toronto

well, honestly, the show we played in toronto last night was definitely the best show we ever played there. there were lots of people in town because of the Toronto Film Fest and because V-fest was going on also. anyways, the crowd at The Boat was great. by far the biggest, best and most responsive crowd we've ever played to in toronto. we played with a band called Sports, the Band (sorry matt and steph) whose bass player was actually Mike from the Meligrove Band. They were really cool. We also played with this band The Patients who were playing their last show, so they brought out a good crowd.

I had an ultimate rock star moment at this show. A girl who I went to kings with was there, on a totally unrelated note, and was like "wow, this band is great" then she noticed that i was playing in the band and was like "hey, i know that guy!". i don't know, but that seemed pretty cool to me.

anyways, we had a bunch of other friends out too. my cousin malizza and her husband reagan came out, as well as my old college roomies jo and aaron, as well as our old pal bennie p, etc etc.

our set was really good, pretty tight, and we had people dancing and enjoying the tunes the whole way through. i definitely can't wait to play there again on a weekend.

today we went out to breakfast and then went to see this art gallery on King Street called "The North End" which was a girl who collected posters from polls in the North End of Halifax for two years, and compiled them into an exhibit/book collection. There was a couple Sleepless Nights posters and superfans posters, and share posters, but i was super disappointed that NONE of my posters were anywhere in the exhibit. ticked! To be fair, we did discover after there was another set of posters we didn't look at so I could be wrong. but still, argh.

now we are at joe's in waterloo. we are playing in his bar/basement tonite and he is having a party. sa c'est le fun.

oh, big PS - check out the new Superfantastics Video. It's amazing, and features cameos to the wazoo ( you may recognize the beer bottles as me and pinky ;) )

Montreal

We left Halifax shortly after 6:00pm on Wednesday evening and headed to New Brunswick. Instead of pending the night in Fredericton like we usually do, we slept at Pineau's aunt's place in Oromocto.

Up early on Thursday morning, we bolted to Montreal making it in pretty decent time. We went straight to the Concordia radio station called CJLO where we did an interview on air and they played two tracks off our EP as well as two unmixed unmastered tracks from our new LP (which by the by, can be found on our MySpace. Got to see some old pals like Omar and Brian and got to take in the Concordia campus left. Felt a little weird considering yesterday was supposed to be my first day of school, but alas...I am on the road for another week.

The bar we played at in Montreal was called The Barfly. It was a little hole in the wall place on St. Laurent with two tables, two high tables and one pool table. It's weird, we seem to be regressing in our Montreal shows. The first time we were here we played at la Sala Rosa which is HUGE, then we played at Casa del Popolo which was smaller, but still pretty big, and then we get to this place. It was a weird feeling. We had fun though. We played with weird "hip hop" act called Ancient Rhymes and Omar's EXTREMELY loud band called Superheater. I'm glad we have soo many friends in Montreal. Val, Karley, Erin, Tim, Anne, Tory, Jen etc etc all came out to see us. There's nothing better than being in a "strange" place and seeing familiar faces. also, if not for them, we might have played to 12 people.

Today we head to Toronto for a show at The Boat. This is our first weekend show in Toronto ever, and the film festival is going on as well as V-Fest so there will be tons of people in town. Will they come to our show? We'll see I guess.

Sleepless Nights back on Tour

heading out on a quick Ontario tour. Leaving today.
tell your friends in the following locations:

Thursday, Sept. 6 - Montreal, QC @ The Barfly
Friday, Sept. 7 - Toronto, ON @ The Boat
Saturday, Sept. 8 - Waterloo, ON @ Joe's Place
Sunday, Sept. 9 - Waterloo, ON @ 130 King St. North
Tuesday, Sept. 11 - Hamilton, ON @ The Casbah
Wednesday, Sept. 12 - Peterborough, ON @ The Spill
Saturday, Sept. 15 - Bayfield, ON @ The Black Dog Pub

the art for the Orphan Choir/Establishment 7"

tour dates to follow.

