The riff-driven rock of The Crawl – including the bass and vocals of South Surrey’s
Brian Sanheim – will hit Vancouver venue Falconetti’s East Side Grill (1812 Commercial Dr.) on Friday, April 5 at 7:30 p.m.
The Morgan Heights resident and his Vancouver bandmates, guitarist-vocalist Kirk Adair Douglas and drummer Ron Tucker, will be playing songs from their third full-length CD, Nine, including the first single, Dream To Fly.
The song is also featured on their website in a video directed and recorded by Sanheim’s daughter, Jodie.
The upcoming appearance at Falconetti’s is not the first public hearing for the group or its members by any means – in addition to live gigs – the band averages one a month – The Crawl’s accessible, feel-good brand of rock ‘n’ roll has found high-profile TV and film exposure.
It’s not a bad place to be in a shaky economic climate when venues aren’t likely to spend much time or energy promoting the acts they book, and radio stations feel constrained to play it safe with copycat formats, Sanheim said.
For The Crawl, it doesn’t hurt that Douglas (formerly with Swank) is an engineer/producer and owner of Vancouver recording studio Soundlounge productions, or that he and Tucker (formerly of Blake Havard) have been on the same musical wavelength since they were teenagers in Edmonton.
“Ron and Kirk went to school together, but after they graduated and went out into the world they kind of lost touch,” Sanheim said.
When they re-established contact through Facebook a few years ago, they discovered they were both living in Vancouver. An invitation to Tucker to visit Douglas’ studio led to a writing and recording collaboration that won movie and TV work even without live gigs.
When Sanheim (formerly of Brandon Paris/Abandon Paris) was invited in, he brought an equally seasoned third voice to the band.
“I’ve toured all over Canada and the U.S., and so have the other guys,” he said.
“I was playing with Kirk in another project, and he said ‘I think we’re going to take this (The Crawl) live, and it would be kind of nice to have another writer involved.’
“The big thing about The Crawl is that we play for the love of the music. There’s a real passion for what we play and what we do is a real collective effort. We work hard and we work at making connections with the music industry.”
One of the biggest connections came when The Crawl’s Rev It Up was chosen to be played at 19 NHL franchises’ home games (including Madison Square Gardens and Vancouver’s Rogers Arena) while also being featured by Sirius XM radio for its NHL broadcasts.
“The NHL was really big for us, and as far as we know we’re still getting played for those games, although it’s a little hard to track,” Sanheim said.
Use of four songs from The Crawl’s first, self-titled album, and eight songs from the follow-up, Terminal Ave., for the mockumentary film Tight (about an all-girl porn star band) has also meant their music has been featured at the L.A. Film Festival (where the movie won best documentary honours) and played on Howard Stern’s radio and TV shows.
Five songs from the first album have also been featured on the Playboy Channel’s show, The Boy Nexxt Door.
In addition, the track Fight, Fight, Fight (Gonna Get Some) from Nine (released in November) has been chosen as the new theme song for the mixed martial arts TV channel Aggression TV, while music from all three albums will be featured in a new Aggression show, Lingerie Fighting Championships.
Sanheim chuckles when asked about the pattern of The Crawl’s music being placed in rather risque projects.
“It’s not exactly where we thought we’d see our music,” he said. “But with 14 tracks in the Lingerie Fighting Championships, it’s royalties, particularly if the show gets picked up by a large network.
“We’ve taken a different approach to music and part of that is that TV and film have become more like record labels used to be,” he added.
“We’re just building relationships. We started off by getting music on the Playboy Channel, and as the contacts we have do other productions, they’re inviting us into them.”
For more information on The Crawl, and upcoming gigs, visit www.thecrawl.ca