Forest City Lovers

Hi friends! I want to take a minute to tell you about a great organisation we’re involved with called Not Far From the Tree [link]. We’ll be donating some money from our merch sales to help them out. They work locally to put Toronto’s fruit to good use by having volunteers picking and sharing the bounty with the food banks.

From their website: When a homeowner can’t keep up with the abundant harvest produced by their tree, they let us know and we mobilise our volunteers to pick the bounty. The harvest is split three ways: 1/3 is offered to the tree owner, 1/3 is shared among the volunteers, and 1/3 is delivered by bicycle to be donated to food banks, shelters, and community kitchens in the neighbourhood so that we’re putting this existing source of fresh fruit to good use. It’s a win-win-win situation!

From us: We have friends that volunteer for this org. They have a blast picking and it’s really amazing how it helps foster the neighbourhood community. The food bank gets fresh, ripe fruits to dispense to those who need it and the people that help out get something too. Pretty neat eh?

This month we will donate $1 to NFFTT for each t-shirt, tote bag or cd that we sell on our tour [dates] or through our online store [link]. And, as a bonus, we’ll donate another $0.50 if you take a photo of you with your swag and tag it on our Facebook page. Easy enough, eh? Go tell your friends.

We are excited to spread the word about NFFTT and hope that it will encourage groups to start in other cities. We’ll see you on the road!

xo
Kat

You may or may not know that I have a strong predilection for a good stop motion film; ones that are really old are even better. This beautiful selection of rolling and jumping clay comes from the film ‘Gumbasia’ (1955) by the very talented Art Clokey. You know Gumby and Pokey? Yep, same guy. He actually just died last year and it’s worth reading a bit about his life if you’re interested [click].

We have some new arrangements, new merch and lots of energy and we’d love to share with you. Please spread the word that we’re heading your way!

xo
Kat

Hey dear friends! Autumn is my favourite season and to celebrate we’re going to be doing a quick jaunt out West before it gets too chilly. If you live in Western Canada, please keep an eye out for us!

November Dates:

5/ London, ON – APK Live
15/ Thunder Bay, ON – The Apollo
16/Winnipeg, MB – The Lo Pub
17/ Saskatoon, SK – The Fez
18/ Calgary, AB – The Palomino
19/ Edmonton, AB – The Black Dog
21/ Kelowna, BC – The Bean Scene
23/ Vancouver, BC – Railway Club
25/ Edmonton, AB – The Haven
26/ Regina, SK – The Exchange
29/ Sudbury, ON – Fromagerie Elgin

And  if you didn’t catch it when Exclaim magazine premiered it earlier this week, we have a new video out.  The parts that have Kat in it were filmed on the darkened streets of Oshawa Ontario. We’d like to thank everyone for not complaining about all the fireworks goin’ down in the park…

We were in studio this week working on a song for an upcoming super awesome compilation. We’ll give you more details when we are allowed to. But I can say that we spent the day with our awesome engineer James Bunton (who also took all the photos) and his super cute kitty. Oh and of course pizza and falafel was involved. See you soon! xo

Happy summertime, everyone. Well, in the Northern Hemisphere anyways….

How has yours been so far? Done any amazing things? School’s out (yay!), lunch breaks at work can be spent outside (yay!) and if you’re lucky enough to be “funemployed”, there are so many adventures to be had (yayay!). Here at the Forest City Lovers camp, we’ve been taking it sort of easy this summer.

Oh, we totally played a high school prom though, and it was super FUN. [click]

and had a lot of fun at NXNE (Thanks Toronto!)

Everyone in the band’s been doing different things, keeping busy and creative over the last little while. Over in my corner, I’ve been spending my summer vacation holed up at my favourite-place-in-the-city-but-not on Toronto Island, making noise, crafts and paintings [click]. It’s a pretty special place. If you’re interested in the goings-on you can check it out over at my other blog [click]

I’m also super excited about a project we’re working on with the talented writer Michael Barclay [click] to celebrate the re-release of his book, “Have Not Been the Same”. I am picking up my copy next week, Kyle got his in mail a couple weeks ago and we all suggest you go pick it up and read it. [AMAZON] It’s a fantastic in depth look at some of the artists that rose up in 80s and 90s and became instrumental to the development of what Canadian music is today.

Next week we’ll be heading to Kearney, Ontario to play the quaint River and Sky festival. Looking forward to camping out for the night! Closer to home is Wolfe Island music fest, on the 6th of August in Kingston. There are few things more fun than playing Canadian festivals in the summer, that’s for sure. Something about spending the day outside in the sun (or rain) and the combination of fresh outdoor air and sweaty arm pits is a very, very special thing. Bring your bug spray!

Also, I rarely do this but this but sometimes I feel like sharing things that I think you should read:

The Book of Negroes by Lawerence Hill - I can’t recommend this book more. A fascinating historical fiction piece about a woman and her journey from Africa to the American slave trade and back. It’s a big book but, honestly, I could barely put it down when I started.
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistestop Cafe by Fanny Flagg – I had heard about this book (and more about the movie) from my Granny my whole life and finally took the time to read it after returning from the Deep South. It’s really good, great characters and has sections written from the town gossip’s point of view in her weekly newsletter.
American Chronicle – How to Poison a Milion People by Prentending to Grow Potatoes – this is a very important article to read and if you hav a moment, please educate yourself about this situation. In a nutshell: giant amount of land purchased under the pretense that it would be for potatoes, turns out it’s a private company vying to build a massive quarry.
Sauce Farm - some of our friends live on a farm and do fun things like make syrup out of flowers and sell vintage clothes
Catcalled with Turnips - Liz Schieck writes passionately and anecdotally about food and the creation of such. I help her sometimes and there may or may not be ridiculous photos of me eating things.

xo KB

We’re happy to announce we’ll be playing RIVER AND SKY music festival on 15th July near Sudbury ON and WOLFE ISLAND music festival on 6th August near Kingston ON! Come out and hang with us in the summmmmmer!

It’s nice to be home. Thank you to all the lovely people I met along the way, and for being such beautiful attentive audiences. It was such a treat to play stripped down versions of FCL songs and to try out a few new ones. I did some video sessions whilst in Halifax, but I will post those later.

Instead, here is the Blogotheque Take Away show that Claire and I did. I’m a huge fan of the work that these guys do, they seem to capture great musical moments with a lot of my favourite bands. We were honoured to be included. We filmed it in our friend Dave’s backyard in Austin, Texas while he was out. I hope he didn’t mind…

Forest City Lovers | A Take Away Show | Presented By La Blogotheque, NxNE, SxSW and ASTW

Dear Friends,

please keep an eye out for us in a town near you. Or maybe we can rendevous at SXSW under the Texan sun?

See y’all soon!

xo kb