It’s only appropriate that we commit ourselves to a moment of silent reflection for Jen “Hellcat” Blackwood. Once calling Burlington, Ontario home, Blackwood helped, along with bassist Sean McNab, keyboardist Kristian Rowles and drummer Matt Gee, to found hellbilly stars The Creepshow in 2005. Blazing vocals, hellacious guitars, successful tours, a full-length album on Stereo Dynamite Records, Sell Your Soul, put the band on the international music map. And those were just a few of Blackwood’s contributions to Creepshow’s ongoing legacy until a little over a year ago when Blackwood announced that she’d be taking a hiatus from the road for a while; apparently she’d been defiled by the lead singer for The Matadors’ demon seed. In spite of the obvious shortage of personnel, the band decided to soldier on—even deciding to keep it in the family by enlisting Hellcat’s kid sister, meek and mild little Sarah, to fill her sister’s shoes both in front of the mic and on guitar. Sarah adopted the stage name Sin and took to the road with Creepshow. First skeptical, fans were quickly won over by Sarah as she came into her own as a frontwoman and, when only nine months after Hellcat’s discovery, she gave birth to a beautiful baby girl (for those that know Jen and Hooch, we can only heave a sigh of relief at the fact that the infant looks like her mother), stock needed to be taken. “No one knew exactly what to expect, including Jen, because it is her first kid,” explains Sarah, now having returned from tour. “She was hoping to come back and do weekend tours and stuff but because of the way that the band is shifting into bigger tour mode, she’s simply unable to go on the road for extended periods of time.
“She has stepped down and is starting up her own little thing that she can do locally where she lives. We still talk about the band all the time and things like that, but her maternity leave from Creepshow has become permanent.”
That said, Sin is in. Permanently.
With all the nailbiting and decision-making now complete, the new, galvanized Creepshow has risen and, according to Sarah, is ready to start working to show off this new incarnation of the band. “We have started writing new material in The Creepshow now—all of the stuff that we’re playing now is stuff that my sister wrote—and it’s a pretty cool experience for me to write stuff that I’m not so used to writing,” says the singer of the overall feel within band right now. “The Creepshow is just ballsier [laughing self-consciously]. It’s so much fun because I actually get to belt notes and I get to yell at people when we play live, and sing duets, and just have that Sarah Sin attitude on stage which is really, really fun to play with. That’s why love doing it so much, and then my solo stuff is a bit more ‘country girl’ and to-the-heart comparatively.
“I’ve been working on the solo stuff too—I started it before I joined the band and I’d like to finish it—and there has already been plans to go into the studio for that as well,” continues Sin. “For the next couple of months it’s really nice because I have three of my new solo songs on a new compilation CD that a lot of promotion is going on in October for and it’s perfect because The Creepshow doesn’t have any shows lined up until toward the end of October so I’ve got a little bit of time before that picks up and then do Creepshow stuff.
“I’m really hoping that after the U.K./Germany/Finland tour that’s coming up for The Creepshow to actually start recording the solo album. I’ve already done a lot of pre-production so far, but I’ll actually record it and put the album out in the New Year. At that point, we haven’t discussed it much yet but I’m hoping I can balance both bands.
“We’ve already got one new song called ‘Run For Your Life’ and I’m really proud of it because it’s the first new work that I’ve ever done with The Creepshow other than the touring and it’s just a little taste of where the band is going to go,” continues the singer, not even trying to hide her enthusiasm. “We actually have a decent amount of writing done and we’re really keen on coming out with the next record after January at some point. We’re just figuring out the finer points as far as our label’s intentions—we’d definitely like to work with them again—and then we want to get started.”
More on The Creepshow here: www.myspace.com/thecreepshow
The Creepshow "Zombies Ate Her Brain" – [Video]
