Le Bonjour everyone,

The Fugitives are doing some jaunts across Western Canada this summer in and around activities at the Winnipeg and Edmonton Fringe festivals. Check out all dates in the shows section. See you this summer.

And this fall … Europe!

Hey everyone,

While we were out on the road the reviews for the new album started coming in. Here’s a host of them:

“An eclectic and exciting sound that defies genres….there’s something new on every track. Folk-inspired ballads like “City of Rain” and “All This Trouble” pull you in, and rousing tunes like “Sober Enough” heat your blood up; the quiet, festering energy behind “Start a War” made that track my album favourite. The Fugitives’ lyrics are smart and real, with enough wit and irony to make me listen on repeat. A band this multi-talented could run the risk of showing off all their skills, creating a confusing mess. On first listen, I wondered where the album was going, but The Fugitives manage to strut their stuff without leaving us behind.” – See (Edmonton)

“The latest batch of smart, literary folk tunes is an honest, hilarious and often poignant look at love and relationships — warts and all…. From the joys of co-habitation to the frustrations of being in a stifling relationship, Eccentrically We Love’s success lies in its vivid — and hyper-realistic — lyrics.” – Uptown (Winnipeg)

“Render(s) musical definition superfluous. And just when it seems safe to create a new genre of let’s say, ‘roots pop show tunes’, a song as moving as ‘City of Rain’ jumps in to redefine things once again. – Scene Magazine

“Much like K’naan who moved from rapping to singing, the Fugitives have a more musical approach to this disc… and this record could do for these wordsmiths what Troubador has done for the young Somalian-born rapper. On the title track they say “We are always talking but are we really saying anything?” Answer in the affirmative.” – Durhamregion

“The band makes excellent use of their vocal harmonies.” – Grayowl Point

“Elegant, thoughtful, and intelligent folk-music….it is hard not to be impressed with the dedication and concern which must have gone into making this album” – Midday Procrastination

“…showcases the talents of a promising young Canadian band.” – The Concordian (Montreal)

 “A cheery flow of contemporary folk, displaying both light-hearted, playful styles and some dark and eccentric themes.” – McGill Tribune (Montreal)

The Ontario/Quebec leg of The Fugitives tour consisted of: Thunder Bay, Sault St Marie, Peterborough, Toronto, London, Guelph, Wakefield, and Montreal. This section of the country is particularly good to tour not just because of the great venues or the plethora of good people we know in these areas, but for the humaneness of it all. The cities are so close together! When we tour Europe, people regard it as classless, uncouth, and completely abnormal to drive more than 4 hours in one day. In Canada, you drive 4 hours, the highway might turn on you and you might hit three gas stations.  

I’ve lamented the driving distances between Canadian cities in other blogs so I’ll quit at that. I just want to underline the bliss you feel when you hit Peterborough and all the cities are separated by 200 kilometres.  200 kilometres! After driving upwards of 8 hours a day for a week, it’s unfathomable. You step into the car and you feel like you’re just settling in when you have to get out all over again. What? No holding your bladder for 45 minutes while your bandmates make waterfall sounds? No eating out of truck stops with pay phones in the food booths? No being so bored out of your mind that you start playing a game the banjo player invented called ‘Name Any Animal you Can Think of That Starts with ‘A’ until you Run out of Animals and Then Continue on Down the Letters in the Alphabet Ad Nauseum Except you’re all so Brain Dead Nobody Can Think of Any – Any! – Animals that Start with ‘B’’. Like, for instance, a bee.  

I’m too longwinded to recount all of the stories from that week of tour. I can’t pack all the awesomeness in so I’m going to go with a few highlights:

There was a freaking marriage proposal at our Toronto show! Lord almighty! Are you kidding me? And I’m not talking about the off to the side at the end of the night drunk couple that annuls it in the morning because they don’t even know each other’s names. I’m talking about the good old fashioned ‘I want to spend the rest of my life with you and I wrote that shit down in song and I’m going to perform that song in the middle of The Fugitives set and then I’m going to KILL the song and then go offstage and get down on one knee in the middle of the dance floor and ask you to be my partner for LIFE and you said YES!”

Congrats, kids! The band feels blessed and honoured to have shared the moment with you. A lifetime of fulfillment is headed your way in the mail. Express.  

In Montreal, we had a bit of an ex-Fugitives reunion with a hang out with original member CR Avery and a show with the other original member Mark Berube, now playing with the jaw dropping Patriotic Few. It was an incredible show and so lovely to play with him again. If you have been dead for the past two years and haven’t seen Mark and his band making people’s faces contort into positions of wonder and inspiration, check markberube.com for a good time, and stay tuned for his new album with Howard Bilerman. Arcade Fire, yo. Nuff said!

