By James Bowler

Cheap Luxury singer and manager starts new band

Nov 9, 2014 | 11:15 AM

A local artist is breaking away from his band for some much needed ‘me time’ in the shape of a new band and a new CD release.  

Joel Rohs, best known for his lead vocals in Cheap Luxury, has decided to work on a project that is all his own.

“It’s kind of a new direction that I’ve taken,” said Rohs. “I still have members in this new group of mine that are playing with me, so it’s not just myself but it definitely is a new direction and a new project for me.”

Rohs said he began writing music that he didn’t feel fit with the vibe of his current bands style of music.

“More or less it was a need for me to get out some songs that I’d written that didn’t necessarily fit in with the music of Cheap Luxury,” said Rohs. “I didn’t necessarily decide that I wanted to put a CD out right away, I just wanted to do some recording with some songs I had.”

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Rohs explained it grew from there.

“I got a couple of my friends to play, and the next thing you know we had set a release date and got a set list lined up,” said Rohs. “It kind of sprung from one thing to the next.”

He is joined by Abraham Lancaster on drums and backup vocals, Chris Borsos on keyboard, acoustic guitar and backup vocals and Stephen Williams on base.

The new band name is ‘Rohs’ and he said it follows more of an Americana style of music.

“It’s kind of a mix between, somewhere in between alternative country and indie folk,” said Rohs. “The songs in this group are a lot more personal to me, the sound of the band is definitely closer to things that I listen to like Neil Young like The Deep Dark Woods, those are the artists that I grew up listening to.”

And this entire project has been a labour of love for Rohs who basically recorded, produced and even created the artwork for the album cover all on his own.

“I think it was just over a month and a half it ended up from the time I started recording the tracks to when the last track was finished recording,” said Rohs. “We had to mix it of course afterwards and I did all the artwork and stuff, [it was] probably three months by the time it was all said and done.”

“It was a lot of time it was a lot of you know come home from work spend five or six hours in the studio, do it all the same again for a few weeks straight, and the same thing with the artwork.”

The EP which is simply titled ‘Rohs’ will be released this Sunday, and the band will be kicking off the release with their first concert at Mosaic Music in Prince Albert.

“You can purchase (tickets) at Mosaic Music, I believe there’s a few left, it’s getting pretty close to sold out,” said Rohs.

As for the future of the band Rohs hopes to start working on releasing a full length album with the help of producer Richard McFarlane at Mosaic Music.

If you’d like to download the first single released titled ‘Monsters’ for free, you can click here.

jbowler@panow.com

On Twitter: @journalistjim