Far Too Gone Music Video!

Hey Baby Cougar Cubs!

We’ve been fortunate enough to be included in a compilation project to help inform folks about the dangers presented by off-shore oil drilling. It’s important to remember that although the media coverage of the Gulf oil spill disaster has diminished significantly, the environmental impact of this unfortunate occurrence will not be completely realized for a very long time. While the authorities do what they can to clean up the past, you can be a part of making sure it doesn’t happen again in the future. Oceana is an organization that aims to protect the ocean from the negative effects of mankind’s industrialization and with a small donation to Oceana’s efforts, you’ll receive a special compilation that includes tracks from bands such as Michou, Dragonette, The Junction, Dinosaur Bones, and our track “When the Years Collide”. Whoop!

Check out SpillCompilation.com for more details or to make a donation!

// JerBear

Hey Gang!

Well, good news! We’ve made it to New Brunswick! Moncton, New Brunswick in fact. We don’t have a Moncton show date, but we do have a date with Theo in Moncton! We’re picking Theo Tams up tomorrow at the airport to head to Hampton to kick off Theo’s “Taking It All Back” tour. Then, and only then will our roadtrip turn into a tour. Presently I’m in a skeezy motel room with Erik while Mick, Iain and Keith are out famaliarizing themselves with the locals. I have a sneaking suspicion that there were a lot of affairs had and marraiges jeopardized in this motel room.

Here’s some awesome non-tour related news! We recently were so priviledged to spend a day shooting a music video for Eighty-Eight Keys! The director? Sean McLeod. The concept? Sheer excellence. It was a long, hot, sweaty day and everyone, especially Sean and the delightful Courtney Stearns, worked very hard to concquer the tall order of finishing the shooting before we skipped town for a month. We are very grateful for the talent and effort and very excited to see the finished product! I’ll keep you posted on this, but needless to say it will be legend – wait for it – dary. (I’ve been watching a lot of How I Met Your Mother lately. Like, a lot a lot.)

So, thus far, the following lessons were learned and observations were had on this journey.

• Backing up a large van is difficult, but a cakewalk in comparision to backing up a large van with a large trailer.
• The commonly preconceived stereotype that East Coast Canadians are unusually friendly and accomodating are very true. Wonderfully true in fact!
• Tim Horton’s consistency accross the country is a welcome cure for home sickness and TimCards are subsequently the best  gift ever.
• Moosehead Light Blackberry, while not necessarily terrible, is not necessarily beer.

Goodnight everyone!

// JerBear

Hey Folks!

It’s been too long, and I’m sorry! Things are as crazy as ever around here! And I’ve been wanting to write you all and update you because we have been working like crazy and we have so much exciting stuff to tell you about, but the thing I’m realizing about the music industry is that nothing is ever confirmed until the very last minute. Please don’t interpret that as a jab at the industry, I love the industry, and in many ways I love how on the fly it is because that’s pretty much how I live my life too. It’s exciting! But the downfall is that I don’t want to make promises that I can’t keep when I’m announcing the latest news, and when things are always so up in the air, the risk is very much present. So, in my typical fashion, I’m going to stick to the hard facts. Here goes!

In August, we’re planning to be on the road. The good people of Team SGS have been working feverishly to make this a reality. The plan? Team us up with an amazing solo performer headliner extraordinaire and stuff us all in a van. Then, send us to the East coast and make us play our way back to Windsor. How cool is that! Pretty cool right? Well, it will be even cooler when you know just who this headliner is! And even cooler than that when you see what cities we’re hitting! As soon as I get the go ahead to spill the beans on this thing, I will let you all know immediately! I promise. I expect the news to come down the wire pretty soon, so keep those retinas lubricated and focused for more!

Backtracking to June and July, we’ve been working non-stop in both Windsor and Toronto. We’ve been teamed up with a great producer, and we’ve been just writing, and writing, and re-writing, and writing some more. It’s so much fun and so frustrating simultaneously. It’s fun because we’re creating of course. And I can’t speak for the entire band, but I think they’d back me up when I confidently say that you are going to love our new material. We’re very proud of it! It’s frustrating though because we just won’t settle. When a part of a song, regardless of how infinitesimal it may seem, isn’t perfect, we just won’t let it go. Maybe a cymbal isn’t splashy enough, maybe a piano blinks, maybe a bass doesn’t walk far enough, maybe a guitar doesn’t melt your face to a significant enough degree, or maybe a lyric is borderline racist. Whatever it is, if it isn’t exactly what we want, we duke it out. We form alliances and turn on each other. Or, most appropriately we just don’t stop talking it out, even if we’re in the van with our instruments packed up, or in Shane’s basement at four in the morning while Erik is trying to sleep and Iain is watching Pengu reruns. We are living with these songs! And the thing about working with a producer is that we’re basically just adding one more member to the band who is more talented and knowledgeable in the songwriting department than we are, so it’s one more opinion that has to be satisfied. A producer is a lot like a personal trainer really. To achieve the results you want, you have to do all the work. The trainer is just there to motivate you and keep you focused on your goal. So I guess what I’m saying is that we’re working really hard to make sure that our next record surpasses all preconceived expectations. And we’re scheduled to begin recording this month, so it won’t be too long until you can hear what we’ve been working so hard on!

