Getting invited to this year’s Boots and Hearts Music Festival was a luck of the draw kind of thing, according to Matt McCartney, percussionist, guitarist and hamornica player for a new, young band called Northern Roads.
McCartney, 21, was in Peterborough last year, playing hockey for OHL’s Peterborough Petes. Every two weeks, the team gathers with the team chaplain, Tim Coles, who happens to be good friends with Boots and Hearts founder Shannon McNevan.
McCartney was hesitant to even approach McNevan. After all, his band was new and he didn’t think McNevan would be interested.
One of McCartney’s closest buddies on the team, Cameron Lizotte, tried to convince him to take the chance.
“I kept saying I don’t know, I don’t know but then [Lizotte] finally said, ‘Screw it.’ He went into my car, took my CD and gave it to him for me,” he said.
McCartney didn’t think he’d hear from McNevan again, but a few months later, he was invited to play on the SiriusXM Front Porch Stage on Sunday, Aug. 3 of this year’s country music festival.
“I was in shock. I called the band right away,” said McCartney.
Northern Roads has been together for just one year, but they have been friends for years.
McCartney and his younger brother, Mitch, have been playing music for ten years. Mitch, 19, says he has been taking guitar lessons since he was young and his brother took drum lessons.
Rob Almeita, 21, was the McCartney brothers’ high school friend and plays main guitar with Mitch.
Almeita was jamming with Connor Allen, 21, when he found out that Allen had known the McCartney brothers since kindergarten, he was invited to be the band’s lead singer.
The four Scarborough boys have always they known they’ve wanted to make an album together. Last summer, they pulled together $2,000 to spend two days in a studio.
“Twelve songs in two days is unheard of because professional bands are known to spend like one week for one song,” said Allen. “The music engineer looked at us weird, but we did it.”
Their album is currently at its post-production stage and is slated to be released late August of this year. They released their first single, Take Your Time, on their YouTube channel in January.
The band describes their sound to be “modern alternative acoustic rock,” with influences from bands like City and Colour, Mumford & Sons and The Lumineers.
Their first professional gig was only on June 14 at Scarborough’s The Three Monkeys Pub at 1585 Warden Ave. They still feel very young but, they are working hard to get themselves ready for the music festival.
“We’d just like to take it as far as possible,” said Almeita. “We enjoy doing it and that’s all that matters.”
The Boots and Hearts Music Festival 2014 takes place at the Canadian Tire Motorsport Park in Bowmanville, Ontario. The festival will run from July 31 to Aug. 3.
To learn more about Northern Roads, you can follow their Twitter account @NorthernRoads.