I first met Kaylar Chan and Ryley Kirkpatrick of Raincity in a coffee shop in Vancouver’s vibrant Mount Pleasant. We had a brief chat about some of the incredible things the band has been working on recently over hot chocolates before the stylish musical pair headed out for the evening. They were charming, well-dressed, articulate and modest. Only the burgundy tips of Chan’s short curls hinted of the extraverted on-stage personas.
Raincity was formed nearly three years ago from a serendipitous scenario that found front woman Clare Tiddy without an opening band for a solo show at the Railway. As luck would have it, Kirkpatrick and Chan, who were playing together at the time, saw her ad in the Nimbus forums and stepped up to the plate.
“It went magically,” Chan recalls enthusiastically.
The plan was to play a few songs together and instead the pair ended up playing half the set with Tiddy. From that, the original framework for Raincity was born. A year later Drummer Sheldon D’Eith entered the fray and a year after that, bassist Ginger Chen joined the eclectic mix. Today Raincity are on one helluva run, recently winning the Best in Vancouver contest put on by Live Acts Canada. The win earned them a song recording and production with Danny Craig from Default.
A few days after that, they released the video for “Give This Up” which features all five band members rocking out in an elevator and quickly winning over all the unsuspecting souls that find themselves in a confined space with them. The original idea was to have the band crash a children’s tea party, but as the band and their team riffed on the idea, the elevator was the one that stuck because it was unexpected and easy to pull off from a production standpoint.
“Some of the other ideas were a little elaborate,” Kirkpatrick laughs. “Stuff where we would need four mansions to film in and we were like, maybe we should save some money for costumes.”
The result is an out of the box fun-filled few minutes that is sure to get you dancing, and if you are a fan Star Wars, you’ll likely appreciate the credits that roll at the end.
A few short weeks later, on Boxing Day, Raincity kicked off a funk filled night at the Commodore Ballroom, opening for Vancouver funk lords, Five Alarm Funk along with Small Town Artillery. Their live show is gloriously quirky and energetic and it’s not surprising at all that this five-piece has won virtually every music contest they’ve entered.
Kirkpatrick was sporting freshly shaved noggin and a sequined electric blue jacket while Chan was decked out in an equally shiny gold jacket with snug black leather pants. Tiddy twirled around the stage, her savory vocals punching through the sexy sax solos and funk fused jams the rest of the band were laying down.
Their short set was as promised, a non-stop atomic dance party and they left the stage to a chorus of well-deserved cheers. The performance at the Commodore may have been the latest high point of their recent rise, but it certainly isn’t the last we’ll hear of them. This fab five will be releasing some new content early in the new year including a new single called “Insomnia” and a video for “Crazy.”
We can also look forward the song they choose to produce with Danny Craig and if things go as planned 2020 will see them touring and hitting the festival circuit. As much as their live show depicted extravagance and lavish bad-assery, Chan and Kirkpatrick remain level-headed about the future.
“You can expect one thing, but it can turn out a completely different way,” remarks Chan, summing up life in the music industry in general.
I’m looking forward to seeing how things unfold for Raincity, something tells me there will be plenty of opportunity for them to choose which way things turn out.
