LIVE: The Sam Roberts Band @ the Hollow Bar + Kitchen, 5/2/14

Videos and photographs by Timothy Reidy

In their native Canada, the Montreal-based Sam Roberts Band has already racked up some impressive credentials. Roberts’ 2001 debut album, The Inhuman Condition, became one of the best-selling independent releases in Canadian music history. And at the annual Juno Awards (Canada’s equivalent of the Grammys), the band has twice won the coveted Artist of the Year honors, as well as two Album of the Year trophies.

In downtown Albany earlier this month, the band wasn’t playing the Times Union Center or the Palace Theatre. Instead, they took over the Hollow Bar + Kitchen for a night of honest-to-goodness rock ‘n’ roll. And they brought along fellow Canadians the Current Swell in the opening-act slot, offering the band from British Columbia an opportunity to spread the word about their about-to-be released album, Ulysses.