Sam Roberts Band set to rock Northern Lights

This Friday, Northern Lights in Clifton Park plays host to a band that has released chart-topping albums, commands extensive radio airplay with every single it releases and has sold out large theaters from coast to coast.

Of course, the above statement is true - when you are talking about charts and venues across Canada.

The Sam Roberts Band brings its brand of folk-tinged rock to the Capital Region on Friday, kicking off a string of four mid-size club dates in a country that is far less familiar with its body of work. But that's not a bad thing for the Montreal-based group, according to its front man and namesake.

"Don't get me wrong, it's great when you get up in front of a crowd in Canada and you're playing songs that everybody knows every single word to from any one of your records," Roberts said. "But at the same time from a performance standpoint, we enjoy not feeling obliged to constantly include the songs that have been singles [in Canada] in every setlist. It means we can go off and play music and take songs and rearrange them - there's a great deal of freedom that comes with it, and I think that's why we have come to love touring in the States."

That's not to say the band hasn't had any success below the border.

"Certainly we've noticed that up in New England, upstate New York, down through Detroit and Chicago, places that have more of a steady contact with Canadian culture, it seems that they've caught wind of the band before we actually make it down there, and that has certainly helped the band along," Roberts said. "I find in the mid-west is that it's pretty tough to penetrate unless you get a serious national profile in the US."

The band's mini-tour is serving as a "last hurrah" for its latest album, "Love at the End of the World," before heading back to Montreal to put together new material, Roberts said.

"A couple of days of recuperation, detox, and then the ideas start coming," he said. "I find as soon as I start puttering around in the garden back home in Montreal, all of the different experiences and ideas that you have that have been accumulating over the last couple of years start to come out and make their presence felt in the form of song."

Roberts hopes to help the audience let go of the world around them when his band hits the stage Friday night.

"I think that's what we aim to do when we get on stage every day, to just take people away from the mundane and the everyday and infuse the energy that music can bring to your life, Roberts said. "It's kind of a full blown rock-and-roll show, in other words."

He paused before offering his final thought.

"And it's loud."