I’m going to end this tour blog in serious fashion. I have some amazing friends in Wakefield, Quebec named Brad and Magda. When Adrian met them on our last tour this fall he’d known them all of a day before pronouncing, ‘I want to be best friends with these people! They’re amazing!’ This opinion is universal.

The newest member of their family, Maya, arrived into the world with health complications. Days after we saw Brad after our Wakefield show, Maya peacefully passed away at the age of four and a half months.

This is unequivocally sad. I can’t do justice to that emotion. What I can attempt – however erringly – is to put into words what bravery, compassion, and insight I saw in Brad that day. He spoke openly, to a room full of strangers, about how lucky he felt. Lucky for all of the blessings in his life, to have the intellectual and emotional capacity and support to deal with his predicament, for whatever brief time he might spend with his new daughter. 

To anyone reading this. Please. This is serious stuff. Life puts up this veil and we walk around all day rarely giving thanks for the act of walking around. Or for the ability to digest food. Or for a nice couch to sit down on or the beauty in a painting or the fact that James Brown wrote some really amazing dance tunes. It’s fitting that I started this blog with fiddly complaints about driving. You just can’t see past your own shit.

But for the love of God, it doesn’t matter. Please, if you’re freaking reading this, go hug your kid. If you don’t have a kid, go find a random one on the street and hug that one. Just kidding, that would be weird. But hold somebody close, wipe your lover’s hair away, text your Mom, give your bandmate or your officemate or your hairdresser a high five. Kiss a bartender on the nose.

I know, I know, I know it’s cliché to talk about the necessity of showing love and appreciation in the face of death, but it’s so true! And I know this feeling of mortality is necessarily ephemeral, but it can come back to us at strange times. A day after hanging with Brad I was back to complaining about traffic, but one week later I’d dive into the ocean near Charlottetown and it would hit me that out there in the dark water somewhere there was a corral reef. Even the rocks on this planet are alive. I’d go back to my room and I’d shake and I’d cry. I’m shaking and I’m crying now. I shook and I cried when Brad sent me this, a few days before Maya’s passing:

“Running out the door to visit wee Maya. She teaches us all so much. Sing for her tonight. Loudly, passionately, absurdly…. It means so much to us that she inspires life in all its idiosyncratic expressions.”

Are you kidding me? I passed it on to the band that night and we screamed our hearts out. And now, from Brad to us, I’m passing it onwards to you:

Sing. Loudly. Passionately. Absurdly.

And again: hug your freaking loved ones.

Maya’s obituary can be found at the link below. The link following that can be used to donate to Roger’s House, where she underwent palliative care. If you did not know her or her family, or any of the families that must go through a process like this, I think it would make the gesture all the more beautiful. 

http://www.legacy.com/can-ottawa/Obituaries.asp?Page=Lifestory&PersonId=142162988

http://www.rogershouse.ca/en/donate/

Hello one and all,

Thanks to everyone at all the shows from Vancouver – Montreal. We’re currently enjoying our first day off in sunny Quebec before taking off for our first ever jaunt into Eastern Canada. There have been a few additions to the tour on the back end, so please check the gigs page for listings. Sweet deal!

Also, check the tour blogs! See you soon!

Well, it’s a tour. Strange things happen. If you haven’t heard the news about the Sade mix-up you can check out the story on some revered news sources:

Georgia Straight

Exclaim

Voir

Hour.ca

Guttersnipe

The Prairies, Speeding, and How I Suck at Drawing Dogs 

 (this blog is also appearing at revered East Van blog site Gutternsipe. Check www.guttersnipenews.com )

I’m writing from the road – 2,500 kilometres into the tour – somewhere between Winnipeg and Thunder Bay. I’m psyched because the landscape has finally decided to incorporate something from Nature’s vast bounty other than flat colourless fields of wheat. Like, a turn. I was raised in the Prairies and I’m totally down with huge skies and the existential majesty of nothingness, but it doesn’t exactly get your blood pumping between shows. A rock and a stick could do this drive, and the boredom often leads to serious cases of speeding. It’s only natural; speed, like everything, is relative, and it’s not like there’s anything to compare your progress to. ‘Oh my, we sure whipped past that grain elevator.’

Case in point: for the Calgary leg the band hooks up with two good Ukranian friends (the fact that they’re Ukranian comes up again later. It’s not racist; it’s called awesome storytelling structure). I actually only know one of them, the passenger. Her friend, the driver, is caught speeding 40 kms west of Brandon.

