Bleeker Ridge: On the Ridge of Success


Hard-rock newcomers Bleeker Ridge have been paying their dues for seven years – but the Orillia, Ontario natives aren’t exactly what you’d call late bloomers. The quartet is made up of two sets of brothers, Taylor and Cole Perkins, and Dan and Dustin Steinke, who first started playing Hendrix covers together when they were 12 and 13 years old.


The band, now aged 19 to 21, teamed up with legendary producer Bob Marlette (Alice Cooper, Marilyn Manson, Black Sabbath) for two months to record their first major-label album, Small Town Dead. What’s striking is the record’s strong youth vibe; Taylor Perkins even sings into a cop’s face with a megaphone in the title-track’s music video. Seven years of maturing musically has paid off – their latest single is climbing the charts – but the youth energy is still there!


Youthink caught up with guitarist Dan Steinke on their Calgary stop on the band’s current Canadian tour to talk about the album and what it’s like to finally feel success.


YT: Bob Marlette, who has produced big names like Black Sabbath, produced the album. How did that happen?

DS: He previously came to watch us when we were like super young, maybe 14 years old. And he was like, “These guys are awesome, but they’re still a little too young to bring to L.A. and do the record”… so, it kinda fell through there. And then when we got picked up by Roadrunner [the band’s current record label], they shopped us to Bob and Bob was like, “Oh my God, I love this band,” so he brought us down and we did the record. We got to spend like two and a half months in L.A.… it was great.


YT: You guys made a music video for your title track. How was that experience?

DS: It was great! It was a blast! Yeah, we got all our friends to come in, you know, do the video with us. We had Ricky from the Trailer Park Boys, which was awesome, because we had met him in L.A., and he came up and did the video with us, which was cool.


YT: Do you find it balances things out to have two sets of brothers in the band?

DS: Well, we’ve been doing that for such a long time that it would be weird to do it differently ‘cause I’ve never been in another band other than these guys. So I think it would be weird if there were anybody else. I wouldn’t know what to do.


YT: What was it like when you first heard your song on the radio?

DS: It was weird. I didn’t hear it for a while, even when I knew it was being played. And then one day it was playing, we were driving back from Montreal, I think, and then I was like, “Oh, this is pretty cool!” And then I switched the station and it was on again , and I was like “Oh sh**, this is really cool.”