TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 7TH ANNECY Le Comptoir de la Folie Ordinaire w/ Leopold Skin
WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 8TH LYON L’Antidote w/ Leopold Skin
FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 11TH BORDEAUX Total Heaven In-Store w/ Leopold Skin
SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 11TH BORDEAUX House Show w/ Leopold Skin
SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 12TH CLERMONT Secret Roof Show w/ Leopold Skin
MONDAY SEPTEMBER 13TH CLERMONT La Coope w/ Leopold Skin
TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 14TH PARIS Point FMR w/ Leopold Skin
THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 16TH LILLE Folk Adhoc House Show w/ Leopold Skin
FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 17TH RENNES Tion w/ Leopold Skin
SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 18TH NANTES Le Ferrailleur w/ Leopold Skin
SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 19TH DIJON Galerie Sabotage w/ Leopold Skin
MONDAY SEPTEMBER 20TH BRUSSELS House Show w/ Trijaus
WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 22ND BERLIN The Monarch w/ Deer Tick
THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 23RD BERLIN Schokoladen w/ Trouble Books
FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 24TH (aft) HAMBURG Platzhirsch w/ Dan Mangan, Woodpigeon
FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 24TH (eve) HAMBURG St. Pauli Kirche w/ Timber Timbre and Mohna
SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 25TH SAARBRUCKEN Sparte 4 w/ tba
MONDAY SEPTEMBER 27TH LONDON The Hoxton Bar and Kitchen w/ Timber Timbre
TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 28TH LONDON The Windmill in Brixton w/ tba
THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 30TH LONDON King’s Cross Social w/ Monica Heldal and William Rahr Fortna

This tour is in support of our record Spirit Guides being released by Kutu Folk Records in France! Check out the label here:www.kutufolk.com

Saturday we launch in a rocketship over the Atlantic Ocean and into Paris where we begin almost a month’s worth of tour dates.  I’ll cut to the chase and just post them right here:

TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 7TH    ANNECY    Le Comptoir de la Folie Ordinaire w/ Leopold Skin
WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 8TH    LYON    L’Antidote w/ Leopold Skin
FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 11TH    BORDEAUX Total Heaven In-Store w/ Leopold Skin
SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 11TH    BORDEAUX    House Show w/ Leopold Skin
SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 12TH    CLERMONT    Secret Roof Show w/ Leopold Skin
MONDAY SEPTEMBER 13TH    CLERMONT   La Coope w/ Leopold Skin
TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 14TH    PARIS    Point FMR w/ Leopold Skin
THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 16TH    LILLE    Folk Adhoc House Show w/ Leopold Skin
FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 17TH    RENNES   Tion w/ Leopold Skin
SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 18TH    NANTES    Le Ferrailleur w/ Leopold Skin
SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 19TH    DIJON    Galerie Sabotage w/ Leopold Skin
MONDAY SEPTEMBER 20TH    BRUSSELS    House Show w/ Trijaus
WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 22ND    BERLIN    The Monarch w/ Deer Tick
THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 23RD    BERLIN    Schokoladen w/ Trouble Books
FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 24TH (aft)    HAMBURG    Platzhirsch w/ Dan Mangan, Woodpigeon
FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 24TH (eve)    HAMBURG    St. Pauli Kirche w/ Timber Timbre and Mohna
SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 25TH    SAARBRUCKEN    Sparte 4 w/ tba
MONDAY SEPTEMBER 27TH    LONDON    The Hoxton Bar and Kitchen w/ Timber Timbre
TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 28TH    LONDON    The Windmill in Brixton w/ tba
THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 30TH    LONDON    King’s Cross Social w/ Monica Heldal and William Rahr Fortna

This tour is in support of our record Spirit Guides being released by Kutu Folk Records in France! Check out the label here:www.kutufolk.com

We are really excited about this all coming together and the record coming out in France.  It’s all one truly exciting surprise for me. On top of that, we get to tour france in the fall, and not just paris, but a bunch of smaller cities too. I can’t begin to explain how fortunate I feel about this. The folks at Kutu Folk already feel like a family to me and we are excited to land there on Sunday morning and meet our new friends. This tour will just be Sylvie and I and we’ve been working hard at trying to make as many sounds as possible with the two of us and I think it’s a really great sounding evening hymns right now, definitely one suited to the autumn weather and bottles of red wine.

