Rubber Tire Peep Show set to end tour in Aurora where members got their start

July 30, 2026 · 0 Comments

Harrison Smith and Liam Slingerland knew they had a musical synergy going as teens when, as dishwashers at a Newmarket restaurant, the respective playlists they brought in to help pass the time dovetailed beautifully.

More than a decade later, the duo are founding members of Rubber Tire Peep Show, a 10-member Canadian musical collective, which is set to end its cross-country tour at Aurora Town Square on Saturday, August 8.

“The Aurora date will be a cool little full-circle moment. That’s definitely where I cut my teeth in high school playing gigs,” says Smith, adding that some of these early opportunities came through the Aurora Winter Blues Festival with friend Ray Gowdy, a member of the band Burs, which is joining Rubber Tire Peep Show on the August 8 bill.

“That was a big part of getting us opportunities to play and perform in front of crowds. Notably, [late former Aurora Deputy Mayor] John Abel was a big part of championing myself and Ray. It’s cool Aurora has this new venue and it’s a top-tier state of the art facility for music. We helped them open it up a couple of years ago when they had Sloan play as part of their grand opening. It’s cool to be coming back and putting on our own show, and we’re really excited.”

The best part of being in a music collective, Smith and Slingerland agree, is the fact that everyone comes to the table with a “different background, different upbringing, different cultures, and different music being played around the house.”

Slingerland says the eclectic backgrounds of the collective are reflected in the music they perform.

“We’re really inspired by music from all around North America and world music,” he says. “Someone will bring a country song to the table, we can work that in, and we’ll have a couple of country songs. All of a sudden, people will bring in an instrumental, with a bunch of different sections that people think sound like 70s Pink Floyd or something like that. Just lots of different music happening all at once is a big part of what we’ve developed into our sound.”

Each member of Rubber Tire Peep Show contributes to the writing process, leading to what Smith describes as a “diverse palette or toolbox of things to pull from.”

“We’ve been playing with Max for about five years now and when we first started playing with him, he was playing in a Toronto band called Love Wagon that Liam and I really admired and looked to as an inspiration because they were all doing exactly what Liam said, pulling from different cultures and such a diverse bag of influences, putting it all into this rock and roll feel without being overly nostalgic.

“It was taking from the things that we loved and something familiar while staying fresh and then when Max joined us, he had all these incredible compositions of his own and we were just following that as inspiration eventually when he moved into our group, which was really sweet.”

Some of the Love Wagon material, notes Max, has worked its way onto a new album from Rubber Tire Peep Show currently in the works, and it’s a good example of the eclectic mix that is invariably found on stage.

“We revived it, made it our own, and it’s got a dancey-kind of feel to it, but also a really good variety of different genres – some kind of country and folky stuff and blues, always a little bit of blues element to everything we do, and it’s kind of a touchstone for us,” he says. “We can’t wait for it to be out sometime in the fall.

“We all kind of live like separate lives for a lot of the years – I’m studying in school and Liam just graduated and Harrison’s living in Australia and David is working in Toronto – so we all have pretty different lived experiences these days, so a lot of our writing, I feel like it talks about our love for just playing music and being with each other and stuff like that. We just draw on our different experiences day-to-day and bring them together as a collective.”

As important as a collective is for the creative process, the band agrees there is nothing better than experiencing music as a collective, as well.

One such local “collective” music experience Smith says was particularly formative was a concert at Town Park in 2013 from iconic Canadian band Lighthouse, which played Aurora as part of the community’s 150^th anniversary celebration.

“My mind was blown from the energy coming off that stage and particularly what was coming out of the electric guitar,” says Smith. “I needed to get an electric guitar and I did a month later. When you have these connections that are purely based online, the communal experience of going out to see a concert can be very gratifying for everyone involved. As people that grew up in Newmarket-Aurora area, I think it’s important to support these events as they go on and go out and see concerts. Go see a band that maybe you haven’t heard of before, or that you have been hearing of and you’ve been meaning to see but it’s never quite aligned. If you want to see this continue on in your community, you have to go out and show some support and let the Town know that this is something that is important to us. Our arts and culture is important to us.”

For more information on Rubber Tire Peep Show’s August 8 gig at Town Square, including tickets, and for all other programs happening at Aurora Town Square, visit aurora.ca/whatson. For more with Rubber Tire Peep Show, visit rubbertirepeepshow.com.

By Brock Weir
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter