The Bills

In 1996, five acoustic multi-instrumentalists—Marc Atkinson, Chris Frye, Adrian Dolan, Glen Manders, and Jeremy Penner—joined forces on Canada's Vancouver Island. They fused the sounds they cherished into a style they termed "folk world fusion," an approach that later secured the 2003 Western Canadian Music Award for Outstanding Roots Release. Performing under the name the Bill Hilly Band, the quintet spent four years refining its lively, roots-oriented approach through repeated live shows before entering the studio to cut a self-titled debut for Borealis Recording. The follow-up, All Day Every Day, arrived in 2002 and drew widespread acclaim from folk-oriented reviewers. After receiving the Outstanding Roots Release honor, the members formally adopted the name the Bills at the close of 2003. Their initial album under the revised moniker, Let Em Run, first surfaced on Borealis in 2004 and was subsequently licensed by Red House Records in April of 2005.