Family Reunion in Montreal

Now where was I. Well I’m not really sure so I’ll start in Montreal. It’s funny, I keep on raving about how great our hosts have been all across the country. A lot of them last minute deals where they most willingly take us in and end up feeding us and giving us fresh towels for our showers etc…

Montreal was a bit of the opposite. Our hosts had invited us months in advance, but because of our continuous delay in getting to Montreal, and my failing to call and warn that we wouldn’t be arriving for dinner, our hosts decided to leave us to find our own accommodations.

We’d originally planned to get to Montreal a day early so we could explore the city, but Toronto had been so much fun with late night to early morning after parties that we decided to stay an extra day.

Arriving at the venue I was greeted by an old familiar face that I hadn’t seen in a long time. I’d meant to contact my half brother Rob earlier but being on the road and having little internet access it had completely slipped my mind. It was strangely emotional seeing my brother after not seeing him for 14 years, and receiving little more than a facebook message from him in that time. It was great to see him again, but it’s funny how such a long period of no contact can leave two people with very little to talk about. You’d think there would be a mountain of topics to cover in catching up, but I’d assume that sometime after 3 or 4 years the mountain disappears.
It was wonderful to see him. I was very self-conscious on stage as my brother had originally gotten me into music. He taught me how to play my first 3 or 4 chords on the guitar. He’d taken me music shopping when I bought the first CD I ever owned.

Rob and his partner Lynn took Corey and I in for the night and gave us a bed to sleep on. It was another night of debauchery until sunrise.

We awoke in time to grab some ‘legendary (you’d be surprised how many things we’ve seen on tour have claimed to be legendary) montreal smoked meat before we headed off for another show in Ottawa.

Half way Point

It seems that in the prairies and places of canada where there was little and little going on it was much easier to give you guys updates. Toronto and the surrounding area has been good to us.

We just played a killer show last night at the Hideout in Toronto. We'd been accepted into the "North by North East" festival just this week and managed to pull a really good slot at 1 AM on friday night on Queen Street. The audience was off the hook. We were sweating, throwing water at each other, girls were dancing on the counter top of the bar, and rumour has it one of our band members even got a kiss in the middle of our song. Now i wouldn't call us a party band, but when people want to party we'll make the most of it and that was splendid.

This week we also had a great experience at the Trepid House in Waterloo. The venue is a house that the owners have converted into a venue by hooking up speakers in every room, so that no matter where you are, the living room, the magic room (yes there were several magicians in this house), the pirate room (equipped with pirate costumes and everything), the plant room or the attic art gallery, you could always groove to the music.

We were lucky enough to share the stage with a newfy band called HEY ROSETTA, which everyone should check out. We were all humbled as hell. The cops had shut down the concert after we played and we all thought that it was over. Hey Rosetta, equipped with mandolins, cellos, violins and acoustic guitars just played an acoustic set and man was it awesome.

We also managed to get some new recordings done in windsor with a friend of josh's. We're talking about temporarily posting them on our myspace and facebook pages so stay tuned for those. I can't promise anything. we're still talking about it, but i think we could swing at least a couple for your listening pleasure.

Off to montreal tomorrow, and then the final stretch back across canada.

hope to see you soon

dom

Working for the Weekend: Part 2 Guelph

As much as i whine about my perceived failure of shows, the one thing i can never complain about are our accomodations. We've had people welcome us into our homes all across the country and we have had such a good time with all of them and thankfully saved a lot of dough that we would have been forking out on hotels. Guelph was no different.

In london i gave my buddy jerry a call to see if he could hook us up. Jerry lives in Van city, but studied in Guelph and assured me that he could hook us up. Jerry gave us directions to a place called Atmosphere in guelph where we would meet up with our first contact Mike who would give us the key code for the house that we would stay at. (Starting to sound top secret to anyone?). Well when we got there, Mike had no idea who we were, I guess we didn't have the correct response to his 'Roses are red violets are blue' riddle. All was quickly sorted out with a couple phone calls, however, and we headed apprehensively over to the house.

