The Dreadnoughts' Official Tour Blog

Dreadnought Hiatus

2011-08-28T21:52:00.000-07:00

Dearest friends, fans, and assorted dirty rotten little bastards all over the world,

Since forming in 2007, this band has made 5 recordings, played close to 400 shows, toured to 22 wonderful countries and Belgium, and even got on the radio once. It has been, all things considered, one hell of a ride. But we're here to announce that as of right now we're going to seriously scale back our show schedule (from 140 shows per year to like, maybe twelve). Also, Uncle Touchy Goes To College will probably be our last recording.

There is, unfortunately for you gossip queens, nothing very dramatic about it. With all due respect to the "old guys" in the rock/punk world, we'd rather not end up like them.

Let us explain: we've seen older, more famous punk bands fill 2,000-person halls all over Europe then paint houses 6 months of the year just to make ends meet. We've seen A-list Epitaph-signed bands who are so sick and tired of touring that their live shows are almost a joke. But they gotta tour, or they (and their kids) don't eat. We've seen countless older guys in the industry--managers, musicians, promoters or what have you--who no longer give a shit about music and who would literally not be able to make it through each year without cocaine. "Living the dream", they call it.

So we're each off to get educations or start jobs or explore the world on our own, and trust us, there is absolutely nothing sad about that.

First, we're extremely proud of the music we've made and we think that it stands as something that is both (1) true to its roots, and (2) hopefully somewhat unique. If one band out there has been inspired to do things just a little bit differently because of us, we're fairly happy with that.

Second, music has given us a chance to see places we would never have dreamed of seeing. Eastern Poland, Western England and Chicoutimi, Quebec have become new homes for us all. We've seen the Kremlin and the Ukraine and Barcelona and Porto, been stuck in crazy latino-only American polka bars and slept at the top of colossal mountains in the Swiss alps. Not too shabby, eh.

Third, we have met the most incredible people and made lifelong friends on our various adventures. If we tried to name you all we would never be finished.

Anyway, we do have one major regret we'd like to mention. As of 2009, we started trying to do the "building" thing. We toured internationally, built our reputation and got to play for lots more people, but in order to try to get some stupid contract with some Canadian booking agent, we basically stopped playing Vancouver. The idea is that if you play one big show in your home city per year, you can fill a huge hall and the fucking big-fish booking agents get impressed.

We've had a few people complain about this to us, and they were right to. Vancouver wasn't just our home city, the place we cut our musical teeth, it was where we got that first "push" to get bigger in the first place. Our friends and fans at home supported us like crazy but we basically abandoned them in order to try to get a booking contract that never materialized, probably because we didn't pretend to be Irish. (Trust me, really, if we'd pretended to be Irish I fucking guarantee you that this particular agency would have signed us.) That sucked, and we're sorry, Vancouver. Um... it won't happen again?

Anyway: One reason folk and punk go so well together is that each of them is about community. A "scene" is just a community of friends, and the whole idea of folk music (and punk music) is that performances should be friends playing for friends. There are no rock stars, no egos, no fucking "images" and no-one is better than anyone else. Even if we joked around and occasionally pretended to be rock stars, we hope all of you knew that we're just your friends who happen to know how to play polkas very fast. That's it.

We'll probably play a few more shows here and there, and no-one knows for sure what the future will hold, but this Polka-punk train is gonna sit in the station for a while. We have a few more things to say about our time in "the biz", and we'll post them in the next couple of days. But for now, we'll leave you with one last recording we made during the "Uncle Touchy" sessions, a song that means so much to us and that is dedicated to every last one of you.

The Dreadnoughts - For The Fans.mp3

EP Cover Design Contest

2011-05-11T10:54:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, we announced an "EP cover design-contest". As you might guess, this could also have been called "please design our album for us for free". In a way, this is exploitative and wrong, but fortunately for us we do not care.

We didn't quite know what to expect, but we were blown away, and even a little touched, by what we recieved. There are a lot of awesome people around who really understand what we're all about, and that's very gratifying. We have picked a winner, but we will wait until that design is finalized before showing it to you. Until then, here are the runners-up, each tied for second place:

1. "Eric Wants to Polka"

The designer, oh, let's call him "Eric", has put together what can only be described as a masterpiece. It has everything: energy, focus, balance and charm. The only reason we didn't pick this one is that it is a little too "polished", and we were going for something that looked a little less professional. Keep it up, Eric, you've clearly got a huge future in graphic design.

2. "Bite Me"

This one is simple, direct, and perhaps a little bit mentally deranged. Bonus points for the phallic imagery, and I'm not quite sure what the two figures on the left are doing, but all in all a solid effort.

3. "Keepin 'er Outta The Cabbage" (Kells Version)

Sent by Tom McSod of The Staggerers, this one has Cider, apples, giants, and all kinds of medieval imagery. We wish we were smart enough to "get" all the references in this one: there is some kind of vine growing around a stump, and artsy types could probably tell us which norse god or phronecian fable it referrs to. Still, A+!

4. "rediC"

It took us a long time to figure this one out: it looks like a pirate-explorer on a terrifying island cut through with a river of sludge, with a blobby, sphincter-like thing poking out from a horrible sea of miniature green alien eggs. We were going to pass the guy's email on to the psychiatric authorities. Closer inspection reveals that it is just poutine and cider imagery, and that we are just extremely disturbed for thinking otherwise. Phew!

5. "Murder Pig"

Um... oh, dear. The pig means business. The pig is chopping someone up and there is blood. Awesome! The only reason we didn't pick this one is that we didn't think we could get a grant from the government with an album called "Murder Pig". I MEAN, WAIT, WE DON'T GET GRANTS FROM THE GOVERNMENT. HA HA. THAT WAS A JOKE. STEPHEN HARPER, IF YOU'RE READING THIS, THAT WAS A JOKE. PLEASE DON'T LOOK INTO THIS.

6. "Keepin 'er Outta the Cabbage" (Witch Version)

Wow. Dark, brooding woman holding a bleeding cabbage. This clearly portrays a goth lady who is married to a husband that she has come to despise. She is seeking revenge on him by deliberately cutting herself while she makes his cole slaw. We were going to use this one and call the EP "Clumsy Bitch".

7. "Togetherness"

It simply doesn't get any better than this. As everyone knows, the squid and the octopus are enemies in real life, which is what makes this submission so heartwarming. It's about the power of alcohol to bring even the most antagonistic people together in joyous celebration and friendship. The octopus is hammered (hence the X's in his eyes) and the squid seems to have mixed his rum with some antihistamines or perhaps a few tabs of acid. The message is clear: substance abuse solves all of our problems.

So, thanks to everyone who submitted. We could have used any of these, and it is clear that there are a lot of wonderful, talented, batshit insane people out there.

Fan Mail

2011-03-27T17:43:00.000-07:00

This is a recent email from one Kelly Skehill, a high-school teacher in Jasper, Alberta. She enjoyed some of our show but seems to have had some problems with some of our stage presentation. Here is the e-mail she sent in full, unedited:

Hi,

I watch you guys play in Jasper, AB at the Downstream bar the other night. Lots of talent! However, you drank way to much during the two sets. Your second set was awful. Taking off all your clothes was disgusting. Usually I like guys in speedos but I was disturbed. Plus there was 90% males in the bar. It was a bad decision. You shouldn't do that at your next show. At least some of you covered you genitals with your musical instruments but the larger guy was too much to handle. Thought you might want to know from a girls perspective. If the second set never happened or you can promise it won't happen again I will spread the word you are worth seeing.

And here is our response, unedited:

Dear Kelly:

We are thrilled, capital-t Thrilled at your offer to "spread the word" about our fledgling group in the huge, bustling metropolis of Jasper, Alberta. As everyone knows, Jasper, Alberta is where Nickelback got their start and we cannot wait to follow in their mighty footsteps. We will of course make any and all changes to our show that you request. However, you should know that if we had a nickel for every time a woman thought our bass player was "too much to handle", we would have more money than Nickelback!

Your Friends,

The Dreadnoughts

ShartAttack

2011-02-13T08:20:00.000-08:00

So, Chartattack.com is hosting three special tour blogs of ours! Here's the first:

http://www.chartattack.com/features/2011/feb/10/dreadnoughts-european-tour-diary-first-we-take-moscow

And, last night, a momentous occasion in the history of the Dreadnoughts:

Our merch guy drank a liter of vodka... and pissed himself.

I'm pretty sure that's a punk rock "level up".

Talco

2011-02-10T02:04:00.000-08:00

Talco are one of the best folk-punk bands in the world right now, and it was a great honour to tour, drink and play with them. Here's a video of the instrumental tune we all put together, played in Berlin. It's called "Balkan Heroes". Enjoy!

"Living The Dream"

2011-02-01T02:44:00.000-08:00

As I sat last night on a plush leather couch in our green room, drinking free prosecco, munching on kalamata olives, stuffed red peppers and pickled white asparagus, one thought kept going through my head:

This isn’t very punk rock.

The punk rocker in me felt as though he ought to be out in the street, swilling cheap vodka with some local brain-damaged Neanderthals, urinating on public monuments and frightening the pigeons. If I were a Real Punk Rocker, I would see this plush, amenity-laden green room for what it was: a symbol of bourgeois luxury and oppression, a symbol of class warfare, of the pervasive inequality of modern capitalism. I would stand up, scream: “fuck the rich!” throw my freshly baked brochette across the room, and go out to raise hell with other members of the working class.

Luckily for me, I am not a Real Punk Rocker, I am a weedy twat from Edmonton who likes freshly whipped pesto. Class struggle gives me a rash. “Squidney! Why yes, another espresso for me, thanks very much old bean! Have you seen this youtube video of the riots in Egypt? Ghastly affair. Yes, two sugar cubes, please. But no biscuit on the side, my tummy has gone a little squiffy.”

In the van, Real Punk Rock bands sleep off hangovers and heroin crashes, pausing only to vomit on the side of the highway, their Mohawks waving gently in the breeze. The Dreadnoughts, on the other hand, pull out their laptops and watch The Inbetweeners, play NBA 2010 or Super Mario Land, and listen to Glenn Gould whenever possible. I’ve even developed a little tradition of opening one of our many free bottles of red wine and pouring myself a little glass while I watch season 1 of “All in The Family” or season 2 of “Rome”. Cockface and I are going to have a Super Mario Tennis tournament today. It’s awesome.

Now, before you think that we’ve gone soft on you, rest assured, this is all quite new to us. Certainly, the previous 250 European shows were not played in such circumstances. In 2009, we spent two months sleeping in the van, destroying our livers every day and eating nothing but Polish “Chakalaka”-flavoured chips for weeks on end. While you were sipping coffee at work, I was sleeping on a muddy hill in god damned France, shivering, cradling the bottle of whiskey that kept me warm, and trying to ignore the ever-increasing sound of wolves howling. You think I’m not going to put my feet up and eat my pickled white asparagus? You think I’m not going to sip fine rotwein from the banks of the Rhine and watch Archie Bunker yell at his wife? Fucking god damned fucking right I am.

“Living the Dream”, a phrase that has officially lost all traces of irony for us. We are truly living it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, this free hotel breakfast ‘aint just going to eat itself. One poached egg, or two? Hmmm. Such difficult choices we face in this life.

Quick Video Update: Day 1.

2011-01-27T09:36:00.000-08:00

It's amazing what a bottle of gin can do for your morale!

Video 1: The German Roadie Doesn't Know Where He Is.

Video 2: A Quick Kiss!

Video 3: Creative Percussion:

Stay tuned!

The History of Gin

2011-01-10T11:30:00.001-08:00

Today's blog entry features a "guest" blogger. Ladies and gintlemen, we have with us today Mr. Squid Vicious, who will enlighten us on a historical topic that is near and dear to his heart. Take it away, Squid:

The History of Gin. Gin was given to the English by the Dutch. From that day forth, no one had any problems.

The Portland Pirate Festival, or, Pirates Definitely Don't Wear Blue Jeans

2011-01-08T17:01:00.000-08:00

I'll get this out of the way right up front: The Dreadnoughts have been banned from a Pirate festival for (1) Drinking, (2), Swearing, and (3) wearing blue jeans. Stop reading now and let that all sink in.

Got it? Good. Now sit down, me hearties, and let me spin ye a grand old tale.

We were booked to play the Portland Pirate Festival. The festival boasts the Guinness World Record for "Most Pirates In One Place". I'm no expert, but I'm fairly certain that Somalia actually holds that record. Presumably, however, there is no category for "Most Bored, Upper-Middle Class White People with Nothing Better To Do Than Dress Up Like Johnny Depp".

Fig 1. Douchebags.

We recieved notice, in advance, that because this was a "family event", we were not allowed to swear on stage. Oookay. It was comically obvious that no matter what we did, our stage show was not going to go over very well with these people. For some reason, this never deters these types, who somehow manage to ignore all the Youtube videos of Seamus barfing on puppies and book us for their shows anyway. We happily take their money, but it never ends well.

Case in point: The Portland Pirate Festival. When the magical day arrived, we awoke to discover that it was the SSB's birthday. We realized that two options lay open to us. We could forget that it was his birthday, drive five hours to the festival, and just get the gig over with. Or, we could do what we actually did.

