The Free Press : The Band

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Wednesday

Nov112009

The Free Press |

Wednesday, November 11, 2009 at 4:09AM |

Montreal is for Lovers

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Lovers of pizza, pepsi and churches. They’ve got me on 2 out of 3.

Thanks to the miracle of wi-fi, we’re sitting and writing in a Pizza Hut in Montreal. It’s handily located across from a big, beautiful church and Urgel Bourgie’s funeral home. We’re waiting for some greasy, delicious fuel (as we have another 8 hours of driving yet today). We had planned to be in Edmundston, NB before midnight but life rarely makes accommodations for rock and roll indie bands. In fact it usually seems to go out of its way to make life “interesting” for outfits like ours.

The problem today was that the 401 was closed just past Kingston. Seriously. The Trans-Canada highway was closed because a large truck (full of pulp), hit a car, hit a bridge, sliced in half, caught fire and slid to a halt blocking all three lanes. As a precaution (probably a good one since a truck that’s on fire and full of paper would provide some combustability) the RCMP shut down the 401 and we spent an hour with some fellow Canadians wondering what in the name of the baby Jesus was going on.

We may have dwelled on this before, but here’s the problem with touring Canada; it’s too christing big. If you cut through the USA (odd that one has to leave our country in order to cross it faster) you can shave some time off your trip and go from Victoria, BC to St. John’s, NF in only 3 days and 7 hours (yes, 79 hours.) It’s roughly 7471 km. There’s many ways to say this, but that’s too far. It’s just over 8170 football fields. 8-1-7-0!!! Brett Favre’s got a good arm, but I’m not sure he could make the hail mary on that field. Now we’re only going from Toronto, ON to Halifax NS (a measly 1782 km). That’s only 1948 football fields but it still feels like a lot. Anyone want to do wind sprints on that surface? I’ll pass.

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Writing from the hotel in Edmundston now. As is our usual style, we’re two hours late and checking in during the wee hours of the morning. Typically we storm into a room, turn on all the lights, plug in all manner of computers, phones, climate analysis equipment and begin to wind down. This consists of watching dumb videos (ie Christopher Walken reading the lyrics to “Pokerface”, reading, checking emails and writing some blogs.) Tonight we have successfully managed to use every outlet in a rather nice hotel room (we will be issuing a formal apology to David Suzuki in a later post). Everyone is resting peacefully as I write this. Let’s call it the calm before the storm. Tomorrow night, Halifax!

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Monday

Jul132009

The Free Press |

Monday, July 13, 2009 at 11:45PM |

We've Got Your Back, Will Smith

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In the absence of a Will Smith Independence Day blockbuster film, TFP took it upon themselves to entertain America. In the absence of a record label or large corporation to distribute us instantaneously and internationally to all of America, we had to confine ourselves to Pennyslvania. Not all of it, but most of it.

Pennsylvania is known prominently for its chocolate and its Dutch communities. There are few places in the world where one can go to a huge amusement park, do some outlet mall shopping, tour a chocolate factory and then buy some handmade, Amish furniture. This is just another day in Lancaster County. There something about this community that’s akin to the east coast. The people are friendlier, the sun is brighter, the air is better.

The Free Press at Freedom Fest in Lancaster, PA on July 4.

Freedom Fest is an outdoor celebration of America’s birthday now in its 7th year, so we were pretty honoured to be included in such an occasion. They set up two stages at either end of a pedestrian street/walk that was lined with bars. It's the kind of thing that we can only find in Montreal or Quebec City. A shame there's not more of it because it makes for a fantastic atmosphere.

We invited back to Lancaster on the strength of our shows we played at the Launch Music festival back in April. A wonderful business man, musician, manager and human named Jeremy Weiss was instrumental in both trips. He’s the guy who – having just seen our show – gave us the gem, “That was…fucking religious.” He brought his brother–in-law, Tom (also a super nice guy), to Freedom Fest. Loquaciousness must be taught within the family, because after we finished our set, Tom was heard to say, “If you don’t feel something when you watch those guys…you are not alive.”

The (G)Len(n) doing that thing he does with the music at Freedom Fest.

We felt pretty good about the show, but after a while the shows sort of melt together. However, getting the chance to talk to fans or fellow musicians are the things that linger long after. In this case, we’ll take kind words like that with us to our graves. Thanks to the USA for a hell of a birthday bash. And thanks to Will Smith for giving us a chance to shine.

Dallas doing something along the lines of making music at Freedom Fest.