Stuck in the Mud: North Country Fair Part II

Driving away from the Main Stage at North Country Fair, Matt (our bass player for all the shows in Alberta this summer, we still have yet to find a permanent replacement for Colin Cowan) pulled to the side of the dirt road to give an oncoming mini-van a little extra room.

Well, he gave it too much room, as we gracefully glided down into a ditch.
It took a second for everyone in the car to register that we were, in fact, in a ditch. Trying to back out, it was clear the tires were also stuck in the mud. Todd slid out the window, I snapped a pic of him as he shimmied, and then I opened the door and jumped into the briers.

Just then a guy on a bike went by, saw us, and said he would fetch the tractor to pull us out. We laughed, thinking how funny it was that some random old guy on a bike would just know where to get a tractor to tow us out of our dilemma!

Car kept passing us, and one slowed. I thought I recognized the lads in the car as the band The Deep Dark Woods (who I had read about in Penguin Eggs as a big up and coming Saskatchewan group.) To be sure I asked who they were and I was right. After chatting we planned to meet, drink and jam with them later at their far-off campsite.

Just as they pulled away, a car passed them and slowed. The driver, an Asian man with sunglasses and a stylish hat asked if we wanted a push. We chatted and discovered he was the Ory No*Man Band (www.orynoman.ca)

It was 3am Sunday morning (Saturday night in the common speech), and I was in the sídhe as you might say, and came upon the Family Stage in the middle of the vast North Country field. There was a psychedelic site. A man with his black tied back, wearing a wife beater and hammering on the guitar belted melody to the famous In My Time of Dying song, covered by Dylan and Zeppelin, most famously, but of far older origin. Beside him a man with a mushroom like hat played the double bass which lay almost on its side. I think someone was on drums and there may have been another singer doing back-up, it is hard to remember through the haze of the experience. All I know is this...

I stood spellbound.
For probably two hours as this changeling-like man and his faerie host played spellbinding aubades as the sunrise breached the midsummer night and the cheers of the listeners continued to inspire the band to keep playing. *You all better buy our last 15 cds,* the singer cried, as he launched into In My Time of Dying for possibly the 5th time.

THIS was Ory No*Man.

Well, watch our 6 minute debut video blog and see and hear for yourself: a little snippet of what this all was like.

North Country Fair (Part 1: Stages and Sound Techs)

We had just pulled into North Country Fair in a place called, get this, Driftpile, Alberta.

Three-some hours north of Edmonton,
in b&% -f$@k nowhere, our car hurtled into a massive field with stages and vendors, down an earthen trail with a warning sign!

We tore up to the stage at 5:30 (having been delayed by a $70 speeding ticket), just in time for our 6pm Main Stage time slot.

I would like to say we blew the crowd away, but it was the second slot of the show, and the crowd was very thin. Thin, that is, for folk fest of some 6,000 odd people. So, there were still a few hundred listeners.

The real problem was the sound. We have no idea how it sounded to the audience, but feedback troubled us on stage. Most sound guys still don*t seem to know how to mix vocals, with effects, and often don*t take the advice that would make a difference. Then there is the cardinal rule:

Do not anger your sound tech!

So, we often keep our mouths shut and let the techs skill or incompetence speak for itself. (Sadly, a listener rarely thinks: *Wow! That show had a bad sound tech.* No, rather, listeners think, *that band didn*t sound very good.*)

The stage was good though, and the stage crew were very tight and efficient, even on the Friday evening. North Country Fair was a well-organized, and altogether awesome event to be part of. Here is a pic of the main stage!

The side stages were also fun. There were two:
1.The Firefly Ranch
and
2. Shady Grove
(which we decided to call Shady Thicket, lovingly after the Christopher Walken sketch *Colonol Angus.*)

We have some video footage of our mainstage show, and two camera angle of nearly our entire Shady Thicket show. And a brief, low quality, but very demonstrative bit of footage of our 3am Sunday night volunteer party show. A great version of Jethro Tull*s Acres Wild came together that intoxicated night!