OK, so let's get these things out of the way: by the time we hit the stage, the SSB could barely stand. While other musicians may do stretches or vocal warm-ups, he warmed up for the show by vomiting on himself for about ten minutes. Druzil and I had been enjoying the "grog" in the "Pirate Bar", but our moderate tipsyness was utterly eclipsed by the titanic inebriation of the Swede. Here is a venn diagram for illustrative purposes:

Fig 2. Happy SSBirthday!

The resulting show was, by our standards, a little rough. Furthermore, I displayed a profound lack of judgment by allowing the SSB to sing one of the songs, and he toook this opportunity to belt out a very bad word, forcing the song to come to a lurching halt. For these two sins, we apologize. In fact, the SSB sent a personal email to the festival organizers right after the show apologizing for that particular mess.

That didn't stop the organizers from emailing us. It would be pretty crass and classless of us to reprint the e-mail in its entirety here. So, we'll only show you about 80% of it.

I feel I should let you know how the whole experience went for us, as far as The Dreadnoughts were concerned.Frankly, I was surprised to hear that they even remembered anything.

Ooooooo.... that's not a very nice thing to say! Never mind that two of us were stone sober the entire day.

Here is our list of complaints that you should be aware of:

1) The Dreadnoughts were obviously already drinking when they drove in and still asking where their alcohol provisions from us were, on top of that.

GOOD CHRIST, A PUNK ROCK BAND WAS DRINKING. WHAT IS THE WORLD COMING TO?

(2) is boring.Oh, here comes a really important one:

3) The boys proceeded to drink for hours leading up to their showtime, and were wasted before their performance. They drank through their allotted sound check time, instead, tryng to sound check during their opening act fire show performance, all while making disrespectful comments to the Fire Performers who were in front of the stage on the grass.

I repeat: given that Druzil and I only occasionally partook, basically half of us weren't drinking. But that's not what really grinds my gears on this one, 'cause here is where it gets interesting. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to welcome you to Having A Real Band At A Festival 101. Take your seats, please. Ahem.

A real band needs something called a "sound check". During this sound check, their instruments (guitar, drums, bass, Hungarian Nose Harp) will be played. While this point seemed to be utterly lost on the clueless troglodytes organizing the "festival", these instruments must be played at full volume. Makes sense, huh? How else would it be a "sound check"?

We were told to get on stage and sound check. As we started to do this, the festival had four attention-starved weirdos swing firey chains around to some Samba music. Some stupid woman didn't like that our guitars/drums/violins were making noise during this "act", and demanded that we stop. We refused to stop. The stage crew turned our channels off. We got no sound check. More on this shortly.

4) Drummer was polite to my stage and sound crew, but was so tossed he was puking.

FALSE. The technical term is "projectile puking".

5) Some band members were beligerent, and completely disrespectful to my AWESOME stage and sound crew.One band member even cussed at the sound crew.

It's spelled "belligerent". And you know what? You're damned right I'm going to be belligerent when we drive nearly a thousand kilometers only to be told, at the last minute, that we can't have a sound check before a show. I do not apologize for this in the slightest. If you booked any large touring rock band in the world and pulled their sound-check out from under them at the last minute, they'd laugh, leave the stage, drive away, and their lawyer would collect their check later. You're damned right I'm going to yell at someone who is demanding, suddenly and without warning, that we somehow suspend the laws of logic and do a soundless sound-check. Idiots. I'll apologize for this when one of them mails me a square circle.

6) During the show, one band member drunkenly jumped/fell? off stage, and broke his drum.

Amazing: you can find videos of the SSB pulling this stunt all over Youtube. We've done this at about 200 shows. The Swede was trying to get the 8 people in the audience to move around a little more, so he jumped into the pouring rain and ran around with the drum, which broke. It's astounding that an attempt to put on an exciting show provokes a "complaint".

7) After their set, they returned to our Tavern, but I believe the place refused to serve them any more.

FALSE. I was personally served until around 1:30 AM. You want another interesting fact? Feeling slightly bad about the rough performance, the band sat in the pub with an acoustic guitar and sang real, actual sea shanties for about 45 minutes. And we sang them well, for an audience that was about 8 times larger (the pub was sheltered from the rain). Does this free acoustic show matter, does it make it into the organizer's account? No. What matters, what is last on the list of notes, apparently, is...

8) Lastly, they did NOT dress at all like pirates, sailors, or anything even close to what was promised in our contract.

FALSE. Contract does not say this. Also: HAHAHAHAHAlol.

Instead, they wore jeans (some jeans about falling off)

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHlol!

with clear plastic bags over bare skin for shirts.

Gee, why would we do that? Why would an electric rock band do that in the middle of a monsoon? Any ideas, anyone?

Not the nicest thing to see skin (some of it bouncing up and down) on stage, under wet plastic bags.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHlol.

This calls for another diagram!

Fig 3. The 2010 Portland Pirate Festival

Here's the thing, kids: when you play an electric instrument, you have to stay dry. Otherwise... and you may not know this, but... you might die. The stage was so inadequately covered that our shirts were soaked and dripping after 5 minutes up there. Not good. So, a couple of us took 'em off and put the plastic covers on, hoping to stop the runoff from dripping into any sensitive electric equipment and sending the sound system's 40,000 volts through our bodies.

Are you noticing a theme? The theme, ladies and gentlemen, is: organizers, not know how to run music festival, decide to put one on anyway.

they should have kept their shirts on, and dressed to fit our festival.

Yeah. 'Cause we, like the bored, upper-middle-class families who attended the festival, have $500 to spare on pirate costumes. We're going to spend most of our festival wage on costumes.

Fig 4. Well-Adjusted People

Luckily, not many were still there in the downpour to see The Dreadnoughts play and did not witness their bad behavior. Just a few hard core PUNK folks that I guess are used to that kind of behavior.

You hear that, Punk kids? The bored, upper-middle-class white people don't like you. The best part about this paragraph is that she appears to be suddenly realizing that she booked a punk band.

Now, to summarize, we stand by what was said in our apology e-mail that went out before any of these complaints were sent. The very bad word was over the line and we shouldn't have said it on stage. We probably could have poured one or two fewer 40s down the Swede's throat before the show. But everything in this e-mail confirms our prior suspicion that no matter what we did, we were going to get an e-mail with complaints in it. It remains a fact that there are people who think that we're obligated to dress in expensive costumes, play without a sound-check, risk death by electrocution and stay sober . How else can I put this? They arrrr wrong.

HOWEVER, we are willing to forgive, forget, and make an honest offer of friendship and reconciliation to these people. We hereby promise to play the 2011 Portland Pirate Festival for free, as a way of making up for our sins. We also promise to wear elaborate pirate costumes, to refrain from drinking, and to conform to any other requirements that the festival may impose on us at any time. We only ask for one small favour in return.

Hold the festival on the coast of Somalia.

Fig 5. Pirate, Definitely Not Wearing Blue Jeans.

Staff Picks

2010-10-23T18:43:00.000-07:00

On this lurching, cross-continental trip, we've played with two or three bands per night. Some of them are more famous than us, and so we only mention them so that we can seem famous and important. "Yeah," we say to people, "we played with Band X, we're playing with Band Y, and that means that we are important and interesting, and not just 5 retards who voluntarily spend 5 months a year in locked a steel box together."

However, most of the groups we play with are basically unknown, and one of the coolest things about touring is running into an unknown band that just blows your mind.

When you call yourselves "The Bill Cosby Anarchist Society of America", you've got an incredible task in front of you. When you stand up in front of an audience and introduce yourselves as "The Bill Cosby Anarchist Society of America", you had better not suck. You had better not even be mediocre. You had better blow people's minds. That is why it is a bad idea to call yourselves "The Bill Cosby Anarchist Society of America".

Unless, of course, you are the three geniuses from Montreal who comprise The Bill Cosby Anarchist Society of America.

They are exactly as awesome as their name implies. Imagine Iggy and the Stooges had a baby with NOFX, and the kid had ADD and a severe eye twitch. Songs like "Street Fighter 2 Turbo", "Punch You In The Facebook", and "Q-Dog King Cheese Parking Bitches at Your Mom's Place" do not disappoint in the slightest. We simply can't say enough about how creative and powerful their album ("Fuck It Up Hard", 2010) is. It even includes, in the liner notes, a letter from Bill Cosby's lawyer telling them to change their name. Wow.

Moving along, Liquor Box are a country-punk band from Kingston, Ontario, and they succeed where so many others fail: they actually keep the rebel, outlaw-country spirit alive in the face of the continuing corporatization of their genre. I absolutely guarantee you that Hank Williams watches every single one of their shows from up in heaven, and maybe he even sings along.

Finally, despite all the hype and image surrounding Nirvana, despite the fact that Kurt and Friends made it seem like the whole thing was effortless, it is in fact extremely hard to make music like Nirvana did. Gnosis are a Japanese band whose albums unabashedly scream "GRUNGE IS NOT DEAD".

Again, it takes a lot of balls to try to breathe life into a Nirvana-esque sound, but in an ocean of musicians trying to find the next thing that will electrify the rock world like Nirvana did, a band like Gnosis is incredibly refreshing. Not only do they demolish stages, not only are they louder than loud, their songs actually come very close to achieving what Nirvana did, and that's pretty cool. The fact that they come from Japan makes it all the more impressive. I was under the impression that all music from Japan sounds like the Katamari Damacy soundtrack, but apparently I was wrong.

So remember, the next time you hear someone saying that rock is dead, that there are no good rock bands anymore, you stop them immediately and firmly inform them that this just isn't true. There are three of them.

"The Scene"

2010-10-17T08:44:00.000-07:00

On this tour, some folks have noticed that we seem a little... on edge. This is true. The Dreadnoughts are angry. Normally, we don't express our anger, but we have discovered that this policy of repressing our wish-fulfillment drives is manifesting itself in a deep and persistent neurosis. Our therapist, Dr. Tholdt, has suggested that a little creative venting might help. In particular, he has instructed us to write a letter addressed to those people who most upset us. So, here it is:

DEAR ANYONE who is involved in the rock/punk music scene in any reasonably sized North American city or town, any musician, booker or promoter who has found themselves saying any of the following things:

"Yeah, the scene here sucks. It's way better in [insert other city here]."
"I hate the [rock genre] scene in this town: audiences never move around or dance or anything."
"Kids just aren't listening to [insert rock genre here] anymore."
"This city is no fun"...

SHUT. UP. ABOUT. THE. GOD. DAMNED. "SCENE". AND. DO. YOUR. GOD. DAMNED. JOBS.

Signed,

The Dreadnoughts

-------

In Guelph, Ontario, after being told by another douchebag "promoter" (who failed to make or put up a single poster for our show) that "punk is dying", we snapped. Ladies and gentlemen, we just frigging snapped. We can't take this anymore. We can't handle the way that people blame their own artistic failures on "the scene" or "the city" or "the kids" and their alleged preferences. Shut up. Just god damned shut up. Maybe it's hard, maybe it isn't, but SHUT UP.

A couple of years ago, a local Vancouver band called Mexican Drug Patrol decided that while their shows were going well, they would be happy with a bigger crowd response, more dancing, more movement. So, they went online, watched some old videos of some of the greatest live bands of all time, and began to re-invent their live show. I saw them on New Years' Eve 2009, and it was probably the most mind-blowing show I saw all year. They destroyed that crowd, and they destroyed the crowd because they took some responsibility for their own performance.

CONTRAST TIME: Before the wall fell, punks in East Berlin were routinely arrested, jailed and raided by the Stasi police. The government sent informers into the punk scene who would report any rebellious activities to the authorities. A punk could find herself being sent to jail on testimony from someone she thought was a friend, a comrade. She could find her apartment searched for lyrics sheets that contain anti-communist sentiments. She could even go to jail just for attending a show.

East Berlin, 1982: No Fun City. Look it up, friends. Then try to tell yourselves, again, that your town just can't have a good rock/punk/metal/whatever music scene because of X/Y/Z.

Now, we all know that it's difficult to carve out a space for rock/punk/metal in any city: that's a given. It's also difficult to start a bakery or a hair salon. Restrictions, taxes, evictions, rental hikes and various economic policies make it tough for anyone who decides to do anything other than live in a box and eat worms. Maybe it's even particularly tough for artists, I don't really know. But what I do know is that a whooooole lot of energy is being put into complaining about why we fail, and that seems like energy that could be used more productively. Like, for example, we could use it to stop failing.

If there are more than 10000 people aged 18-25 in your town, there will always be a market for good, powerful live music. You can either bitch endlessly to anyone who'll listen about how there is no scene, or you can help to create a scene. The choice is yours. But don't expect people who actually work their asses off creating a scene to stay quiet while you trash the very thing they're working so hard to nurture. Mmmmkay? Thanks.

America

2010-10-16T11:47:00.000-07:00

America is where God lives.

There, I said it. I know that most of our fans are in Canada and Europe, and are therefore used to making fun of the U S of A. Chances are, you've probably called Americans fat, stupid or politically insane at some point.

But no matter what you say, no matter where you live, and no matter how many Noam Chomsky books you discuss with your friends at the Anarchy Cafe Book Club, you will never be a citizen of a country that has chicken fried chicken.

Yes, America has spent the last 50 years starting wars that have basically ruined the world, but I don't recall driving through B.C. or Nova Scotia and seeing a restaurant called "Neato Burrito".

