O highway I travel! O public road! Do you say to me, Do not leave me?
Do you say, Venture not? If you leave me, you are lost?
Do you say, I am already prepared—I am well-beaten and undenied—adhere to me?
O public road, I say back I am not afraid to leave you, yet I love you, you express me better than I can express myself.
- “Song of the Open Road” by Walt Whitman
When you are touring, you get used to being in very close quarters with your bandmates. Squishing in vans, hotel rooms, hanging out and playing music with the same people for an extended period of time can be both challenging and rewarding. It’s a true test of friendship and temperance in all situations, good and bad. I count my band as some of my best friends and I am so lucky to have a small [but ardent] family of brothers-from-other-mothers and sisters-from-other-misters that enjoy traipsing the land in a rolling block of metal and body odours as much as I do.
This tour was so successful for us, and we can’t thank everyone enough. We were constantly surprised and encouraged at the warmth and positivity we received from so many people we met (and re-met) along the way. I was happy you remembered us! Thank you to our new friends, our old friends and those who opened up their homes, lives, Sunday nights and pocketbooks for us along the way. You make me so excited to be able to do this.
Here are a few highlights:
We are waiting for the Subway sponsorship…
We were the most tanned beach bunnies around.
Evening Hymns + Lovers = Awkward photos
Dear mountains watch over us, we small beings by the sea.
Now it’s time for us to start preparing for the Toronto cd release show and a string of Ontario shows in the fall. You can purchase advance tickets by hitting up your local independent record shop in Toronto. They’ll be available at the door but we always suggest getting advance because this just might..be …a …party.
This is a drawing that I recently did for UK based site The Line of Best Fit, for the cover of their OH Canada compilation. Ro Cemm runs the site and oversees the releases, and he’s a pretty solid fellow. You should go to the site and download this latest installment for some great Canadian music. Celebrate our nation’s birthday!
As you all know our record came out a few days ago (whee!) and we’re heading out this weekend to play a whirlwind tour of this dear nation (and a few dates stateside). What could be more exciting? I don’t think we have more than a day off which is hardcore, but it should make for some good tour blogs. Which, now that I mention it, are going to be up at our Exclaim site (remember 2008?) since they’re nice enough to sponsor our tour. Check it out for ongoing updates from us all! There might be adventures, I’m just saying…
We’re really happy people are enjoying it and once again, thanks to everyone for pre-ordering it, ordering it and just generally being so lovely to us. We’ve been bombarded with some great press for our record, here is a small selection:
This is one of my favourite photos from our first tour of Canada with our friends Ohbijou a few years ago. It was a beautiful rainy day in Montreal and we frolicked and got really wet. We couldn’t complain though, as when the rains stopped, the most beautiful rainbow appeared in the sky. The feeling of that day – pure joy in something so simple – is something I continue to carry with me.
CARRIAGE is out in a few days! In the FCL camp we’re getting both excited faces and weak knees. It’s a scary thing to create something so simultaneously public and private and release it to the world. I think we’re ready…
To get YOU excited, we’re doing a few things:
- On Monday, 28 June we’ll be streaming CARRIAGE in its entirety on our Myspace page.
- You’ll be able to order new t-shirts and merch on our online store. Any orders placed between the 28th of June and the 2nd of July will get a special bonus in their package.
- July 1st tune into CBC Radio3 ‘cuz we’re going to be eating breakfast with Vish Khanna on the Breakfast Club. We’re honoured to be invited back!
- We have added a couple more tour dates, and finalised a few more. Check out the “shows” section for the details.
I also just wanted to briefly touch on a couple matters of heart. I’m sure by now most people are aware that the album has leaked. It’s a little disappointing that it’s happened before our record has even come out in Canada, but this day in age it’s to be expected. We’re a small band and we’re on a small label, so please just keep it in your mind that we still rely on our fans and supporters buying our music and coming to our shows. At this stage in the game for us, every sale does count. We really appreciate you sharing our music (and – it must be stated that by no means are we reprimanding you for sharing a track or two on your blog, that’s totally cool, we’re just not into being able to get the whole thing in a zip file…) and we can only hope that even the non legit downloaders will still come to a show and bring some friends. It’s all we can hope for!
Once again, thank you very much for your support – collective readers – it’s totally and wholeheartily appreciated.
Just under two weeks til the ball starts bouncing towards your town!
CARRIAGE drops in just under three weeks but if you JUST CAN’T WAIT to get your copy… we are excited to say that you can now pre-order your very own copy!
In addition to getting your cd before everyone else, you will also receive a limited edition postcard-print of an original drawing by Kat Burns, autographed by the whole band, a set of three new badges, a b-side mp3 and a hand written message as a thank you. We really do appreciate you buying our record and we want you to know!
This week I took off to Pulaski [POO-LA-SKY], New York, for some much needed time away from the city. It was a beautiful retreat to an organic vegetable farm that my friend is working on. My lovely bestie Chantale came along for the ride, and we had a blast just relaxing and wandering around forests and fields, forgetting about this big looming city that we live in. I even helped prune some blueberry bushes! I would love to go back there at the end of the summer when all their hard work will be in constant bloom and the fresh organic produce will be bursting at the seams. It was really nice to spend some time with people that are serious about local foods and organic farming. You should check out this website if you have a chance to learn more about them, as well as other CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) organisations.
