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The Tour Has Begun!

That’s right, we hit the road this morning and even missed most of the rush hour traffic leaving Toronto!  Our quest to tour the Canadian East while simultaneously boycotting Tim Hortons is a success to this point!  We have stopped for coffee twice and no TH products were purchased.

I’ll be tweeting throughout our campaign, so make sure you follow us @seespotrun to get the latest on our adventures on the road!

 

luv fudge

 

PS – this is my first ever blog post FROM THE VAN.  Gotta love tethering.

 

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SSR tour brought to you by McCafé!

We have decided that due to the consistently poor service and quality of product at Tim Hortons we will be avoiding their establishments at all costs.  Instead, SSR has chosen McCafé as our new coffee provider.  The product far exceeds the quality of Tim Hortons and the service is at least one step above theirs as well.

Last night’s foray at the Historic Red Dog in Peterborough was fun (as usual).  We played a few new/old originals that we have not unleashed upon our fans there and we played an encore of “Bust A Move” by request for the loudest encore-shouter!  It was pretty cool, we don’t usually play encores that I sing. :)

Tuesday we head out for the Maritimes to appear on CTV Morning Live on Thursday October 20, and then 3 shows in Nova Scotia.  A short ferry ride awaits with the promise of a rockin’ good time in Newfoundland’s Corner Brook.  We are stoked to head back to the East Coast for the next couple of weeks.

Follow us on Twitter, follow our Facebook page, or hell… get in your car and follow us!  We’ll be riding down the highways in our big blue bus.

 

luv fudge

 

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I’m on a London radio!

Okay, so it doesn’t really fit with the chorus from “Mexican Radio” but it’s true!  London’s 98.1 Free FM has been wearing out the proverbial needle on our latest single “Let It Go” and we are headed down there to play a concert for a select few contest winners next week.  We are stoked to meet all the winners and radio personalities and hang out with everyone for what will surely be a night to remember.

If you live in the London, ON area be sure to listen to 98.1 Free FM for your chance to win tickets to this exclusive show!

 

See you next week, London!

luv fudge

 

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Falling into the Maritimes

Fall is my favourite time of year.  It’s full of anticipation of Thanksgiving, then Halloween (favourite!) and then Christmas (second favourite!) soon after.  But this fall is different from those before it because SEE SPOT RUN will be traveling to The Maritimes!

That’s right!  We’re heading to New Brunswick, Newfoundland, and Nova Scotia for a whirlwind 2-week tour which will see SSR playing 7 shows in 11 nights!  I can’t put into words the excitement that’s buzzing through the band for this tour.  It’s been a long time since SSR visited Canada’s East Coast and we’ve been getting all kinds of email and Facebook messages from fans who are already counting down the days.

We have just posted a number of shows that we’ll be playing around Southern Ontario leading up to our late-October tour out East and we’ll make sure to post details of the other shows soon.  Stay tuned and get ready because SSR is ready to take over the East. :)

 

luv fudge

 

 

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See Spot Run, Clean The Shore, Shop The Shore!

See Spot Run will be playing Mimico’s annual “Shop The Shore” event September 24, 2011.  In addition to shopping The Shore, Mimico residents will also be cleaning The Shore.  There is a Lakeshore cleanup event happening in the morning of September 24 at Amos Waites Park at the base of Mimico Av and Lakeshore Blvd W and I encourage everyone to come down and help out.

The Shop The Shore event is put together by the Lakeshore BIA and is a fantastic outdoor festival that takes over the entire Lakeshore with fantastic music, wandering performers, food, drinks, and every shopkeeper promoting special deals for everyone in the community.  SSR is the featured musical act at Mimico Square on Saturday September 24 between 3pm and 5pm for a FREE all-ages outdoor show.  We’re proud to be a part of this event and it’s especially meaningful to me because it’s in my own community.

Come out, bring your kids, bring your taste buds, and bring your dancing shoes because you won’t be able to stand still!  See you then!

 

luv fudge

 

Terry Fox

SSR and Brian James Kick Off Terry Fox Campaign in Huntsville

Huntsville’s FM 105.5 personality Brian James will be kicking off the 2011 Terry Fox campaign with “31 hours for 31 years” on the little rock island.  See Spot Run has been asked to perform at the event and we will be there on Friday August 26th to help!  The Terry Fox Campaign is one that is close to our hearts and it means a lot to us to be involved in this event.

We hope to see you there, and if you can’t make it please register and participate in the Terry Fox Campaign in your local area!

Brian on the Island – 31 Hours for 31 Years

Terry Fox Foundation

 

luv fudge

 

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Minitour A Success

WOW!  We have arrived home after a 3 show minitour of southern Ontario and it was amazing!

We started Thursday night in Peterborough at the Red Dog where I blew out my bass drum head… that’s right, it EXPLODED from the inside!  That has never happened to me ever.

Friday night we stopped in at the Red Rooster in Burlington for a show with “n’ Friends”.  It went late, but the hardcore that stayed to see SSR got a little extra as our 70-minute set turned into closer to 85 minutes by the end of it.

Sarnia’s Stubborn Mule hosted See Spot Run on Saturday and it was a madhouse.  The Mule was wall-to-wall with people screaming and dancing and singing along; gotta love Sarnia.  This was our first trip to the Stubborn Mule and the management treated us just as good as the audience.

All 3 shows were great and we are proud and grateful to have such awesome fans as all of you who came to see us (some more than once!).  This week we have an ALL AGES show at The Rockpile in Etobicoke, ON.  We’ll be playing with a couple of great local bands and I’m especially excited to be back in my own hometown playing for my friends and neighbours.

