By TJ
July 22, 2010
It seems that last week my destiny was determined to find out who The Snowbirds are and where have they been hiding? After all, they are from Green Bay so I should have known at least something about them, but the truth is The Snowbirds have been kind of low key in the area. A good friend tipped me off to them a while back with a "You gotta come down and see them, they're great!" and he left it at that. You see, I trust my friends advice, but we have a little different taste in music so if he says something is good I'm extremely curious but still not one hundred percent sold on it. A week goes by and I go down to the new Kavarna with my favorite vegetarian friend from Madison for lunch and we see all the posters hanging up for the show coming up on Friday. We spent some time imagining what a show would be like in the new Kavarna space. A couple of days with the question still swimming around in my head, and I reached the final straw, via one of Kavarna's facebook posts. That's it; it's Friday and I'm heading down to Kavarna to see The Snowbirds. I was on my path and ready to get answers.
When I got to Kavarna there was already a decent crowd inside. I made my way to the rear of the building down the tri-level loft and found my friends at a table already putting away some PBRs. Songwriter Ben Gordon and songwriter Jon Lefler each did a fine acoustic prelude before The Snowbirds took the stage that is on the second level of the three floors. The Snowbirds counted in and my ears were hit with some mellow over-driven guitar rhythms, pedal steel guitar, keyboards, bass, and drums. The sound was so soothing; it was northern country gone right. Take away the accents and vocal twang out of country music and you are left with a version that is closer to folk rock with emotion but still country nonetheless. The Snowbirds have an earnestness to their sound which is brought to the front with Jason Berken's mid range vocals and drummer Jeff Berken's harmonization on the backing vocals. Matt Keon on the pedal steel worked in sync with Gary White's keyboards to add a sweet bit of droning sub melody. Jeff Berken's drums were simple and solid and had a lot of power with Scott Schoenbeck locked in with his warm tone bass guitar. There were times when the band's sound would venture off to the edge of alternative rock with some driven guitar solo work from Jason and then settle right back into some slow tempo country but in all it was a good fit. They played for a few hours to the sold out room and the patrons were really digging it. The Snowbirds loosely fit alternative country with rock and roll and they are an instant classic, pulling 
inspirations and tones that are so familiar that they lend a sense of home. Jason does a terrific job building emotion into Gretsch hollow body guitar that blends perfectly with his vocals. The songs can be as enjoyably haunting as they are homely. They are a tight group, and probably one of the more professional sounding bands I have heard in the area. It seemed almost as if they have been playing together for years. It turns out most of them have been playing together over the years in the area with different bands and projects most of which are worth mentioning.
In fact when you venture into the resume of the musicians that make up The Snowbirds it is a little distracting so I will leave it to you to fill in the blanks. The Snowbirds played an awesome show; the sound was great and the room is one of the best stages downtown for live music. So my friend was dead on about The Snowbirds and if you get a chance to go check out The Snowbirds I highly recommend you do, because it is music that you can most likely relate to and it seems that up until now they have been flying below the radar. You can check out their website here.
