Forth Valley band cocked and ready to rock Vibration Festival

The massive two-day music extravaganza, which takes place in Callendar Park this weekend, features headline turns from The Charlatans and The Darkness on the main stage, but fans will want to shoot over to the Breakthrough Stage to check out Forth Valley band Gerry Son and the Smokin’ Gun, who are scheduled to appear at 4.30pm.

Describing themselves as dark and funk alternative rockers, the band – Gerry Son aka Gerald McGlade (vocals/guitar), Roddy MacKenzie (guitar), Gez Schieritz (bass) and Ross Pilgrim (drums) – come from lots of different places, but see Vibration as homecoming gig.

Formed in the City of Stirling in 2019, two of the band members – singer Gerry and drummer Ross – are denizens of Denny.

Describing their influences as “eclectic”, the band are big fans of 1960s pop, Motown, blues, rock, glam, metal, funk and jazz with the members counting The Beatles, The Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Guns and Roses and The Police as some of their favourite bands.

A spokesbloke for the band said: “We all hail from across the Forth Valley area and as kids we would all regularly attend the previous Big In Falkirk festival in fact as a teenager frontman Gerry would annually busk at the gates of Callander Park while the punters steamed in.”

Gerry said: “I’d get about two hours in before being moved on by security or police, but by that time the guitar case was so heavy with the generosity of the Falkirk people I didn’t mind.

"It felt like being part of it. Now I’m in a band that is getting an opportunity to play the Vibration Festival and we plan to pull out all the stops on the Breakthrough Stage on Sunday."

Gerry Son and the Smokin’ Gun have released two albums Cheap Dirty Love (2020) and The Future Can’t Wait (2021) which are filled with music and lyrics filled with passion and tongue-in-cheek humour, which they say will have people “empowered” and “singing out loud”.