.
“When we reached out to different people to try to help us, a lot of people had already heard about us through Jeff. So he did a great deal of talking about us and in the beginning it led to some wonderful things for the future” explained Dave.
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