I don't recall the shots in London being 3 ounces, nor were there 40-oz cans of beer labeled "Big Ass".

I don't recall stopping at a restaurant in Germany or France and eating a grilled cheese sandwich where they grill the cheese before they grill the sandwich.

I don't recall stopping at a random bar in a small Dutch or Welsh city and discovering that it has 348 beers available.

I don't recall ever seeing a restaurant in Canada that sells burgers by the bag.

Every show we've played has been to about eight people: we don't care. We get to wake up the next day and go to some random diner where a nice older lady with a beehive haircut will turn a 100-calorie plate of mashed potatoes into a 1000-calorie plate of mashed potatoes via the river of hollandaise sauce she liberally pours all over the meal without even asking you first.

America is where God lives. And God is fat.

Polka's Not Dead

2010-09-30T10:03:00.001-07:00

Oh, Jesus H. Christ in a little red wagon, the album's finally here.

120 days of writing, practicing and arranging, 28 days of studio, mixing, mastering, panicking, drinking, shouting, barfing, waking up not knowing where our pants were, fighting, crying, baking, being chased by the police down an alleyway in New Westminster and enjoying a Margaret Lawrence novel with some mint tea in a hot bubble bath with Sarah McLaughlan's "Surfacing" on later, it is finished.

The CD Release is tomorrow, and it's the culmination of 5 long years of work in Vancouver. The album is diverse, fast, furious and fun. It's easily the best thing any of us has ever put together, and we're proud to begin our next North American tour knowing that it stands proudly next to any folk-punk album ever made, maybe even casts menacing glances at a few of them, maybe even snickers at them a bit, maybe sneaks backstage to snog their girlfriends.

Thanks to everyone who made it possible, and thanks to everyone who's about to see our new, vamped-up live show on the upcoming tours.

Tomorrow, we polka.

Winterview

2010-08-09T02:37:00.000-07:00

Two nights ago, playing a Swiss open-air festival, the national radio station is interviewing us live before the show. The following exchange takes place:

Lady: "And what do you think of your home country of Ireland?"
Seamus: "... what?"
Uncle Touchy: "Too many leprechauns."

(pause)

Lady: "And... um... how are you finding Switzerland?"
Squid: "... Google Maps".

It was a short interview.

Polka's Not Dead

2010-08-06T06:24:00.000-07:00

Still out on tour, but we put this together recently to give y'all a taste of the new album. Here it is!

Pics

2010-07-29T01:56:00.000-07:00

Some pictures from our recent adventuring...

Yoda and Rupert

Mighty Sounds!

Clemens and Drazil ramp it up a notch.

Jesus Christ.

2010-07-28T00:13:00.000-07:00

Tour Blog - Mighty Sounds and Onwards

When you find yourself going 130 kph in an extremely shitty old van, and the back tire has exploded, and the van is careening all over the autobahn, and the noise inside the van is like ten thousand members of Satan's Unholy Demon Choir screaming liturgies of death into your ears, one thought invariably goes through your mind:

Shouldn't have left the lucky Punjabi dangling van ornament in the Ukraine.

But, oh, this theme was set long before, on Day 2. A big punk festival, a couple of thousand people waiting for our set, I pull my very expensive guitar out of its case and discover that a tiny piece has come loose and is nowhwere to be seen. The guitar won't work without it. We later discover that, because my very expensive guitar was made in America and we are in Europe, it is actually impossible to find a replacement. The reason? The metric and imperial systems of measurement. Day 2, no guitar. Awesome.

We pulled it out though, crashing through an awesome set and ending the show in a new and interesting way. There was this little kid, a pure German stereotype (chubby, blond, loud) dancing in the front row, and as we started to play "Elizabeth", I motioned for him to get up on stage. His eyes sparkled and he ran up to the security guard minding the stage. The security guard shook his head, firmly indicating that no-one was allowed to approach the stage. All we could see through the noise and smoke was this enraged little ball of fire begin to thump his chest and scream at the guard. The guard shrugged and let the kid through. Wow. Soon, he was up on stage, leaping around, screaming into microphones and generally displaying ten times the stage presence of most lead singers I'm aware of.

After the song, we all laughed and hugged the kid, messed his hair and told him to start a band when he got older. A strange, cooing noise arose from the crowd, and we later learned that it was actually the sound of 2,000 ovaries sighing.

No, really, we looked it up on wikipedia.

WHAT NEXT? Mighty Sounds Festival in the Czech Republic! Pretty much the greatest festival we've ever been a part of. Probably our most powerful set of all time, as well, the climax being when the SSB went crowd-surfng 30 feet from the stage and Seamus--displaying an admirable disregard for endangering others--actually threw a huge tom-drum at him. Here's what happened:

We met and drank with Smokey Bastard, a simply fantastic folkpunk band from Reading, England. The highlight of our meeting was bringing about 39 pints of beer into a quiet, hippie-ish hookah bar on the festival grounds and singing English and Canadian sea shanties to all the hippies. The Smokeys ended the session with a rendition of their fantastic song, "Steve The Twat". In general, it was just nice to speak with people who understand both our language and the concept of comic irony.

By far the best part of the festival was when one of our van keys broke in the lock and the other key was with an unbelievably drunk and completely missing Seamus. We could not get into the van. We sent massive search parties out into the night, scowering the festival for the tent of the saucy young wench he'd certainly gone off with. Two hours later, no luck. We somehow managed to score a ride back to our hotel, and came back the next morning to the festival grounds.

Ten points to the first commenter who can guess where he was.

A few days later, we found ourselves in Kiel, northern Germany. We arrived backstage to find an opening band putting eyeliner on each other backstage. Um. After finishing a set in a basement room which literally rose to an eyeliner-melting 46C during the show, I jumped off stage and immediately began complaining loudly to the locals about how all the buildings were so new, shiny and uninteresting, like the town had no history. One of them quietly informed me that Kiel had been a major centre of U-Boat construction during the war, and had thus been utterly demolished by the Allies.

"Oh," I said. "Um... gotta go!"

The next day, Rupert the Bear found himself back in Hamburg, the place where on year ago he had literally lost his head. After the show, he agreed to come out with us for "a beer". We rambled over to Hamburg's legendary Reeperbahn and entered the official pub of FC St. Pauli, the world-famous soccer/football club. We approached the bar, ordered some beers, and suddenly realized that the bartender was wearing a Dreadnoughts' shirt. He informed us that he was also the owner and that he was going to bring free beers over to our table until we were stinking drunk. "A beer" indeed. We laughed, smiled and sang all into the night, like children, fully unaware of the horrors that the following day would bring us.

Now, I don't know the names of the people who manufactured and installed the rear right tire on our van. All I know is that they had better take particular care to never encounter me.

A few hours after the "incident", we were driving like mad in a newly rented van to a festival in southern germany. We were supposed to arrive at 6 PM, and our ETA was 10:30. The festival organizers were nice enough to move the music plans around to accommodate us, and another band offered to let us use their gear (since most of our gear was lying in several pieces in what was left of a van). We arrived, caught some of the other acts, and heroically pulled out a headlning set at one in the morning in the pouring rain and suffocating mud. We finished, thanked the previous band for their gear, and learned from the organizers shortly thereafter that they had decided to charge us 100 Euro ($130 CDN) to use the gear for 30 minutes. This was deducted from our pay for the night.

If a band, any band--even Nickelback--had been through what we had just gone through and we had something they needed, we would give it to them to use, no questions asked.

We take consolation in the fact that we will never, ever be:

(1) The worst folk-rock band in the entire world, complete with terrible songwriting, computerized fiddle/accordion noises and the worst vocal performances since Bob Dylan accidentally swallowed a frog during his live rendition of "Ave Maria", and
(2) The kind of horrible human beings who can charge a group of people who just narrowly escaped death money for basically no reason.

The following evening we played a festival headlined by some extremely famous german "hip-hop" band. I don't even remember what they were called, but I do know that putting our merchandise table next to theirs was a massive mistake. They were repeatedly swarmed, and I mean swarmed, by huge gangs of 12-to-14 year-old girls, each wanting a poster, shirt or body part signed.

Now, the Dreadnoughts are no enemies of real Hip Hop, in fact, ten points to the first commenter who can name the Dreadnoughts song with A Tribe Called Quest line in it. However, we were forced to watch in disbelief as the group repeatedly passed drinks out to the crowd of teenaged girls, and gasped in horror as many of the same girls made it absolutely clear that they wanted to be taken back to the hotel later that night. One or two of us stuck around for the "set" of "music", and concluded that the majority of 12-to-14 year-old girls should probably be put in manacles every day at 4 PM for their own good.

Despite The Incident, we have currently made and played every show on this tour. This is largely because of Clemens Schlink, our german friend and roadie, a man who is kind, loyal, generous, and willing to take insane trips across the European wasteland in order to secure another van for us. Also, he is the world cup-stacking champion. You think I'm making that up? Nope.

Today, we are finally equipped with a brand new, huge, pimp-ass tour van on the way back to the Czech Republic. We just visited a small Swiss town to deposit some money, and we stopped at a red light outside the bank. We all lurched forward violently as a huge "BANG" echoed from the rear of the vehicle. Someone had rear-ended us. Hard. Three hours with the cops, a million forms, injury reports, and a few nervous phone calls to the rental company later, we are now back on the road. What. The. Fuck.

Rest assured that the next time we see something, anything Punjabi, we are buying it and hanging it from the rear view mirror. Since the old one went missing, things have been slightly... off.

Squid Vicious - Day 1

2010-07-20T02:36:00.000-07:00

Luxembourg Fact Sheet

2010-07-08T12:17:00.000-07:00

Few people know or care about Luxembourg. We here at The Dreadnoughts believe that this is a grave tragedy. We offer this fact sheet as a corrective, educational tool to help us all better understand this wonderful and fascinating nation.

Luxembourg is the second-largest country in Europe. Its borders span from the southern banks of the Be'chech river all the way up to northern Irkustk, and it is covered with majestic rivers, breathtaking mountain ranges and a nagging sense of meaninglessness and anxiety.

Luxembourg contains twelve million people and eighteen thousand Frenchmen. Its capital city is Grargh and its three principal provinces are Grbpl, Shrbplpppl and Bleen. Luxembourg is ruled by a rotating 23-member Grand Council and men's choir, selected every four year by national elections. According to the country's constitution, Almost all Luxembourgers are eligible to vote, except for convicted felons, traitors, men who own property, women who don't own property, people between the ages of 23 and 52, Aquarians, Saggitarians, and (quote) "ne'er-do-wells".

Its main exports are maize, yarn and motivational speakers. Due to European Union trade restrictions and policies, Luxembourg is forced to import most of its food directly from Yeurbonia and Poland. This has created a moderate malnutrition problem in much of the country, where rural Luxembourgers are forced to subsist on a diet of lima beans, Bok Choy and discarded Coffee Crisp wrappers.

Traditional Luxembourgian Dress

Luxembourgian history is dominated by the Great Belgian War, which began in 1221 and continues on to this day. The tiny and otherwise insignificant Atlantic nation of Belgium, enraged by 1219's Belgium Can Lick Our Balls Act has conducted terrorist guerilla warfare on Luxembourg for centuries, stealing property, burning villages and even forcing a small French quadrant of Luxembourg to join Belgium itself.

Luxembourg's national anthem was written by Gary Young in 1629, and it is called "Plant Man":

Luxembourg's future is a great unknown. The natural, hard-working and efficient mindset of the average Luxembourger is a great source of stability and economic growth, but unfortunately the increasing pressures of globalization, external threats to national security and an as-yet-unexplained increase in Invisible Scary Skeleton attacks have disrupted the nation's natural harmony and peacefulness. In spite of these challenges, Luxembourg soldiers on, a shining beacon of reason and progress in the European polity.

---
This message brought to you by The Dreadnoughts and The Luxembourg Tourism Board.

Follow-Up Post

2010-06-19T14:55:00.000-07:00

Here we are in Lviv, Ukraine at the Stare Misto festival:

And if anyone is curious as to just what that latino/polka bar in Inglewood looked like... Google Earth provideth:

View Larger Map

I Wish They All Could Be California Pupusas

2010-06-14T19:08:00.000-07:00

It's 3 AM on a Monday in Inglewood, California, the rest of the Dreadnoughts are on a plane, I'm about eight beers over the line, and I've just bet $100 of the band's money on the roll of five dice. A dozen shocked Latino gentlemen pass a hat around to match my bet, shouting and gesticulating wildly in cocaine-fuelled amazement. The word gringo is suddenly a popular one, and it's accompanied by other words that I don't particularly want to understand. The bartender is a smiling senorita named Joselyn, and she rolls the dice for her compadres: three sixes. My madness now looms in sharp focus: instead of spending a quiet evening enjoying a cup of tea and Jean-Paul Sartre at Comfort Inn Inglewood, I am utterly shitfaced and almost certainly about to lose $100 on a dice game.

I know that it is now time to bring out my Secret Weapon. I take the dice, place them in the cup, look up to the sky, cross myself, place the cup near my mouth and whisper: "let it ride."

I slam the cup upside-down and lift it up quickly, the entire bar breathlessly watching for the result...