“How fast were you going?” she asks him, as the cop pulls us over.

            “Fast,” he replies.

            The police officer approaches the vehicle and asks for our license and registration. Then he inquires as to whether there’s any alcohol, drugs, or contraband in the vehicle.

The driver pauses. “Not to the best of my knowledge,” he says. 

“Not to the best of your knowledge? So there might be drugs in the vehicle.”

“Not to the best of my knowledge.”

I’m in the back seat for this. I can only assume the reply – ‘not to the best of my knowledge’ – what? Did you black out midway through packing the car? – is a reference to myself. Like his more blunt answer would be: ‘I don’t do drugs, sir. But there’s a man I’m unfamiliar with riding in the back seat. He’s a touring musician so he likely drinks heavily, he’s from BC so he’s probably perpetually stoned, and he lives in East Vancouver so there’s a good chance he mainlines heroin.’

Luckily, the cop moves on. “Sir, do you know why you pulled over today?”

“Because…I…was… speeding?”

“That’s right. Is there any reason you’re not wearing your seatbelt right now?”

“I took it off to get my registration?”

“Sir, I’ve been following you for over two kilometres and recording you in high definition. Everything you’re saying right now is also being recorded in high definition. Do you understand?”

“Um. Yes.”

“Sir, I have you on high definition video riding without your seatbelt for over three kilometres.”

“Oh.”

I wondered about the repetition of ‘high definition video’, ‘cause he really hammered that part home. Is standard video not intimidating enough? ‘Sir. You’ve been busted speeding down the highway for kilometres on end without a seatbelt. We also got a close-up of your back hair. You’re fucked.’

The cop continued. “Any idea how fast you were going?”

Beat.

“120?” the driver asks.

Silence.

“130?”

“Not even close. Sir, are you aware that in the province of Manitoba you can be arrested for driving deemed a reckless endangerment to yourself and others? That this arrest can result in you being handcuffed right here and now and the vehicle being impounded for five days? Do you know that this leads to troubles with border control and travelling to other countries? Do you know how hard it is to get a job with a criminal record, sir?”

Arrested for speeding? I didn’t know that. So I said, ‘Wowsers’. Out loud. Then everyone looked at me.

The cop left it at that; he walked away and left the driver sweating it out for 25 minutes not knowing if he was going to jail or not. Eventually he came back with a fine of 300 bucks for not wearing a seat belt (300 bucks?! Fact: you can buy a hot tub for that much – I looked it up) and $780 for going 55 over the limit. (Again, you could buy a hot tub for that. Also, a maltese dog. Not that anyone would want one of those yappy little shits).  

            I felt awful because the guy was a nice dude; he took it as well as he could. The day after our Winnipeg show I went to a Ukrainian easter egg decorating party with the two of them and he was in fine spirits. And, man, the Ukranians are serious business about their easter egg decorating. They’ve all been painting easter eggs since they were tiny foetuses and they’re true artists. They sit there drinking galloons of hard liquor – which you’d think would adversely affect their motor control – and proceed to hold up egg after delicate egg filled with flawless lines and intricate patterns, some woven into quadrants the size of a tetanus shot. They’re like that guy in Victoria down by the harbour who can write any name on a grain of rice for 5 bucks.

            I’ve always sucked ass at arts and crafts. When I draw, my people look like horses and my horses look like dogs and my dogs look like surfboards that have grown spider legs and a really shitty looking head. At summer camp when they ask you to make a popsicle house I always made something more like a popsicle brothel with broken windows, half a door, and a total lack of chimney. Consequently I’m usually mean to artisans. I always used to taunt the rice writing guy in Victoria by asking him what would happen if your name was ‘Sir Giuseppe Edwardian Lockenheister Drachmatastein IV’.

But I couldn’t make fun of a bunch of seemingly nice people I barely met who just happened to all be humble Rembrandts with an egg. So I turned the self hatred on myself. Forced to try to paint an egg, I made some half assed pattern of squares and circles, but reverted midway through to my traditional ‘dog as surfboard’, going so far as to write in one quadrant, ‘This egg sucks. It makes me want to die.’

            I don’t think I was a hit at that party, but the rest of the tour has been great. In Brandon, the wonderful people at the folk fest put on a great show, housed us, and baked us a boatload of amazing cookies. In Winnipeg, we were treated to dinner with our old billets from the fringe festival three years back. They fed us chicken mole (that last ‘e’ is supposed to have an accent, but I don’t have a Spanish computer) that made me want to weep and kiss their feet, while down the hallway their little children strangled one another in the bath. This reminded me of my own family; of my rock star parents who stayed up past 1am and were up again at 5am to hang with us on the quick stop through Calgary. Good family everywhere and always the opportunity to make more; next up, Ontario! We’ll see if we can find some cousins out in Thunder Bay.

