13 May 2014

This Thursday, east coast band Bloody Diamonds plays the Jimmy Jazz with The Shelters. Read on to learn more about the band and visit the event listing to learn more about the show.

Music Lives: How did Bloody Diamonds come to be? How have you changed since you started playing together?

We first met while we were at college in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. We were taking a music arts program and all of the original line up actually lived on the same street not far from the school. We played together at school in various groups, and in a few less serious projects, when we decided to start the band. To be honest though, that all seems like a different lifetime at this point. Pretty much everything has changed since we first started the band even though it was only a couple years ago. We’ve went through multiple line up changes, tour vans, learned a lot, and grown up a lot. We’ve got to do some cool things we never imagined we actually would get the chance to. What hasn’t changed since we first started playing together would be a better question.

ML: Sometimes you play as a 4 piece band, and sometimes just as a duo. What’s the differences when you’re playing live between the two groups?

Though the vibe of our music stays the same with both the full band and the duo set, our songs are a lot more stripped down as the duo. With the full band, there are twice as many instruments so there’s a lot more to work with and it’s way easier to create a full, heavy sound. As the duo, all the focus is on the vocals and guitar… because that’s pretty much all there is. Sara has a lot more room with her vocals, so it makes for a really intense live show. And, though the songs are more stripped down, it’s still really distorted, dirty, and heavy. The duo set definitely takes a lot more energy though, where it’s only the two of us, putting on a performance requires a great deal of focus. Our “stripped set”, as we call it, is hard to explain in words… you need to hear it and see it to really understand how it works.

ML: You guys have a great sound! You list influences like Black Sabbath and Band of Skulls – how did your sound come together? Did it take a while to find a good fit or did it just come naturally?

Thank you. Our sound came together pretty naturally really. As a group we listened to a lot of the same music and had a pretty distinct style in mind when we started the band. Theres never been any argument about what direction we wanted to take the band in musically. After playing a couple hundred shows and doing some recordings some things have changed, but it’s more of an evolution of the original ideas than anything else. It’s always really obvious when we’re writing, if a song sounds like “us”.

ML: This tour is jam packed! What keeps you going with such a busy schedule?

It’s going to be a pretty busy few months, that’s for sure. The busy schedule is kind of what keeps us going, if that makes sense? This is what we do and luckily we get to do what we love. Knowing that we have a show that night is more than enough motivation to wake up in the morning, get our asses in the van, and drive to the next city. Meeting great people and connecting through live music every night is an incredible way to get to spend your time. As the tours get bigger we get to travel to and see more places that we’ve never been to before, so that’s pretty cool as well. Getting to see a real desert is one of the things we’re both really stoked for on the tour this spring/summer. Eating healthy and drinking lots of water keeps us going too, haha.

ML: Where can people find out more about Bloody Diamonds?

Our website www.bloodydiamonds.com is the best way to find out more about us. You can find all of our tour dates and any other pertinent band information there. It also has links to all of our social media accounts for anyone that wants to stay up to date with us on the road on a more day to day level.