...Although I'm fully aware that none of you is going to believe what happened next, so I should probably tell you how I got into that situation. You see, the Dreadnoughts were contracted to play the "Ink n' Iron" festival in Long Beach, California, opening for punk rock luminaries Swingin' Utters, Stiff Little Fingers, Hepcat and the incomparable X. We flew a day early from Vancouver down into the sun, sand and palm trees, and found ourselves staying in Inglewood, a poor but vibrant black/hispanic community beside South Central Los Angeles.

We downed some beers at an El Salvadorian pupuseria, a place we visited solely because any food called "pupusa" has got to be worth trying (hunch: correct). The dude behind the bar liked us, at least until the Stupid Swedish Bastard asked him: "hey, when do you get off work?". The bartender's eyes widened and he made it crystal clear that he was not homosexually oriented. The service declined noticeably after that, all because the SSB is apparently one of the eight people in the world who do not know that "when do you get off work?" is universal code for "I am a creepy asshole who wants to fuck you".

With this towering success under our belts, we decided to go back to our hotel. That highly responsible plan was quickly destroyed when we walked past a small, raucous, hole-in-the-wall bar with Mexican accordion-polka music blaring from inside. If you've spent any time with us at all, you know that eight thousand Samurai warriors couldn't have kept us out of there.

I tell you, dear readers, there is nothing that two dozen surly occupants of a Latino-only bar love more than three weirdos, a hippie and a troll walking into their bar, especially when the invaders are whiter than a terrified polar bear who's drowning in a giant pile of chalk.

Several uncomfortable seconds passed before we whipped out a very clever trick we've used at the native-only Savoy bar on East Hastings: we bought the bar a round. This, as everyone knows, is universal code for "please ignore the fact that the White Man is responsible for 60% of the world's problems and 100% of yours".

Mexican polka, endless rounds of Bohemia beer, dancing, shouting, singing, and surrounded by illegal immigrants with three jobs each: that is how the Dreadnoughts like to be, man. As we took a taxi (punk rock!) to the festival the next day, we wondered how weird it was going to be to go from that to a tattoo festival where we're not allowed to swear onstage and we get to sit backstage with Stiff Little Fingers and 12 free cans of Bud Light.

Answer: very weird. We have nothing against tattoos (except, occasionally, our grunting, sweaty bodies) but we don't really get the point of covering yourself with them, slicking your hair back and gurgling over sparkly cars from the 1950s. I'll take our beautiful 2007 Dodge Grand Caravan anyday, but hey, whatever floats your ocean liner.

(in 2057 will people go to Dodge Grand Caravan shows?)

Everyone was very nice, though, our set went well and getting to hang out with the Utters and Hepcat was just awesome. The Dreadnoughts actually made quite a splash amongst all of the Famous People, and not because of our music. Let's just say that I have, on my laptop, a YouTube video of an extremely well-endowed walrus doing something very... nice to himself with his big, floppy, whiskery mouth. I showed the video to the singer of Swingin' Utters, and I guess word got around the backstage area, because a couple of hours later an older Irish gentleman approached me and said: "Hello, we haven't met, but I play guitar in Stiff Little Fingers and I understand that you have a video that I have to see."

This is now our strategy for becoming famous: make sure that no man, woman or child in the world thinks the name "Dreadnoughts" without also thinking "walrus video".

We took another taxi (punk rock!) back from the festival and despite the fact that it was 1 in the morning the SSB and I went straight back to mexican polka bar, where we were greeted with a cheer and several shouts of "andele!". Which, as everyone knows, is universal Spanish code for "buy me a beer, white boy!".

We also can't go anywhere without running into racists: this is just a fact that we've learned to accept. From the sieg-heils in rural Quebec to the Polish skinhead who insisted that a black hockey player has never existed in the history of the world, we've really seen a lot of this stuff. But nothing prepared us for the "Deport Obama" bumper sticker on the LA freeway.

Or the guy who looked at me in the elevator and said "man, it's good to be white, isn't it?" Umm.... what? Congratulations, America: you have produced racists that make European neo-nazis look relatively tame.

The more we travel, the more we realize how utterly stupid racism is. Walking into that place was like diving into a cool pool on a blistering-hot day... I felt like we were back in the real, actual world again with real people. Despite the fact that we invaded their bar and the fact that most were registered gang members, just about all of them were friendly, cheerful and curious to learn about Canada. Racism is stupid. In fact, as everyone knows, there is only one kind of person worse than a racist, and that's a goddamned Frenchman.

Anyway, It felt so good to be back that I decided to celebrate by losing my passport. So while the rest of the lads flew home the next day, I was in a barely controlled panic trying to find the stupid thing so I could get home. It turns out that a Canadian passport dropped on the ground in an area full of illegals is not likely to be returned. Right now, at the Saskatchewan border, there's a guy from Bolivia who speaks eight words of English trying to convince the border guard that his name is "Nicholas Andrew Smyth".

I quickly devised an alternate strategy for dealing with the situation: instead of running around in a controlled panic, I was going to just go back to the damned bar and drink my problems away. Round three. I hung out with Joselyn, Benito and the owner's son all night, a certain walrus-themed video may or may not have been merrily passed around, and the fact that I was laughing, drinking and singing along to Spanish accordion music while the other Dreadnoughts were enduring a 6-hour layover in Denver made it all particularly sweet. Hey, guys: suck it! Did you join the mile-high club with each other? Ha!

But, gentle readers, I drank a little too much, made a few too many friends, and when they taught me the dice-game, I found myself betting 100 DreadBucks on one round. I needed to roll a full house, four-of-a-kind or a five-of-a-kind to beat Jocelyn's three sixes and win all that money. Odds? Around one in 20. Ayyy. Sweating like an athsmatic pig, I rolled, lifted the cup, and everyone stared in disbelief at a five, a three, and...

...three sixes. A tie.

Let it ride.

We Can't Believe All Of This Happened In 7 Days

2010-05-26T11:57:00.000-07:00

Rich <----------------> Crazy

This diagram should be attached to every west-to-east tourist map of Europe.

One country per day, west to east: that was the (rather absurd) plan on this one. We picked up Cock-Face, our god-like German roadie, and headed for Switzerland. We had a successful and relatively normal night, only drinking heavily until the early, responsible hour of 4 AM.

Pilsen, in the Czech republic, was next. Again, things went relatively smoothly, but dear old Seamus got the disaster ball rolling by chugging a bottle of vodka on stage, slicing his belly up with broken glass and almost dying in the backstage bathroom while a bizarre Czech lady kept shoving her fingers down his throat to induce more tummy-evacuation.

A refreshing two hours of sleep later, we all piled into the van for a 13-hour drive to Poland. Accumulated sleeplessness began to take its toll, and we began to turn the van into a cross between a madhouse-circus and an infant's crib:

Oh, and hey, you know, leaving so early in the morning should have got us to our show on time, except for one minor problem, which was that southern Poland was FUCKING UNDERWATER.

The drive was hell. Pure, traffic-choked hell. Second only to the France drive last year where I was nearly eaten by wolves. Actually, sometimes I think that I actually was eaten by wolves and that my soul is currently inhabiting some bizarre, video-game plane of existence. Allow me to explain.

We pulled into our venue in Sanok, Poland, only to have a burly chap at the door tell us: "show cancelled. No show."

Wide-eyed, panicking, delerious from lack of sleep, we ran/drove/crawled around the town until we discovered 300 people waiting for us at another bar. We screamed up in the van and were immediately mobbed by Polish friends and organizers. It was good to be back, and for a few brief, shining moments, it appeared as though things were looking up.

Around an hour later, I realized how wrong we had been, as I lay convulsing on the stage, the last remenants of 240 volts coursing out of my body and dissipating into the ground.

"FATHER! PLEEEZE!" I shouted, momentarily convinced that I was going through a scene in Return Of The Jedi and that some masked, caped, black figure would remove me from this torment by heaving the Emporer down a large shaft. As it turns out, the only large shaft involved in the situation was the one we were currently getting, the phallus of Poland's electricity system. Which in this case had neglected to install grounding pins in our plugs. 5 songs in, show cancelled, no show, no sleep, no beer in the van, fucking Kourrva fuck.

The following day, we awoke fresh from two hours of sleep in order to make our way to the Stare Misto festival in Lviv, Ukraine. None of us had visited the Ukraine, so we were quite excited to be going so far East. However, I am a seasoned world traveller, and I know that you should not expect a foreign country to conform to a list of Hollywood stereotypes. So I tried not to expect a land full of soil-tilling babuskas, corrupt policemen with kalashnikov rifles, ornate churches, chickens running free through the countryside, and roads that have not been repaired since the 1917 revolution.

You can guess where this is going.

"KOURWA! KOURWA CHEEKENS!" shouted Leo, our driver, as he fought desperately to avoid both the fowl beasts and potholes the size of cider barrels while travelling at roughly 125 kph. Leo was, I am not making this up, a movie stunt driver in the Ukraine for many years.

Babusya-ladies in traditional dresses stood in line at churches, tilled the fields with hoes, and were easily mistaken for large, wobbly potatoes. Vodka didn't actually run in streams down from the hills, but it fucking might as well have. It was everywhere, including in giant pools in our bellies shortly after entering the country. Oh, and how did we enter the country? By leaving a stack of bills on the dash and looking away as a border guard casually reached in and ganked it.

Repeat after me, class:

Rich<-------------------->Crazy.

We played well at the festival, a main highlight being when I informed the 15,000 people that we had only come from Canada in order to have sex with each and every one of them. It was only later that I noticed that many of them were children, but you know, whatever. We don't really like grape juice, but we do like wine, if you're mowing what I'm growing there.

Coach (somehow) crowd-surfed off the 40-foot stage, we bashed out old and new songs, finished, and ran backstage . We were eventually mobbed by dozens of autograph-seekers. In all honesty, though, meeting and signing autographs with Ukrainian kids was one of the coolest things any of us have ever done.

Things got better: Goran Bregovic took the stage. He and his huge band are, to my mind at least, the best live gypsy/russian/balkan group in the world. We waded into the crowd and joined these heartbreakingly cool traditional local folk-dances, where hundereds of people formed circles within circles within circles and danced around each other in different directions. At times, all I could do was try not to be overwhelmed by the sight of it all: young, beautiful, happy people dancing and shouting and laughing along to their own traditional folk music.

Let's just say that if I ever have to sit on a fucking lawn-chair at some Canadian folk festival again and listen to some brain-dead weirdo covering Joni Mitchell on a harp, I'm going to think about the Stare Misto festival. And then I am going to kill myself.

(Squidney, post-festival and post 4 bottles of wine)

Anyway, that night, we made it back to our wonderfully lush hotel around 11 PM and prepared to get the first solid 8 hours of sleep we'd had all tour. Nothing, not a single thing on god's blue earth could have kept me away from that.

"Oh, look," someone said as we walked through the lobby towards our rooms. "There's a bar."

Seven hours later I went to bed after endlessly slugging vodka out of a jug, ranting at anyone who'd listen about how eastern europe needs more feminism, and accidentally pissing on a tabby cat outside the bar. Kourwa Blotch.

One final show awaited us in Poland, and it was excellent, with great bands, old friends, no violent electrocutions, and a woman who showed us this:

... wow. We're not sure how we got so lucky as to have developed this awesome relationship with so many Polish people, but it's happened, and we're gonna milk it for all the free vodka it's worth.

Now, I know what you're thinking right now: "What about pierogi? Where are the usual pierogi stories?" Well, we did stop at a restaurant for some excellent pierogi (the best yet, actually), and sitting across from us was an older Polish man who, at 10 in the morning, was clearly obliterated on some form of hard liquor. He ordered food in slurred Polish while swaying back and forth in his seat. The waitress eventually brought him his pizza and well...

Rich<-------------------->Crazy.

Thoughts On Irish Punk Music

2010-05-12T11:07:00.001-07:00

Two Dreadnoughts Fans

2010-04-16T15:03:00.000-07:00

The Dreadnoughts have obtained rare, hidden-camera footage of two of their fans discussing an upcoming show. Not to be missed!

Canadian Adventures

2010-04-05T20:05:00.000-07:00

We are currently making our way through the rugged, rocky terrain of Montana, in the midst of a 56-hour drive home. The drive is long, tiring, and I’ve just been fed the devastating news that not only is Hannah Montana not from here, she doesn’t even visit.

Thinking back on this tour, a lot stands out, and it’s hard to think of how to describe it all here.

There was the first show in Victoria: my mum brought us a huge bounty of Merridale Cider and the opening band was called Lesbian Fist Magnet. Result: Guaranteed Success!

The near-constant stops for poutine: a culinary obsession of ours. We have consumed something on the order of 75 poutines between us in the past two weeks, and some of us are beginning to take on a decidedly “pregnant” look. Luckily, I hear that look is “in”.

Ottawa: a crowd of chanting, clapping-in-unison university students outside Ottawa University walked past our car. Their beaming, fresh, optimistic faces contrasted with our scraggly, sunken, gin-soaked visages. Squid Vicious, ever eager to do the right thing, rolled down his passenger-side window and offered them a curt suggestion:

“FUCK YOURSELVES!”

We spent most of the time in the van either playing Travel Trivial Pursuit or discussing vegetarianism and the state of the North American agricultural system. Oh, god above in heaven, how I wish I were making that up.

