During two years spent in Shanghai as a teenager, Sid Simons picked up his relative’s dusty guitar and quickly found solace in songwriting while navigating a new and unfamiliar home. Since then, the songs that emerged from that guitar (and many others) have taken him all over the world and through multiple iterations of bands.

Presently residing in NYC, but by way of Portland, Sydney, and Shanghai, Simons is a frontman and songwriter crafting an infectious cocktail of personal metropolitan lyricscapes, slinky guitar hooks, and blistering live shows. It’s about the best cocktail he knows how to make, as he looks to set a record for most-bartending-jobs-fired-from. Charged with pouring too many freebies to his compatriots, the typical beneficiaries consist of “The Darlings” – Sid’s eclectic bandmates who join him in the studio and on stage, including for multiple sold-out dates supporting Franz Ferdinand and Modern English in the summer of 2023, and clubs packed wall-to-wall across New York City.

Produced by Gordon Raphael (The Strokes, Regina Spektor, The Libertines) down the block from the original site of the recordings of Is This It, Simons has released several adored singles ahead of a forthcoming debut LP, Beneath The Brightest Smiles, out May 17th. Westward Music Festival will mark the band’s first appearance in Vancouver B.C. and Canada as a whole.