Upon arriving our doubts were quickly vanquished. Aaron, on of our hosts, greeted us with "Hey Painted Birds! i'm a huge fan. you guys want a beer?". Aaron and his roommate Ola assured us that they would come to the show but needed to get up early for work the next morning. Their noble ambitions were soon forgotten, as following our show at about 2:30 in the morning Aaron said screw it and ordered us and a group of people back to the house for more partying.

The show was pretty good. Leighton managed to zone out for most of my solo and only come hug me for the very ending which was again hilarious. Starting in London and continuing on in Guelph, Sarnia and Windsor, we've started to include a newer song called Seashore in our encores. It's probably one of my favourite works. There's of course an oceany seafarer feel to it which i hope will someday be belted out by a throng of people who have lost all self control and have no fear of dancing or singing in front of their friends.

Dave from Bedroom biography ensures me that we should record it in Toronto so you might hear a version of it sooner than later.

stay posted

Dom

Working for the Weekend: Part 1. London

This last week was a go go go non stopper. 5 shows in 5 days, which is standard for the regular working folk but our first stint non stop rock this tour. i made the comparison to corey the other day that this week kind of felt like a volleyball tournament i played in when i was in grade 10. we'd started this tournament off by beating the best team in the province, penticton ( a group of genetically engineered youth whose minimum height was that of my own), and then went on to lose every other game in the round robin that weekend.

In this comparison, the steroid pumped brute was the Legendary Horseshoe Tavern, and every other loss was a rapid fire of southern ontarian cities: London, Guelph, Sarnia and Josh's hometown of Windsor.

You'll have to excuse what may seem like my constant negativity. Looking back at Northern Ontario, there was a great amount of success and reward in the shows we played. The same can definitely be said about our last 4 of 5 shows. Touring for me is a series of massive ups and downs. The highs are super high and the lows are super low. It seems that i'm confronted in each show with either success or failure.

The Horseshoe in toronto was, of course, a massive success. Two sets of hands were not enough to handle the mad rush of people who approached our merch table. Having started off on a Tuesday, which is of course not really a night that people go out, with such good attendance, i got my hopes up, figuring this week would be amazing.

Getting my hopes up seems to be one of my biggest enemies, however. London was fine. The venue treated us astoundingly well. The pub's guests all loved us. It's just that despite all of their efforts to promote the show, including posters and handbills on every table and even our biography by the entrance, I wanted more people there. But that's me. Want want want, and never get enough.

London was the first night that we would share the stage with our good friends from Bedroom Biography (www.myspace.com/leightonbain). Bedroom’s frontman Leighton is a long time good friend of the band. At our first show Leighton would start a tour tradition of the onstage hug. Needing to leave suddenly near the end of our set, Leighton walked up to me in the middle of a guitar solo in our new track Is it Fate and gave me a hug. The guys all insisted on giving him a hard time, and Leighton and his sidekick Dave insisted on continuing the tradition at every subsequent show in Southern Ontario.

Now there's usually one ‘crazy’ who ends up making our night. they're usually into the sauce and sometimes a bit too touchy feely. in london it was steve. Steve was the anti heckler. if he would have been booing, trash talking, or making Pearl Jam requests he would have been a heckler, but Steve was more into the loud obnoxious compliments from across the bar. On Wednesday Steve worshiped the Painted Birds. Our crowning moment was when he told us that our CD would be the soundtrack to his family’s bonfire that weekend. I hope they roasted a pig on a stick and fired their family guns into the air. I’ve always wished that such activities would take place to our music.

We rested our heads at an old roommates house, and got ready for day 3 of the work week, guelph.

Dom

Legendary Indeed

before i proceed i just want to thank you guys for commenting on the notes. it's good to know that there are people out there who are reading this. so thanks.

the horseshoe last night was splendid. so much so that i might even take my previous comments back about it being questionably legendary. our last 3 shows had been kind of downers, and the horseshoe was so great that all our previous worries seemed to just melt away.
a fast set. 30 minutes. only the current hits were played. some new ones, ocean, is it fate, some album numbers, colleen, clouds.

i don't know, when it's good i have little to explain but merely that, it was great.
for those of you from toronto, we'll hopefully be getting another gig for north by north east next week.

and for those others of you across the country, check out the latest body so beautiful contest entry from Lisa Holmes. We're still waiting on many more entries every one so send them inp.s because it was entered as i wrote this up, i'll add leighton bain's photo entry as well.

as for those painted beards. tsk tsk. i'll have nothing to do with those copy cat sorts.