Montreal: a massive mosh pit culminating in a “Wall Of Death” which actually caused serious injury to several audience members. We also consolidated a new club: the Gintlemen’s Club. This is an extremely exclusive club consisting of anyone who has drank two shots of gin with us, pounded their fist on the bar and shouted: “GINTLEMEN’S CLUB!”. The shouting is important.

Winnipeg? Winnipeg can go and fuck itself.

Finally, Chicoutimi, a sad and happy night with a bizarre ending. Fred Simard, ever the gentleman, supplied us with gobs of poutine and 18 litres of Quebecois Hard Cider (10%). We played one of our best shows of all time and made merry well into the night. On a more serious note, we met Joe Desgagne’s mother and father and talked with them for a while about Joe and Claudine. We signed messages for our departed friends and received an incredible gift: the roulette wheel we used to play Epic Drinking Game “Let It Ride” with Joe and Claudine the last time we saw them.

Joe was too tipsy to play the game properly at the time, so he just left all his chips on the number “26”. Thus freed from the responsibilities of playing, he just drank when he was told to drink and gave a gleeful holler whenever the very unlikely “26” came up and he was allowed to distribute a ridiculous number of drinks to his friends. He spent that night grinning, laughing, dancing, and shouting “Twenty-Six! Vingt-Six!!” at everyone and anyone.

As we left the venue this last time, thoughts of the recently departed Joe firmly in our mind, Squid suddenly decided to pull out the roulette wheel and declare that we had to spin it one last time in his memory. He threw the ball around, spun, the wheel in t opposite direction, and shouted: “Let it ride, folks, let it riiiide!”

And, dear readers, you must be assured that I would not ever make this up in a million years: the ball landed squarely on black 26.

Joe and Claudine

2010-03-01T15:48:00.000-08:00

The Dreadnoughts have just learned that two of our good friends in Chicoutimi, Quebec, have died in a tragic car accident. We have been all over the world and met a lot of people, but not many could match the incredible kindness and fun-loving spirit of Joe Desgagne and Claudine Belanger.

The last time we saw Joe and Claudine, we had just been treated to a booze-soaked private show in their home basement, a fully decked-out bar they called the Unnipek Pub. Ono the wall was a large mirror with the phrase "Cider is Good For You" etched into it. We drank obscene amounts of their liquor for free and they helped us to invent the World's Greatest Drinking Game: "Let It Ride", a spectacular game with chips and a roulette wheel. By the end of the night, everyone was tired, happy and nicely drunk.

It was one of the greatest nights we've ever had, and it will always stand as a testament to Joe and Claudine. We did not know that the poutine we shared with them the next morning would be our last together, and we did not know that our good-bye embraces would be final. However, we do know that they were among the finest people we've ever had the chance to meet on the road, and we will never forget them.

Douce mère qui sait, au sein de la victoire,
Faire toujours veiller un rayon de sa gloire
Sur les tombeaux de ses enfants.

-Octave Crémazie (1860)

Poland II

2010-02-06T03:40:00.000-08:00

It is impossible to tour in Poland without coming back with some utterly bizarre stories. The country is full of wonderful, energetic, drunken, batshit insane people who seem to communicate mainly by shouting at each other. This makes it so that any problems you encounter are magnified. Times a lot.

When we think back on this particular trip years from now, one word will leap out of our memories: "cold". Europe has just experienced its worst winter in decades, with temperatures dropping to -23C in Poland itself. This normally would not be a problem, unless you are travelling in a van which has inexplicably lost its heat and also you are surrounded by people who think that a good solution for this problem is to fill the engine with bits of cardboard.

Good god, I wish I was making all of that up.

It started when the heat stopped and a little red light came on. Things got very cold, but we (somehow) made it to a gas station and warmed up with some food. We had barely turned our backs when we discovered that eight Poles (tour manager, opening band) were standing around our open engine and stuffing cardboard into it. Their theory was that the extreme cold was preventing the engine from getting hot enough to heat the van.

If you think about this for five seconds, you realize that it is completely, COMPLETELY retarded. But our brains had frostbite and we somehow allowed them to gum up all the airflow in the engine with cardboard.

We drove away. Predictably, the engine temperature shot up to 130 C, which is techincally, as a mechanic might say, "very bad". Suffice to say, we took the carboard out and continued to FREEZE OUR BLUE, ICY BALLS OFF. The engine refused to cool down. The irony of freezing our blue, icy balls off while simultaneously having panic attacks about the engine overheating was not lost on us.

Somehow, we managed to keep our spirits up:

It took a couple of days and some horrible nights to get the van fixed, and let's just say that we will probably never be that cold again. Let's also just say that we broke down some traditional gender barriers by using each other's heat to stay warm. That's all I'm going to say.

This entry will be too colossal to read if I try to tell you everything else that happened. But I can summarize: we got on a major polish TV station and screwed it up by shouting Polish obscenities too often, we lit Druzil on fire on stage, Squid Vicious gouged his head open by smashing a beer glass on his head, I nearly broke my leg in a vodka-assisted fall in Krakow, one of our shows was run by the Polish mafia who decided to take a ton of extra money from us without warning (our response: "well, your money's worthless anyway, isn't it?"), our van door fell off, and (FINALLY, on the last day), we were able to eat proper Polish pierogy:

.

Nonetheless, the shows were huge, incredible, and filled with excellent (and, as I've said, insane) people.

Those are just the things we remember. Multiply it all by 4 and that's pretty much what happened to us. Fuck. Kourrrrva.

Career Opportunities

2010-01-24T12:35:00.000-08:00

Last night we played a sort of irish-punk showcase, with some great bands and a big hall and everything. Normally, a band would use this opportunity to carefully craft an excellent set of music and to make some useful contacts.

"Normally" is really the key word, there. Instead of doing these things, we decided to:

Drink 16 litres of cider before the show,
Run around the venue with the words "fuck Ireland" written all over our skin in black sharpie,
Threaten to beat the living shit out of a banjo player in another band,
Barf on stage,
Empty about two pints of Seamus' blood onto the stage via his mangled elbow,
NOT cut a plush sheep in half, (definitely not. we don't even know which sheep you're talking about), and,
Play a show which was later described--charitably--as "disturbing" and "avant-garde",

Dreadnoughts!

2010-01-21T09:15:00.000-08:00

The Plan was to spend some time in Switzerland. This, of course, meant crossing the border.

So, we made it to Switzerland. A few days ago we played a big indoor festival called "Ska-Fest". We were excited about this for two reasons:

1. We were playing with TALCO, an incredibly good Italian folk-punk band with horns and violins and all kinds of awesome, and
2. We had a golden opportunity to make fun of ska music.

You see people, ska is generally terrible music. The reason is is terrible is that it sucks and we hate it. The reason there are so very many ska bands in every single city in the world is because most children are forced to play some kind of horn instrument in high school band. Then, as adults, legions of these musicians get a little baked while listening to Sublime and realize that they might get laid if they join a band. The songwriting and stage performance seems to be of secondary importance.

So, meeting Talco was something else. They blew everyone else off the stage...

...went backstage and were promptly annihilated by an Albertan drinking game taught to them by a certain Canadian punk band. Not only were they incredible guys, they also had that distinctly Italian inability to resist peer pressure. The result? Two soused folkpunk bands shouting, throwing things and generally terrorizing the rest of the (ahem, ska) bands.

Now, The Dreadnoughts generally do not believe in being poseurs. That is to say, we sing about getting drunk and going on adventures and doing utterly stupid things, and we do all of those things. We like to play big festivals with other so-called "party" bands, because we get to see if they, you know, actually put their cider where their mouth is, actually walk the walk.

Suffice to say, at this festival, we emerged as the undisputed champtions of The Walk. We destroyed the stage, we lit things on fire, we ran screaming through the halls, we valiantly leapt to defend the honour of damsels in distress, we poured obscene amounts of beer into our gullets, and most importantly, at the end of the night, one of us had to be carried out of the venue by Squid Vicious and the president of our record label.

Win.

And ska music? Well, ska music got the full treatment. We'd just finished "Ivanhoe" for around 200 moshers, and I got on the mic:

"Hey, do you guys like ska music?" The crowd roared their assent, throwing their hands in the air.

"Why?" I countered. "Ska music is terrible."

(Some laughter, a few scattered boos.)

"No, some of you seem to think I'm joking. Ska is terrible. It's all exactly the same. You only like it because you're white and that means it's the only music that you can dance to."

(Here, we all parodied that ridiculous "skanking" dance that ska fans do).

The boos became much louder. "OH!" I shouted. "Can't handle the truth, eh? Hey guys, wanna do a ska song for them?"

We broke into an easy two-chord ska breakdown, complete with our best trombone imitations into the microphones. The crowd began to dance wildly, and we soon ground the song to a halt. "wHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?" I shouted. "Didn't you SEE HOW EASY THAT WAS? JESUS!!!"

Anyway, Martin, our aforementioned label president, told me the next day that this was the best thing he'd ever seen and that he was sick to death of ska music. This is rather unfortunate for him, as he does happen to run the biggest ska label in Switzerland. Hmmm.

Also we went to Belgium. For some reason.

Week I

2010-01-12T02:09:00.000-08:00

An INSANE few days for the Dreadnoughts. Where to begin?

We'll begin with Rupert the Bear and his injury (and subsequent recovery) in Hamburg, Germany:

Then, we go to a report by Seamus O'Flanahan, describing his favourite parts of the tour so far:

Coming back from Copenhagen, we encountered -20C weather, high winds, and snow drifts. We quickly learned that Danish men are 60000% more manly than we are:

In Kassel, Druzil displayed his extraordinary talents for the locals:

Finally, today in Spangenberg... Squid Vicious decided to concoct an entirely novel dish, the Choco-Herringdog:

All in all... well... fuck.

Just Wing That Mother

2010-01-06T01:39:00.001-08:00

AND another grand European adventure begins!

Our plane leaves at 6 AM, in four hours. We were going to try to smuggle some cider on board until that feckin' eejit tried to blow up a plane by lighting his ballocks on fire or whatever it was and now there's no liquids at all. Bugger.

The new countries on this tour are Denmark and Croatia. Croatia is exciting: we hear they have incredibly creative ways of getting completely annihilated there.

As for Denmark, well, there ARE rumours that Uncle Touchy has spent one previous night in Copenhagen, and if you talk to the right people they'll tell you that he may have emptied an entire bottle of Absinthe down his gullet and thrown a television out of a 5-story window. Uncle Touchy would just like to set the record straight and remind everyone of how viciously inaccurate the rumour mill can be. He also drank a beer.

Stay tuned for videos, images, and our new "scratch-and-sniff" blog entries! Mmmm!

The best 8 minutes ever

2009-12-07T16:44:00.000-08:00

Some Recent Tour Activity

2009-12-07T14:41:00.000-08:00

2009-11-11T08:29:00.001-08:00

Fun Times at Sarah Sin's House in Toronto

2009-11-05T21:17:00.001-08:00

You know, one day you're sitting around, thinking it would be nice to play some bigger shows, and fairly soon you've got Sarah Sin's cellphone--which she has unwisely left downstairs after going upstairs to bed--sitting right in front of you.

I don't know what Squid Vicious and I are going to do with it, but it is going to be epic.

Crabshaw

2009-11-02T10:57:00.000-08:00

Here's O'Flanahan performing "Buried Alive" with the Creepshow on Halloween! Wait 'till the end to hear Uncle Touchy's special message to the Creepshow.

Our shows are going very well, but it is simply awesome to hang out with these guys and watch them every night. Mike is one of the most incredible drummers we've ever seen, The Reverend McGuntey eats like a starving horse, Sick Boy seems to know everything there is to know about the music scene and Sarah Blackwood is sweet and kind and also she loves unicorns and crayons and pretty princess stickers.

Cyderween

2009-11-02T10:50:00.000-08:00

Happy Cyderween everyone! Uncle Touchy and Seamus combined to make this pumpkin, which was awesome.

Poland, or KOURRVA MACH...

2009-08-07T03:10:00.000-07:00

No time to say much about this wonderful country, but here is picture from land of pierogy and Slibovica...

Pile of Coal right outside someone's house... POLAND!!

Economy is bad so must hire chickens to work at gas stations.

Salon Meblowy... a must for any businessman traveling through Poland.

SSB wearing traditional Polish Speedo.

...

Relax in Krakow with a nice tall glass of Boner.

Too much Boner and you are susceptible to van pranks.

Home in 6 days! Many stories to tell! KOURRRRRVAAA!!!!

2009-07-27T04:09:00.001-07:00

Our gig in Portugal was shut down by the cops. This is a rock n' roll LEVEL UP. HOwever, we just played outside for a bunch of folks. Here is the video...

Espana

2009-07-23T00:02:00.000-07:00

We were very excited to go to Spain, because as wonderful as Germany, Holland and the UK were, Spain seemed like the first place we would go where the culture was genuinely different from ours. Our last German gig was in Kassel. We stayed at our promoter's place. Heis name was Armin, and he was a sort of wiry little mustachoied german dude in his mid-30s who kept saying "This is a great honour... the DREADNOUGHTS are in MY HOUSE!". He had procured 24 Guinness, 24 Newcastle and a bottle of expensive whiskey. We disappointed him by collapsing into bed and passing out.

And yes, I know, those of you who have actually gone to bed with a Dreadnought understand entirely what Armin's experience was like.

