Arcade Fire's Tim Kingsbury Creates Sam Patch Group, Working on Album

Tim Kingsbury, bassist and guitarist for the Canadian indie rock band Arcade Fire, is breaking out and exploring a new side project group he has created, dubbed Sam Patch, and the group is working towards an album.

According to Pitchfork, video surfaced of the band's first show at Bar Le Ritz PDB in Montreal as part of the Passovah Summer Fest. Kingsbury was backed by Arcade Fire drummer Jeremy Gara and Basia Bulat on piano and guitar.

In an interview with Cult Montreal, Kingsbury explained that most of the album was written in the hotel rooms of his latest tour with Arcade Fire.

The band's name comes from a 19th century American daredevil who jumped into Niagara Falls, which based on the footage below pretty well describes what we've heard of the band thus far. In the interview, he describes the sound simply as rock music and notes that it feels a lot more stripped down than the large posse of Arcade Fire folks he's used to touring with. He describes how he was able to work on these songs himself, rather than feed off of such a large band, all with their own input. By picking up a nylon sting guitar and playing with some keys, a moog synthesizer and a drum machine, he started coming up with new songs and the rest seemed to fall in place.

To this point, the album has largely been recorded in his home with production and instrumental work from John McEntire, a well-known producer and member of both Tortoise and The Sea and Cake.

The project is slightly over half done but right now it's still just a personal project. He said there's no label backing it yet and they don't have any shows planned past this one where we got a sneak peek. Sam Patch has a long way to go yet before we'll hear some solid singles or see them on the road.

 Sam Patch in #Montreal #barleritzpdb

A video posted by Bilal Butt (@buttmusic) on Aug 27, 2015 at 8:56pm PDT

Sam Patch at Bar Le Ritz #passovahfest A video posted by Bilal Butt (@buttmusic) on Aug 27, 2015 at 8:33pm PDT