After a very long drawn out trip, we had 2 great shows in Kelowna. On Friday night we played a show at the Habitat opening for Ohbijou: a great band from Ontario that absolutely delighted the room. On Saturday night, after getting new grippier tires for our van we had our very own show at the Streaming Cafe. Thanks to all that came out and tuned in online. For those of you that don’t know, the Streaming Cafe is a new venue in Kelowna that books music acts and films and records the shows to ’stream’ them for the audiences watching live online. The venue, the staff, the audience and the whole experience marks one of the band’s favourite shows of all time and we’re very happy to have great footage of the show.
On a personal note I was very pleased to find out that two old friends of mine, Greg Sczebel and Dan Bremnes played the night before me and after me at the Streaming Cafe. In highschool I took a music composition class with both these gents and it's so cool to see that we're all still slugging it out on the road with our music. All the best to you boys!
For your viewing pleasure here is an acoustic performance of our single “Wash Away” at the Streaming Cafe.
Enjoy!
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Saturday, November 21, 2009
How to Paint A Dying Bird Back to Life
So we've made it to Kelowna. Twas a long long trip to get here from vancouver, but we made it. Josh and Shawn are currently making a trip to Kal-Tire, while I sit at an old friends house writing this blog to you.
You may be wondering how getting to Kelowna from Vancouver is a long trip when really it should only take a bit over 4 hours, and you'd be even more surprised to find out that it took us around 8 hours to make the trip. Well wonder no further for i will tell you how such a trip could take so long.
I'd woken up with premonitions about our journey on Thursday night as the last time we'd driven the Coquihalla we'd hit snow, fishtailed, put on our cables and then had them break about 20 minutes later. We still didn't have new tires, and now that i think of it we hadn't purchased new tires since we'd purchased our van in the spring of 2008. Since then we've taken our van on 4 tours, 2 all the way across canada. We've put about 45,000 clicks on our van since we purchased it and the tires weren't even new then. So tires, not fit for the journey, but we had purchased new chains.
Around 1 PM we saw somewhat of an omen. On a curb just of Main Street and Terminal a pigeon was lying on the sidewalk, flapping one wing and looking like it needed to be put out of it's misery. After our roommate Jarred, who decided to make the trip with us, declared it to be a bad omen, I said the we should probably knock on wood. Shawn was quick to correct me saying that it was kind of difficult to knock on wood in our van, where there was no wood. Save for the guitars that were in their cases, and us being far too lazy to open up the cases etc, etc. Plus we're really not that superstitious.
I made an off color joke, no pun intended, about the only way we could undo this omen is if we could somehow paint the bird back to life. I think acrylic and oil paint would be a bit heavy, much more suited for putting the bird out of it's misery. We'd probably have to use a light water color or the spray cans. But we needed to be in Kelowna by 6 and like I said, we're really not that superstitious...
We head for the highway and it's Friday so of course we hit bad traffic for an hour or so. After getting some gas and being relieved from the driver's seat by Shawn I hit the back seat for some sweet sweet nap time. I awake as the van is fishtailing up the Coquihalla. We immediately pull over and start to put chains on the tires. On the side of the road we quickly realize that our headlights have both burnt out. Our high beams still work but not one, but both headlights are burnt out. Looks like we're driving the whole way with our high beams on.
The next thing we notice is that it's cold. It's snowing, and it's really not as temperate as vancouver. Josh quickly jumps back in the driver seat announcing that he'll back us over the chains when we tell him to. We lay the chains out, josh backs over them, and we then proceed to struggle to get the chains hooked on the the tires.
Now two things make this difficult, or three, three things make this difficult. 1. It's dark and you can't see behind the wheel very well to hook up the chains, 2. your hands are freezing, cuz you're a city boy who couldn't have possibly thought about how cold it is in the interior and 3. you have to get that chain as tight as possible which is tougher than ever with painfully numb fingers. If you don't you'll hear a rickety tickety clackety clackety in your wheel well as you drive.
