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Vancouver rockers Doug and The Slugs are anything but sluggish

Legendary local band will play West Van's Rock Ambleside festival on Sunday
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Doug and The Slugs perform at Rock Ambleside, Sunday, Aug. 19. Show: 3:30 p.m. (rockamblesidepark.com)

Doug and The Slugs were worried they were inching forward a little too slowly to make the gig.

The legendary Vancouver band were en route to a recent festival appearance in B.C., after having first performed in Saskatoon, but they wound up gridlocked at Calgary airport with a five-hour delay.

It’s moments like this where being on the road can take its toll – the panicked rush, the stress, the sense of anxiety wrought from potentially disappointing legions of fans.

After 40 years in the biz, Doug and The Slugs are well-versed in the dizzying highs and crashing lows that can come with the rock life, but despite being stuck in an airport when desperately needing to be somewhere else, it’s always well-worth the pains when – and if – it all comes together, explains Slugs longtime keyboard player Simon Kendall.

“We just get to the airport, fall onto the stage, and there’s thousands of people right there singing along, smiling, videoing, taking pictures, really enjoying themselves,” Kendall tells the North Shore News about the band’s recent rushed journey to take the stage on time for a festival performance. They made it, and the fans were delighted.

“That is so gratifying to see.”

The band’s upcoming concert will be less susceptible to touring’s myriad uncontrollable variables: Slugs fans can catch the band in West Vancouver on Sunday when they perform as part of the Rock Ambleside festival.

“Anywhere we have played fans come out and really enjoy the show, that’s a boost,” Kendall says. Asked what it’s like reconnecting with fans, many of whom have stuck with the band for the better part of four decades, Kendall’s answer is simple: “It’s huge.”

Although the current iteration of the band, including five original members and new lead singer Ted Okos, have been playing together for the better part of 10 years, the longtime musical act’s “Doug and The Slugs” namesake almost never came to be, Kendall explains.

Originally founded in 1977 in Vancouver by songwriter, singer and bandleader extraordinaire Doug Bennett, the proto-version of the band didn’t really have a name at all. When a concert booker asked the band’s lineup at the time (this was before the band’s classic recording lineup assembled a year later) what they were called, then bass player Dennis Henderson went with Doug and The Slugs on a lark.

“It rhymed, and because it was the punk era and post-punk and so forth, it was topical in a way. The name stuck,” Kendall says.

Towards the end of 1978, Doug and The Slugs experimented with one more name change, but luckily it didn’t stick.

When the band’s classic lineup assembled in ’78 the group found itself trapped between two poles, those who favoured a more raucous new-wave/punk esthetic and those inclined to book a band with a more traditionalist approach.

“Ironically the first gig we ever did was as The Doug Bennett Band because there had been so much backlash to the name Doug and The Slugs that we thought we better try something else,” Kendall says. “But there was then a double backlash because The Slugs fans came out and said, ‘What the hell is this, Doug Bennett Band – forget it, we want Doug and The Slugs!’ So we only ever did one show as The Doug Bennett Band and that was Dec. 8, 1978 and that was the first show that I did.”

After the positive forces of band-naming won out, Doug and The Slugs were on the right path. The group found success with a string of Canadian Top 40 hits throughout the ’80s, including such bangers as “Who Knows How To Make Love Stay,” “Making It Work,” and “Tomcat Prowl,” to name a few.

Kendall’s hesitant when asked to pick a favourite tune from the band’s catalogue of six studio albums, numerous singles, and many unreleased songs (“I don’t believe in favourites,” he notes), but when pressed goes with the band’s first hit, 1980’s “Too Bad,” which: “Always gets a huge kick and it’s always fun to play.”

Doug and The Slugs have been Doug-less for quite some time. Bennett passed away in 2004, shortly after the band’s classic lineup reunited to play a pair of sold-out 25th anniversary shows at the Commodore Ballroom in Vancouver.

The classic lineup had mainly parted ways, amicably, during the previous decade as band members got older, started families and looked for new opportunities that took them away from the rigours of touring.

“We had a history that was unique and we had all played material that never got recorded and we had our banter and our in-jokes and all that history,” Kendall, who now speaks for the band, says. “Those shows were huge. … (Doug) was not doing well, but I think honestly that was a boost for us because we sold out those two shows and I think Doug was pleasantly surprised at how much fun it was to get back together with the original guys.”

Some years went by before the five original members decided to tour again, as Doug and The Slugs, with a new singer in tow.

Touring as the original Doug and The Slugs again is something that Kendall says he never could have anticipated happening. But after finding a singer like Okos who’s gifted at faithfully recreating Bennett’s songs, as well as the overall enthusiasm from the rest of the original members, the band is thrilled to continue with Doug and The Slugs’ legacy.

“It was uncharted territory. It’s a daunting thing to go into a show without the main man,” Kendall says, before adding that the remaining band members are keen to keep the music going through their live set. Doug and The Slugs survive as long as there’s still enthusiasm for their classic songs.

“It’s paying homage to the history,” he says.