Todd Mader and Enzo Milia, one-half of the Squamish-based band Zombies Locker, have been playing together for 25 years, so they've seen a lot in the music business.
Since receiving the wild-card prize at last month's Supernova band competition in Vancouver, though, the gigs have been "flowing in" for the classic rock foursome that also includes Ben Lens and John Bright, the band's publicist wrote last week.
The band, which plans to release its fourth CD of original tunes later this summer, is set to play Chances Casino in Squamish on Saturday (April 27) and takes the Tom Lee Music Stage for the Band on the Run competition on May 4 in Vancouver.
Mader, who plays bass and guitar, said that in addition to a collection of CDs, he still listens to classic rock on vinyl. "I just bought a new turntable," he said.
He told The Chief last Thursday (April 18) that while all four have regular jobs, they're driven by a passion for the classic rock of the 1970s, '80s and '90s to keep making music, both for live audiences and in the studio.
"Enzo Milia and myself put together a band that was called The Noise, and it got changed to Zombie Roof. That name is a local climb in the Smoke Bluffs called Zombie Roof, which came from a Frank Zappa tune called Zombie Woof," he said.
It became Zombies Locker when the band added Lens, who used to play for a band called Davey's Locker, Mader said.
"That's the beauty of the band, because we're all coming from different areas. I'm a '70s guy who loves Zeppelin and [U.K.-based] Mott the Hoople and Alice Cooper -that whole '70s glam thing had a huge influence on me," Mader said.
"Enzo liked a lot of the The Cult and that from the '80s. Ben's a decade younger than us - he likes grunge like Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains and the newest member John comes from my era, so he maybe likes different bands, but from the same era."
Bright, a keyboard player who counts Kenny Wayne, Lyle Mays and the Pat Matheny Group among his influences, plays a classic Hammond organ, which gives the band a true classic rock feel, Mader said. "It's a Deep Purple kind of a sound," he said.
Zombies Locker performs a lot of cover tunes from the classic rock era, but also mixes in lots of the band's original tunes from its four CDs -among them Zombies Locker 3, its most recent studio production, or even the soon-to-be-released Zombies in the House of Madness.
Zombies Locker plays Saturday (April 27) at 9 p.m. at Chances Casino Squamish. There is no cover charge. For samples of the band in action, visit YouTube and key in "Zombies Locker."