After france we play a house show in brussels and then we hit germany for 5 shows. really excited to see berlin and saarbrucken and so excited to play in st. pauli church in hamburg with our good friends and church-shredders Timber Timbre

if that place ain’t haunted yet then it will be after that night!

thanks to tobias at gastspielreisen booking for helping us out! I look forward to doing a more extensive German tour in the future.

we finish up in the U.K. doing a few shows around London and most importantly opening again for Timber Timbre on the occasion of their European album release.  it feels good to have this show near the end. taylor, from TT, and i did our first tours ever together many moons ago and it’s a real feelgooder for me to be asked to do this show in london with him. if you haven’t heard his latest release, well any of them really, than you should do yourself a favour and pick up the S/T record now. wowsers.

anyways, we’re camping out at my mom’s place for the next few days to escape toronto and focus on rehearsing and relaxing. stay tuned to the BLOG OF THE FORSAKEN for all important evening hymn’s news.

bon voyage.

jb

like i almost kept it pretty updated?

and i only really slipped at the end?

maybe cause home was in my sights? maybe it was all the thunder bay saunas and beers?

let me try and pick this up where we left off…

played a cool show at this little artspace on albert st. in winnipeg called Freud’s Bathhouse and Diner, which was neither a bathhouse or a diner.  it was a very hot, very rad space. we played sandwiched between a bunch of really different, experimental films. my favorite was leslie supnet .  check out the link there… pretty radness! thanks to jonah from ghost town, mb for hooking up the show for us, and michael elves from UMFM for putting me in touch with michael. also thanks to the gang at freud’s for having us.

here’s some video of us performing history books at freud’s:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWDnHSuoSkA&feature=player_embedded

after the show we hit up the LoPub for a couple suds and watched ohbijou.

they were totally awesome and it was good to see them. i miss them.

michael elves, baseball fan extraordinaire:

after this we went home to michael’s house and hung out a bit… felt good to catch up with a friend.

slept like a log then up too early for thunder bay to play 2 shows with forest city lovers.

the three of us hit kanga’s sauna again before the show to unwind and get our heads together.

then we went to the apollo to set up for two nights of playing.

thanks to sheila for having us for two nights and puttin’ us up! love this place!!!

pre-show:

only one way to turn these frowns upside downs:

CHANGEFACE!!!

i believe that was all the change from joe’s pocket.

sylvie got a temporary tattoo from some random:

and then we after the show we stayed up really late playing jeopardy, under the influence. pretty challenging and fun.

the morning, or well, afternoon… was a great time to go to the hoito to eat breakfast. they were celebrating their 100th anniversary. i am making it official saying this was my favorite breakfast of tour. very close runner-ups would be the bent fork in nelson, bc and the park cafe in saskatoon, sk.  maybe i should just make it a 3-way tie? anyways, the finnish pancakes were amazing…

and then we followed this up with a real long sauna at kanga’s again. this one was extra special cause we got christian and kyle to join us and we cooked a couple real gems in there. not to mention we had bought some new soap and loofahs and we all left feelin’ squeaky clean! one of my favorite places to stop on tour for sure!

no picture from the show that night at the apollo. i got a little topsy-turvy and played a heavy version of mtn. song that was really fun for me.

post-show consisted of more jeopardy, under the influence.

slept amongst the gulls of red river street and then up and out in the a.m. for the drive to sault ste. marie.

thanks to alex from the apollo for waking up early to let us into the venue to load our gear out.

we stopped on the drive to snap a cliche band photo beside lake superior:

here’s a couple randoms from the show at loplops:

oh good times! hit up a hotel in the soo for tour finale/party!!! pretty good times.

the next day we drove to sudbury for pizza hut with fcl and we got to see this on the way:

totally badass!!!!

and then we ate delicious pizza and hit the road home.

