There are bands for which rock and roll is a lifestyle, and then there are bands for which it is life.
At an age when most boys are still dreaming of rock stardom, the Weber Brothers were too busy working to care. Four sets a night, four nights a week, the brothers perfected their hard-won sound in Maryland dive bars they were often too young to frequent. Inspired by their intense love of Scorcese’s classic concert film “The Last Waltz,” Ryan and Sam sent off a self-recorded demo tape to the legendary Ronnie Hawkins, the elder statesman of rock whose former protégés (Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, et al.) went on to reshape the music history as The Band. Duly impressed by the pair’s immense raw talent, Hawkins promptly invited them to audition for his storied backing band, The Hawks.
One quick decision and one long van ride later, they arrived at Hawkins’ rural Ontario home, and after surviving the intense musical apprenticeship of his fabled “Rock ‘n’ Roll Bootcamp,” they were in: full-blooded Hawks. Ten years and six self-released albums later, the Webers have spread their wings, shared the stage with icons like Garth Hudson, Levon Helm, Leon Russell, Derek Trucks and Kris Kristofferson, and toured extensively throughout the US, Canada, and Europe.
“Left Right Left Right,” their seventh release, is nothing less than a rebirth of The Weber Brothers sound. A double album of 26 original songs, it fuses the stomping country rock learned at Hawkins’ knee with the brothers’ own love of pop music in all its splendor, from gorgeous “Pet Sounds”/ “White Album” vocal harmonies to blacktop-burning 50’s rockabilly, full-throated Crazy Horse anthems to classic corner group doo-wop. Tightly focused in execution yet epic in scope, “Left Right Left Right” is the Weber Brothers at their finest.