Montreal’s Justin Saladino Band follows up the critically A Fool’s Heart CD with a live recording in a studio with an intimate audience simply titled LIVE.
Why a live CD in a studio environment? We don’t have the luxury of using the same audio/technical team on every show so the logistics of recording a few nights and blending them didn’t make sense. Piccolo studio is massive and allowed us both a great live-show experience and enough control over the recording to guarantee good sound quality. The final takes are the result of 2 nights and a soundcheck/rehearsal.
Why a bigger band? Rearranging the songs is half the fun of the creative process. And we felt that bigger, in this case, is better.
How the songs are different from the studio version? There are no metronomes, much more spontaneity and an overall “going for it” feel. The arrangements are spiced up, dynamically enhanced and the guitars are BOLD.
Why a Tom Petty song? “You Don’t Know How It Feels” is a tune with a feel that seamlessly fits in our set of originals and in addition I think that we add some extra flavours to the mix.
Why that Studio? The room, the feel, the history and our chief engineer Patrice Pruneau who works out of that spot.
Anything about the song selection? The tunes we selected are some of our favourites to perform live and we felt the live versions of these tunes deserved to be recorded.
Happy with the result? We’re all really proud of the result. All of us left that session feeling really great about the experience and as though we had made something worth immortalizing on an album.
Homegrown Montrealer, Justin Saladino leads a guitar-driven roots blues group. Following their 2016 release “No Worries,” the Justin Saladino Band brought their music to audiences at the ‘Montreal International Jazz Festival,’ ‘Tremblant International Blues Festival,’ ‘Rogers Cup,’ in Montreal, ‘Trois-Rivière en Blues’ and the ‘Toronto Blues Summit.’ In 2018, the 21st annual Maple Blues Awards nominated the group for “New Artist of the Year.” The groups first full length LP, “A Fool’s Heart” was released in 2018.
The band was chosen by the Montreal Blues Society to represent Quebec at the International Blues Challenge in Memphis where they had a great chance to showcase their brand of blues to an international audience of fans and presenters.
At 24 years old, Justin has been on the scene for over a decade. Having performed alongside the likes of Ghost Town Blues Band, Victor Wainwright, Steve Strongman, Frank Marino, David Gogo, Jack de Keyzer, and Ronnie Baker Brooks; he’s seen firsthand how it’s done. Learning from the masters and translating these experience into his own project, the Justin Saladino Band puts on a dynamic show, demonstrating a wide palette of sounds from heavy blues/rock riffs to folky acoustic tones all while keeping the audience grooving.
