Flashback

Flashback was formed in the spring of 1986 by Bob Mitchell and his brother Leroy. Bob called Doug McHarg and Tony McAuley to join, two musicians he had worked with previously. We got together on a Wednesday night and we sounded alright on songs we all knew. We found out we had a gig in two weeks at the King John Pub in Langford. We quickly crammed some more songs and got through the first gig.

We started playing a lot of weddings, parties and special events as well legions and pubs. We rapidly grew to gigging almost every weekend, plus the odd Wednesday to Saturday gig. We had a lot of fun, saw some crazy things and learned a lot about sleep deprivation.

On one occasion, we were setting up at the Legion in Sidney, our first time there. As we were plugging in our gear, an elderly lady came up to us, and asked "Would you boys ever like to play here again?". Leroy replied, "Don't know Lady, haven't played here the first time yet." She said, "That's not what I mean! If you boys want to play here again, you better not be turning on those amplifiers!". 20 minutes later, we turned on the amps and played really quietly. She got her whole table "Boooing...".

Halfway through the song the harmonies are sounding nice, people started dancing and we can still hear her booing. At the end of the song, the crowd clapped, she was "boooing" and the dancers told her to shut up. She made a stink about it, so the bartender cut-her off, then kicked her and her table out. Everyone applauded as she got the "heave-ho", it was so funny. After that, we called that place "The Rude Lady Legion".

At the Gorge Pub one night, Doug was doing a solo in "Roadhouse Blues" when he slid up to the octave E, someone opened a Keg and it whistled the notes he was already playing, so he had fun with it and the crowd went crazy.

In 1991, Flashback was doing a Coca-Cola Christmas party at the Cedar Hill Rec center. A tall thin, long-haired blonde guy asked if he could sing a song with us. We let him sing. Immediately, we could see he had done this before. His name was Dave Jensen, and we ended up inviting him into the band.

With Dave singing, we started playing current hits from the radio and we changed the band name to "Fugitive". Please see the "Fugitive" page on this Website.

We tried to drop the name "Flashback", but we were unable to do that. We got a lot of calls for private functions wanting old time rock and roll, and even some of the pubs preferred we still play as "Flashback". We ended up using both names depending on what the client wanted.

In 1995, our drummer Tony retired from the band and taking his place was Darin Kourie. Darin knew a lot of our current songs and quickly learned the new songs with us in the practice room, so the transition was not difficult. The band, continuing as Flashback, had near the same number of gigs per month as Fugitive.

After 1997, Flashback and Fugitive slowly merged in terms of the set lists we would put together, just playing the best of the new and old. It was certainly a fun time. In 1999, we decided to stop gigging and went our separate ways, but some of the friendships still exist.

Please see our listing under "Fugitive" to read more good stories and adventures from 1991 to 1999.