Mark your calendar for an entertaining evening to support a good cause!
On Saturday, April 27, the band Snake Oil will perform a fundraising show at Balmoral Rec Centre. The band is known for its impressive impersonations of rock musicians from the ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s and more.
Travis Williams, one of the organizers, said Snake Oil performed at Quarry Days last year, and fans left the event super excited.
“So, brought back by popular demand, we felt this would be a fantastic fundraiser for the Balmoral Rec Centre,” Williams said.
“The Snake Oil concert is an important fundraiser for all of those who enjoy our community centre as the funds will go towards a new artificial ice plant condenser.”
Doors open at 7 p.m. on April 27, and the performance will start at 8:30 p.m.
“Fans can expect an awesome show filled with your favourite songs and rock bands. It is an all-age licensed event and food will be available. You may bring your own chair, but be prepared to stand as the arena floor will quickly become giant dance floor. It is going to be a blast,” Williams said with a laugh.
“To make this event a success, we’ll need volunteers, sponsorship and, most importantly, fans in the stands. Your support is very much appreciated.”
Snake Oil features Darren Moore, who grew up in Stonewall and now lives in Las Vegas. The other band members are also from Manitoba and are currently based in the province.
For Moore, the upcoming Balmoral concert brings back memories from yesteryear.
“When I was a young kid living in Stonewall, I used to perform with my Dad’s band in Balmoral for various dances and socials quite often,” he said.
“Although it wasn’t really my kind of music, that’s how I learned about live performing and got a great music education that led to a career.”
Now with Snake Oil, Moore continues to look forward to every performance. The band offers four completely different shows. The Balmoral show will be “Snake Oil Ikons of Rock,” which features the music of classic rock icons such as Kiss, Van Halen, Heart, Joan Jett, Ozzy and more.
“We love what we do. A part of the fun for us is, although the songs are well rehearsed, what we do or say on stage is not — so it’s a different show every night,” he said.
“And we have so many characters we do, we can’t fit them all into a single show. So the set list varies from performance to performance as well.”
The audience will have plenty to look forward to, with a mix of cover songs and originals.
“The band has an original album distributed through a European record label,” Moore said. “We will do a few original songs and the rest will all be songs any classic rocker will know.”
If anyone would like to preview the original music, they can visit http://snakeoilrock.com/music. Snippets of the live show are also posted online at www.snakeoilrock.com.
Moore expects the Balmoral Rec Centre fundraiser will be filled with music, laughter and fun.
“The audience will witness a variety of classic rock era characters in full costume performing their hit songs as close to the original albums as possible,” he said.
“We’ve been told by many industry professionals we do some of their songs better than the original artists did live.”
Looking ahead, Snake Oil has a full calendar of upcoming performances, both near and far. On Friday, April 26, the night before the Balmoral concert, the band will perform the Snake Oil ’90s Rock Circus show, which features classic rock from the ’90s and early 2000s at the Burton Cummings Theatre.
“We are also aligned doing shows with Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines to do an Ikons of Rock Cruise,” Moore said. “We have shows this year from California to New York City, so we’re everywhere.”
The high-energy performance has all the makings of a rock ’n’ roll party.
“We are all proud Canadians, more so Manitobans, sharing our ‘flatland mafia’ pride — there’s a good handful of Manitoba-born professional musicians performing all over the world and that’s our shared handle,” Moore added. “And we share that pride globally.”
Tickets to the Balmoral Rec Centre fundraiser cost $40 each and are available by contacting Don Slater at 204-513-1515 or Travis Williams at 204-899-8277. Tickets are also being sold at the Rockwood Motor Inn, Home Hardware, Korner Kutz and the Balmoral Rec Centre.
“It will be a fun and historic event,” Williams said. “Please join us for Snake Oil. We’re going to blow the roof off the old arena!”
