By Sarah Wallace

E.A. Rawlinson Centre welcomes Les McKeown and the Legendary Bay City Rollers

Feb 5, 2013 | 5:20 AM

Scotland born Les McKeown has been performing in the world of pop music since 1973 when he joined the Bay City Rollers as their lead singer.

In 1978 McKeown left the band to pursue other interests and in the 1990s he formed the group Les McKeown and the Legendary Bay City Rollers.

Now the group travels around the world playing the hits of the Bay City Rollers with McKeown being the only original member.

McKeown, himself, has been touring Canada since 1975.

“I took a few decades off to do other things and now I’m touring back again. I did one (tour) two years ago, it was very successful so they’ve got me back again doing it some more,” McKeown said.

Event Centre funding

City may hire lobbyist for event centre money

10h ago

International honours

Raiders' Kubiesa to represent Czechia at IIHF U18 Men's World Championship

14h ago

Learn the signs

How often should you change your brakes?

18h ago

“I think what inspired me to start paying attention to my career again was I had a bad time with alcohol back in 2008, which culminated with me going to rehabilitation and after that my work schedule increased exponentially and now I’m full of life and positivity again, we’re working very, very hard.”

The Canadian tour starts in Montreal on May 1 and will end in Kelowna on May 20 with McKeown and the Legendary Bay City Rollers stopping in to perform in Prince Albert on May 13th.

For ticket information check out the E.A. Rawlinson Centre website.

After their Canadian tour the band will head back to Europe to perform in a number of festivals.

“Helsinki, Finland, Germany, Denmark, Russia, lots of places to do festivals and then we’re going back to the United States in the early Fall and then we start our UK Tour which is quite a condensed 60 dates on September, October, November and December,” McKeown explained.

He said he did the same kind of tour last year and it was great.

When McKeown isn’t touring he said he spends his time composing songs, preparing for his next tour, designing album covers, writing sleeve notes for other artists, building houses, demolishing houses, and things like that.

In 2002 an autobiography on McKeown was released titled, Shang-a-Lang: Life as an International Pop.

McKeown said he’s looking forward to chatting and laughing with his fans in Prince Albert and even said if anyone has any old memorabilia to bring it along to the show and he’d be happy to sign it.

He said one of his favourite places to tour is Canada.

“I do like Canada, not just because I’m coming here, but I really do like it. I have been on and off in Canada for the last, like I said, 40 years but once I got to take a tour in the summer and we rented some camper vans, that was great fun, it was about 10 years ago. So we took our time touring Canada and that was great,” McKeown said.

“To me it’s like a ginormous Scotland,” he finished chuckling.

swallace@panow.com

On Twitter: @sarahthesquid