saint john/charlottetown/home

the final leg of our tour was probably the most fun i've had on the road.

before the saint john gig, we did an interview on campus radio on a show called Prog as Balls. it was pretty hilarious.

the saint john show was a ripper. it was matt's birthday, and our friend barb's birthday - so there was plenty of drinking going on. it was also our second show with our friends The Peter Parkers. the crowd was great, it was fantastic to see so many people dancing and singing and enjoying our set. despite the booze, i think we played great - maybe one of our best sets of the entire tour.

that night we spent the night at barb's watching clone high, and in the morning we headed to pei for our final two shows of the tour.

the first was at a small record store in charlottetown called Back Alley Music. It was quite literally like playing in someone's rec room for about 20 people. we got to play four songs. it was pretty fun, all things considered. it was a treat just to see the peter parkers in a setting like that. there was also a really cool all-girl trio from pei called The Barnkats who played with us, and whom I quite enjoyed.

the bar show got underway a little late because of the hockey game (we decided to wait until the game was over to start). by the end of the night the bar was pretty full, and we ended the tour with a bang i think - not really a saint john bang, but a bang nonetheless.

the tour also ended on a sad note as this pei show was mary's last show with us. she's moving to toronto, and i know personally, i am very sad to see her go. we made sure she had a good night though, we got some rowdy applause from the crowd in her favour, and bought her a plethora of coronas as a send off.

after the show we went back to the motel where we were staying and stayed up partying till about 530 in the morning - well at least i did. some packed in earlier, some later.

this morning we went to pineau's parent's house for some sweet breakfast and then made our way back to nova scotia via the ferry. it was gorgeous.

now we're home safe and sound, the van held up, we have a couple bucks in our pockets, and a bunch of shows to play this month.

c'est beau ca.

hamilton/moncton/fredericton

the show in hamilton was kind of a bust. there was maybe 20-30 people there, and we didn't really sell anything. kind of a shitty way to end our ontario leg. there were some perks though. we got to hang out with maria a whole bunch in hamilton and her mom made us supper, we got to see donnie the soundguy, who used to play in don vail and is a big establishment fan, and - out of the blue - joe and nikki showed up. that was super cool.

after our set, we packed up the van and started the drive to fredericton. somehwere around toronto we realized we forgot pinky's cymbals, had to call maria, and get kyle cunjak to bring them home when petunia is done their tour - what a rigamarore.

anyways - we drove straight through the night to get to new brunswick. i stayed up all night with matt and pineau who took turns driving, but then i slept through the majority of quebec and new brunswick in the back of the van. mmm sleep.

we got to fredericton around 8 or so i guess on tuesday, and stayed at Nick Cobham's place - you might remember him from The Fussy Part. we got a bunch of beers, hung out, then pinky, matt and i went down to the capital to see what was shaking. we ran into some pals like Zach and Dennis and Jeff. that's why i like fredericton, because even though we're not from here - we can go out and see friends. love it.

oh - yeah! we finally found an extra seat for the van! turns out, Zach's dad had like 3 of them just kicking around. how lucky is that!!! woo! everyone gets a seat!

wednesday's show was in moncton with The Peter Parkers, who, thankfully for us, are also playing our Saint John, PEI and Halifax shows. this was only our second show in moncton (technically our third i guess) so we were kind of ancy about the crowd-size. having the Parkers on the bill deifnately helped. the crowd was great, and very receptive. moncton is definately a city we have to play more often.

we stayed at Stephane's (the parker's bass player) house that night, a really nice place in downtown moncton. mary and i watched a really crappy sean connery movie before bed. he's a weird guy.

yesterday we came back to fredericton for a show at the capital with The Trick. Again, I was kind of worried about the crowd because we have kind of a big ego to flaunt in fredericton. all of our shows here have been packed, and everyone seems to love us. having said that however, we have never played fredericton as the headliner, we have never played on a weeknight, and we have only played here once when university wasn't going on and that was when nobody really knew us. so last night was definately the test - how "cool" are we in fredericton, really?

