Prince Albert’s Ray of Sunshine are the opening act when Pharm from British Columbia play at the Spice Trail for an all-ages show on Wednesday evening.
The show is produced by Clay Cottingham and Threadbare Production, who connected the local act to the touring group according to guitarist Jamie Lariviere from Ray of Sunshine.
They are the local act opening on this stop of the tour only.
“We had seen that they were looking for someone to open like local bands wherever they were going to stop,” Lariviere said. “We answered that, and we got connected with Clayton there from the Threadbare Productions and he was the one that was doing the surveying for them to see where good venues were.”
After a few conversations, they were asked to be the opening act.
Ray of Sunshine has been together for five years, however the current lineup has only been together for the last year.
The band is made of up of lead singer and guitarist Alex Chisholm, bassist Tyler Gerstner, drummer Abraham Lancaster and Lariviere. Chisholm and Lariviere are all longtime members, while Lancaster started with the group, left for a few years, and then rejoined them again. They then picked up Gerstner to play bass.
The group hoped to do more live performing, but the COVID pandemic stopped most of those efforts.
The band’s first real performance was the Battle of the Bands for Chesterfest in 2020 in February. It was the band’s first show, and for a long time, also their last.
“We got one gig and then we got the gig to play, but it was cancelled,” Lariviere said.
The band is now back to playing shows more often.
“We scraped everything back together and knocked the dust off everything there, and then we started practice again and we found the band that we have now,” Lariviere said.
“Abraham’s been in lots of bands around town and myself and Tyler Gerstner, we were in a couple of cover bands here and there,” he added. “My friend Alex, a huge jam band fan, like Phish (and) the Grateful Dead would be the biggest ones. He loves to jam in front of people.”
Lariviere describes their music as a kind of jam rock with some blues mixed in too.
“There were lots of blues in there and then lots of jam stuff like just like the Allman Brothers, the Grateful Dead,” he said.
“Then we just jam out all the time. It just has this real mixture that seems to make people happy.”
Lariviere said they were happy to be invited to play the show and again thanked Cottingham for getting them on the bill.
“All of us are just working class guys,” he said. “We get together and we were rehearsing, and it turned into sounding good and we decided to play.”
Pharm and Ray of Sunshine play at the Spice Trail on Wednesday, with the show starting at 8 p.m. Tickets are $15 in advance and at the door.