After much cursing and struggling with the cold josh opens the door and asks us if we want to borrow the gloves he's wearing. More cursing ensues as the hilarity of the gloves being on the guy who's keeping himself warm in the van. We finally get the chains on and depart. Moments later the rickety tickety starts up in the left wheel well. We stop tighten them a bit, continue on. Rickety tickety continues. We then proceed to stop and tighten the chains every couple minutes because we just cant get the chains tight enough. At some point we even improvise and use other metal clips to connect the chains and use a pair of wire snips to tighten the metal clips around the chain. Drive, stop, tighten, curse, drive, clickety clackety, stop, curse, tighten. This goes on for 2 hours.
It's now 630 and we're still on the Coquihalla, and we were supposed to be in Kelowna at 6. We text the owner of the Habitat, who thankfully gives us no stress and tells us to just get there safe. We love Quinn, he's the Best. Finally, after tightening the chain for the 9th time, we figure we've got it now, nipped it in the bud.
Wrong. We drive away and in moments we hear the loudest clickety clackety yet. We inspect to see that the chain has now broken. It's at this time that i must advise you, or perhaps you can deduce this yourself.
Don't buy chains. Or do, but if you can, just get winter tires. It's so much easier. Yes it costs a lot of money, but isn't hassle an expense??
In the end we just slugged it out with our old crappy tires. We arrived in Kelowna at 9, a half hour after we were supposed to go on, but Quinn the Habitat's proprietor, who really is the BEST, let us play a full set, and it was tonnes of fun. Ohbijou the headliner rocked as well, check them out.
So how do you paint a dying bird back to life??? I don't think you do it with paint. Unless it's that spray paint that jerry o'connell used to make himself fly in My Secret Identity. Great show. Wish it was still on TV.
You may be wondering how getting to Kelowna from Vancouver is a long trip when really it should only take a bit over 4 hours, and you'd be even more surprised to find out that it took us around 8 hours to make the trip. Well wonder no further for i will tell you how such a trip could take so long.
I'd woken up with premonitions about our journey on Thursday night as the last time we'd driven the Coquihalla we'd hit snow, fishtailed, put on our cables and then had them break about 20 minutes later. We still didn't have new tires, and now that i think of it we hadn't purchased new tires since we'd purchased our van in the spring of 2008. Since then we've taken our van on 4 tours, 2 all the way across canada. We've put about 45,000 clicks on our van since we purchased it and the tires weren't even new then. So tires, not fit for the journey, but we had purchased new chains.
Around 1 PM we saw somewhat of an omen. On a curb just of Main Street and Terminal a pigeon was lying on the sidewalk, flapping one wing and looking like it needed to be put out of it's misery. After our roommate Jarred, who decided to make the trip with us, declared it to be a bad omen, I said the we should probably knock on wood. Shawn was quick to correct me saying that it was kind of difficult to knock on wood in our van, where there was no wood. Save for the guitars that were in their cases, and us being far too lazy to open up the cases etc, etc. Plus we're really not that superstitious.
I made an off color joke, no pun intended, about the only way we could undo this omen is if we could somehow paint the bird back to life. I think acrylic and oil paint would be a bit heavy, much more suited for putting the bird out of it's misery. We'd probably have to use a light water color or the spray cans. But we needed to be in Kelowna by 6 and like I said, we're really not that superstitious...
We head for the highway and it's Friday so of course we hit bad traffic for an hour or so. After getting some gas and being relieved from the driver's seat by Shawn I hit the back seat for some sweet sweet nap time. I awake as the van is fishtailing up the Coquihalla. We immediately pull over and start to put chains on the tires. On the side of the road we quickly realize that our headlights have both burnt out. Our high beams still work but not one, but both headlights are burnt out. Looks like we're driving the whole way with our high beams on.
