Les and Mark Hall met up with each other one night in 1990 at The Rainbow in Ottawa and had some discussion about forming a weekend band as we both had day jobs at the time. Rehearsals were out at Mark's on Sunday afternoons. Les ran adds in the local papers looking for musicians to join a rockin' country rock act. We were looking for a lead guitar player and a drummer. They were really looking for a rock/blues guitarists who had enough talent to learn the country riffs. After many auditions we made a decision to hire Mike Belanger and the drummer we would choose would be a blues hero in town who played with The Blue Angels in the late 1970's to the early 1980's and Tony D. in the 1990's. Due to other priorities the band started out playing a couple of nights a month and by 1990 the band was playing 12 to 18 shows a months and up to as many as 25 shows a month. The bands following grew in and around Ottawa and the Valley playing clubs, festivals, corporate, private functions. The bands mailing list was set-up and sent out quarterly, The Newsletter was set-up to inform their fans what they were up to, where to catch them live as well as new merchandise. Hickory Wind also had one of the first web sites in the area and have been online since Nov 1996.

Open All Night*
Live At The Rainbow 1-23-93

Ohh What A Thrill
Sonic Studios 1995
(Tom busted his ass during this recording session
in the attic, It was 100 degrees up there, great job.)

Les Lepage on Rhythm Guitar/Vocals and Harmonies
Mark Hall on Bass/Vocals and Harmonies
Mike Belanger on Lead Guitar/Vocals and Harmonies
Tom Barrington on Drums/Harmonies

Honorary members
Mike Bright on Lead Guitar/Vocals and Harmonies
Bill Henry on Drums
Eduardo Flores on Drums

In the Spring of 1994 Hickory Wind went into the studio to record new original demo tracks at Sonic Studios. There was some exceptional live tracks laid down over the next 7 days in Lee's studio. Many thanks to Lee Bowie for engineering and co-producing the demo tapes. 10 original demo tracks were recorded for the project and this led to Les writing more songs and recording more original demos for a future cd release. They were constantly playing as much as they could in and around Ottawa and the Valley, working on their chops and really having a great time together. In 1996 they went out to BS Traxs in Dunrobin to record 4 more original songs between gigs in order to put together some new original material for radio. These were very demanding times for Hickory Wind and Les eventually decided to leave the band in 1998 to work as a solo artist in order to keep his sanity.

If you'd like to share some stories about any of the good or bad times with Hickory Wind in and around Eastern Ontario and Western Quebec, send your stories to info@leslepage.com and we'll gladly post them for you.

All songs written by Les Lepage except *