CALIFORNIA band The BellRays will play the Lantern in Halifax on January 19 as part of their tour of the UK.

The band combine garage, rock and punk with soul style vocals, and are playing 11 dates across the country supported by Los Pepes.

A spokesman said: “Blues is the teacher. Punk is the preacher. It’s all about emotion and energy, experience and raw talent, spirit and intellect. Exciting things are sure to happen when these things collide.

“Bob Vennum and Lisa Kekaula  made the BellRays happen in 1991 in East LA but they weren’t really thinking about any of this then. They wanted to play music and they wanted it to feel good.

“They took everything they knew about, The Beatles, Stevie Wonder, the Who, the Ramones, Billie Holiday, Lou Rawls, Hank Williams, the DB’s, Jimmy Reed and Led Zeppelin.

“It was never about coming up with a ‘sound’, or fitting in with a scene. It was about the energy that made all that music so irresistible.

“With the BellRays there was no conscious effort to ‘combine’ rock and soul because they didn’t see them as divided in the first place.

“Blues was teaching. Punk was preaching. And The BellRays were always listening.”