From Shoe to Shoe

normally it's 'sault' ste. marie, as in 'soo' but our videographer mr. fischer started calling it shoe at one point. the reason for which escapes me. of course being as impressionable as i am, i had to follow suit.

the drive through northern ontario had been described as a snooze fest by people who had been there before. my sister even skipped this part of the country by bussing from winnipeg to toronto when she biked across canada a few years ago. i'd given her a hard time, but having seen it i can't really blame her. but who am i kidding, i was sleeping.

the venue in sault ste. marie, the lop lops, looked good. a hip lounge kind of feel. seeing the venue, i worried that we might be a bit too loud, and this fear was confirmed as we sound checked our selves a few hours before the show. the owner told us we needed to turn down.

now i like challenges, especially when we are forced to overcome such challenges with creative thought. we returned to the venue just after 10 PM to find a couple large groups who appeared to be at the venue for their social engagement and not the Painted Birds show. to keep from driving them out with our rock and roll we decided to play an acoustic set filled with our mellower numbers. now at this point i wish i could report that our scheme worked and we won them all over. but i must be honest with you. after about two songs, the large group of women that had caused our concern started filing out slowly. Which led me to think 'why am i catering to these people if they don't even care'.

We came back with the rock after our break and we won a number of them over.

after another 8 hour drive we spent a day in Toronto catching up with old friends and wandering around aimlessly from bar to bar. Today it's the Legendary Horseshoe Tavern, which as far as i'm concerned is only 'legendary' because the smart owners decided to put legendary before the name. So i've decided to change my name. from now on refer to me as the Amazing Dominique Fricot. soon it won't even be questioned and wham i'll just be known as that without any justification.

looking forward to southern ontario

Dom

Almost alone in the Peg and the Bay

There comes a low point on every tour. I hope we've passed ours. On Vancouver Island it was having one of the best show of our lives at UVic and then having a majority of the crowd walk away on us in Nanaimo the next day for us not being heavy enough or mosh-able. While our hosts in Winnipeg and Thunder Bay were wonderful, the crowds were well... non existant. But i musn't be so negative because both nights had serious turn arounds that left a smile on my face.

We played last in Winnipeg after a band called All Your Friends, who's audience decided it was too late to stay out and listen to music after they finished playing. So we were left with a table of other musicians who were touring through, our wise and noble videographer, Corey, our host Mike, and a couple other random people.

Faced with such a meager serving of audience i find it hard to get positive. The few who were there would consistently drag on applauses for almost uncomfortable amounts of time. The mood started rising.

Then in our last song, a new one called Ocean of a Sea, the musicians all jumped to their feet and danced in merry revelry. It somehow made the whole night worthwhile. And i thank them for that.

Thunderbay started off depressing. The ending of our winnipeg show was good enough to improve the night but not enough to keep me on a high for the next day. The owner at the bar warned me that Thunder Bay had gone through an economic recession and people just weren't going out anymore. Later we asked the sound guy if people came out to shows and he smirked cynically.
"Sometimes..." he said.

As we're supposed to start playing, there is nobody more than staff in the room. Josh recommends that we do some songs twice as we need to work on them more than others.
"Great" i think, "We came all this way to rehearse".
We go through a couple of tunes like this, and then all of a sudden to pair of eyes peer through the window at the back. The next thing we know there are 3 people at the bar. They tell us that they thought we sounded good from the road so decided to come in for a beer.
Shawn turns to me, "now we have a show. Let's play a show for these people". About ten other people walked in and once again our spirits were lifted.

Then it was off to Sault Ste. Marie. We're still going. Don't try and stop us.

Dom