Tom van Deursen figures he's been playing music with his kid brother Derek for about 20 years now. They grew up in the small town of Kaslo, B.C., and had caught the music bug by the time they hit double digits.

"We liked a lot of rock and roll," says van Deursen, on the line from Ucluelet, where he's enjoying a few days of rest and relaxation. "We were listening to all the pop-punk and the pop-rock—Green Day and Billy Talent and Rage Against the Machine. But we also had my parents' record collection, so Asleep at the Wheel and the Blues Brothers soundtrack and Supertramp, and then it all just started to mash together."

Over time those early influences led to the formation of Small Town Artillery, a band that thrives on the DIY approach the brothers developed early on when it comes to finding gigs. As teenagers they would put on their own shows in the high-school gym, at the skatepark, and playing friends' weddings and birthdays.

"There was only one music venue in Kaslo that ran year-round," says van Deursen, referring to the historic Langham Theatre. "There was a healthy sort of love for the arts, but there wasn't a lot of venues, so we had to kind of make our own venues as kids, and that totally reflects what we do now. That mentality really stuck around."

One example of the van Deursens working hard to make music happen was the East Van Block Party, which they organized and hosted in September of 2019.

"Our old jam space was a place called the Rockery, and it had an alley behind it that was just perfect—like mostly businesses that were closed on a Saturday and one residence that we actually were able to pay them some money and tap into their stove outlet to run power. So we were able to throw a free festival. I went around and got sponsors, and we had about a thousand people in the alley, a bunch of bands, a licensed beer garden, and raised money for Big Brothers of Greater Vancouver. It was just great."

One of the local acts that took part in the East Van Block Party was teenaged singer-songwriter Aza Nabuko. She will also open for Small Town Artillery on August 4 and 5 when they perform as part of the Firehall Arts Centre's Music in the Courtyard series.

"She started out as sort of like a folk-pop starlet," relates van Deursen, "and she has morphed into a punk rock 'n' roll queen. Her last album, Indigo, just came out a couple months ago, and she's got a great voice and stage presence and writes really interesting, heavier music, so it fits really well with our band."

Van Deursen, 32, handles lead vocals and guitars for Small Town Artillery, with 30-year-old Derek on drums and vocals. Other current band members include bassist Carson Webber, guitarist Kyle Vaughan, saxophonist Jen Davidson, trumpeter Jocelyn Waugh, and background vocalist Chelsea Webber. The group has released two LPs and two EPs, and is currently working on a third LP. Van Deursen describes the music as "anthemic rock 'n' roll with a brass section".

"It piques curiosity," he says, "because anthemic rock and roll's nothing new, but with horns it's pretty unique. We have sort of an all-ages or world-music element just because of the brass, but it's definitely funky rock and roll."

One way Small Town Artillery finds the funk is through a mash-up of Michael Jackson's "Billy Jean" and Stealers Wheel's "Stuck in the Middle With You", which it performed last year as part of the online Kaslo Jazz Etc Festival. Van Deursen says the song combination just kinda happened.

"We were cooking up in the jam space," he recalls, "and we just started putting down the 'Billy Jean' bassline and then singing 'Well I don't know why I came here tonight,' over that. It felt so good that we just starting mashing the two songs together."

Fooling around with other people's material is fine, but Small Town Artillery's main focus is its original music. Van Deursen's songwriting skills are on display in the introspective 2019 tune "The Birds Up North are Braver", which was written at a transitional time in his life.

"I was staying out with some friends on the Island and I just had an important person from my past sort of reappear in my life and I was asking myself, you know, 'Can I let this love back in in a safer and more gentle way?' So I was trying to listen to my heart at the time, and the line 'I don't need nobody, no saviour, but the birds up North are braver' just kind of came. I have such a fascination and respect for the birds that we live nearby, the ravens and the crows, and I just thought of their intuition and trying to run it against—or with—my own."

"The Birds Up North are Braver" was released as a video and single on Vancouver's JumpAttack! Records, which STA has been with since 2018.

"The reason we signed with them is because they're our great friends out of East Vancouver, and they run the Blue Light Studio. We signed on with them to be a team, so we've split all our costs 50/50, and if the band is flush and the label isn't we cover it, if the label's flush and the band isn't they cover it. We try to balance the books that way and have access to a whole team of people and ideas and gear that we otherwise wouldn't have."

Small Town Artillery has several B.C. shows lined up in August—including gigs in Lillooet, Tofino, Golden, and their old hometown of Kaslo—then for most of fall and winter will work on finishing the new record, before starting to look at what next year might bring. The expectation is that the touring circuits will be wide open by 2022, so van Duersen is trying to lay the groundwork for how best to approach that.