Day 20 of 47… And we’re about to hit Thunder Bay for the first time as a band. There have been so many stops that it has been a little hard to track. But I believe I left off in Moose Jaw, which means we’ve been through: Gravelbourg, Weyburn, Winnipeg, in the mean time… With a few stories.

In Gravelbourg, I finally got to assemble my new touring BBQ! Definitely a highlight of tour for me to slow grill chicken breast and garlic bread while tossing around a baseball in the parking lot of Centre Cultural Maillard. We played a show there later on with some great bands: Picture the Ocean, and two members of the Johnny Ninety Nine Band (Jobi and Arielle) who both put on awesome sets.

After a short stay and a few beers we made our way to Pump Jack’s Saloon in Weyburn, SK where the beer flows like water! We were only set to play the Thursday night, but with a gig in Regina falling out, that kept us free to return on Friday once requested following our first set of the night. The staff there really knows how to take care of a band with real Saskatchewan hospitality. They even had a Pilsner bus to boot!

So after a few too many beers in Weyburn, we made it to Winnipeg just in the nick of time to find out that we missed our sound check and that the band to follow us was already set up on stage… oh and the comment from the sound guy (James Brown) was also very welcoming “I don’t know how the F#@% you guys are on this bill, it’s skin-head punk night tonight!”. Never the less we set up our six piece in front of the other bands drum set sped up our tunes by about 25 bpm and just country-punk rocked The Cavern with a Rancid and Motorhead cover on top of our own and had one hell of a time with the clientele. I think we may have even sold the most merch that night, so it looks like it all worked out in the end.

*Written by the Bitterweed Draw‘s bassist, Daniel Finamore

Rock-hard grit and all-girl soul from the Coachella Valley: just, take it all in… its good, like vitamins and just in time for summer. Deap Vally is the howl of Lindsey Troy and rhythm of Julie Edwards (Heisenflei of The Pity Party); together, the duo breaks blues down to its simplest, most fundamental form: beat, melody, and meaning. Although they have only been a band for one year, they’re already playing wicked SoCal gigs like Moon Block Party and about to jet set to England for Latitude Festival while also going public about their desire to one day live inside of Bill Clinton.

The ‘Baby I Call Hell’ session was filmed in Bedrock Studios in Los Angeles inside a tight, but formidable space for six people. The walls were adorned with lacquered old newspapers, old wood panels and blue acrylic smatterings. The ladies are wearing designs by Kittenhawk: Welcome to the Deap.

Their favourite video:

New Band / New Song:

Only You “the Pressure” (you can hear it on their facebook page – amazing song)

Old Band / Old Song:

Led Zeppelin “In My Time of Dying”

Five artists to watch for in 2012:

Only You, Gothic Tropic, Pity Party, Incan Abraham, Juju

Where they live:

Where they jam:

Where they eat:

Which music festival they’d like to play one day:

Coachella

10 bands they would pick to play with:

The Black Keys
Led Zeppelin
Hole
Parliament Funkadelic
The White Stripes
The Strokes
The Rolling Stones
Jimi Hendrix
Bill Withers
The Black Angels

Day 15 of 47 and we have made it to wonderful Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan – home of Al Capone’s infamous liquor running tunnels from the days of the American prohibition. We were pleasantly surprised that we were being featured on the homepage of Moose Jaw’s summer music festival website. They posted a video filmed from the Market Collective’s Ugly Christmas Sweater Social last year. Check it out here (www.gosummerfest.com). A big thanks to those who filmed the video, and whomever posted it online for strangers to use!

Before that, we stopped in Kamloops, where our bass head decided to not work anymore and so we had to schedule an emergency repair. Luckily, we found ourselves at Lee’s Music and weren’t delayed getting out the next morning, everything is working top shape now.

Which brought us back to home soil, Alberta! First stop Jasper; a very brief stop. we made it to the venue just in time to set up and start playing our first of three sets for a crowd who may not have filled the whole bar, but definitely filled the entire dance floor. It’s amazing when there is only one table remaining with people seated while we play, yet the 40′ x 30′ dance floor was crowded enough to have people shoulder bumpin’ and two steppin’ into each other!

After that, we hopped back in the van without a wink of sleep and made the short drive to Hinton: home of Mr. Mario Casagrande, himself. We arrived to find a hot, homemade, Mama Casagrande lasagna waiting for us on the oven around 3:30 am… clocks don’t really exist when you’re on tour. It doesn’t get any better than that; but it also doesn’t stop there. The warm welcome the Bitterweed always receives in Hinton was definitely outdone this time with a massive and energetic crowd at the Hinton Valley Zoo, followed by debauchery at an after party that once again kept us up to whatever time… clocks don’t exist.

Finally our last stop was at another regular stompin’ ground: the Wunderbar in Edmonton. Another big thanks to Craig and Mick from Analog Booking, who helped arrange a lot of our shows this tour and really lit the fire under our asses to get us out on the road. The Wunderbar was celebrating their second anniversary with music starting at 3 pm and ending with us playing til whatever time we wanted that night…. still I don’t know what time we finished.

*Written by the Bitterweed Draw‘s bassist, Daniel Finamore
*Photos by Jessica Wittman

Day 7 of 47 and we have made it across one province keepin’ busy every night up until tonight, which is our first day off since we hit the road last Wednesday. We’ve met too many new friends (well, I hate to say too many), and have experienced a warm welcome in every town we’ve stepped foot in.

Our first stop in Revelstoke was at the new Stoke FM – a private radio station located in the basement of a house perched on top of a hill, watching over the valley where the rest of the town lay. With three songs played over the short distance radio waves, we were able to bring in a full house on a Wednesday to the Big Eddy Pub; a pub with hella’ good wings, and a stage that’s set up to burn the place down with some hot licks.

Next stop was Vernon, which is a beautiful town where we played at the Vertigo theatre – an art gallery that has the room to house a great little private evening party with one of our good friends, Moot, who sang a few songs with his sister and their band Oma. Their voices are amazing together. We joined in for a couple at the end of their set before we took the stage ourselves and played a couple of half-rowdy to a Bitterweed standard set. There was a child in the audience and we didn’t want to set a bad example, so we kept it PG… Well as PG as we get. There were no complaints.

That finally brought us to our three-night stint in Vancouver, where the support for the band was overwhelmingly intense. It was an honour to play the final ‘For the Sake of the Song Sunday’ at the River Vintage. I want to give a special thanks to Elliot Way for that, and booking our other Vancouver gigs (China Cloud, Biltmore). He has done some amazing stuff; not only for us, but for the music community in these parts. The list of artists we were able to perform with were incredible: the Sumner Brothers, Ben Rogers, Sarah Jane Scouten, Blue Rich Rangers, Rusty Ford. We also got to play a couple songs on CiTR 101.9′s ‘Sore Throats, Clapping Hands’ hosted by Robert Privett last night, and had a great time doing that as well, There is something incredibly fun about cramming six people around a radio host and two microphones in a studio the size of a large closet, then performing live on air… can’t wait for that podcast.

*Written by the Bitterweed Draw‘s bassist, Daniel Finamore
*Photo by Jessica Wittman

Well, we go a long way back with the fine folks at Market Collective and must tip our collective hat for the opportunity to curate the tunes for the April 21/22 addition. It is immeasurable how much they’ve done to connect the various artistic personalities of Calgary these past four years, and our little get-up has certainly felt it’s share of introspective trickle-down. Not only did the Market end up inspiring some of our earliest video work, it also brought about things, some of which we probably never would of imagined doing: like building a haunted house, selling cupcakes and bringing taxidermy into digital.

Peruse the schedule below and keep in the back of your mind that we will be celebrating Earth Day… all weekend long. So, if you have not yet hocked your Coachella ticket, do it now. Save your money for feather jewellery, ride your bike, learn how to make cheese and dignify your musical senses with some western variety courtesy of us. Besides, Kanye ain’t even playing this year.

Saturday, April 21

10am: Classical Revolution
11am: Luke Thompson & the Howl
12pm: Joel Fraser
1pm: Anita Athavale
2pm: Hot Sweet Noise
3pm: the Bitterweed Draw
4pm: Sam Masterton
5pm: the Doer and the Doddler

Sunday, April 22

11am: Spencer Jo & the Mandrill
12pm: AM Static
1pm: Snow Owl
2pm: Ryan Bourne
3pm: Mike Tod
4pm: Nathan Godfrey & the Bow River Buddies

To commemorate the 2012 TransCanada Alberta Music series, we at the West teamed up with Jodi Lucas at the Epcor Centre for the Performing Arts to offer a glimpse at some of this year’s acts from within the institute’s hallowed walls. On the eve of St. Patrick’s day – and following the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra – our crew and a small audience met up with local folk man, Mike Tod and snuck in the back door.

The ‘Take You Down’ session was filmed in the tight confines of the Epcor’s Founders Room abandoned elevator shaft. The crew and audience all pitched in to lift and displace various pieces of the theatre’s timber refuge in order to carve out a corner for Tod to set up his set up this minimal arrangement (suitcase, kick pedal and mandolin).

Mike Tod’s namesake is getting known all around town for these raucous unassuming upstarts; he needs only a couple of cubic feet to achieve the ferocity of a full band. If you were at either of his St. Paul’s Fish Creek performances or walked by the Epcor prior to the Low Anthem/ City and Colour concert to see him busk, you already know this.

Discover a couple of tracks from his most recent EP with the Buffalo Lake Kid (Dillon Moulfield). Mike Tod also hosts a tasty old time radio show on CJSW called Mind Folk’d (Thursdays 10am). He performs on the Saturday of the Alberta Music Series alongside West vets, Cowpuncher.

Deadhorse – Glam Central from Down Home on Vimeo.

The neon paint on these basement walls reads: “Great Friday” – a banner flown both in celebration and sad farewell to the musical 1636 house in Calgary’s Kensington village. With the winter melt already upon the household’s members and an expiring lease agreement, the ashes were about to burn, drop and scatter bringing to a close a creative and memorable chapter in the city’s new roots surge. It was within the walls of 1636 and in other proximity residences (Gladstone, Haushom) where whimsical projects and performances were taking place on a nightly basis. It was, in essence, the beginning of some big growth and wayward sharing. The sheer multitude of projects formed was probably an unprecedented whammy on our municipality… especially since many were inside a reasonable stones throw.

Among others, sounds like the Haggard Beat, the Psychic Alliance and James Dangerous and the CIA were having memorable stints during the 1636 era. And on this particular evening, in-and-around 100 Easter partiers witnessed a triple header involving Evan Webb & the Poisonous Birds, the Ooei Oohs and Deadhorse. The numerous black lights revealed dental sets down in the dank and the post-war duct work took a percussive thrashing – it didn’t even matter much that we all were inhaling a dusty cloud of grey matter – the show was full throttle and anything was possible. This Deadhorse performance marked the in-between stage of a cross-Canada tour where they would officially partner the release of their vinyl LP with some quality friends and a house show.

(Video by Duncan Kentworthy Photo Alisha Weng)

It was Saturday and closing in on Christmas in Los Angeles. The streets were what you’d expect: traffic, sunshine and dust; radio interference and bursts of commotion among people rummaging together merchandise for the season. Inside Black Iris Studios sits Rachel Fannan, working to prepare a new composition to spell all of life’s meaningless noise. On this day, like many more ahead, hers is an unmistakable coyote call in the heart of Echo Park.

For Fannan, the past year has seen her add a new dimension to an already acclaimed young music career. Since ending her tenure as front woman in San Franciscan psych band, Sleepy Sun, she has not only developed a touring solo repertoire, but also an excellent all-girl group called Only You.

For the Let Me Sing You Love Songs session, Fannan duos with Brandon Intelligator of Slang Chickens and the West teams up with Michael Harris of Black Iris, located in the Bedrock LA multiplex (aka the Disneyland for musicians).

The Ramblers arrived on the first weekend of the 2011 Calgary Stampede; it was the same weekend Will & Kate lodged in the province and were also slated to appear in the Parade. Many Calgarians eagerly camped out the night before in order to secure their best vantage point or perfect photo op. However, it proved quite the disappointment when the Royal couple hurriedly scooted along the downtown thoroughfare in a covered sedan. Nonetheless, the Moonshine Ramblers would perform a set with the Bitterweed Draw in the heart of town that weekend and hand delivered the first country music performance during Stampede we could get behind since god knows when.

The following afternoon was spent on the banks of the Bearspaw Dam. We could have never made this video without our friends Mark Collins and Angela Wolfe – they did the work of six people by hiking into the brush to meet us with plenty of firewood, refreshments and smokies. At around 3:30 in the video you can see smoke from the fire and hear their baby Hudson saying something or other in the background. This session was, for us, a homecoming of sorts with Alex Hastie (seen on guitar) – it was, after all, one of his songs that became the very first Welcome to the West video. That song is called Heavy Drinkin’ Woman and it also appears on the Moonshiner’s debut, which we staunchly endorse.

Gander our flickr page for some more “Behind the scenes” action like this friggin fall shot…

Jeff the Brotherhood – We Are The Champions

Wilco – The Whole Love

AA Bondy – Believers

Night Beats – self-titled

Ty Segall – Goodbye Bread

Tom Waits – Bad As Me

Dead Skeletons – Dead Magick

My Morning Jacket – Circuital

Kurt Vile – Smoke Ring For My Halo

The Felice Brothers – Celebration, Florida

Gillian Welch – The Harrow and the Harvest