The Broken Nose Mall Santa (BNMS) band has been together on and off for about four years, recently releasing their first album – Ditch Picnic. The new album consists of six songs; Goalie Fights, 1844, Frig off Barb, Woman is a Dangercat, Worst, and Hand Dipped. The band includes Josh Schneider – guitar and vocals; Jordan Heaman – guitar and vocals; Matt Friesen – bass; and Carson Penner – drums and vocals.
The 26-year-old Schneider explained how it all began, “Carson, Matt and Jordan were playing with Jonathon Lesyk on drums for quite some time, but [Lesyk] ended up moving to Edmonton and none of them were quite ready to pack it in.”
Schneider continued, “I got a phone call asking if I could fill in on guitar for a show in Winnipeg, and it went really, really well, and we decided that it would be a permanent spot. So Carson took over on drums from that point on and now here we are.”
The band had to put in a ton of work to get to where they are now, but it was all worth it for the four band members.
“We had a pretty tight timeline to work with [for the album],” said Schneider.
In May the group took a list of six songs that they wanted to record, and laid down the instrumental work before the process of vocals could happen.
“Carson played all of his drum tracks first to a click track (basically a metronome in your headphones) and laid down the foundation for the whole album. Then Matt played all of his bass parts over that.”
Schneider continued, “And finally, Jordan and I played all of our guitar parts. We recorded all of our vocals on our last day in the studio, so we were all pretty hoarse by the time we were done.”
Broken Nose Mall Santa has their first album released and in the books. Schneider said, “We are pretty proud of it. We hope to inspire more local kids to start making music and getting their voice out there and heard.”
