Unbreakable Bloodline hope to rock area Christmas parades

ALBANY — Never a group to shy away from a challenge or an interesting opportunity, Albany’s Unbreakable Bloodline (UBL) will be wowing holiday crowds this weekend as they take to a moving stage as part of both Leesburg’s and Albany’s annual Christmas parades.

“It’s going to be dope,” said UBL’s Vernon “Chief Havoc” Cruz. “We played the Albany parade last year and it was a blast. This year we figured we’d rock Lee County, too.”

The two parades also mark the end of a busy few months for the band that saw them play a variety of unique shows in an attempt to reach as many new fans as possible.

Cruz said the band first played a special Fourth of July gig at Marine Corps Logistics Base-Albany, then after some club dates, played a rapid series of shows this fall including the Big Pine Festival in Albany, BamaJam in Alabama, a show at the Halloween Haunted Forest set up by J&K Productions, and a two-night stand at the Southwest Georgia Regional Fair in Albany.

“The way we kind of handled ourselves that last few months, we had the intention of hitting everything we possibly could, hard,” Cruz said. “We wanted to do as much different stuff as possible. We kind of had that big push and put ourselves out there. Now, we’re closing out the year with the parade. I can honestly say last year when we did that, that was probably the coolest thing we’ve ever done. We played live on a moving vehicle — dope!”

This year Cruz and his bandmates are hoping to do an even better show at the parades, and they feel they’ve got the opportunity to do that now that they don’t have the learning curve they had last year, having never played on the back of a truck before.

“We didn’t know what we were doing,” said Cruz. “We just decided to do it at the last, last minute. We hired a truck, a flatbed, like the day before and just did it. It was really cool, but it was different. (The first part of the performance) I was getting into it and I jumped up in the air and then when I came down I was like 2 feet away from my original spot.”

Despite little hiccups like that, UBL had so much fun playing the parade they kept on rolling after they had finished the route.

“My favorite part was when we got through with the parade, the guys were like, ‘What do you want to do?’” said bassist Ryan Myers. “We just kept going.”

“We told our driver, ‘We’ll cover it, hit Oglethorpe man,’” added Cruz. “We were still rocking down Oglethorpe.”

While the band doesn’t have any plans to keep rocking through the streets of Albany this year, its members are getting a chance to warm up by being a part of Leesburg’s parade Saturday morning.

“Leesburg will be different because it’s smaller and in the daytime you can’t see the lights,” Cruz said. “But we’re looking forward to it. It’ll be a nice warm-up for that night.”

Even though they are still riding high thanks to a busy and productive year, UBL are looking forward to a little down time after the parade so they can focus on finishing new music for their next album, which they currently are working on with new guitarist Jon Smith (check out next week’s Friday JAM for more on that). Once that’s done, they’ll head down to Log Cabin Studios in Tallahassee for a few days of recording early next year.