farewell fcl…

hit peterborough around midnite and snapped one last tour pic.

i’ll send this one out to my fellow comrades Joe and Sylvie. thanks you two for playing my songs with me and coming along on the adventure. you both made it such a pleasant journey!!! love ya!

those eyes are sparkling cause it was a joyous farewell, albeit a touch emotional…

and now i must sign off on my tour blog… thanks for reading, and thanks to all of those who opened their homes, beds, venues, hearts, wallets, etc. for us!

this tour was a huge success for us. cannot wait to come visit you all again.

all the best until then….

xo

jb

http://www.allcitizens.org/

wow.

drove from saskatoon to bruno. in short, (cause it’s an amazing long story), this wonderful gent moved to bruno, sk (population a few hundred) and bought this house on main street that has a little storefront that he uses as a consignment shop and espresso bar and as canada’s smallest venue! tyler cooked us an amazing pasta dinner and after the show we stayed up super late gettin’ inspired by his story and his ideas for bruno.  he just recently bought the royal bank building a few doors up from him for $25 and he is converting it into a bigger space for arts/live music. tyler awarded us with an engraved plate with our name on it and an etching of all citzens on it for making it out to bruno, sk (see picture above!)can’t wait to come back and visit and play again! thanks to tyson from slow down molasses for making the trek with his friends out to see us! we also convinced him to play a couple songs and he did a sweet version of new partner by will oldham.

host with the most:

the weirdest part was when we were packing our car this dude kept driving by in his truck.  he literally drove by 50 times… probably more actually, playing loud music and staring at us. pretty funny:

also, as we were loading our car this pleasant lady walked by and said hello and said “it must be hard to sleep in that car” cause i guess she had read our blog and recognized us and saw that we had slept in the car. we thought that was pretty rad. hi nice lady from bruno, sk if you’re still reading this!!!!

from bruno we drove to riding mountain national park and camped out, had a fire, sipped coldies.

beautiful spot but man oh man, to camp one night, with a bundle of firewood, came to $55!!!! same price as a motel. what gives?

glad we did it… but that kind of fee makes a broke, touring musician contemplate the walmart parking lot solution a lot more!!!

woke up and had a nice brekkie at uncle toms.

hit winnipeg and played an instore at music traders.

here is a picture from the perspective of our friend Archer:

then we went and had a campfire at michael and michelle’s beautiful house and stayed up late playing wii baseball after. i hurt my arm a bit and my ego, as michael crushed the jays with his almighty twins.

woke up in the morning and went to mondragon for brekkie.

met up with these dorks:

then we bid them farewell, they’re off to play brandon, mb tonite and then we re-unite tomorrow night in thunder bay for a couple more shows before we’re home. myspace.com/forestcitylovers

sylvie and i put josephine down for a wee nap in the afternoon and then drove over to our friend neil’s house. he did the artwork for the evening hymns t-shirts so we wanted to drop a couple off to him. he was getting his next show ready for switzerland. i want all of these:

here’s some of his incredible work: http://www.royalartlodge.com/

after this we went for argentinian gelato and then home to beagle HQ:

gave this little dude a quick belly rub to get him gigglin’ and we were out the door to freud’s bathhouse and diner for our show tonite!

here’s the invite:

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=102649656456795&ref=ts

oh and that brown hat i’m wearing in all those pictures is my new hat. i’ve been searching for that hat for over a year. happy to finally have found it in winnipeg.

okay, soundcheck time and then sleep, and then thunder bay for more saunas and coldies.

be well,

jb

here’s our last two days.

we hit up the west edmonton mall. i almost puked on the roller coaster.

after the mall we hit up the venue… haven social club.

such a nice space.  brian the sound guy was super rad.

didn’t get any photos from inside but we did get this one from across the street:

we were offered a space to stay with a real nice girl named Jill but we decided to push east a bit and stay at elk island national park but when we got there, at 2am, it was all full and we couldn’t pitch a tent so we decided to keep trucking, eventually settling for a walmart parking lot in vegreville, sask. 3 little hymnsters tucked into balls in hotel honda. slept beside a tim hortons though so that was handy for crappy road breakfast.

