Warm Your Mind and Soul b/w I'm Learning

The Sound Box were a Montreal dance band with a psychedelic streak, a 1961 Ford Econoline van and a rehearsal house on Île Bizard. Drummer Brian Redmond began playing at fourteen, saving for a Ludwig kit and a set of Zildjian cymbals, and around 1965 formed the high school R&B group The Red Cats with Ron Hepworth, Bud Swan and Michel Dugas. The Red Cats ended in 1967, but the four musicians continued playing together and brought in Jim Boyce as lead singer and harmonica player.

As The Sound Box, the lineup had Boyce on lead vocals and harmonica, Dugas on lead guitar, Hepworth on keyboards and rhythm guitar, Swan on bass, and Redmond on drums and vocals. They worked high schools, clubs, chalets, dances and proms around Montreal, drawing on everything from the Rolling Stones, the Beatles and the Yardbirds to James Brown, Cream and Jimi Hendrix. Local groups including The Haunted, The Rabble and J.B. and the Playboys were part of the same musical world.

Their home base was 2401 Chemin Bord-du-Lac on Île Bizard, where they rehearsed for years in a small room warmed, more or less, by an old cast-iron stove. The Econoline sat outside. Across the road was a wooden Bell pay phone that became the band’s unofficial office. Pay phones could still receive calls, so when a booking came in Redmond would run across the road to answer it. Young women sometimes sat on the old stone fence near 1re Avenue and Bord-du-Lac and listened while the band rehearsed.

Redmond remembered the house as a gathering place during a turbulent period in Quebec. There were parties, occasional trouble after downtown club dates and, during the October Crisis of 1970, police and army activity in the area while authorities searched for FLQ fugitive Paul Rose. The stories surrounding 2401 Bord-du-Lac later found their way directly into one of the band’s records.

The Sound Box worked through Donald K. Donald Productions, the company established by Donald Tarlton, which was already active in Montreal’s club and dance circuit. Tarlton would later become one of Canada’s major concert promoters and a founding owner of Aquarius Records.

The band’s first single appeared on Regency R 980 in the spring of 1968. ‘Warm Your Mind And Soul’ and ‘I’m Learning’ were both written by Boyce and Hepworth and produced for Donald K. Donald Productions by Al Nicholls and Bill Hill, the singer and guitarist of J.B. and the Playboys. Phonodisc pressed and distributed the record.

RPM reported the single “just off the presses” in its June 1, 1968 issue and noted that The Sound Box had been billed as an “Electronic Sound Experience” and were “fast becoming Montreal’s top dance band.” The same column had them booked with Pops Merrily for May 10 at the Dorval and Loyola arenas, keeping the stages going while The Guess Who travelled between the two venues for a CFOX and Donald K. Donald presentation called The Wildest Pair.

The second and final Sound Box single appeared on Regency R 983 in 1969, this time billed as Brian Redmond and The Sound Box. The A-side, ‘I Want You’, was written by fellow Montrealer Andy Kim, who that same year co-wrote ‘Sugar, Sugar’ for The Archies and had his own hit with ‘Baby I Love You’. Bill Lowell, a disc jockey at Montreal station CFOX 1470, produced the record for Donald K. Donald Productions.

Redmond remembered recording the single at a studio on Guy Street in Montreal during a snowstorm. The equipment was four-track and the two performances were completed essentially as one-take recordings. It was the kind of session familiar to young Canadian bands at the time: limited studio hours, limited equipment and little room for endless retakes.

The B-side, ‘Boogaloo Up Bord Du Lac’, was written by Michel Dugas about the band’s rehearsal house at 2401 Chemin Bord-du-Lac. The instrumental drew its title and character directly from the place where the musicians spent so much of their time. It was later used as a music bed for radio commercials and promotional spots. The house itself was demolished in the late 1970s.

‘I Want You’ received enough attention to land The Sound Box on a show with Andy Kim and Gary Puckett & The Union Gap before an audience Redmond remembered as roughly 7,500 screaming teenagers. The band members were only eighteen or nineteen. Redmond met Puckett backstage and remembered him as both friendly and an impressive guitarist. Kim had a more difficult start to his set when a musical mistake forced him to stop and begin again, but Redmond remembered how quickly he recovered and carried on.

There was plenty of work away from the stage as well. Redmond carried the band’s 45s into radio stations himself looking for airplay, hauled equipment into television studios for live appearances, then loaded everything back into second-hand vans to make the next engagement. For a young local band, promotion, transportation and road work were often handled by the musicians themselves.

‘I Want You’ was the last Sound Box release. By 1970 Redmond had moved into Marble Hall, singing and playing drums on the group’s Aquarius single AQ-5003. ‘Marble Hall’ was written by former Influence guitarist Louis McKelvey with Roger Gomes, while ‘Get Your Thing Together’ was written by Montreal songwriter Martin Martin and produced by Hank Squires. Redmond remembered the Marble Hall recording taking place in the Côte-des-Neiges area of Montreal, with Michel Dugas again involved on guitar and Phil Vyvial also playing guitar and singing backing vocals.

Redmond continued working with Squires and Martin after Marble Hall. In 1972, under the name Mashiya, he recorded ‘Chimbombay’ b/w Martin Martin’s ‘Imagine’, issued by London Records in Canada and later released by labels in Greece and Peru. The following year the Squires group Shaka recorded a French version, ‘Chimbombay Amène Moi’, arranged by Phil Vyvial, with Redmond’s composition ‘Penser’ on the reverse.

Both Sound Box singles are now sought after by collectors, and the band’s recordings have subsequently appeared on Canadian garage and psychedelic compilations, including the Wyld Canada series.

Redmond eventually moved into a long career as a DJ, but the memories of those Montreal years stayed with him. Decades later, one particular request could still take him back to 1969.

“Today, whenever ‘Sugar, Sugar’ is requested (osti!) for a cake cutting, I just smile,” he recalled. “The Archies, Andy Kim, Gary Puckett. A moment in time, way back in the day.”

-Robert Williston