Hello All,
This is Bryan, back in Vancouver after having survived Tribune’s North American tour. Despite a number of hiccups and cancellations, it was a total blast, and we already can’t wait to tour the States and Canada again (it sure as hell beats working a day job)! Having said that, we in Tribune need a bit of a rest from the road, some time to visit with our friends and families, and also time to finish writing the next album. Of course, that doesn’t mean we’ll be idle. No, we’ll be playing an after-party show at Iron Roads Studio June 23rd, then playing another Courtenay show at The Mex June 29th, then Brian Else’s birthday bash, again at Iron Roads, on July 14th. After that, I will be taking the month of August off from the band, as that is when my wife and I are expecting our first child to be born (fuck, does it ever make me feel old as I write that)! Throughout this period, and afterwards, we will be writing new material for the next album, which we hope to release by the end of 2013.
But I digress. I’m supposed to be writing a tour recap, here.
The last time I updated the fans, we were in Arizona, two weeks into the tour. We played some fun shows after that, although I would have to say my favourite show in the States was definitely the one we played in San Antonio, Texas, at a venue called Zombies. This place was great. There were pictures of mutilated body parts and undead varnished into the countertops, and the washrooms were smeared with bloody handprints (no, not real blood). The bands were great too, especially Black Falcon, an all-hispanic hard rock/metalcore group. Really friendly guys, too. Actually, we met a lot of friendly people in the U.S., and not just in the South, where we discovered what people mean when they talk about Southern hospitality. In Texas we were put up by Derek and his brother Clint, in Mississippi we stayed with Richard Smith from the band Soul Skard, and in Kentucky we were graciously taken care of by Dot and Gary, all of whom fed us and let us use their showers and were just generally awesome to us. In New York we were plagued by cancellations, but were put up in a hotel room a very cool promoter named Vinnie (a classic New Jersey stereotype, the Jersey Italian). Add to that list Emily and Emmanuel from Seattle, Ty and Dave and the Portland Pirate Punks, and the guys from Animism and their families in Sacramento, CA, and we in Tribune can definitively say that the people of the United States of America are every bit as hospitable as we Canadians.
Once in Canada, we had a bit of downtime, and we spent it exploring Montreal, one of Canada’s greatest cities. We had a fantastic time there, despite the fact that our van was targeted by vandals (our Quebec friends suspected it was because it had B.C. plates, which, if true, shows an appalling grasp on politics on the part of the vandals; B.C. is marginalized by Ottawa every bit as much as Quebec is). We played some great shows there, ate some delicious poutine (La Banquise is the shit!), and stayed with some wonderful people (big shout out to Holly and Pierre Ethier and their family, and our dynamo of a publicist Jon Asher). Actually, we were quite fortunate in that we found terrific people all across Canada as well, people who took us in to their homes and made us feel welcome. Thanks go out to Rich Moreland for hooking us up with a show and hotel rooms in Sault Ste. Marie, to Taryne in Winnipeg (the hot chick in front at the Winnipeg show), to Jennifer Lyons in Saskatoon, and to Dylan the sound guy in Red Deer. Without these people…there would have been a lot more camping in Wal-Mart parking lots!
Also, I feel I must give a shout out to the guys in West Of Hell, with whom we shared the road in Canada. They fucking rule! Anyone who is into home-grown Canadian heavy metal should check these guys out, they rip it up! We played some killer shows with these dudes, and had some mean parking lot barbeques with them, too! We look forward to playing with them again soon (June 23rd, in fact).
So that was the tour, and it was great, but next year, we will probably not tour for that long in one stretch. We’ll do two tours! That’s right, we’re tentatively planning to tour the West Coast of the States in early 2013, and Canada in late summer of 2013. If you want us to come to your town, get ahold of us via e-mail, facebook, twitter, or however the fuck you gotta do it and demand that we come and play your local shitty metal dive. No metal dive is too divey….
Horns Motherfuckers!
Bryan