our humble abode:

we actually slept pretty well… for 5 hours.

we hit saskatoon around 4pm and hooked up with our main man Phil Greer from vive music!

him and rich taylor, the minds behind vive music, put on an amazing show for us at their new venue, which remains without a name right now, and it’s a real beauty spot. it’s connected to this wonderful cafe called caffe sola and is a real nice sounding room.  here are some pictures of the show/space. they don’t really do the room justice. it’s been a definite highlight of playing on this tour. i think we maybe sounded our best in that room last night.

will robbins opened with a real nice set.

followed by husband/wife duo economics!!!

find me a happier looking group of people then this one above. that’s us making a joke about taking a smash at sneaky dees.

that’s rich satisfying his pizza tooth with us.

this is me elongatin’ my jam before hittin’ the hay.

thanks phil and rich for a rad show! can’t wait to come back to saskatoon.

on to bruno, saskatchewan!!!!

stay tuned.

why not go to a food and wine?

after this feast of fancy foods and beautiful brews we headed back to Casa Kent to order some slichays and pils.

wayne’s world finally is watched in it’s entirety and we continue on our beer crushing odyssey.

a good nights sleep, kent coffee in the morning and some max brand on the balcony.

now we’re packing up from our little calgary vacation and heading to edmonton. it’s a rare thing to find time on tour to relax with old friends and i feel fortunate to have had some time with both james in calgary and julie in banff to catch up and just have some good hangs. this whole tour has been a real trip for us full of open-hearted people and wonderful, pleasant surprises and these last couple days have been so mellow and relaxing. now we are re-charged for our return journey across the prairies and home with plenty of shows left to kick out the jams.

on to edmonton…

jb

just to recap:

after a great sleep in banff, my friend julie, who we were staying with, and I decided to head downtown to the farmer’s market truck that drives from the okanagan valley every wedensday to sell fresh fruits and vegetables to banffers. we got a ton of fresh fruits and julie whipped up these amazing parfaits for our breakfast. the most amazing ones we’ve ever had. julie is a special needs eater and happens to be the greatest cook, or i guess the greatest non-cook as she is a raw foodist. here is her blog:

http://www.glowfood.blogspot.com/

check out her blog. it’s pretty amazing! she made these parfaits with cashew cream as opposed to yoghurt, which i’d never had and it was mind-shatteringly delicious, and the granola was bought from Wild Flour Bakery which is right below their apartment. oh by the way, here is the view from their place:

julie accompanied the amazing parfaits with fresh watermelon and cucumber juice that she made us. a great little breakfast to start our day and prepare us for a mountain climb:

we went for a hike up tunnel mtn. in banff… it’s a mellow jam. here’s some photos from the hike:

that’s me and julie and michael. our wonderful hosts. michael taught us many lessons of mountain climbing before disappearing into the woods and sending us on our way.

you can pretty much just walk right up to these little champions.

here’s josephine infront of rundle mtn. his buddy cam climbed this wildabeast we hear…

the sherpas:

here we are riding trees and sylvie looks likes she should be on the side of a beer bottle. look at that hair. mountain hair:

after banff we drove to calgary and played a nice show at dicken’s pub with heart failure research unit and field museum.

great sets by both and we played a short set to a nice little crowd. thanks calgary. that was a treat.

we headed back to james and mary’s place to stay. we ended up sitting out on their balcony sippin’ pils and staring out at the city skyline. calgary is gorgeous at night.

after the balcony we moved inside and we were about to go to sleep and then conversation exploded into talk about playing music and then the city of peterborough and how those two things are connected. it was a really good talk. next thing ya know it was 4:30am and james was retiring to bed. sylvie, joe and i ended up staying up until 6am talking about touring and playing music and life goals and the usual 6am epiphanies. good grief.

good times.

now we are heading downtown to meet up with james at one of his wine and cheeses.

planning on watching wayne’s world tonite.

we are excited.

then we’re off to edmonton for tomorrow night.

over and out.

jb

so i have a lot to speak of.

