In a basement somewhere in Ottawa, TBD is getting ready to rock your world.
Six introduction to music industry arts students are determined to set a name for themselves in the music industry – although that name is to be determined.
The band has six members: Colin Prentice, who sings lead vocals, Robin Hamilton-Craig, who does lead guitar and backing vocals, Alex Dee, who plays drums, Andrew MacDonell, who is on bass guitar, Justin Cho on keyboard and finally Ramel Bautista on rhythm guitar.
Fans of rock and blues will be lining up to hear TBD play some hits by artists such as Justin Bieber.
“You would never know it was Justin Bieber. People come up afterwards and they’re like ‘oh that’s such an awesome song.’ ‘Oh thanks that’s just love yourself by Justin Bieber,” said MacDonell about a fans’ reaction.
They also do covers of songs by Stevie Wonder, The Beatles and Oasis, but the songs are changed instrumentally.
“The thing is we are still in the process of figuring out who we are. Our name is TBD which literally means ‘to be determined,’” said Hamilton-Craig.
While the young band has only played three gigs – two battle of the bands and one opening for another band – they are eager to play more. There were plans to play at the Last Band Standing finals that were meant to take place on March 24, but due to a series of unfortunate events, that did not happen.
“We’re definitely disappointed that it was cancelled, to say the least. It’s just a bad situation all around. We put in a lot of hours for this gig,” said Hamilton-Craig
Baldeep Randhawa, events programmer for the SA, explained that the Last Band Standing was cancelled because out of the five bands scheduled to play, only one was confirmed available for the night. Two other bands had to cancel, and there was no response from the final two bands. Numerous email malfunctions of the past weeks played a major role.
“There was definitely a lack of communication with the SA and us a bit too and also technical difficulties. Emails weren’t getting through. It was kind of unavoidable,” said MacDonell. “What happened, happened and we’ve got to move on.”
The band still has a bit of growing up to do when it comes to management and getting gigs on their own.
“We haven’t actually had to go out and get a gig yet, because people would come to us and say ‘hey you wanna play with us?’” said Hamilton-Craig
Although TBD is already planning for the future, don’t expect an EP just yet. The band members said that they will likely be waiting to September to start working on anything new.
“We might take a break for a bit, focus on school. We’ve got some pretty high key assignments due within the next week,” said MacDonell
TBD can be seen playing at Greenfield’s pub on April 12 for League of Rock.