The next thing we notice is that it's cold. It's snowing, and it's really not as temperate as vancouver. Josh quickly jumps back in the driver seat announcing that he'll back us over the chains when we tell him to. We lay the chains out, josh backs over them, and we then proceed to struggle to get the chains hooked on the the tires.
Now two things make this difficult, or three, three things make this difficult. 1. It's dark and you can't see behind the wheel very well to hook up the chains, 2. your hands are freezing, cuz you're a city boy who couldn't have possibly thought about how cold it is in the interior and 3. you have to get that chain as tight as possible which is tougher than ever with painfully numb fingers. If you don't you'll hear a rickety tickety clackety clackety in your wheel well as you drive.
After much cursing and struggling with the cold josh opens the door and asks us if we want to borrow the gloves he's wearing. More cursing ensues as the hilarity of the gloves being on the guy who's keeping himself warm in the van. We finally get the chains on and depart. Moments later the rickety tickety starts up in the left wheel well. We stop tighten them a bit, continue on. Rickety tickety continues. We then proceed to stop and tighten the chains every couple minutes because we just cant get the chains tight enough. At some point we even improvise and use other metal clips to connect the chains and use a pair of wire snips to tighten the metal clips around the chain. Drive, stop, tighten, curse, drive, clickety clackety, stop, curse, tighten. This goes on for 2 hours.
It's now 630 and we're still on the Coquihalla, and we were supposed to be in Kelowna at 6. We text the owner of the Habitat, who thankfully gives us no stress and tells us to just get there safe. We love Quinn, he's the Best. Finally, after tightening the chain for the 9th time, we figure we've got it now, nipped it in the bud.
Wrong. We drive away and in moments we hear the loudest clickety clackety yet. We inspect to see that the chain has now broken. It's at this time that i must advise you, or perhaps you can deduce this yourself.
Don't buy chains. Or do, but if you can, just get winter tires. It's so much easier. Yes it costs a lot of money, but isn't hassle an expense??
In the end we just slugged it out with our old crappy tires. We arrived in Kelowna at 9, a half hour after we were supposed to go on, but Quinn the Habitat's proprietor, who really is the BEST, let us play a full set, and it was tonnes of fun. Ohbijou the headliner rocked as well, check them out.
So how do you paint a dying bird back to life??? I don't think you do it with paint. Unless it's that spray paint that jerry o'connell used to make himself fly in My Secret Identity. Great show. Wish it was still on TV.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Peak Showcases Night 2- GARRET KATO, TEA, WATC, SWEETHEART
We made it out to every night of the Peak Performance Showcases, but brought our video camera to only some of the nights. Luckily, we did bring the video camera to the second night when Garret Kato, Tea, Sweetheart, and We Are the City took the stage.
Special highlights include, Sweetheart's worst Valentines day ever, Drinking Shots with Tea, Garret Kato's mad basketball skills and left handed layup, and footage of my personal favourite We Are the City Song, April.
Dom and TPB
Special highlights include, Sweetheart's worst Valentines day ever, Drinking Shots with Tea, Garret Kato's mad basketball skills and left handed layup, and footage of my personal favourite We Are the City Song, April.
Dom and TPB
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Shopping With TV Heart Attack and Danny Echo
This was my blog to the peak following our showcase at the Cellar on October 15th.
Below is the video that we finally edited down after all of our interviewing that night. enjoy...
love show days. I’m usually quite useless at whatever it is i’m supposed to be doing, be it work or preparation for the show. Thoughts like what we should say between songs, how I’m expecting people to react or what lyrics I’m having trouble remembering usually race through my head again and again. Thursday was no different from such show days, except for added brain rumblings brought on by a new random idea to become a rogue journalist for the Peak Performance Project.
Allow me to explain. I started the day off at the coffee shop, where I could actually get an internet connection, unlike our dilapidated house, and tried to herald in some more votes in the competition. Those two boy bands, the left and the city boys are handing our butts to us, and something needed to be done. So I was pestering family and friends one by one on facebook trying to remind them to vote if they hadn’t already, when Shawn messages me that he has to go get his hair cut. He’s already loaded most of the gear in the van, all i have to do is sort the t-shirts and bring them along with my amp and whatever is on the couch. Easy.