i can’t remember if i’ve explained how a lot of this tour has come together but basically our tour plans fell through about 6 weeks before we had to leave and it was up in the air whether we should even risk touring because it’s expensive and a lot of driving and time off work and if we can’t really play too many shows then why should we bother at this point and maybe we should just wait and book something later in the year. we all decided that we should just push forward, commit to touring and hope to book enough shows to get west and back and not completely lose our minds. i mean the three of us were really excited to travel across canada in july. swimming, the mountains, etc. joe and sylvie had never been west before and never seen the mountains and so we decided to see what we could make happen in the little time we had to book a tour of sorts. i think the day we left toronto and hit the road we had 15 shows confirmed, along the way we’ve picked up a couple more and we’re so happy that we decided to forge ahead and make this trip. when the original tour fell apart i emailed a bunch of my friends that are in other bands and asked for help. basically just looking for any leads on small cities to play, cool promoters that might want to help, etc. my dear friends in the wooden sky we’re unbelievably helpful this way and gave me plenty of contacts out west of places they had played during the western tour they did where they played houses and smaller alternative spaces. you can watch so many of these amazing shows right here: http://vimeo.com/6771566 they are amazing videos made so beautiful by our friend scott cudmore. one of the contact that we got from these guys was for a dude named sean in nelson, bc. i had never been to nelson before and was excited to try and get a show there. when sean got back to me saying that he was going to help us out i was super excited. we left vancouver and drove the 8 hours or whatever it was to nelson. it was such a gorgeous drive and we hit town around 8pm. we were greeted by some of the friendliest people we have met yet on the road, told not to go eat because they were having a big potluck, and shown where we would be sleeping… basically got to town, met these strangers and they opened up their home to us.

sean, evan and riley opened with a nice little set and got the room warmed up. everyone sitting on the floor…

we’ve been doing a lot of singing into the room without mics cause it’s so nice to play quietly on this tour and nelson was the best for this yet. i can’t believe how much fun this show was.

the night concluded with us playing an old song called “sips of sea” that ends with a cover of the beach boy’s “god only knows” and we got the whole room singing the big harmony at the end… a very magical moment for us. so grateful to play to the most gracious audience in canada.

our friends forest city lovers played in nelson that night too and they came up the street for a beer after their show.

so many fun stories from nelson. i’ll just share 3 quick ones.

#1

as we were unloading the car, brent, one of the tenants at the fishbowl (the house we played at) saw my pillow in the car and was shocked and asked whose it was. i told him it was my pillowcase that my mom had bought me 15 years ago. he then told me that his mom had made it. it’s an airbrushed pillowcase with skiers on it that says “jonas takes to the air”.  it’s pretty rad. brent’s mom used to make these things and sell them. what a small, strange world we live in…

here’s brent and i, 15 years later, commemorating the meeting of our moms…

#2

after our windsor show, joe found a setlist on the floor of the phog lounge and pocketed it because of the song names. after sean and the boys opened the nelson show and said they didn’t have a band name i told everyone how i had this dream on the first day of tour that a new band was in toronto opening a bunch of shows that we had turned down because we were busy and the band was called “directional glory” and so sean, evan, and riley took it on as their new name, and then later decided that they would create new songs to match the setlist. joe gave them the original list and then they typed us out one as a keepsake. we are playing with DIRECTIONAL GLORY next time we play nelson. here they are:

and here is our extended gang:

thanks nelson. you are the most wonderful people!!!!!!!!

#3

so we leave this gang of amazing people on a quest to get my oil changed as it’s overdue from our cross-canada drive. when we played windsor the bartender at the phog lounge, big joe, told me that if i needed any car repair or anything while i was in nelson to go to his buddy blair at midtown motors. he is a honda specialist. so i call him in the morning and ask if he can fit me in and that big joe sent me and he says “sure, i’ll make some room” and sure enough we get there and he pulls a truck off the hoist so that he can put our car up there. he tells me to leave it with him for an hour and so we wander into town to look for a copy of wayne’s world, which we find for $5:

and then head back down the hill to see if the car is ready. walking up to the shop we see hotel honda parked in the lot, gleaming in the sun…. blair had washed out bug-covered car and it looked so good. when i go into the shop to talk to him and settle up he refuses to take my money… we argue for a bit… i tell him we have to pay and he refuses to let us… says big joe sent us and big joe is his best friend and that he can’t charge us…i am almost brought to tears by this… how much better can nelson get right? and he even hooked up his computer to the dash to check on all the warning lights that were lit up in my car and told me about them and what to do and not to worry and basically set my mind at ease.

