Tour Blog II

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.

Tour Blog I

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 New Album Comes out March 23!

The Fugitives are proud and pleased to announce the release of their new full length album, Eccentrically We Love, due out March 23. The album will be supported by a long awesome tour across Canada and back. Read about the album below.

On March 23, albums will be available for order at Canadian record stores, the 604 Records store (www.604records.com/store), and for preorder over Itunes.

In late 2009, The Fugitives released a short EP, Find Me, which tracked extreme examples of people living in isolation: a park ranger suffering from cabin fever, a woman trapped in an unforgiving marriage, and a man whose death went unnoticed for seven years. Maybe the band’s just getting old and morbid, but the songs made them uneasy. Not to mention neurotic. After a brief spell where they walked around telling everyone, “who cares, nothing matters, we’re all going to die alone,” they decided this response was boring, and headed back into the studio.

Eccentrically We Love, The Fugitives’ newest full-length, takes anxiety and isolation as its starting point. As it turns out, the band thinks anxiety is good. They are also fans of: frustration, discontent, being overworked, and living in broken down houses with noisy roommates. It’s not that they’ve suddenly developed a pessimistic worldview - the album is primarily about gratitude, but it avoids clichés by centering on topics we’re normally not appreciative of. The album opener, 'Snail Shell’ revels in the everyday annoyance of hearing your neighbor’s love life through the walls (and sometimes ceiling). The title track celebrates human relationships at their most exasperating, and ‘All this Trouble’ is an affectionate list of life’s sand-papery frustrations. In a sense, these are all songs about love and affection, but they aren’t offering anyone bouquets of flowers. If Find Me was about people lost to isolation, 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.

The secret to the theme of this album might lie in how it was made. Immediately upon their return from a seven-week Canadian tour to support Find Me, the band locked themselves in North Vancouver’s Neighbourhood studios and embarked upon a month of recording. After 1,536 hours in each other’s company (yes, they were counting), the group decided that they still liked each other. More than that, they realized that their different musical backgrounds and lyrical approaches actually brought them closer, and made them a better band. Eccentrically We Love is the result of co-writing, co-editing, and co-performance - a true collaboration that balances eclecticism with the kind of unity a band earns by spending days and days in each other’s company.

Featuring co-production by Leo-Award winning producer\composer Matthew Rogers, guidance from Canadian art-rock icon Veda Hille, as well as guest appearances by Jesse Zubot and Rod Murray, Eccentrically We Love expands on the “top notch” vocal harmonies established in Find Me (ChartAttack) and the tight composition of their Canadian Folk Music Award nominated debut. The album will be supported by a cross-Canada tour in April 2010, a brief stint to Europe in the fall, and a request for fans and friends to send ‘small troubles’ to their website. These daily annoyances are to be funny, poignant, or heartfelt. Hopefully, when all is done, a quick survey of the amalgamated catalogue will make one feel grateful (and normal) for the beautiful, unavoidable difficulties in life.