Entry #1: Tour, the Global Apocalypse, and Facebook

 The Fugitives head out on the latest cross-Canada tour next week. All the way from Vancouver to Charlottetown and back – four bodies, four instruments, hundreds of cd’s (what can we say, we think positively), and underwear, all packed into a tiny rental car courtesy of Budget (they didn’t give us the car for free, by ‘courtesy’ I mean we paid for it).

My friend Jo told me that blue whales have a heart the size of a car; I’ll try to think about this in the next few days as we trade the mountains for the Prairies – the four of us traipsing across our native land like the huge thumping heart of the largest animal ever known to have existed, pulsing to the beat of eclectic urban folk music.

Which is all a bit optimistic. I love the crap out of my bandmates and don’t worry about getting along with them in close quarters for thirty odd days. But I do worry about myself – that I’ll suddenly become that overbearing/taciturn/melancholy dude that everyone wishes they could drop off in the middle of the Canadian Shield at the gas station that sells nothing but country cassettes and refrigerated sandwiches.

To date, I have yet to royally flip out on tour, but I have a history of self doubt when it comes to things like this. Whenever the global apocalypse comes up (and let’s face it, it comes up a lot), I’m adamant that I would never be that guy in The Road who could ‘keeps the flame alive’ when things got tough.

My friend Randall disagrees, but he’s just being nice. 

“All the books make it out worse than it is,” he says. “It’s not like you have to go around shooting bears and stuff. It’s just about being resolute and forthright.”

                “But I’m not resolute and forthright. And why would I shoot a bear after an apocalypse? One, how did bears survive the apocalypse? Two, if animals did survive, why wouldn’t I shoot a deer or an elk or a moose – something people actually eat?”

                “See. You’re already thinking practically.”

                “Yeah, but even if I had a gun I couldn’t shoot it. When I went paintballing with my Dad I mowed him down in the head.”

“That’s perfect. You’re supposed to shoot for the head.”

“And even if I did shoot something I could never cook it. I can’t cook now, and I have a stove and a microwave.  I’d be helpless with just a lighter and some sticks -”

                “If you even had a lighter -”

                “Unless the apocalypse happened because of global warming. Then I guess I could shoot things, let them cook under the blazing hot sun, and duck under a tree until they were finished.”

“If there even were trees -”

I’m sure there’ll be lots of conversations like this between my bandmates and I after we spend thirty days cramped together in a car (read: heart of a blue whale).  

Oh well, the fame and glory are worth it. Like this message I got from someone after our recent going away shows at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre:

Dude. You don’t know me but I peed beside you at the urinal once and then you signed my cd. So I guess you can say our friendship is messed up. Oh well, you rule. Add me.

I added him. Because that message is awesome. And because I add everyone; I have unscrupulous Facebook standards.

The Fugitives have big news! Our brand-new full-length album hits the world today!

Buy the physical copy here from 604 records:

http://www.604records.com/store/product/product/the-fugitives

Preorder it on Itunes here:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/preorder/eccentrically-we-love/id362143025

It’s called Eccentrically We Love, and we are so so so excited about it. We recorded it this past December, right after our seven-week Canadian tour. We came home, locked ourselves in North Vancouver’s Neighbourhood studios, and spent a month of recording. After 1,536 hours in each other’s company (yes, we were counting), we decided that we still like each other!  Even better news is that we realized our different musical backgrounds actually bring us together and make stuff better! More than any of our previous work, this album is the result of co-writing, co-editing and co-performance. Collaboration! Yeah!

As you might have guessed from the album title, all the songs are about love and affection, in one way or another. But never fear! We haven’t gone sappy. Eccentrically We Love chronicles the beautiful itchiness of being close. It’s about getting irritated,  angered and distraught, and the exhilarating necessity of feeling this way.

We were very lucky to work with some amazing people on this. Leo-Award winning producer\composer Matthew Rogers co-produced, Veda Hille guided and inspired,  Jesse Zubot slayed on violin and Rod Murray did delicious things with his trombone.

We are stoked to hear what you think about it all. The album’s available through 604 records, on i-tunes, and at live shows. Drop us a line through this site, or come talk to us when we’re near. Chances are we’re coming to you soon. Show dates are up on our calendar. Send yourself! Send your friends! As always, we will be disastrously enthused to see you.

Hearts and Exclamation Points!!!

The Fugitives