Live Music Monday: Locomotive Ghost
Locomotive Ghost plays their own stories, sharing desperate moments, celebrating mended hearts, and owning up to mistakes. The group’s earnest performance and shared male/female vocals have been likened to The Head and the Heart, while their pop sensibilities have yielded comparisons to acts like Of Monsters and Men and The Lumineers. Locomotive Ghost’s music is “at once artistically expressive, accessible, fun, and full of small surprises” (Avenue Calgary).
Locomotive Ghost’s fourth full-length album, “Into the Glow”, will be released on February 27th, 2017. The new album was recorded with award-winning producers Russell Broom and Spencer Cheyne and was largely supported by a successful crowdfunding campaign in 2016. The release will be supported with a national radio campaign and a Western Canadian tour this spring. “Into the Glow” is now available for pre-order on iTunes.
To date, Locomotive Ghost has released two standalone albums, four EPs, one compilation album, and one single. The group gained industry accolades for the ambitious and holistic creative approach to their year-long, self-produced “Seasons” project. In 2015, Locomotive Ghost began their collaboration with producer Spencer Cheyne when they released their single “In The Garden”. Later that year, they became the first contemporary music act to be featured at Calgary’s Bella Concert Hall. Locomotive Ghost has been highlighted on a dozen Canadian radio stations and several international podcasts, including the popular show “This Week In Science”. The group has performed at nearly two hundred events throughout Alberta, British Columbia, and Saskatchewan (and, according to Beatroute Alberta, “belongs on any festival stage in Canada”).
Locomotive Ghost was formed by singer Mike Buckley and bassist Ben Nixon while they were attending Selkirk College’s music program in Nelson, BC. They played together off-and-on for nearly a year before focusing on the project and settling on a name (taken from an Allen Ginsberg poem). After graduating from music school, Buckley and Nixon relocated to Calgary, where they eventually added vocalist/pianist Laura Schoenberg and drummer James Bundy.