answer: very

there was a lot of people there, engaging in sing-a-longs, dance-a-longs, clap-a-longs. we sold a boat-load of tshirts and cds and played an awesome set.

tonite we play in saint john (it's matty matt's birthday!!!), then tomorrow we do an all ages show in pei then a bar show. I think Nick Cobham is coming with us. that will be hilarious. i need to get more batteries for my camera.

i love the maritimes.

hamilton

just a short post from the bar...

we rolled into hamilton yesterday afternoon and met up with our friend maria who barbecued for us in the semi-rain.

then we spent the night at cassie's place - aka the greenhouse - playing guitar hero, watching tv and watching perhaps the most hilarious and insane thing i have ever watched - R Kelley's "Trapped in the Closet."

seriously.

this is either the dumbest most self-indulgent piece of art i have ever seen, or the most genial comedic work ever produced. i haven't figured out which yet.

so. awesome.

anyways, today we lounged around - spent some time walking around hamilton, and maria's mom made us a wonderful pasta dinner.

we're second on the bill at the casbah tonite, and we're going to drive to fredericton tonite when we're done.

holy, joe and nikki just showed up.
awesome.

see you in the maritimes.

Cambridge/Waterloo

After our show Friday in Guelph, we came back to Joe's. Saturday's show was in Cambridge, which is only twenty minutes away, so we spent all of Saturday around the house.

But this was no lounging day, oh no. We helped Joe and his dad do some wicked landscaping - mulching their garden's like we were pro landscapers. If i was doing the work at my own house, I would not have been having a good time. But for some reason, doing it here wasn't so bad. It might have been that I was still able to spend time with my friends while doing the work, it might have been that Joe's parents (and Joe) have been so hospitable to us these past couple days that we felt this was a way of earning our keep, it may have been that we spend hours on hours in the van and this was a good means of some well needed physical exercise, or it could have been the cause of a strange vortex which exists somewhere in Ontario. Either way, it was an afternoon well spent.

Pinky made us some sweet pizzas for supper - a la Tomasinos, sorry Tomavinos, style. They were delicious. We also had a cornucopia of beers and pie - and we gave Joe's parents a framed photo of us and a bottle of wine for putting up with us the past two weekends.

After all that fun, we headed to Cambridge to play an all ages show with - seriously - metal bands. The bar was the skeeziest place I've ever seen - it reminded me of something out of the movies, the kind of bar that could be found in redneck Texas or something. It was good to see a couple of the guys in Persona again.

Given the other bands on the bill, we upped the ante a little bit, playing a melange of our heavier songs and our songs which include face-melting guitar solos. It went over better than I thought, we got a good response (all things considered), sold some merch, and then - yep - made our way back to Joe's.

We spent the night drinking beer in his hot tub. So rock n roll.

Today Joe's mom is cooking us a roast (obviously taking a page from the book of Katherine) and we are heading to Hamilton a little later. Today is a day off for us, so we're going to just hang out with our friends Maria and Cassie in Steeltown, and - if the rain holds off - hopefully have a barbecue.

Monday is our last Ontario show. I think we're driving straight to Fredericton when we're done playing Monday night, stopping through Montreal to pick up our shirts that we forgot there.

Its hard to believe we've already been gone a week.

And to think, one week from today, I will be sleeping in my own bed.

Angel of Debt tour photos/videos - part 3

Toronto:








Morning fun:




Hanging out at Joe's, our favorite past-time:




















Me playing outside in Peterborough:






A/V in Peterborough:




Windsor:








Fun, keeps the body healthy:






Guelph (photos by Jeff Woods):






















Sleepless Nights, Landscaping Extraordinaires:












Team PSS - Pitchfork, Shovel, Shovel:

Angel Of Debt Tour Photos - Part 2

Hanging out at Joe's place:




Helping out around the house:






Seven Nine people riding in Bettie White










The 40s, the 40s, the 40s never stop!






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Post-show chilaxin' (check out Mary's fancy new dress)