However, I awoke the next morning and said to Armin: "Hey, let's get pissed!" So we did. Instead of, you know, beginning the 23-hour journey to Galicia, we sat in Armin's basement, listened to obscure European folkpunk and drank all of his booze. I somewhat regretted this move later, as I lay mostly comatose on a hill in France, completely in the middle of nowhere. Everyone else slept in the van, and when I heard wild dogs howling in the distance, I decided to cozy up into the driver's seat and pass out on the steering wheel.

We sleep in the van a lot.

The next day, somehow, we made it to Spain. To Galicia, where Cider (or "Sidra") is EVERYWHERE, almost as ubiquitous as in Bristol. However, there is a seriously terrible tradition, one which we broke many times, something for which we were almost murdered several times. In Galicia, you pour a bottle of Cider OVER YOUR HEAD into a cup that you sort of hold down by your bollocks. This results in half of the cider going on to the ground. The remaining amount, you're supposed to chug.

We enjoyed this tradition once or twice, but when we started paying for our own bottles, and when people started coming up to us and demanding that we pour half of it on the fucking ground, we had had enough. "Fuck OFF," we said, but they kept coming. Fuck. Idiots. CIDER. Fuck.

Speaking of Cider, we changed the "Cider" song to "Sidra" in order to impress the Spaniards. All over Spain, we've been singing "SIDRAAA, SIDRAAA, SIDRAAA, SIADRAA....". Someone has just informed us that our pronunciation is bad and it sounds like we're saying "SIDA". Which, in case you didn't know, is Spanish for "AIDS".

Spain: 1, Canada: 0.

Anyway, it would be difficult to summarize this wonderful place, but our booking agent has luckily provided us with a decent quote:

"In Spain," he said, "we don't give a fuck about anything."

He is basically right about that. Their Siesta is legendary: three hours a day where everyone fucks off from work and goes to sleep. Alcohol is UNBELIEVABLY cheap, and it's not uncommon to walk past a cafe at 10 in the morning and see hordes of old Spanish men drinking Cerveza on the patio. Usually they look at you like you're completely retarded and they hate you. Every building here looks like it's going to collapse in ten minutes. It's awesome.

At one festival we were playing, a man challenged Squid Vicious to a punching competition. There was a machine that registered the power of your punch. The guy wound up and pounded the bag... we waited for a minute, and his score came up: 1140. Squid nodded, stepped up to the bag, and ploughed into it. We waited for a minute, and Squid's score came up: 9908.

Spain:1, Canada:1.

Tonight, we play our final Spanish gig and head back towards a festival in Switzerland where, if you can believe this, we have 4-star hotel rooms, a shuttle bus to the hotel rooms, and a room full of cider waiting at the festival. As wonderful and enticing as this is, we will be sad to leave Spain. It is a beautiful, wonderful, squalid, noisy, fucked-up place, where sometimes, if you're drunk enough and the lighting is right, you can imagine that you're back on East Hastings.

The Shelf

2009-07-22T02:38:00.000-07:00

So, an interesting discovery we've made is that in Holland and parts of Germany, the toilets are what can only be described as "disgusting and completely retarded".

When you first see one, and you have to do a "number two", the first thought that enters your head is: "why?". The second thought is, "OH GOD, WHY???" And so forth.

WHY??

So, we asked our friend Tom from Circle J to explain the Shelf to us. This is his response:

Totally unsatisfactory, but hilarious.

We are in Spain now, and it is hot, and full of Spaniards. The toilets are normal. The food is spectacular. The punks are drunk. You can buy a liter and a half of sangria for 1 Euro 75 at the gas station. YES.

The West Country, and England In General

2009-07-11T03:09:00.000-07:00

(photo: Adam PW Smith)

We went to the West Country of England with several high expectations. We expected to find a folk-punk scene obsessed with Cider... Cider-Punk. We expected to find a folklore tradition centred on Cider, represented by a bunch of stout, broad-shouldered, bald guys who say things like "Oi therr lads, how's about wee go out tae the zoider bars an' get roight sottered, wha'?" We expected to be treated to a full tour of the West Country's finest Cider farm, the Wilkins' Farm, a place Johnny Rotten and Joe Strummer have both described as the "best place in England". We expected, in a word, to be drowning in the right old fermented apple in all possible ways.

Sometimes, you set your expectations too high, and it turns out that reality cannot possibly match them. You are inevitably disappointed, because you've been imagining something to be much more than it actually is.

This was not one of those times.

Jaymer from the Surfin' Turnips is the greatest man alive. Every song they sing is actually about Cider. For example, here is a verse from "It's Cider Swillin' Time Again":

It's Cider swillin' time again,
Oh aaa! Oh aaa!
It's Cider swillin' time again,
Oh aaa! Oh aaa!
It's Cider swillin' time again,
I might has one, I might has ten
And we'll all go rollin'
Back to the pub again!

OHHH ARRR AYE. Here's another gem, from "Drink Myself to Sleep":

Drink, drink, myself to sleep,
every night a cider by my side
auuuRAAAAA laa laa AAA rauuu RAAAA

Kev, the Turnips fan we stayed with, is also the greatest man alive. Zoe, his girlfriend, is the greatest woman alive. Bristol rules. Cider is everywhere. We drank on a BOAT WHERE THEY ONLY SERVE CIDER. THEY SPELL IT "ZYDER". THEY SING SONGS CALLED "DRINK UP THEE ZYDER" UNTIL FIVE IN THE MORNING. WEST. COUNTRY. FOR. THE WIN.

We staggered away from the Wilkins' Cyder farm loaded with ten gallons of the stuff, bought at something like twelve cents a pint. We are still in the process of consuming the rest of it all over England.

(photo: Adam PW Smith)

Speaking of England: we do not want to leave. The European continent is OK and everything, but England is simply one of the best places on earth. The cuisine is awesome. Beans on everything. Yorkshire pudding. It is all incredibly cheap. Pints are three dollars. People speak proper English. Simple, basic features of civilization (phone booths, post offices, phone cards for sale, grocery marts, public washrooms) are all over the place, unlike the rest of Western Europe. People are totally polite by default, which is very Canadian.

Essentially, what I am saying is: Rule Brittania.

2009-07-07T04:01:00.001-07:00

Here, via Spark, is the Amsterdam Incident:

Canada Day in Amsterdam

2009-07-02T04:10:00.001-07:00

Well: we have officially gone up six levels as a band. We're at level 32. Why? Three words:

Mushrooms. On. Stage.

That's right: on stage in Amsterdam, The Stupid Swedish Bastard dropped mushrooms and proceeded to play the set.

The man who sold us the mushrooms told him to take, at most, 7.5 grams. He dropped 15.

The set was epic.

Afterwards was even more epic.

Adjectives cannot do justice to the epic. The Stupid Swede ended up at some town 30 kilometers away, jumping into canals with Dutch people while holding a beer and a lit smoke, climbing apartment buildings and stealing plants off of people's balconies, and writing "TEGAN AND SARA" in giant letters on his chest. Europeans simply had no idea what to make of him.

OOOOOOOOOOO CAAAAAAAAAAAAAA NA DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA...

Pre-Canada Day Update

2009-07-02T04:08:00.001-07:00

So we've been playing shows every single day for... ever? We're not sure. To put it mildly, a few things have been happening to us along the way.

Our recent shows have been with Circle J, an awesome folkpunk band from Holland. They have been incredibly nice to us: booking us a bunch of shows, letting us use their gear and even letting us sleep in their van when our van becomes too crowded. However, I keep getting drunk and (correctly) reminding them that "we liberated your asses in World War II, ya fuckers" so I think we're basically even.

Speaking of getting drunk, I may have hit an all-time personal... high? Low? We found ourselves with an unexpected day off in Kreuzberg, Berlin, and I had been taking it easy for a few days because of a nearly broken toe. I woke up in the van around 11 PM, turned to Squid and said: "Well, I'm gonna find some breakfast, then I'm gonna get deee-RUNK!"

Never have I followed through on a promise with such vigour and enthusiasm. After some excellent turkish-style breakfast, Squid and I found ourselves in the middle of a colossal park, drinking a six-pack each. We polished those off and went to collect everyone else. In very little time at all, the whole band was in the park, gathered around a small beetle and a ladybug. "MAKE FRIENDS!!" we shouted. "MAKE FRIENDS, YOU LITTLE FUCKING BASTARDS!!" When it became clear that BottleBeetle and Spotty Bitch weren't going to commiserate, we decided to play some soccer. As a Canadian in Europe, you have to have a few drinks in you to play soccer, because even four year-old European epileptics are better than you at soccer.

Soon afterwards, I found myself throwing old, rusty bicycles down a 60-foot high marble slide with a small British girl. We were sitting at the world's weirdest playground, a giant stone auditorium-style construction that had completely fallen apart and was full of all kinds of nooks and crannies. We were hanging out with these awesome kids and their moms, running around on this giant complex and generally making fools out of ourselves.

Everything was totally peachy until some dudes started throwing rocks at a woman because she was drinking alone in public. According to whatever bizarre, fucked-up version of Islam that they adhered to, this was apparently the thing to do, and it is not entirely uncommon for such incidents to occur in Berlin. The guys backed off pretty quick when Squid made an appearance in front of them, arms crossed.

Seamus and I headed off into Kreuzberg, determined to find some goddamned cider. We hadn't seen a proper cider since Quebec. So, we wandered into the streets and stopped at every bar, asking "Hast du Apfelwine? Cider?" After a series of negative responses, we realized that we could double our efficiency by walking down opposite sides of the street and going into bars seperately.

As it turned out, the only bar with Cider was populated by four lesbians who kept using scissors to cut our T-shirts into fascinating shapes. This is when things start to get really blurry for me, but I do recall a gypsy accordionist wandering up to our table looking for money. "Why would I pay you for gypsy music," I slurred, "when I've got the best gypsy violinist right here drinking with me?" Seamus pulled out the ol' fiddle and began to engage the accordionist in a gypsy duel. Seamus would play, then as the gypsy dude tried to match him, I would motion him with my fingers and shout "BRING IT!! BRING IT!!"

Apparently, after this, one of the lesbians had to go and find me, as I had wandered aimlessly off into the streets. They brought me back to a bar where Circle J were enjoying a few pints, where (apparently) we played Pogues tunes for almost two hours.

And then I woke up in a Hostel when a bunch of retarded Spanish girls kept giggling at me, for some reason. Fuck.

Next: CANADA DAY IN AMSTERDAM...

MORE SHOWS

2009-06-26T01:34:00.000-07:00

Sexism!

7 more shows added: Poland, Ukraine, Britain. We have no breaks this summer. We are playing every day this summer except for two.

The way this makes me feel? It really turns me on. It knocks me off of my feet. People always told me, be careful what you do, but I believe in miracles, and a miracle is happening tonight. Why? Tell 'em that it's human nature.

R.I.P.(2009-2009)

There Is No Swiss Word For "Stubble".

2009-06-21T08:02:00.001-07:00

Canadians often think they are too polite, that they are boring, that they have no exciting culture to speak of. We are here to tell you that on all those counts, the Swiss have us beat by a million miles.

Culture? People are almost universally too busy working hard and keeping themselves well groomed to take up artistic pursuits. A well-placed source in the Swiss music industry has described most Swiss bands as, quote, "total balls". Swiss media is dominated by Italian, German and French content, and the Swiss seem happy with this. Why not let foreigners take care of that mundane stuff while we do the really important stuff like building more tunnels?

Boring? The "Xenophobe's Comprehensive Guide to Switzerland" contains the following passage: "The Swiss have an almost universal suspicion that everyone else in the world spends too much time trying to 'have fun'. They happily see themselves as taking up the slack for the rest of the world." Oy.

Polite? We had a van-party after our Basel gig, with fiddle music, drinking and singing well into the night. The next morning, an extremely-well groomed Swiss man (note the redundancy there) tapped on the passenger window and handed me a piece of paper with the words "Polizei Stadhof" written on it. He politely asked if we had been in the van the previous night, and then politely asked us to drive down to the nearest Police station and pay a 150 Franc fine. No police-person talked to us. We didn't even get a ticket. The fine, it was clear, was more of a request than a requirement, and if we were too busy to actually go down to the station, then it was clear that that was perfectly alright.

"Have a nice day," said the Swiss fellow. Christ.

(note stubble)

In other news, "Samovar" was played on BBC1 radio the other day, thanks to the promo work of ADAM PEE DUB SMITH.

In other other news, the Tour Sieg Heil Count (TSHC) is up to 2. The first came from a 12 year-old in Cowansville, Quebec, and the second came from a stubby looking fellow in Basel. While utterly distubring, the Sieg Heils are also extremely hilarious, because these retards think we're playing their music, when in fact our stuff is almost exclusively Gypsy- and Jewish-influenced. Now, I may have spent most of Grade 11 history class trying to get a look down Sara Bougen's cleavage, but I'm fairly certain that Hitler wasn't overly fond of Gypsies or Jews.

(note lip-stubble)

2009-06-16T05:56:00.000-07:00

This is where we are staying:

This is what we do to our advertising:

This is the Dread Pirate Druzil cutting a woman's pants off with a knife:

Um..... wabam.

