Rob Shapiro of country band Hey Romeo is keeping busy with his band as well as working with other musicians and his own projects.
Shapiro grew up in the valley and has found a musical home playing keyboard for Hey Romeo. The band just played a show in Paradise Hill in Saskatchewan with Washboard Union, a roots/pop country act that recently signed to Warner Canada.
“The town (Paradise Hill) has been great about having our band so when they built their new events centre and wanted to treat the inside of the building for acoustics they reached out to me for my thoughts,” said Shapiro. “I was happy to help them find a reasonable quote from a respected acoustics company in Edmonton to make the building sound way better and not like a gym. So now it sounds fantastic in their brand new building and I was happy to be a part of it.”
Musically, he and Hey Romeo guitarist Darren Gusnowsky have been working on a project called Jay Walker.
“We have recorded a couple of songs with super producer Jeff Dalziel (Washboard Union, Dan Davidson, Nice Horse). It’s been really great and we look forward to showcasing the new band at CCMA week in Hamilton Sept 7-9,” he said. “We hope to gather some industry interest and a label who likes what we’re doing enough to sign a deal with.”
They are working on a few tracks and are hopeful it will resonate.
“The best song always cuts through, the first two songs we tracked we wrote with platinum artist Aaron Goodvin (Luke Bryan) and Byron Hill (Alabama, Gary Allan), we love them,” he said.
In the meantime, he has been busy freelancing with other artists.
“I have been freelancing with Aaron and Darren has been working with Dan Davidson throughout the summer as we build up our new project. It’s been a lot of planes, trains, and automobiles but summer is the time for making hay, happy to be playing music for big crowds at all the music festivals across Canada, just finished two trips to Ontario in one weekend and that was nuts.”