Youngbloods win Battle of the Bands

By Brady Grove, Times Reporter

After a gruelling seven-week competition, Lethbridge band Youngbloods emerged victorious at the first annual Battle of the Bands on Aug. 25.
The screamo-rock band beat out five other finalists with a high-energy show complete with dancing and head banging.
“I’m surprised to be honest with you,” said Youngbloods lead singer Kyle Hogan. “There was a lot of really good acts.”
The Youngbloods took home the top prize of $1,500 and opened for Meghan Patrick on Aug. 26 at the Strathmore ag grounds. They will also host a radio program on 95.1 Golden West Radio at some point in the future.
Hogan called out to the crowd during the Youngbloods second last song to come down from the grandstands and dance in front of the stage. Half of those in attendance joined the group which definitely helped in the audience interaction category.
“We really feed off other people’s energy and other people having fun,” said Hogan. “We like to have fun with the crowd.”
The finals were no different than the opening round, with judges grading bands in four different categories including musicianship, originality, stage presence and audience interaction. Each category received a score from one to 10.
This was Strathmore’s first foray into a Battle of the Bands-style competition. The idea came from the Canada 150 Committee to help celebrate Canada’s sesquicentennial birthday. Canada 150 vice-chair Stacy Devine and her husband Shane wanted to bring a musical event to the celebration and put in a lot of time volunteering at each Battle of the Bands week at Legends which ran from July 13 to Aug. 17.
“We had a great venue, great response from bands, really good turnout from the community and for the most part everything went just as planned,” said Stacy Devine.
According to Devine they are going to assess the competition over the next few weeks but would really love to have the Battle of the Bands back next year and make it an annual event.
“We plan to get some feedback from the bands to see what we can do to make it better and we have already had discussions about maybe changing the venue to accommodate all ages,” said Devine.