Breakout 2007: Lions In The Street

Hometown: Vancouver, British Columbia

Sound:
If the Glimmer Twins left the Stones' Some Girls sessions to join the Allman Brothers in the studio to record the soundtrack to Almost Famous.

Why?
Lions In The Street really are Vancouver's best-kept secret. When it comes to Canada, at least. While the four-piece rock combo haven't toured anywhere in Canada outside of B.C. yet, they've been making fans south of the 49th for the past few years, playing New York, Chicago, Texas and California.

"The U.S. has been great to us," says Chris, the band's single-named vocalist/guitarist. "It's a place where we've had nice, warm receptions everywhere we've gone. We had some good blog coverage, too, which has definitely enabled us to tour there."

American interest surrounding the Lions started to bubble sometime in 2004, resulting in their signing with a major label. The band were sent to Los Angeles to record their debut full-length with such heady names as Todd Rundgren and Gilby Clarke being thrown around as potential producers. It was almost too perfect. Things would inevitably go sour, forcing the Lions to make the decision to extricate themselves from their record deal.

"You get caught in competing interests and different perspectives and the band always loses," says Chris. "The music business is so much about ego and so little about music. People fight, the band gets caught in the middle and you end up losing. So we took things into our own hands and got a lawyer and split."

Going from a luxurious, fully loaded Los Angeles studio to a damp, Vancouver basement with an 8-track, the boys recorded and self-released their Cat Got Your Tongue EP (available as a free download on their website) in 2006. After their disastrous first taste of major label life, they're refocused on building their name from the ground up, relying heavily on the internet community, satellite radio and good ol' fashioned word-of-mouth hype. Expect them to bring their ass-shaking, rhythm and blues-inflected rock 'n' roll across Canada sometime in '07. Then we can rightfully claim these Lions as our own.

Official Site: www.lionsinthestreet.com

This feature is from the February 2007 issue of Chart Magazine. To purchase the issue, go to the Chart Shop.