Thursday, December 15, 2011

Shred Kelly invited to Canadian Music Week in Toronto!!


Say Whaaaaaaaaat?  Looks like in March we will be hitting the road again all the way to Canadian Music Week!!  Canadian Music Fest is Canada's biggest music festival and this year's line-up is already epic including acts such as The Cat Empire, Blackie and Rodeo Kings, The Trews, to name a few.  And we couldn't be more STOKED! Stay tuned for a list of shows that will be our Spring Tour to Canadian Music Week in Toronto and also stay tuned for an anouncement of our showcase show at Canadian Music Fest from March 21 - 25th 2012.

http://canadianmusicfest.com/
http://www.cmw.net/

Shred Kelly Fall Tour 2011 Wrap Up

Well folks....we haven't been all that good at keeping you updated the last few months with our fall tour to Ontario and back. Maybe it was the cold. Maybe it was lazyness. Maybe it was the 10 hour drives. But you Shrederites deserve more than that so here is a captivating summary of our last 5 weeks!

We technically started off the tour playing two halloween shows, one in Rossland at the Flying Steam shovel, and another in Nelson at the Royal on Baker opening for the great Cuff the Duke and Hooded Fang, two killer bands that had the place hopping. We didn't have a costume until about 5 minutes before going on stage so we ended up being the 1984 Canadian Olympic Speed Walking team. Hilariousness ensued.

The next show was in Golden opening for the legendary Elliott Brood to a very rowdy crowd. We can always count on Golden, BC to raise the bar in awesomeness. One hangover and 10 hours later we were in Vancouver for a film shoot with The Green Couch Session crew ( http://www.greencouchsessions.ca/ ) and to play a show at The Railway Club, a cool venue that happens to hold the longest running liquor licence in Vancouver. The film shoot with Green Couch was awesome as we pounded out "Tornado Alley" acoustically in two different spots in Vancouver in the rain, and got kicked out of both by residents and police. Stay tuned for the video coming soon.

The next week saw us make giant strides to Jasper, Edmonton, and Saskatoon. With a push to Winnipeg, we opened for the amazing (and current winner of the Peak Performance Project) Current Swell. What can I say? Great tunes and equally great guys. Two more shows in Winnipeg (see footage at http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10150456899836066) and one in Thunder bay (see footage at http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10150521318131454) ended the praries for us and now it was time to drive 18 hours south to Toronto.

Ah Toronto...the big Smoke. With an epic show at The Piston, we reunited with good friends and had a bouncing dance floor all night. The next morning we were on the 401 to Windsor to play the Phog lounge where we randomly received a band-touring care package from a group of amazing people who traveled from Detroit to see us play. Gummy bears, cookies, pretzels, and even a note-pad for making set lists!....we couldn't have been more impressed with the good people of Detroit and Windsor.

We circled the mega-ness that is Southern Ontario playing London, Guelph, Collingwood, Peterborough, Kingston, and finally found ourselves playing at the Lengendary BlackSheep Inn in Wakefield, QC. You wouldn't even beleive how beautiful the town of Wakefield is which sits quaint on a lake and smells of wood stoves everywhere you walk. The Blacksheep Inn won our hearts in so many ways. I can't stress how nice it is to feel appreciated on the road and the Blacksheep Inn went out of their way to do just that. Great food, good people, and amazing sound makes it a must on our tour schedule.

Another push back to Winnipeg saw us play our last show for the tour at the Standard Tavern. Santa hosted the night and with cowboy hat, sunglasses and always a drink in hand he declared "Santa is getting druuuunk!!" At the end of the night we high fived each other with another tour under the belt and parted ways for the holidays. I have to admit that it is nice to have some time off, not squeezed in a van for 8 hours a day and living off of pub food but to be honest I know that by New Years I will be getting the itch to do it all again. (Dec.31 NYE party at the Royal on Baker in Nelson, BC)

One thing that we realised on this tour is how lucky we are to have such a great network of friends and family from Vancouver all the way to Newfoundland that always have their doors open to us while on the road. This tour was the first tour for us in cold weather where camping was not an option and in 5 weeks we only stayed in a total of four hotels. These ski bums from Fernie were pretty stoked not to have to fork over tonnes of money for rooms. Thank you so much to those who put us up and fed us sometimes for two or three days at a time. Your contibutions will always be remembered.

So here is a video of us on the road that was filmed at Dave and Sigrids in Winnipeg, a wonderful couple who host house concerts at their home which backs onto the Red River. They also put us up and fed us! This clip is an acoustic version of a new song called "The Bear" that will appear on our upcoming album this summer and was filmed at sound check.  See you in 2012 Fernie!


Shred Kelly Presents " THE BEAR " from David Warrenchuk on Vimeo.