The Re-Mains (Part 1)

The Re-Mains are an Australian band signed to Croxton Records. Their one and only YouTube video, period, is a classy, classic looking video with a van break down, the lads hitching to their show, and rockin* out Country Rock *n Roll style in an old building.

See it here:


Why mention The Re-Mains, well, I checked the line-up for North Country Fair in northern Alberta and saw they were playing. Hailing from Australia, the 6 year old band was going to tour Canada for three months. And they had shows in Vancouver and Victoria, B.C.

We dropped an email to them, and Mick Daley, their frontman and singer wrote back that he would love to see us at his New Music West showcase show at The Bourbon.

Down at The Bourbon, where we had played on St. Patrick*s Day, along with the Dreadnoughts, Jon and I saw an excellent show. Sadly it was spoiled by the following and (God-knows-why!) headlining act, The Satellite Nation, a poppy, emo kid band whose singer had all the moves. (But they do go to show that record sales still rule the day, despite the growth of indie power.)

And, I have to admit, I do get a sick little pleasure out of the child-like antics of emo stage acts. Like a kid whose lolly has just been taken by his mother, emo kids just feel so much pain.

Moving on, we chatted to The Re-Mains; showed them our cowboy hats we*d worn in support (even though they are not really country at all, but more rock with a banjo and dolbro); and gave them our recommendations for good breakfast spots in Vancouver. And highly stressed they go and drink at Big Bad Johns in Victoria -- one of our favourite bars in the world.

This is us at Big Bad Johns just a while ago: we have mixed up our hats and glasses with these strangers while drinking draughts of XXX, staring at the plastic snakes and lizards hanging from the ceiling on fishing wire, along with signed braziers and other nick-nacks, all to be dropped on unsuspecting customers from behind the bar, and then drawn up again.

Now, to understand our next encounter with The Re-Mains, you really should read our guitarist*s Os* Teacher Turned Folk Star accounts of the Lilac Festival (a.k.a. The Calgary Trip).

I was driving from Calgary to Banff in our rental van, to return it, before hitch-hiking to Canmore to see about getting the Pooka repaired. I picked up hitch-hiker as I left metro-Calgary, thought some karma would be good for when I had to hitch, and it turned out he was a local Banff expert on bears. The Bear Detective, people called him.

Mostly he lived in the bush.

Driving into Canmore, he said he knew a hotel where we could get free coffee. I loved his scavenger mentality, and used the opportunity to hijack the hotel*s internet, call the rental place and let them know I would be there a little after the return time.

When we met back at the car, The Bear Detective said he had made another phone call, and gotten some Canmore bush grass. Just hitting the road, we pulled in to get gas, realising I had to return the gas tank full. In the gas station on the side of the highway, there was The Re-Mains.

One of them recognized me as I pulled in. Then Mick Daley saw me and smiled a very surprised smile. We all greeted each other in amaze and laughed a lot.

It was pretty crazy. Feeling a little left out of the loop, The Bear Detective pipes into our fray,
-- Hey! I got some weed!

We discussed this important issue behind the gas station near the train tracks, like classy minstrel would, and the giggles didn*t subside about the odds of the encounter.

After a couple of pics being taken (soon to be shown, once Mick sends them to us), we rambled on.

Mick Daley had given me The Re-Mains first record at The Bourbon. I owed him ours when it came out on Midsummer, at North Country Fair -- the event that had led to our meeting this band, which slowly was getting cooler and cooler, in my serendipitous estimation.

Hot Blood was my favourite of their rocker songs. And finally, at North Country Fair I got see them do it.

To be continued....

THE DRUNKEN PRIESTS...On the Road!

Tetélestaí.
It is finished.

After a solid 11 months of hard studio work, reworking, editing, mixing, drinking, mastering, remixing, remastering, drinking, graphic design, drinking, contracting and drinking and drinking and more drinking, finally...

It was time to celebrate.

The debut studio record was done. And it was perfect.

The band is now about to head off now across Canada. From Vancouver to Cape Breton island (Nova Scotia) and back in 6 weeks and 25+ shows. The Pooka (or *Púca,* for you gaeilgoirs out there, is our ride: A 1973 VW (read=hippie)Van. BUT, it has an 1800 CC engine from 74.

