May 9, 2012
Day 15 of 47!
We have made it wonderful Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, home of the famous Al Capone's liquor running tunnels during the days of the American prohibition, where we were pleasantly surprised to find out that we are on the cover page to Moose Jaw's summer music festival website with a video filmed from the Market Collective's Ugly Christmas Sweater Social last year! Check it out here. A big thanks to those who filmed the video and posted it online for strangers to use!
Before that we stopped in Kamloops, where our bass head decided to not work anymore and had to schedule an emergency repair but thanks to the help of Lee's Music out there we weren't delayed getting out the next morning and everything is working top shape now.
This brings 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 immediately for a crowd that although may not have filled the whole bar but definitely filled the entire dance floor! It's amazing when there is only one table left with people sitting 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 to find a hot home made Mama Casagrande lasagna waiting for us on the oven sometime 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 Mikey there and their company 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.
May 1, 2012
Day 7 of 47!
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.
March 29, 2012
New shows are being added daily to our Spring 2012 cross-Canada tour!
Check out our Shows page for a complete listing!! Watch out Canada, The Bitterweed Draw is comin' to getcha!
March 20, 2012
"Heart of the Old West" - AVAILABLE NOW!
The album was released this month, thanks to everyone involved in making this happen and all the fans for coming out for the release. Visit our Bandcamp page to buy the album, or contact the band for a hard copy. Vinyl release on the way!
February 22, 2012
Welcome to the new website!
Check out the Listen page to listen to a sneak peek of the new album, Heart of the Old West. The album will be released on March 9, 2012 at Below Deck Tavern. $15 gets you admission and a CD!! See you all there!