Peace will be making their third Sled Island visit this year, performing at the Royal Canadian Legion No. 1 Branch on June 19 and at Tubby Dog on June 22.
Frontman Dan Geddes says their sound has changed slightly over the years since they began in 2008.
“It has been kind of a classic evolution where we started out as a scrappier version of what we are now,” Geddes says, “a more punk inspired version, and as we’ve gotten older and experimented a little more musically, our tastes have changed and our ambitions have grown.”
Geddes says they have been moving towards “singer-songwriter” folk music and the next album will be even more so than the last.
The word “scuzzy” has been tossed around to describe the band — describing their usual psychedelic post-punk sound but also the Vancouver dive-bar where they got their name. Geddes says that he and drummer Geoff Dembicki were drinking in Funky Winker Beans where an old man gave them the peace sign and said that was the name of their band. They figured they wouldn’t trifle with fate.
Peace has accumulated many strange stories such as that one over the years. They recorded their latest album in Pamela Anderson’s hometown, once performed in the basement of Canada’s department of foreign affairs building and played in a detached garage looking out on a cemetery.
“We’ve played to a lot of strange dogs on the west coast,” Geddes adds. “I mean that literally.”
He says there was a dog that liked to watch shows and bob its head and mosh with the audience.
“There was one show in Oakland where somebody crowd-surfed a dog,” Geddes says. “I was a little concerned for the dog’s safety at that point.”