So we should be fine, right?

Oz, our guitarist, has documented some of the details (with pics) of the first venture of the Pooka in his blog, Teacher Turned Folk Star.

To summarize the journey of the Pooka, since buying it from a German man in his 70s, who bought it new, we have:

1. Broken down in Banff, AB.
2. Been towed to Canmore, AB.
3. Replaced the Starter Motor in Canmore, AB.
4. Broken down in Salmon Arm, B.C.
5. Where we replaced the fan belt.
6. Broken down at midnight on the Hope-Princeton (Trans-Canada) Hwy.
7. Been towed to Hope, B.C.
8. Reconnected the Generator to the Starter (a mistake made by EUROKAN AUTO in Canmore.)
9. And taken it in for a muffler/fuel-line repair in Surrey, B.C.

(Now, if you have booked shows with us, please do not worry. It will be in tip-top shape for the summer, plus, remember that the Pooka is not human. NO indeed! It is a changeling. Half-car, half-sídhe, this faerie-mobile slowly turns half horse in second gear, pulling into a canter in 3rd, and in 4th! Well, I will tell you, the Pooka becomes The Steed. And at its whopping 60 MpH will get us anywhere we need to be in no time at all. And when in doubt...we rent a van.)

And so, us wandering minstrel lads set off, new record in hand, to bring our myths and music to the world. Well, Canada, for now.

(Pic of The Canmore Hotel, a waitress for whom a customer bought one our shirts. A kind donation to our Pooka repair fund!)

This will be the first Damanta tour to rival our great journey across Ireland and Europe in 2005; from our home-base in Galway, Ireland to Vienna, Austria and beyond. Only now we have a solid record.

THE DRUNKEN PRIEST and the ghostly hymns of autumn
(IMRO & SOCAN 2008)

The first review for it came out the month of the CD release, by the renowned publication of Western Canada, The Celtic Connection (see here). Catholine Butler, who gave me Irish soda bread she had baked after the interview, also did a feature story about the original songs and how they came to be.

With more reviews on their way, what else can we say? Except, like I mentioned, we did not really stop working on the record till every little trouble spot that we and Jesse Waldman, my co-producer, could find. After which we had the disc Mastered by Vancouver*s one and only, Marc L*Espérance.

[My apostrophe key is broke.]

It is a very satisfying thing to know you have done your absolute best on something. Especially after 3 years of under-budgeted, often rushed, and imperfect recordings. These have ranged from mini-disc sessions done in basements, to $14 computer mics (our *Cúnla* recording) to single-track from a mixer, live-off-the-floor recordings done in a Church (2006 Alive On Pentecost) all of which very few copies exist (read=collector value!:)

We are also proud of the Limited Edition track Faerie Childe which is on the CD and will only be on the first 1,000 copies, and never downloadable. This recording was a lucky one of from a show at Falconetti*s on Commercial Drive in Vancouver. It is just myself with drum and bass, but really captures the moment.

In fact, much of the last year has been Damanta without the well-known tenor banjo and fiddle additions. While working out bed tracks (drums and bass) for THE DRUNKEN PRIEST, Todd and Colin and I did many trio show to get the right ideas. The song, *Rambles At Night,* for instance, changed just before recording. The last way we played it live, the old way, can be seen in a video we recently put on YouTube. But you can see it here:



I think that the final, recorded version more dramatic with changes we made to how the song begins. And Jesse Waldman has some crazy ideas for the remix, when we throw the fiddle melody, Grapes, back into it (as heard on Pentecost) and add a little electricity.

So, rather than say more about the shiny, fay-touched album we will be selling for gas money on our tour, do go and read Catholine Butler*s hard work in review and article for The Celtic Connection. After that, you will have to judge for yourself:

Buy now!
DAMANTA
THE DRUNKEN PRIEST and the ghostly hymns of autumn



And of course, do visit us at our other online venues, as well as when we pass through your town!
REVERBNATION
MYSPACE
RedCappe Promotions
FACECULT!
and
The DAMANTA Official Website

PS: If you want to check us out more before giving us hard earned euros, you can DOWNLOAD some songs for free on our MySpace...yep, enjoy!