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The Gospel According To Park | Michael Park preaches the blues as the main creative force behind Bombchan.

BOMBCHAN
w/ Hangloose, Burro. The ARTery (9535 Jasper Ave). Fri, Nov 27 (doors at 8pm, bands at 9:30pm). Tickets: $5 at the door.

“Proper names are poetry in the raw,” W.H. Auden once said. “Like all poetry, they are untranslatable.” If you’re hearing about Edmonton’s newest blues-fuelled rock band Bombchan for the first time, you might be in for Auden’s conundrum. What is a Bombchan?

“Oh that’s my Korean name ... there isn’t really a Canadian spelling for it,” says Michael Park, laughing at my moronic question. “One day I was writing my cousin in Korea ... and I wrote Bombchan at the end, and she wrote back saying, ‘Oh, I like how you’ve made your name explosive!’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m onto something here!’”

That’s exactly the type of intuitive logic Bombchan applies to the blues. Bombchan releases its new album Do Me Right at The ARTery on Friday night. The CD features six tracks, all of which are covers — sorry, interpretations of classic Mississippi Delta blues songs. The band favours a heavier sound that growls where others whimper, and Park isn’t afraid to put his own spin on things: “R.L. Burnside sings about going to the world’s fair,” Park jokes. “When I’m singing ‘Poor Little Mattie,’ I’m not going to the fucking world’s fair! I’m going to give my own personal twist to the lyrics, and that’s the tradition of the blues.” So, when will these guys start singing originals about the North Saskatchewan instead of the Mississippi?

“There’s a lot of original material coming up,” Park says, “but it was imperative to pay my respects to something that has influenced us so much, that’s the basis of Bombchan.” Park promises that Friday’s show will feature some homegrown tales alongside Bombchan’s serving of Bukka White and Robert Petway. After all, when a band treads new ground on a genre that has such a rich history, you need to give a nod to the masters before you proceed.

Before Bombchan, Park made his name in the city designing and constructing skateboard parks, and expected that skaters would make up the band’s primary audience. So he’s been surprised by the diverse crowds who’ve been showing up to hear them play. “The skateboard scene is digging it, the hipsters are digging it, the blues fans are digging it,” Park says. “It’s a little heavy for some people, but I think that’s a good sign.” Everything that breaks down some boundaries is bound to catch a little flak, and Bombchan is ... well ... bombing them.

Park points to Mississippi Fred McDowell’s “Write Me a Few Lines” to illustrate what he’s talking about: “He says, ‘My name is Mississippi Fred, I do not play no rock ’n’ roll,’ but hey, I think the guy has written songs that transfer quite well.”

That’s as good a summary of the Bombchan experience as any. After all, what’s in a name? That which we call the blues by any other name would sound as sweet.