Hansovich the Rabbit

2009-06-15T04:58:00.000-07:00

Last night the Dreadnoughts valiantly battled a local group of Luzern 9 year-olds to a 4-4 draw at soccer. We had been drinking for six hours: red wine, beer, Kirsch (60% alcohol) and singing acoustic songs for a bunch of excellent Swiss people, one of whom was, in Seamus's words, "fucking hot". I just liked that she kept bringing us drinks: more beer, more wine, and eventually Absinthe. We ended up shirtless in a basement laundry room bawling out sea shanties and drinking a ridiculous amount of booze. Apparently I was quite obnoxious.

On the ride home I (apparently) went on a rant about how much I loved the Dread Pirate Druzil and Squid Vicious, and how, quote, "If a wizard came and told me that he was going to kill one of the three of us and I had to choose, I would choose me." Then (I am told) I passed out in the backseat with my hand down my pants.

The other amazing thing we saw was in Geneva: a dance club that wasn't total fucking balls. Get this: a 2000-person hall filled with revelers dancing to gypsy techno music. Two DJs played awesome melodic gypsy music and backed it up with techno beats: awesome. Every so often the female DJ would strut out in full gypsy regalia and sing her own awesome songs along to the beat. I hadn't felt that blissful since I saw Druzil get nailed in the balls by a falling box of CDs in the van.

We had heard about these things in Europe, and apparently they don't exist in North America. So, when we return, get ready for THE DREADNOUGHTS' GYPSY DANCE PARTY. It's gonna happen, people. Five bucks to get in and all the eurofolk dance music you could ever want. If you're lucky, we may even wear clothing.

Finally, a joke we heard from Marco's MegaSwiss Uncle Willy: A man has three rabbits, Hans Frans and Jurgen. One day he gets a gun and takes them out to the forest. He renames them "Hansovich", "Fransovich" and "Jurgenovich". A passing friend asks him why he renamed them. "Oh," he replies, "If I rename them Yugoslavian names I find it easier to shoot them."

RACIST UNCLE WILLY WIN.

WaBAMsterdam

2009-06-10T05:13:00.000-07:00

Amsterdam... we had 8 free hours and did everything that the city has to offer. We went for "a beer". We had four more beers. Smoked marijuana. Went for two more beers. Ogled the hookers. Played the world's worst game of hackey-sack. Ate ice cream.

Drank vodka. Smoked hookah. Smoked a weed/hash combination. Yelled at other tourists. Fought a small cat. Fell down.

We have never, ever been this collectively wasted. By the time our ride arrived from Belgium, most of us could could barely stand up and had to be poured into the van. I apologize for the total lack of detail in this entry, but it is what we could piece together.

Here is us doing a simultaneous 5-man beer-coaster table flip:

Amsterdam

2009-06-07T11:37:00.000-07:00

Insane few nights. No time to describe it all. However, a brief summary:

Met and partied with "Nubs" from the NOFX song.
Chi Pig from SNFU is AWESOME.
Drank a box of wine in an alley. Shouted "LIVING THE DREAM" over and over.
Got on CBC Radio (nationwide) because we have a polka song.
SSB inhales cigar, gets extremely sick. Learns (at age 27) that cigars are not for inhaling.
Got parking ticket while unloading: ate parking ticket.
Seriously: ate it.
Seamus attacked by Wild Urban Mohawked Eagle.
Ate final Poutine of the tour. Europe: no poutine. Fail.
Many Dreadnoughts fall in love with Ottawa. wtf.
Van smells like sadness.
Why did Julia Roberts rub feces on her genitals? BECAUSE SHE WAS HORNY. BRRRRAAAAAAUUUUUG.
Uncle Touchy's lip smashed in by microphone. According to local women, this is an "improvement".
BRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUG.

Flying to Amsterdam tonight. Will shortly acquire hookers, 'shrooms and Druzil has vowed to do a shot of absinthe out of a 300-pound stripper's navel. STAY THE FUCK TUNED.

Chicoutimi

2009-06-06T10:17:00.001-07:00

As you can tell from the previous entry, we had a pretty awful night in Trois-Riveires. Through absolutely no fault of ours or of our record label's, we ended up on a totally inappropriate bill in a dance-hall nightclub full of depressed Quebecois teenagers.

The old cliche: "It is always darkest just before the dawn" is one of those stupid things that people say that is totally false and retarded, like "that's the exception that proves the rule" or "it's the quiet ones you gotta watch", or "don't drink that, you might die". Clearly it is not darkest just before the dawn, it's dakest when the fucking sun is on the other side of the fucking planet.

However, in reference to rock n' roll tours, it is totally true. According to sources, Chicoutimi was supposed to be a backwater, mega-seperatist little town full of grumpy old Quebecois. We prepared for the worst. Instead, we were met by Frederic, the promoter for the show, who showed us to the bar and immediately presented us with a bottle of Crown Royal Limited Edition Rye Whisky. Then he showed us to our two hotel rooms (a first for this tour, which has featured several mornings of us all waking up with carpet patterns imprinted on our faces).

Fred had booked an eight-piece local bluegrass band, which is just a spectacular idea. You might think a pure traditional folk band wouldn't fit with Les Dreadnoughts, but the match is actually an excellent one. One reason is that any asshole with working hands can pick up an electric guitar, but you kind of have to be serious to play banjo, standup bass or accordion. Result? A LOT of awful rock bands, very few awful bluegrass/folk bands.

Our show was simply spectacular, matched only by the epic Pub 340 shows we've had back in Van City. People were going bananas. Halfway through the show, I picked up Cider Bear, and said: "Madames et mesieurs, il s'appelle Cider Bear, et IL AIME BEAUCOUP LE MOSH PIT!!!" We threw him into the crowd and he had a lot of fun, even getting his underwear ripped off at one point.

We got three stomping encores, with the crowd chanting and singing "Ole, ole!" over and over in true Quebecois fashion. After the show, half the bar moved to the bluegrass band's house and had a big boozy jam session with like 19 instruments and a bongo (not an instrument, Commercial Drive, NOT AN INSTRUMENT).

We then moved back to our hotel rooms and partied with several Young Maidens of Virtue True (YMVTs). I don't think I can relate the rest of the evening's activities to you on a public blog. Suffice to say that much cider was imbibed, much laughter was shared, and a certain YMVT woke up the following afternoon with red hand-prints on her bottom, courtesy of none other than the Dread Pirate Bruisil himself.

Everything about Chicoutimi and Quebec culture is just awesome. For eight dollars, you can buy a colossal plate of properly made Poutine, smothered in cheese curds, gravy, ground beef, sausages, peas and probably a dollop of lard for good measure. Beer labels are epic and beer is extremely strong. And everyone we've met has been helpful, jovial, interesting, welcoming and shitloads of fun. Vive la Quebec!

2009-06-03T10:37:00.000-07:00

The Dreadnoughts are going to be famous. Not for our musical ability, but for the unbelievably good video game we just thought up in the van.

It's called "Rock Band: Reality".

First, you create a rock star character. You assign them various attributes: Songwriting, Stamina, Intelligence, Charisma and Liver, each on a 1-100 scale. These attributes will increase as you (hopefully) acquire a bunch of Experience Points. You choose your instrument (bass, drums, guitar, vocals, accordion, glockenspiel).

You are then released into the game, where you have to actually form a band. There are various ways of doing this (dive bars, craigslist, accosting random strangers), but if your Intelligence isn't high enough, you are likely to only collect other similarly retarded musicians.

Once you've formed your band, you begin to play shows. This involves:

- booking shows. Until you've leveled up and acquired an Agent, you have to do this yourself (sending random emails, making phone calls, dealing with bar managers, etc).

actually sitting at your TV or computer and driving the van for an average of five to seven hours per day. If you crash, you're all dead. If you don't make all the requisite stops (for gas, urination, cigarrettes, gatorade, beer, cider, food, vomiting) your band mates slowly become resentful of you and will eventually quit. You also have to select the proper variety of van music to satisfy their fickle tastes. If, say, one guy (let's call him "Druzil") loves 80s metal while another band member (let's call him, for no reason whatsoever, "Uncle Touchy") thinks that everyone associated with 80s metal should be strung up by their gonads and whipped to death with giant flaming canes, then you have to engage in creative problem-solving (involving such things as earplugs, sexual favours, etc.).

actually finding the venue. Depending on your Intelligence rating, you may be provided with a detailed road map, a series of hastily printed Google Maps instructions, or simply a drummer in the passenger seat who calls himself "The Human GPS" and who shouts out random directions every five minutes. If you don't find the venue, the show is cancelled and you lose a ton of Experience Points.

sometimes, you will find the venue but discover that the show has been cancelled. This happens randomly. There is absolutely no way to predict this or avoid it.

setting up the sound equipment. This involves both carrying everything into the venue (requires good Stamina) and remembering how three dozen little wirey things connect into three dozen other little wirey bits.

waiting for your show to begin. If you are still a low-level band, this involves listening to an average of five shitty teenaged emo-core nu-metal bands wallow in their goddamned sorrow per night. As you level up, you will occasionally enjoy better opening acts, though it will never be possible to avoid the stupid hair-in-the-eyes retards who think screaming like a little girl is singing. Each time you sit through one of these bands, your Stamina drops.

Luckily, there is a way to make the pre-show more tolerable: alcohol. You must decide how much to drink before each show. The more you drink, the more tolerable the stupid nu-metal assholes become, and with enough booze, it is possible that you may even enjoy them and your stamina will remain untouched. However, unless you've got a phenomenal Liver rating, your Stamina will almost certainly get lowered the next day.

"But wait," you might now be saying to yourself, "That means there's no way to keep my stamina from dropping!" You are correct. It gets worse:

playing the show. This is just like the "Rock Band" video game we all know and love. However, several extra complications have been added to our version, and determine whether or not you "nail" the show and recieve the Experience Points:

If your Songwriting attribute is still low, all you get to play is "Don't Let The Sun Go Down on Me" over and over again. Only by gaining Experience Points can you acquire new and better songs, such as Groove Factory's "Poison" and Paula Abdul's "Opposites Attract".
If you've drank a lot, the notes/beats on the screen swirl and distort randomly, making it nearly impossible to hit most of them.
If there is a hot girl in the audience, sometimes the notes/beats on the screen will randomly be replaced with pictures of her bosoms. These notes/beats are unplayable.
Sometimes, random retards will leap on stage and start trying to sing/play instruments extremely badly. Until you level up, you will have no bouncers to help you: fight them off yourself (here the game cuts to a "Street Fighter II" sequence).

You collect Experience Points in proportion to how well you "nail" the show. If you see a "did not nail it" message at the end of your song, you lose experience points and may actually go down a level or two. Playing any show makes your Stamina drop.

After the show, you have the option to "hit on women" or to "just go the fuck back to the damn hotel". Hitting On Women is the most difficult and stamina-taxing part of the game. However, if your Girlfriend Status is "yes" or "sort of", you have to call her first and enter Relationship Talk Mode. Depending on your Intelligence and how much liquor you've consumed, you may manage to convince your girlfriend that it's okay for both of you to "see other people" in which case you may resume Hitting On Women. However, this is extremely unlikely, and in all probability you will drop your Girlfriend Status to "none" (bad for Stamina when you're back home, unless your Charisma is phenomenal).

Hitting On Women is easier if you "nail" a show. If you actually succeed in Hitting On Women, you have a new place to sleep that night away from your bandmates. However, there is a 7% chance that the woman you sleep with will become your "Girlfriend", and you will not only be restricted from Hitting On Women in the future, but you will also have to answer whiny cellphone calls randomly while driving the van, making accidents more likley and further sapping your Stamina.

If you fail at Hitting On Women, your Stamina drops.

Finally, your Stamina will occasionally just drop by a significant amount for absolutely no reason. If your Stamina ever reaches 0, you die.

So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen: "Rock Band: Reality".

Laptop Punk

2009-05-31T18:08:00.000-07:00

You know, when Michael Jackson got busted for lip-synching on stage, he was in huge trouble and almost had to cancel half of his European tour. When Ashlee Simpson lip-synched on Saturday Night Live, she was endlessly attacked in the media and in the general public for being a no-talent hack.

I can therefore not understand how it is that groups of young men are allowed to form bands that do essentially the same thing. Our opening acts last night were unbelievable: not only was the style of music a kind of Sum-41 ripoff emo-core whatever, each of their songs began when a dude pressed a button on his laptop and the pre-recorded drums, vocals and bass kicked in. We caught both acts missing notes/vocals, and somehow the vocals and notes came through the speakers anyway. At one point, a drummer stood up and began to clap his hands along to a song, and the sound of a full drum kit came crashing out of the speakers.

This is, apparently, a very big thing with the kids today. It's "progressive" to not actually play your instruments and to sing about relationships. Nothing I could possibly say could convey my hatred for this idea.

Also, we want to send a huge big-up to Les Cowboys Fringants, a quebecois folkpunk band who actually sing in French. That's how it should be. If I were a Quebecker proud of my heritage, I'd be very alarmed to see a bunch of kids get on stage, introduce their songs in French ("Cette chanson et...") and then break immediately into whiny american-style vocals ("You said you loooooveeed meeeee....") because they want to get on English radio. Tabernac.

