The Blown Gasket Orchestra are a seven piece avant garde rock band that incorporates jazz, blues, reggae, and tight pop song arrangements with innovative time signatures that stretch the imagination and set an animated scene. Although the band has only been together for just over a year, they have already won over crowds all around halifax, and even had the oppurtunity to open up for Joel Plaskett at an outdoor concert.
Band leader Stephen Hughes is originally from Port Hawkesbury, Cape Breton and is a multi instrumentalist and composer who has been contributing to the Halifax music scene for the past thirteen years. He has backed up some of our regions finest artists and was a co-founder of the 1997 YTV achievement award winning rock band Soup, and now he has put together this tremendous group of Maritime musicians to create this unique sound.
Rob MacIntosh - Rob has played the saxophone for the award winning songwriter Shirley Jackson for over ten years with The Good Rockin' Daddies and the SideCats. He will be playing a mean tenor saxophone.
Jonathon Andrews - An accomplished songwriter and co-founder of The MiddleClass Pushovers, his songwriting won him an ECMA in 2006 for best aboriginal album of the year. His favorite number is seven and he will be playing lead guitar, as well as some background vocals.
Noel Taussig - He was a long time band member for Juno award winning blues artist, Garrett Mason. He writes great songs and makes guitars in his spare time. Noel does vocals, plays alto saxophone occasionally, and has lots of fun percussion stuff in his bag of tricks.
Claude Samson - Co-creator of Soup, Claude is a classically trained musician, who has performed in big bands on cruise ships with the likes of legendary comedian Marty Allen. He's an inventor and a great mind of our generation, and will be playing drums.
Dean Gallant - Dean was another co-founder of The MiddleClass Pushovers, and is a talented multi instrumentalist. He likes the colour green and will play bass guitar and background vocals
Michael Murdock plays baritone saxophone. He used to play with The Mellotones and studied music at Concordia University.