The Preying Saints

The Preying Saints came out of Edmonton’s rockabilly scene at the end of the 2000s, bringing together musicians from local favourites The Igniters, The Firebrands, Los Cremators and the Krazy 8’s. Paul Balanchuk sang, Greg Stefishen played guitar, Fernando De Los Santos played a pinstriped, spider-webbed upright bass and Ryan Two-Stix played drums. Their own billing promised everything from honky tonk to punk to ska, played loud.

By January 2010 they were warming up crowds for touring headliners. At New City they opened for the English psychobilly veterans Guana Batz, alongside Calgary’s Smokin’ 45’s and Banff’s Grave Mistakes. Balanchuk, a scene regular through the Deluxe boutique and the owner of a much-admired Thunderbird, held the front of the stage while Stefishen struck rock and roll poses beside him.

That year the band issued a six-song CD: ‘Six Strings to Salvation’, ‘Answers’, ‘The Game’, ‘The Living Dead’, ‘One More Fight’ and ‘1984’. The songs were credited to the band, with lyrics by Stefishen and Balanchuk, and the recording was made with help from Mike and Record Without a Cause. The black-and-white sleeve showed a guitar on the front and a vintage microphone on the back, and the back cover listed only five of the six songs.

Shows at DV8 with Hellfire Special and Hellpreacher followed that fall, then a New Music West showcase in 2011 and a slot at Boonstock in Gibbons in 2012, on a bill topped by Korn, Billy Talent and Volbeat. They cut ‘Last Ride’ at the Physics Lab in Edmonton in 2012 and ‘Bitter Moon’ there in 2013, and Ryan posted the songs online with homemade videos, setting ‘Last Ride’ to footage from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

In May 2013 they opened for the Supersuckers and Lydia Loveless at The Pawn Shop. Salvation Is Gone followed on October 24, 2013, eleven songs including ‘Black Soul’, ‘Gunfighters Diary’, ‘Hot Rods and Heartaches’ and ‘Bitter Moon’, whose lyrics supplied the album’s title. ‘Answers’ came along from the 2010 CD. The next night they played The Vat in Red Deer.

The band kept working Edmonton stages through the decade: The Dreadnoughts at Brixx in 2017, the Starlite Room in 2021, The Buckingham in 2022. In December 2021 they put out a new song, ‘My Bike’, recorded by Rob Lawless at the Physics Lab, with a video filmed at a Stomp Records anniversary show at the Starlite Room. They also cut a version of ‘The Gambler’, the Don Schlitz song Kenny Rogers made famous.

On March 30, 2024 they returned to The Buckingham to mark ten years of Salvation Is Gone with a remastered vinyl edition: 100 copies, each numbered by hand by Balanchuk, pressed by Flashback Records in twenty possible colours and sold only at the show. Mitchell Sadler designed the sleeve, and ‘The Gambler’ closed side two as a bonus track.

-Robert Williston