Page 11 - Black Velvet Magazine Issue 106

BV106 pg10-15 Kris Barras Band.qxp_BV106 pg11 02/05/2022 21:36 Page 2

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hange is a big thing. Some
Csay it can be as good as a
Unleashed evitability. But one thing is certain
Unleashed
rest. For others, it’s a scary in-
- without change it is usually diffi-
cult to move forward and
progress. This has certainly been
proven with the latest work of the
Kris Barras Band on their latest
album ‘Death Valley Paradise’. The
band have shifted gears ever so
slightly to incorporate a harder
and rockier edge to their trade-
mark blues rock sound and the re-
sults are tremendous, reflected
not only in the new record, but the
bigger venues around the country
it will enable them to headline,
and is further evidence that, while
change can be a gamble, it’s more
than worth the risk when it pays
off.

nother example of change on ‘Death Valley
AParadise’ is within the songs and lyrics,
and in many ways they are a reflection of the life
and times that Kris, the band (comprised of Josiah
J. Manning on keys/guitar, Kelpie McKenzie on
bass and Billy Hammett on drums), and the world
as a whole, has gone through in the last two years,
and if historians are looking to create a time cap-
sule of 2022 for future generations and need a
record to show them what life was like, this could
be the one to include.
‘Wake Me When It’s Over’ is a prime example.
‘Wondering if you're out there, are you stuck in this
nightmare, alone in darkness and climbing the
walls’ is a lyric most will relate to, since everyone’s
lives changed with the global pandemic in early
2020 and is something Kris has spoken of. So, we
begin by asking the former MMA fighter turned lead
vocalist and guitarist about the importance of the
release of the new album and whether it represents
to him a much-needed return to normality after
some trying times.
“I started writing a few of these tunes pre-pan-
demic,” Kris replies. “‘My Parade’, the first chorus
of that was written around November 2019, but the
song had a slightly different vibe then. Before the
pandemic hit, I was constantly on the road and it
actually started off as a positive thing because I,
like a lot of people, thought it was only going to be
a three-week thing and it would all be over, but of
course it wasn’t. I had to cancel a tour and that was
a real shitter.
“So, I embraced it and I used the time to write
songs. And then reality set in and it was like, ‘Hold
on, this is going to be a lot longer than what we first
thought,’ and yeah, I had some dark times. It was
tough, like it was for everyone. And I just kept writ-
ing. Looking back, I think, for me maybe, it was al-
most a blessing in disguise, because, while on one
hand it was some of the worst years of my life, it
KRIS BARRAS BAND