So I head back to the house to complete the sorting merchandise mission and pack the van. After doing the back and forth between sorting t-shirts, rehearsing harvest moon, counting t-shirts and re-rehearsing harvest moon, I’m struck with an odd image in my head. For some reason I imagine myself interviewing Kuba-Oms, but i’m not asking any questions. I’m just rattling off nick names for Kuba: Kubinho, Kuba Snack, Kubasa Sausage, El Kubano, Kubee Roo, Kubarrific Koobs and the Kubliminal Messages, etc etc. In my head, Kuba, who probably invented cool, is dead panning me to death. Now somehow from there I start thinking that it would be great fun to interview each peak performance artist. And that’s where my mind started racing, and all my physical actions wen’t on auto pilot. I grab paper and I’m jotting down questions, I’m role playing in my head, it’s embarassing and pathetic, but quite enjoyable when it’s going.
All of a sudden I’m out of time, I throw the merch, the guitar stands and the video camera, which will now be used for Rogue Journalism, in the van. Our van has been in rough shape as of late. So much so that the van starts to overheat on the 5 minute ride to the venue. You know it’s bad when the trip around the block to find parking gets you stressed.
I figured we’d be fine enough to get home later that night, but I hadn’t predicted my next blunder. After TV Heartattack sound checks, Josh asks me where my amp is. “Shoot”. I’d totally forgotten it plus the things on the couch that Shawn had told me to bring. Auto Pilot had obviously done me wrong. I want to rush but the van wasn’t in the mood. Within blocks from the Cellar the van’s temperature needle is peaking and I’m coasting whenever possible.
Don’t worry, nothing bad happens. I return on time for soundcheck and a magnificent night ensues. Rogue Journalist, Dominique Fricot, got his key interviews with Danny Echo and TV Heart Attack. And our set, well our set felt amazing. There’s something so comforting about looking out at a whole crowd of smiling audience members and seeing good friends dancing and singing along.
Let’s hope the judges were also smiling.
Until next time
Dom
Below is the video that we finally edited down after all of our interviewing that night. enjoy...
love show days. I’m usually quite useless at whatever it is i’m supposed to be doing, be it work or preparation for the show. Thoughts like what we should say between songs, how I’m expecting people to react or what lyrics I’m having trouble remembering usually race through my head again and again. Thursday was no different from such show days, except for added brain rumblings brought on by a new random idea to become a rogue journalist for the Peak Performance Project.
Allow me to explain. I started the day off at the coffee shop, where I could actually get an internet connection, unlike our dilapidated house, and tried to herald in some more votes in the competition. Those two boy bands, the left and the city boys are handing our butts to us, and something needed to be done. So I was pestering family and friends one by one on facebook trying to remind them to vote if they hadn’t already, when Shawn messages me that he has to go get his hair cut. He’s already loaded most of the gear in the van, all i have to do is sort the t-shirts and bring them along with my amp and whatever is on the couch. Easy.
So I head back to the house to complete the sorting merchandise mission and pack the van. After doing the back and forth between sorting t-shirts, rehearsing harvest moon, counting t-shirts and re-rehearsing harvest moon, I’m struck with an odd image in my head. For some reason I imagine myself interviewing Kuba-Oms, but i’m not asking any questions. I’m just rattling off nick names for Kuba: Kubinho, Kuba Snack, Kubasa Sausage, El Kubano, Kubee Roo, Kubarrific Koobs and the Kubliminal Messages, etc etc. In my head, Kuba, who probably invented cool, is dead panning me to death. Now somehow from there I start thinking that it would be great fun to interview each peak performance artist. And that’s where my mind started racing, and all my physical actions wen’t on auto pilot. I grab paper and I’m jotting down questions, I’m role playing in my head, it’s embarassing and pathetic, but quite enjoyable when it’s going.