But let’s get back to the facts! We have a show this Friday! With the very cool Andrew Austin. I was watching Ferguson the other night and a Ritz cracker commercial came on. “That sounds just like Andrew!” I said to myself, and I looked it up and it is! So, you know that commercial for crackers with the adorable song in it that you love so much? Well we’re playing with that guy Friday night at Maxwell’s Music House! Maxwell’s Music House is one of my favorite venues in Southern Ontario, and just an excellent place to see a band or a songwriter. If you come out this Friday, you can see a band and a songwriter! Wicked cool.

And more good news, we’re playing The Erie Shores Wine Festival in September! We’ll be playing September 11th at 5:45PM, and this show will be all ages. Of course, if you’re of age, you know, it’s a wine festival. So, bring your drinking hat. Even if you’re not into our music though, The Erie Shores Wine Festival showcases amazing Canadian talent ever year. In past years they’ve had my favorites like Bedouin Soundclash and Serena Ryder. This year they’ve got Steven Page, Sloan, the devilishly handsome Pat Robataille and even the handsomely devilish Michou! S’gonna be good. Real good.

Alright gang, well I’m going to leave it there. I’ll drop another note soon with some more good news. Definitive news! News that you can take home to your mama.

Love,

// JerBear

Hey Everyone!

So, guess what? It’s decided and it’s happening. We’re making a new record. Oh yes, oh yes. Now, we still have a lot of decisions to make and so as I blog my way through the next couple months, I’m going to drop hints and details as I go, because we haven’t conclusively conceptualized the entire thing yet and I don’t want to make promises that I can’t keep. So here are the facts.

• We’ve been writing our faces off for a long time now, and we’ve got a metric ton of material that we’re stoked about.
• We’re still writing because that’s how we roll.
• We’ve been recording and demoing material for awhile now, and we’re hitting Blackbox Sound the first week in May to demo more… Demo Moore… Demi Moore.
• We’ve been talking to a very nice young man in the big city who may be interested in helping us with our recording by putting a producer hat on. A producer hat, by and by, looks pretty much like an old soup pot that Keith hot glued a letter “p” on. This could be a deal breaker should the nice young man from the big city elect not to sport the producer hat.

So those are the facts and we’re voting yes. (Death Cab reference, anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Oh, there was a Ferris Bueller’s Day Off reference! Anyone? Bueller?) I can’t promise any release dates, how many songs are going to be on the record, or anything like that, which is pretty bush league, I know. I just want to let the cat out of the bag a little bit so that you folks can get as excited about this summer as the five of us (plus our manager Dom and sound magician Kevin and everyone else on the StereoGoesStellar dream team) are. Also, by dropping little hints and details like I intend to do over the next couple months in these blogs, it will force you to struggle through my poor blogmanship. Bahaha… I’ve got you “write” where I want you. Get it? Because you “write” blogs, not “right” them. So yeah, you can expect several more months of that kind of rubbish.

But it’s summertime, so you should be excited anyways! To celebrate the summer, Kevin threw a barbeque at his cottage and the whole band minus Keith was in attendance plus many of StereoGoesStellar’s best friends. Keith was scaling a mountain to save a busload of orphans. He would have made it to the barbeque, but there was a bear he had to fight. It’s a whole thing, don’t worry about it. Erik recently bought a beautiful SLR camera with the intention of capturing some tour memories and other related band happenings, but he made this awesome video of Kevin’s barbeque which I’m completely head-over-heels in love with. It doesn’t really have anything to do with the band, granted, but I thought I’d post it for two reasons. First reason (I was going to say “firstly”, but that’s just unacceptable), this should put you in the mood for summer because it encapsulates everything that’s right about the summer; friends and not being stuck inside because of snow and cold. Second reason, I’m hoping this will encourage Erik to make more stop-frame videos like this one. Peep this!

And speaking of stop-frame animation, Mick informs me that our stop-frame animation video of Far Too Gone is nearly complete and we’ll be heading up to Toronto early in May for a number of reasons, but particularly of interest, to watch the finished product! And then we’ll pass that bad boy onto you! I’m very excited for this video I have to tell you. Christina and Danielle in Toronto have worked so hard on it, we can’t thank them enough!

And we actually have another video in the works right now too, but I shall save the details for another blog, on another day my friends. Mainly because I want to call Mick and get all the details before I go running my mouth.

I’ll see you good people soon, and hey, welcome to summer! Yes, I know it’s not “technically” summer, but Spring is rainy and far too inconsistent in temperature for my acknowledgement, so let’s just bypass it and go “write” to summer. Ahh! See that, I did it again! Such a clever Trevor.

Love,

// JerBear