Welcome to Canadian Beat’s Indie Spotlight – where we highlight a new independent artist every month. This month we chose four musicians from Montreal that make up the band Guidestones.
The band started with twin brothers Ryan and Zander Boudreau. They began playing the local hard rock circuit for years before meeting vocalist/guitarist Gabrielle La Rue. With a written EP ready to track, they enlisted bassist Dizzy Velvet in 2018 to help complete their sound.
Their sound pulls from 70s and 80s rock while their lyrics become a balancing act between deep conversations and light-hearted stories. Always with a simple goal in mind – to connect with like-minded listeners with constant sincerity. The band calls their overall sound a “melting pot” – drawing from classic influences like Bryan Adams or Fleetwood Mac. Their 2018 single “So Sick” feels reminiscent of the quick-pulse energy of the mid-2000s pop-punk era.
Much like dating becoming a band comes with a learning curve, and they’ve learned over the last three years how to play off of everyone’s strengths; as they continued to go through band member changes until Velvet solidified their group in 2018. In their words, “The first EP and upcoming record were written by Gab, Zander and Ryan. Gab or Ryan would show up with basic ideas whether it be just a guitar riff or vocal melody and Zander would help structure them. Lyrics are primarily written by Gab and Ryan with Zander helping refine them. Now that we have a stable bass player with Dizzy around, we’re excited to see what comes out when we start writing again.”
Simply getting music to the right people seems to be one of the major challenges indie bands face in a growing and already saturated industry. Producing quality music is at an artist’s fingertips thanks to the technology landscape, but the members of Guidestones will need to continue building their fanbase; as they tell us, as long as their chemistry turns out great music everything else is a bonus.