All of a sudden I’m out of time, I throw the merch, the guitar stands and the video camera, which will now be used for Rogue Journalism, in the van. Our van has been in rough shape as of late. So much so that the van starts to overheat on the 5 minute ride to the venue. You know it’s bad when the trip around the block to find parking gets you stressed.
I figured we’d be fine enough to get home later that night, but I hadn’t predicted my next blunder. After TV Heartattack sound checks, Josh asks me where my amp is. “Shoot”. I’d totally forgotten it plus the things on the couch that Shawn had told me to bring. Auto Pilot had obviously done me wrong. I want to rush but the van wasn’t in the mood. Within blocks from the Cellar the van’s temperature needle is peaking and I’m coasting whenever possible.
Don’t worry, nothing bad happens. I return on time for soundcheck and a magnificent night ensues. Rogue Journalist, Dominique Fricot, got his key interviews with Danny Echo and TV Heart Attack. And our set, well our set felt amazing. There’s something so comforting about looking out at a whole crowd of smiling audience members and seeing good friends dancing and singing along.
Let’s hope the judges were also smiling.
Until next time
Dom
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
We'll Do Anything For Your 50+ Votes - #2 Jenn
It's time for episode two of "we'll do anything for your 50+ votes" at vote.thepaintedbirds.com .
our good friend Jenn decided to go full board and send out emails to all of her contacts as well as over 100 messages to a lot of her facebook friends. I know this because Jenn cc'd me on the messages. the next day we noticed a considerable jump of over 80 votes to our total, and we were over the moon. Thanks so much Jenn!!
Jenn requested that we'd send her several pairs of underwear, which we most naturally had to comply with. Here you see shawn holding up the treasured Painted Birds red undies with white print.
Now Jenn did request a few more than two pairs of underwear, it just so happens that we're sadly almost out. or i guess that's a good thing isn't it, it means the product has been selling. YES. But either way, we decided to throw in a couple of t-shirts.
So i wrapped Jenn's goodie bag up for her and went to the UPS store to ship it all of to her in Manchester, England. Hope you get it soon Jenn, we know a long winter is coming and nothing keeps you warmer than TPB undies and t's. Although after i did send it off, the UPS worker did notify me that postal services are going on strike in the UK right now....
Again if you'd like to help us out and get something in return it's as easy as sending the link
vote.thepaintedbirds.com
to your friends via facebook or email and cc'ing me (dom@thepaintedbirds.com) or including me or one of my bandmates in the message. remember to tell your friends of course to vote for "the Painted Birds". Do it and you could be as lucky as Jenn.
Or of course Jared...
our good friend Jenn decided to go full board and send out emails to all of her contacts as well as over 100 messages to a lot of her facebook friends. I know this because Jenn cc'd me on the messages. the next day we noticed a considerable jump of over 80 votes to our total, and we were over the moon. Thanks so much Jenn!!
Jenn requested that we'd send her several pairs of underwear, which we most naturally had to comply with. Here you see shawn holding up the treasured Painted Birds red undies with white print.
Now Jenn did request a few more than two pairs of underwear, it just so happens that we're sadly almost out. or i guess that's a good thing isn't it, it means the product has been selling. YES. But either way, we decided to throw in a couple of t-shirts.
So i wrapped Jenn's goodie bag up for her and went to the UPS store to ship it all of to her in Manchester, England. Hope you get it soon Jenn, we know a long winter is coming and nothing keeps you warmer than TPB undies and t's. Although after i did send it off, the UPS worker did notify me that postal services are going on strike in the UK right now....
Again if you'd like to help us out and get something in return it's as easy as sending the link
vote.thepaintedbirds.com
to your friends via facebook or email and cc'ing me (dom@thepaintedbirds.com) or including me or one of my bandmates in the message. remember to tell your friends of course to vote for "the Painted Birds". Do it and you could be as lucky as Jenn.
Or of course Jared...
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