Pour out a little donair sauce for Billie Dre and the Poor Boys this weekend—the Halifax rock trio is calling it quits. After releasing Garlic Fingers and following their friends TWRP and We're Doomed! to Toronto last year, the high-energy outfit—singer-guitarist William Dray, bassist Corey Henderson and drummer Dylan Ryan—is slowing to a natural stop.
"I just wasn't contributing anything anymore. It wasn't a plateau—the guys were doing so much, they were creative, writing material," says Dray, who's recently become a butcher. "I'd been writing and it just stopped. I didn't like going to shows, I didn't like what I was seeing, I didn't like the industry. I wasn't getting jaded but I wasn't creative, nothing was coming out. I need perspective. When I brought it up to the guys they understood and we're still great friends. It's ending because it was over."
Still friends, nobody smashed up their instruments or limped back to their mom's house on the east coast, as band dissolutions go, that's a best-case scenario. Friday's show at the Seahorse, with Dregs and Outtacontroller, will be the Poor Boys' last in Halifax, the city Dray calls "the best part of that band. When we were really running with it and we were all passionate and creative, living on Agricola Street together, eating garlic fingers and donair poutine after shows, that was the best."
Billie Dre and the Poor Boys
w/Outtacontroller, Dregs
Friday, May 22, 9pm
The Seahorse Tavern, 2037 Gottingen Street
$10/$12
