Celebrating 20 years of music, Toronto’s Bedouin Soundclash is coming to the Capital Ballroom this December for the second night of their Canadian tour. After the re-release of their 2004 album, Sounding a Mosaic, the band is bringing their sound back to the stage.
Bedouin Soundclash’s hiatus lasted a little longer than intended. The band took a break in 2011, returning to the studio in 2018 to record their album Mass in New Orleans, Louisiana with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. They began playing shows again following the release of Mass, in 2019, until COVID hit. They’ve now returned to the stage again, first in the UK with a tour they recently finished and now with their upcoming Canadian tour.
Hearing about people’s experiences at shows is something vocalist/guitarist Jay Malinowski enjoys about touring. He says he goes into the audience to talk with fans after every show. Over time, Malinowski has even become acquainted with some fans.
“In the UK, there was a family that came out, Alex Star, a fan of ours, who passed away and played ‘When the Night Feels My Song’ at his funeral. They played it while they took his coffin down the aisle, and his whole family came out in Birmingham. I actually had met Alex a few times from when he was 14 years old, like way back in 2006,” says Malinowski. “So, there’s moments like that that make it really kind of, makes me realize what’s important about what we do and what isn’t. I’ve kind of an indescribable feeling of being really humbled, and I mean all the emotions, but grateful that we got to be a part of some other people’s lives in this way, because we don’t take it for granted at this point.”
After 20 years of putting out music, Malinowski also says the crowd is slowly getting younger. Some newer fans are coming with their parents who have been longtime fans; others heard Bedouin Soundclash from a surprising source.
“I remember when we were playing Toronto, [a] couple kids came up, and they knew ‘When The Night Feels My Song’ because of CBC Kids. They knew it as children, but they actually had no idea that we were the same band. They’d only heard us through Mass, the record we did in New Orleans,” says Malinowski.
In music there are different trajectories one can take. Starting in university, bassist Eon Sinclair and Malinowski immersed themselves in the music they wanted to create. From there, the sounds flowed.
“We just got ourselves so wrapped up into the world that we wanted to live in, which was like ’80s, ska, and punk, and jungle, and drum and bass music. And we had all these influences, but we had no idea what was going on around us,” says Malinowski, “And then everything flowed from that. And I think if you’re going to be an artist who writes your own music and wants to have that kind of identity, then that’s the way to start. And then everything can flow from it once you have that kind of core value or vision from your music.”
Not taking anything too personally is a lesson that Malinowski works on every day and advises other creatives to do also.
“It’s like you’re going to do something very personal, that you’re going to present it to the world, and there’s going to be rejection of some kind,” says Malinowski. “And so, it’s easy to forget that there is a ton of positivity out there in the world.”
Bedouin Soundclash
7 pm Friday, December 6
$27.50, Capital Ballroom
thecapitalballroom.com