i know that he probably won’t read this but blair we cannot thank you enough. what a huge boost on the road, mentally and financially. thanks!

if you need car work done in nelson make sure you hit Midtown Motors:

we left nelson full of spirit and headed to the white swan hotsprings. i had been here once before in the winter about 8 years ago. it’s a pretty magical place. the water is piping hot and then you lay down in the freezing mountain river. you pretty much blackout. good times:

stopped in kimberley, bc and the happiest boy in the world got his photo taken infront of happy hans:

then we drove through kootenay national park and into banff and it shattered our minds. now we are off to climb a mountain with our friends julie and michael who have hosted us in banff. here are some photos from the last leg of our journey including a photo out the front door of julie and michael’s amazing place in banff.

the last 24 hours has easily ranked in the top 10 days of my life, possibly even top 5. feelin’ good.

got to neptoon records just in time for our instore.

what an awesome shop.

then we got to hang out at sunset beach with sam, our west coast promoter.

this whole vancouver show basically came together from a tweet. i emailed sam after he tweeted about our band and from there he took on booking his first show ever for us at the iconic Railway Club in Vancouver.  the turnout was amazing and the show was one of the best yet for us. the Railway Club is amazing and i hope that we get to come back soon to play. thanks Sam!!!!

i must say that one of the highlights of this tour was this:

the legendary jon ebrell moves his truck for us so we can park in his underground garage and pulls off this incredible move. so close to the wall that joe can hardly pass an old canadian five dollar bill between the mirror and the wall. mad skillz with old billz.on the road.

here we go… off to Nelson, BC to play the Fishbowl tonite.

then a day off in the mountains!!!!

be well.

jb

just to recap what we’ve been up to since the last post.

we drove from kapuskasing to dryden, ontario, which took roughly 12-13 hours i think, and slept at Aaron Provincial Park.  nice place. leeches in the water so i didn’t swim unfortunately.

stopped at the side of the road that leads to hornepayne where my dad had his moose hunting camp. nice being up north. haven’t been up here in a really long time.

feel like we were helped along the highway. almost ran out of gas near hearst. scary. happy to pay $1.25 a litre at Klotz Lake Camp!

hit Kanga’s Sauna in Thunder Bay, a necessity. taco time and we’re back on the tarmac.

then we drove from dryden, on to brandon, manitoba. got there around 5pm and played 2 sets at Lady Of The Lake. it was real nice to finally eat some real food.  it was delicious! back on the road after the set and drove to just east of regina, sk.  stayed at Echo Valley Provincial Park. woke up at 6am and hit the road. drove from their across saskatchewan, then across alberta and into BC.  we drove 17 hours.  i think i did 15 of those. i think that’s my new record.  we hit the kootenay pass at 9:30pm and hit Champions Lake Provincial Park at 11pm, just as the warden was locking the gate, but he let us in.  really nice park. got to swim for breakfast!

bugs!!!!

back on the road. drove straight through to mission, BC. stopped in the okanagan for fresh fruit and a swim. arrived at Paul and Sarah’s house in Mission. the most gracious hosts i think i’ve ever encountered. a huge spread of food and a fridge full of cold beer. played a packed house show to the nicest, quietest crowd. what a treat. joe opened with a great typewriter set. so nice to hear his songs. (myspace.com/fortinjoe) we stayed up entirely too late and then paul and sarah got up and made us crepes for breakfast. we’ve been treated like kings and queens. after driving for 4-5 days straight it was so comforting. thanks paul and sarah!

this is 3am in mission.

now we’re off to vancouver.  an in-store this afternoon around 3pm and then the railway club tonite!!!! 8:30pm!!!

here’s a couple more pics: