Bands on Bikes in B.C. - Hannah Georgas and Friends Hit the Road

Jeremy Fisher, Said the Whale, Hannah Georgas & Aidan Knight Present:

THE MALAHAT REVUE ‘BIKE-TO-WORK’ TOUR – JULY 2010

Talk about going green. Rarely do you hear about bands using biodiesel fuel or recycling all the garbage in their tour van. So what could be the ultimate way to protect this great earth while being a touring musician? If you’re Canadian musicians Jeremy Fisher, Hannah Georgas, Aidan Knight, and Said the Whale: you tour by bicycle. Yeah, you heard us right.

Watch the trailer and read more about this awesome tour. It's just such an awesome idea.




The British Columbia-based musicians will tour the province from July 8th through the 18th entirely on bikes. With just one vehicle carrying their instruments, the bands have come up with an ingenious and possibly the green-friendliest way to tour over 500 kilometers in just over a week. Originally from Ontario, Georgas' rose to Canadian indie fame from being hand-picked to write corporate jingles to being hailed “…the next Feist," by Exclaim!. Georgas' latest album This is Good made Canadian critics instantly perk up. Her Hidden Pony label mates, Said the Whale released Bear Bones this year and everyone is anxiously awaiting for a new album by Jeremy Fisher.

Dubbed The Malahat Revue, eight musicians will get on their bikes and get to their gigs with enough energy to still play their hearts out. Fisher who doesn’t own a car, and has toured across North America by bike three times conceived the Revue. All eight musicians will play with each other by playing selections from each others albums, which will make each night different, spontaneous and inspiring.

THE MALAHAT REVUE – JULY TOUR DATES:
Thursday, July 8, Artspring Theatre – Salt Spring Island, BC
Friday, July 9 – Pender Island Community Hall, Pender Island, BC
Saturday, July 10 – Sugar – Victoria, BC
Sunday, July 11 – Duncan Garage Showroom – Duncan, BC
Friday, July 16 – Nanaimo Entertainment Centre – Nanaimo, BC
Sunday, July 18 – Vancouver Folk Fest – Vancouver, BC Click Here to Read More..

Golden Bloom's Golden Rules

OMG! Another new weekly feature on the GLG blog? Yep, and we love it. Each Wednesday (well, you know how musicians are, so hopefully every Wednesday....) we will treat you to a Guest Blogger from our lovely group of artists. Each Guest Blogger will have a different name for their column. We start off with Shawn Fogel of Golden Bloom/Neutral Uke Hotel and his "Golden Bloom's Golden Rules." He likes to write, a lot. I mean a lot. But he's pretty excited about playing in Toronto this weekend, so we let him go crazy.

This week’s Golden Rule: Always have something to look forward to!

Whether it’s the Monday morning of another work week from hell, the beginning of a 10-hour drive through a torrential downpour, or the first 10 minutes of Green Day’s horrendous Broadway show, you can get through anything as long as you have something to look forward to. I know that the faithful readers of this here blog are far too sharp to miss the fact that I just said I saw Green Day’s American Idiot on Broadway. It’s true, I did. I won’t go into detail about how I ended up seeing the show, but I will tell you that I would give it the same two word review famously attributed to Spinal Tap’s 1980 release Shark Sandwich.

The reason I share what would normally be a secret too dark even during the most epic slumber party “Truth or Dare" sessions is that it’s a perfect example of this week’s Golden Rule. I made it through all 90 minutes of dreadful plotless-ness because I had something to look forward to, and that something is this year’s North By Northeast (NXNE) music festival in Toronto.

The Great White North’s equivalent of SXSW is five days, 650 bands with simultaneous film and interactive festivals to boot. Golden Bloom had the privilege of playing NXNE last year and when I got the invite to return I couldn’t have been happier. I’ve never had a bad experience in Toronto (unlike my friend Tom who got food poisoning from a Korean BBQ and got really sick the following day at a gig in North Bay, ON). The city is cleaner than New York (sorry New York), the people are friendly (sorry New York), and well, I just plain like it better than New York (sorry New York, I think you and I should start seeing other cities).

This year we’ll be in Toronto for three nights, playing three shows (one Golden Bloom show and two Neutral Uke Hotel shows). Two of the bands I’m most excited about seeing are both bands that I’ve enjoyed sharing the stage with over the past year. Coincidentally, BOTH of these bands are from Cincinnati, OH (also coincidentally, both bands feature those boy/girl vocals that we all know Green Light Go goes gaga for)!

First is The Seedy Seeds, who play at Rancho Relaxo at 10 pm on Thursday, June 17th. I love the fact that they are playing a venue named after the spa Marge Simpson visits in “Homer Alone” (15th episode of the 3rd season)! Margaret (vocals, guitar, accordion, keyboard), Mike (vocals, banjo) and Brian (drums) combined the oft far removed organic elements of country/folk and the electronic elements of dance music like a Reese’s Cup of pure musical joy (You got banjo in my electronica! You got electronica in my banjo!). The Seedy Seeds are a ton of fun and I can’t wait for NXNE fun-seekers to see and hear them on stage for the first time.

The other band I’m really looking forward to seeing is Wussy, who play The Legendary Horseshoe Tavern at 11pm on Friday, June 18th. Chuck (vocals, guitar) and Lisa (vocals, guitar) write amazing songs that are equal parts pretty and noisy. Matter of fact, I love Wussy’s songs so much I recently recorded a Golden Bloom cover of “Magic Words” (my favorite song off their most recent self-titled full length album). It’s still in the super top-secret song vault right now, but hopefully we’ll share Golden Bloom’s Wussy cover with the world pretty soon.

If you are attending this year’s NXNE festival, you’ve got a lot to look forward to. Those of you who aren’t Toronto bound shouldn’t feel blue, and shouldn’t forget this week’s Golden Rule. If you can’t think of anything to look forward to at the moment (other than the next edition of Golden Bloom’s Golden Rules), I hope you find solace in the fact that the not-so-distant future where robots play improvisational jazz is finally here! Click Here to Read More..