Roads untraveled: K-Man & The 45s bring its Canadian ska to ABQ, West Coast, for the first time

Canadian ska heavyweights, K-Man & The 45s, will be making its first visit to the Southwest and West Coast of the United States.

The band will make a stop in Albuquerque for a show on Sunday, Oct. 20, at Echoes, for “SKALLOWEEN,” which also features openers Last Reel Hero, Los Domingueros and The Coffin Stuffers.

“We’re so excited to get down that way,” said Kristin Daniel, frontman for K-Man & the 45s. “For the longest time we weren’t able to play in the United States because we’re from Montreal, Canada, and it was kind of difficult for a while there getting our visas together.”

Daniel, who also goes by K-Man, said there were frequently delays with visas not arriving in time for a U.S. show or arriving after the show date. He added, now that the band is no longer having issues with visas, they are playing the United States as much as possible.

“We’ve been going constantly,” he said. “I think it’s going to be our fourth time just this year that we’re heading down to the states and we’re having a blast.”

Daniel said he loves being on the road.

“I think the thing that I like most about it is the simplicity of it,” he explained. “I mean, you have the shows and all the excitement of the shows, but the routine of the road is kind of nice too. You wake up early in the morning, you drive into the next town, you stop, you have your coffee, you check into your hotel, you go for sound check, maybe take a nap, and you do a show, and you repeat and you do that again.”

For this tour, audiences will be able to hear songs from the band’s early days to the present.

“We’re going to play a bunch of songs off our latest album, ‘Primed To Go!’ out on Stomp Records,” Daniel said. “And we also will play a good mix of stuff. We have three albums that are out on Stomp actually, and the set will probably be half off the new album, ‘Primed To Go!’ and then a mixture of the four albums before that will fill in the other side of the set and kind of keep a good balance.”

“Primed To Go!” was released in late 2023, and the band has been touring nonstop since.

“We’re in the process right now of doing our 21st tour across Canada, but we’ve been on the road a lot,” Daniel said. “(We do) two or three major tours a year. When I say major, (that is) more than three weeks long, and then, we’ll play a weekend between that. So now we’re just booked up everywhere. We’re booked all the way up until next October, actually, 2025, where we play Europe. We just try to get out there and meet as many people as we can (and) have these amazing moments with everybody and just rock out and play our version of ska music.”

Daniel does a brunt of the songwriting for the band.

“It’s something that I’ve always done since I was young, actually,” he said. “I remember my mom was always telling me that the first song I ever wrote was called, ‘I Wish I Was Rich.’ I was probably like 8 years old. I like to sit down (and) reflect on things that I end up writing. You know, that cliche is the greatest form of expression, where it’s very direct, pen or a pencil on paper, and it’s right there.”

Daniel was exposed to music at a young age.

“I grew up in kind of a big hippie house and my dad plays music,” he explained. “He’s 77 years old. He’s still playing five days a week. And so I had all these reggae musicians around me from Jamaica, and I grew up with them and I was just a rebellious young punk (during) my teenage years. And kind of mixing those two angles brought me to ska. My parents live in Jamaica, for the last 30 or 40 years. So that’s always been a big part of my life. But then the North American punk rock, and I’d say the greater Seattle punk rock has also had a huge influence on me. So, just mixing both those things together kind of made it happen.”

Being part of K-Man & The 45s has been an unforgettable journey that Daniel continues to appreciate.

“I was surrounded by great musicians that play on the road,” he said. “But outside of that, like in the general population, there’s not that many people that get to travel as much, see as many different places, be open to as many different ideas or opinions. It kind of gives you a different view of the world as well. I find when you travel that much, it really kind of opens up your mind a little bit.”