While I was gone our record got mastered and sent off – which means it’s totally done. It was nice to come home and realise that I can take a break from thinking about minute details of this-and-that, at least for a little while. It’s now time to think about how we can play the new songs live, make the shows interesting and really focus on the next few months. And with a renewed sense of energy. I thank the organic kale for making me bright-eyed-and-busy-tailed again.
Some big announcements are coming next week and we’ll probably reveal the artwork and track-listing soon as well. Keep checking back, ok? Oh! And our drummer, Christian, is going to be touring with another band called Texting Mackenzie this month. If you see them in your town give him a big hug for us okay? We wish him good luck and safe driving…soon it’s our turn with him!
We have returned, weary and dizzy, from our fantastic week in Austin, Texas. It was such a vibrant, exciting place for the time we were there. People streaming out of bars at all hours of the day and night, high on life and stuffed with Lone Star and breakfast tacos. I think I ate more burritos and tacos in the last seven days than I have my whole life. That’s including my brief Taco Bell obsession in grade ten…
River runs through it.
The weather was so sunny and cheerful, up until Saturday, and it was a nice respite from the grey Toronto that we’d left. We spent the week relaxing and hanging out with new and old friends and playing/watching music. We went on a lovely SOCAN boat cruise around the lake and thus, saw Austin from a few different angles. Christian even got a great new haircut in the artist village!
Kyle on the boat.
Combined I think we saw about 50 (or more?!) bands play, and very few of those were from Canada. It was a nice chance to see bands that might not come through Toronto any time soon. My personal favourites were Fool’s Gold (Ethiopian-style you-can’t-stop-dancing), Local Natives (definitely live up to the hype) and Wye Oak.
Big thanks to XM Radio and Six Shooter Records for having us at their amazing Six Shooter House to record a session (you can listen to that here, it’s airing a few more times) and to our hosts Dave and Graeme, amazingly warm ex-pats that showed us a great time. And thank you to SXSW for all the hospitality, amazing food and drinks and lovely Artist Village where we could chill out in the sun. ( All that said, we did have to drive through a snowstorm in Texas and bitter cold winds in Arkansas and Kentucky on the way home. It seemed like the storm was travelling roughly 120km/hr on the same highway as us. Such is life.)
Snow...in Texas?
A big hello to our new friends from near and far and we hope we see y’all again soon!
We’ve posted a couple shows in NY state in April, tell your friends!
Here is a video of an interview with Explore Music that I recently did. Like the plaid? Very Canadian…
The wind is blowing spring into the city. The trees are dancing in the rain. Our record is like the buds on the trees – just waiting a few more weeks to come to be, full of life and ready for another year. I’m excited, are you? We’ve put a lot of thought and energy into this new sonic selection and I hope the wait will be worth it. Tracking finally finishes up this weekend, with some lovely friends laying down some guest vocal tracks. We’ll be mixing and a ‘mashing when we get back from Texas. Yee-haw! Looks like our record will be out in July on Out of This Spark and we’ll be touring Canada and some US June/July/August. Plans are in the works. We’re also going to be playing New York in April, keep an eye out.
Oh ya, speaking of Texas, are you going to be at SXSW? We are and here is where you can find us (other than stuffing our faces with burritos…)
March 20 – 2pm we’ll be playing an acoustic XM radio session and doing an interview at the Six Shooter House.
March 20 – 1am we’ll be playing our showcase at the Ale House (310 E 6th St) with the lovely Venice is Sinking up before us.
We’ll be out and about doing other fun and unannounced things throughout the week, so say hello if you see us!
We just finished up doing the Canadian Music Week (Fest?) thing and it was pretty fun. Here is some press from the last couple days, and check out a couple videos below, compliments of NXEW.
So we have finished our first chunk of recording with Chris and now we’re on the last leg. How exciting is that? We have 8 songs almost done and another few are wrapping up this month. We are pretty happy with our hard work so far and I hope it’s all worth it. The songs are sounding pretty big, with some new exciting sounds. I hope that this album will be a step forward for our band. We’ve been really working hard to get arrangements together and planning some exciting aural treats. For your viewing pleasure, here are some photos from the studio days!
Kyle rockin' bass.
Percussion masters.
Kat in the studio.
Alligator and chips.
We also got to play some shows lately and I didn’t really bring my camera along BUT I did capture a few good shots our lovely skating day trip in Guelph and of the alligator and chips that Christian and Tim had in Hamilton and the killer game of Guess Who that we played. I wish we could have captured the amazing Outburst sesh we had because it was GOLD.
Keep an ear out for me hosting the Grocery List on XM the Verge in the next couple weeks!
Airing:
February 15 at 2:00 & 10:00EST 11:00 & 7:00PST
February 18 at 7:00EST/4:00PST
February 20 at 12:00EST/9:00PST
We are waiting for the Subway sponsorship…
We were the most tanned beach bunnies around.
Evening Hymns + Lovers = Awkward photos
Dear mountains watch over us, we small beings by the sea.
This is one of my favourite photos from our first tour of Canada with our friends 