We have a few more one-off shows coming up this fall so keep your eyes peeled on our shows page, Facebook, and Twitter for more info on those.

Thanks for everyone who came out to the shows, to all the bands that played with us, and to The Wolf in Peterborough and K106 in Sarnia.  We’ll see you all again very soon!

luv fudge

 

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Retroactive…

Here I am sitting in the van with the boys on the way to Lexington, MI for our show tomorrow night and I’m online (how cool is that?) reading Twitter and seeing the music and movies people are talking about.  Chris has a label that we talk about fairly often that is “The Regurgitation Generation.”  I am finding this label more and more fitting with each passing week, but why are we here?

Since the 50′s and probably before, there has been a “retro-cool” thing that seems to happen with every generation where things from their parents’ childhood come back in style in one form or another.  When I was younger it was bell bottoms and lava lamps and now it’s neon clothes, big hair and “stylish” ripped jeans.  The thing that seems more prevalent now than ever is the “blockbuster” movies being remakes of movies that did well in the past.  The Smurfs got me thinking about this in-depth and the news story in Toronto about road closures due to filming of the remake of Total Recall has be writing about it.

Is the Regurgitation Generation just out of ideas?  I find it hard to believe that creativity is lacking in any human being; granted there are some that are more creative and talented than others.  What I wonder is with all of the innovation and growth in other aspects of our society (technology, automotive, food, clothing, CSI, etc) why is our entertainment industry so stagnant?  Is it because the new music and television shows are just not entertaining?  Are people tired of hearing and seeing the same old thing?  I sure hope so.

I am anxiously awaiting this generation’s Kurt Cobain to come along and kick the F’ing doors off the industry “standards.”  We are at about that point in the cycle of music trends that the next great innovator should appear to save us from the over auto-tuned, no-human-musicians-playing  crapola that permeates every hit single on the charts right now.  I s/he comes soon because we’re dying here…

Everything has to come from something and I am all for influences jumping out through new material, stylistic “nods” to predecessors.  If there is one piece of advice I can give to any musicians or writers or artists out there it is to create!  Use what you’ve learned, use what you enjoy and incorporate all of what you are into making something new.  Taking something another artist has done and doing it over is fun and it’s good, but the world needs more new music and movies to entertain us; be that.

 

luv fudge

 

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Excited anyone?

I’ve gotten personal Facebook messages from more than a couple people telling me how excited they are for SSR to return to Lakeview Hills Golf Resort THIS FRIDAY!  We are excited too.  The van got cleaned, we all did a little maintenance on our gear to make sure we’re good to go, and we updated our P2 Visas so there should be no problems at the border!  It’s funny though, each year we get pulled over and they search through our things, then the border officer asks the name of the band and we say “See Spot Run” and s/he always says “OH YEAH? I love you guys!”  The border people all listen to K106 and I secretly thing they pull us over just so they can pull out the boys’ guitars and take photos with them.  ;)

We are hard at work in the studio finishing our next single.  I can’t share the name with you just yet, but to quote Don Cherry, “it’s a dandy.”  I’m excited about this song a) because it’s new material and b) because it’s very catchy and had me singing back the chorus all day the first time I heard the demo.  I am personally excited about this song because I think it’s the best I’ve played on a recording to date.  The track is not complicated or full of Mike Portnoy-esque fills or time changes or anything funky like that, but I was able to really get my soul to jump off the drums and right through the speakers into your ears.  I’m very proud of this track and I hope you will all like it as much as I do when it hits radio.

Another exciting development is several one-off bookings for SSR over the next couple of months.  The combination of playing live and having new material being written and more being recorded means that we’ll probably be sneaking a few of the new songs into our set list soon.  Hopefully we’ll see you out at one of our upcoming shows!

 

luv fudge

 

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Record Store Dies, Live Music Lives On!

I had a conversation recently with a friend of mine about the demise of the traditional “record store”.  The topic came about when talking about the recent sale of 121 HMV Canada stores for a measly $3.2 million.  This sale of HMV is only the latest in a long line of record stores to close down; Sam The Record Man, A&A, A&B Sound, Music World, and how HMV have all bit the dust in the last 10 years thanks in no small part to the Napster revolution.

Where does all this turmoil with physical record stores leave us?  Well, there’s iTunes, Amazon, PureTracks, CDBaby, Spotify, and lots more!  But all of the sudden we’re dealing with low-quality compressed sound files instead of high quality recordings.  Not only does that provide a poor quality sample of the music you’re listening to, it also impacts the high-end audio equipment market.  Why would anyone spend $10,000 on a supreme state-of-the-art stereo system if they’re just going to plug their iPod into it and play MP3s?  It just doesn’t make sense.

So… buying music and unwrapping it to play it on your stereo is passé.  But you can’t download the feeling of a live performance!  Now we as music lovers have to step up and demand that our musicians know how to play when we pay money to see them perform.  There is nothing like seeing a good band play live whether it’s Stevie Wonder playing at Massey Hall, or your brother’s band playing at the Horseshoe on a Tuesday night.  If the band is good, they have energy, and there is a vibe in the room, it’s an experience like no other.

All you music fans out there who are downloading your music, please make sure you support the art of making music by going to a live show!  And don’t just buy the $300 tickets to Lady Gaga, but also go to those $5 shows that are put on by the local bands in your area.  The more you support your local music scene, the more it will thrive and the better the bands will get.

luv fudge