However, May 29th was not totally a bust, because earlier in the day we played a... get this... a high school. Seriously. Seamus's "not within 400 meters of a high school" probation period had just run out, so we managed to do 45 minutes of folk-punk for a cafeteria full of 1000 gaping 12-18 year-olds. Our lives are spectacularly weird.

More to come! Much to say about Chicoutimi, the greatest city in the entire world and Fred Simard, the greatest promoter in the entire world....

Our Last Few Days

2009-05-28T06:59:00.000-07:00

Variously, these are pics of Cider Bear, us at the bar two nights ago, and Squid smoking a cigarette through Druzil's nose. Enjoy.

Saskatchewan

2009-05-28T06:55:00.000-07:00

This is what driving through Saskatchewan is like.

"Days Off"

2009-05-28T06:12:00.000-07:00

It is very stupid to spend most of your days off drinking. Yet, yesterday's 11-hour drive from Sault Ste Marie to Ottawa was a boozy one. As the poor Stupid Swede drove, the rest of us played a game called "LCBO". This game involves stopping at every LCBO (Ontario Liquor Store) you see to buy another drink. Before long, we were all red-faced, screaming and shouting, and demanding that the Stupid Swede turn up the polka music.

When we arrived at the place we were staying, he compensated by joining the Century Club and spending the rest of the night trying to get some girl to take her shirt off on Skype. We were so drunk that at one point we thought it would be a good idea to put on a certain film that was lying around. A film called (not making this up) "My Granny's a Tranny".

Heavy drinking. It is, as one of my students once wrote, "not good way".

Offical Dreadnought Drinks

2009-05-24T00:20:00.000-07:00

Bols Deep in Cider: 20 oz Strongbow, 1 oz. "Bols" vodka.

The Shane MacGowan: 20 oz Guinness, 1 oz. Gin.

Cider Bomb: 20 oz Strongbow, 1 oz. Rye dropped vigorously into glass. Result: explosion.

Pils'n'Er: 1 oz sambuca, 1 oz. tequila, 1 multivitamin (powdered), 1 capsule of fish oil (forms layer on top).

The Dirty Cider: 20 oz. Cider, 4 oz. dirt.

Stay tuned for our new video series, "Will They Drink It?", where Seamus will attempt to drink the first Pils n' Er ever made!

Epic Punt

2009-05-24T00:16:00.000-07:00

Sakagina

2009-05-23T17:34:00.000-07:00

I was against eugenics and forced sterilization until yesterday.

I won't tell you the name of our promoter for our Regina show. We pulled into the Distrikt Club and quickly discovered that he was, is, and will forever remain an absolute monkey-fucking retard. The show was scheduled to start at 10 PM. We arrived at 8:07, where we learned from Druzil's family that he had cancelled the show. Why? Because he, quote, “hadn't heard from us”.

For those of you not familiar with the music business, here is how a standard gig is booked: Agent calls promoter. Agent asks for show. Promoter books show and negotiates payment/accommodation details with Agent. When terms are agreed upon, contracts are mutually signed and faxed. Contracts contain all requirements for both parties. Band shows up in time to sound-check. Band plays show. Band gets paid by promoter. Band leaves. Band drinks twenty-eight cider bombs and spends the rest of the night doing unspeakable things to their teddy bear with a fork.

At no point in any of this chain of events is it within the promoter's rights to cancel the show because the band hasn't called him to see how he's doing, to see if he needs anything, or to exchange fucking brownie recipes or whatever the fuck it was we were supposed to do on the phone with this colossal ball of fuck.

I repeat: I was against eugenics and forced sterilization until yesterday. It's easy to hold such abstract moral positions until you discover people who literally should not exist.

We stood outside the venue frantically calling everyone we could. Tensions mounted as people began to arrive for the show to find only a very large bass player screaming and throwing rocks at a very closed venue, screaming insults in what appeared to be some dialect of Ogrish.

I've learned over the years of touring that these moments of extreme fucktardery are usually followed by generous, compassionate help from total strangers. Dan (an ex-bouncer in Regina and a huge celtpunk fan) began to call around and investigate the possibility of us jumping on another show. The crowd outside the venue promised to follow us wherever we went.

And so, somehow, by the grace of Odin's frosty balls, we found ourselves headlining an all-ages emo-rock bill across town. We played the show, sold a bunch of CDs, and headed to O'Hanlan's, a cookie-cutter faux-Irish pub in downtown Regina. Each of us drank an incredibly unreasonable amount of alcohol, and a huge crowd gathered around us when Seamus and Druzil, um, whipped out their instruments and started a sea-shanty celtic session. We sang, played and shouted obscenities well into the night, handing out business cards all the while and promising to come back.

We are now en route to Amigo's bar in Saskatoon, which by all accounts is not run by walking condom commercials.

Luckily, Druzil's most excellent aunt and uncle let us crash at their lovely house in west Regina. They made us breakfast the next morning, bought us lunch, and sent us away with some food and water. This display of compassion re-affirmed our faith in basically everything. Grant and Diane: we love you. Seriously.

Nonetheless, there remains the problem of The Promoter, and of what we are going to do to him when we get our hands on him. Several suggestions have been floated, but the general consensus is that he will be locked in a room with two things in it: (1), Squid Vicious, and (2) a pair of scissors. 20 minutes should be sufficient, assuming he is of average constitution and strength (i.e.10-13). However, should his attributes be higher or should he possess any unexpected Special Skills (invisibility, fire magic, Cone of Silence) or hidden magical items (+2 Vorpal Sword, Skin Flute of Transportation, Giant Dildo) then thirty minutes may be required. Also Seamus is going to fuck his dog.

Fail

2009-05-22T17:23:00.000-07:00

An excellent, excellent show in Calgary, but SO MANY FAILS. How to recount them all?

First, we somehow forgot that we had to drive after the gig last night and The Stupid Swede had to sleep in the van. Just before he went out to the van, and I swear to god I am not making this up, two hot danish SISTERS invited him back to their place for “some beers”.

His response? “No, sorry, I'm going to go and sleep in the van.”

They declined his offer of a threesome in the van. Fucking Danes... such prudes. I mean, what red-blooded Canadian woman would say no to a threesome with her own sister and a man with a yeast infection on his chest in a van full of empty beer cans and rancid cheese? Fucking Danes.

Danish Threesome Fail.

Druzil was chatting up some lady for some time... she was responsive... bought him drinks, let him put his arm around her, etc. Then, at the end of the night, he asked if he could accompany her home, and she responded (again, I couldn't make this up if I tried): “No, I have to get up at seven in the morning because I'm moving to a new farm and we have to set the farm up.”

Farm Setup Fail.

We're in the prairies, so I suppose we'd better get used to farm-girl rejection. You just can't compete with women who are used to, um, horses. Well, maybe Squid can. Um.

Personally, I experienced a Sleeping On The Bathroom Floor Fail. I hope Squid dies.

There were also other epic fails which are actually too personal and painful to recount. Let's just say that 90 pound non-recovering alcoholics shouldn't drink eleven bottles of pilsner.

We are now driving through Saskatchewan and I haven't seen anything this flat since I nailed Celine Dion. I am now going to drink a bottle of Bell's whiskey and pass out in the back of this filthy, disease-ridden vehicle. I hope Squid dies. I hope we all die. Auuuuuugh.

2009-05-21T12:51:00.000-07:00

wAUUUUUUUUUUUUUU SEAMUS

2009-05-21T12:48:00.000-07:00

2009-05-21T12:34:00.000-07:00

Drunk

2009-05-21T09:59:00.000-07:00

Faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaak.

Is for thirty in th morning sn im completely wasted. We got beer at the bar an it iwas a reaally gooo d bar with lots of um. edmontonians in it and one guy had a shirt that said \edmonton oilers on it but it fuyckin didnt say oilers it said misery on it and we kicked cider bear around the fuckinn parking lot and it isnt morally wrong becase he isn't sen snee sentient.

And now a word frm squidney:

"Nuke Edmonton."

aaaaaaaaandf we're back. So anyway we decided that the swiss didnt have concentration camps because they couldn't concentrate. waaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUGHHHHHH no seriously there was a lot of people out tonight bu theey were kind of standing around and also we drinked trad ale after the show AN ALSO THERE WAS THIS GUY FOMR ATHE OPENING BAND na dhis name was finn a nd he jumped around like crazy and i was jealous and ATHE SEECRUTY GARD SAAID WE WERE THE BEST BAND HED SEEN THERE IN 2 YAERS AND SO FUCK WE WINAN wwwwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH.

WAIT. WAI wait. i will go and find a video . wait. this is the mnorning after:

And now a word from Seamus:

"8 days of antibiotics couldn't compete with one night of heavy drinking, badger-chasing, and drunk-dialing ex-girlfriends. I'm cured. It... is... a... ...miracle. Also, I disagree with squid, I love edmonton and its cider-dealing denizens what are hot. Now we go to transylvania to meet the vampiric lady-wenches."

truer words were not spoken., vagina,.

Cider Bear

2009-05-18T13:11:00.000-07:00

We sped away from the Mighty Town of Kamloops yesterday morning, and Seamus drearily gazed of his side window, looking wistfully into the distance, asking himself why he could never seem to find true happiness. Just as he was about to ask us to put Sarah McLaughlan's "Fumbling Towards Ecstacy" on the stereo, something caught his eye: an old woman minding a garage sale outside of her house. This no doubt piqued his interest, but what made him scream at us to pull over and stop the van was the fleeting glimpse he'd caught of a brown-furred little bear sitting beside the old woman.

And so, we'd like to introduce you all to the newest member of The Dreadnoughts' Family: Cider Bear.

Ten minutes later, we were back in the van, gleefully providing Cider Bear with cans of the finest Blackthorn Cider.

"Cida Bear was getting mighty sick a dat ol' granny," he said. "One more story about embroidin' and I'da smacked a bitch."

We joyously poured more cider in/on him. He became rather drunk and started telling us about the time that he'd barfed on the neighbours' dog and watched as it had been blamed on a small child. Then he told us about the time he was in the navy and had been used to "bung up a hole in da septic tank". Then he told us about how a 12 year-old boy had used him to masturbate for the first time¹.

There was a highly uncomfortable pause.

"I don't like Cider Bear," said Squidney. "Let's put him in a merch bin." We all agreed, and have since only let him out of his bin to sell our merchandise at shows. Even this may have to stop, as he spent most of last night at the bar trying to get some chick named Megan to, I quote, "show Cida Bear dem mighty brusums".

Bad Cider Bear! Bad!

Tonight we play Kelowna, and tomorrow our truly epic journey begins. 8 hours to Jasper, Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Regina, Winnipeg... you know the old saying: sometimes you want to go where absolutely fucking nobody knows your name.

----
¹ Philosophical question: is humping a stuffed bear masturbation? We're stumped. Please leave a comment if you think you know the answer.

Folding T-Shirts: The FInal Frontier

2009-05-17T10:32:00.000-07:00

Before leaving Vancouver, we thought we'd fold our t-shirts in order to save some space. This all sounded fine until we realized that there were 850 of them:

That's Squidney under the shirts. JESUS CHRIST.

JESUS CHRIST.

Nine trillion hours later, we left Vancouver and decided to pass the time in the van by playing this game called "who would you rather do?" We started off, obviously, with Star Trek: The Next Generation.

"Tasha Yar", I offered.

"Nope," said Druzil. "I'd rather do the Counselor."

"GO AND FUCK YOURSELF, YOU STUPID DIRTY HIPPY TWAT," I responded. "THE *COUNSELOR*???"

"I'd rather do Captain Picard," said Seamus. There was much agreement on this fact and on the fact that Druzil is a total fucktard.

Then we decided that Queen Latifah is way hotter than Oprah AND Tyra Banks. I don't know who Tyra Banks is, but I think she was a character in Mary Poppins.

Then we decided that R2D2 is hotter than C3PO. There was rare unanimity on this one. The reason? "R2 has those little electric taser-prodders," said Squidney. "That might be kind of fun."

Hot!

Finally, we established that none of us would have sex with the giant turtle from The Neverending Story. It's important to think about these things in advance in case the opportunity arises.

And then we played a show.

We're off now to eat breakfast, sit around a fire and try to come to a decision on whether or not Darth Vader would be a good lay.

- Uncle Touchy

How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Van

2009-05-13T13:28:00.000-07:00

Normal punk bands buy giant white touring vans from shady garages in Abbotsford and write funny shit like "Free Candy" on the side. The Dreadnoughts? The Dreadnoughts buy a sleek, silver, soccer-mom Dodge Grand Caravan. Gas mileage! Air bags! Child-proof locks to keep Seamus in! Christ.

We bought it from an angry East Indian fellow who needs the cash quickly so that he can continue to sue his ex-wife.

"Fuck," he said as we test-drove his little beast. "Fucking bitch took good car. I left with fucking Grand Caravan to sell so I can sue her for good car. Fuck."

There was a slightly uncomfortable pause. "It nice van, though," he added, thoughtfully.

I assured him that any woman who would turn up her nose at such a sexy little minivan (which comes with a nifty little fold-down child-seat and an anti-lock braking system for extra safety!) could not possibly be worthy of his excellent company. I mean, honestly, what's the world coming to, anyway? I want to have sex with our van.

Anyway, I don't know how the drummer scraped the money together, but he did. He's Swiss, so the phrase "Nazi Gold" ran through my head a couple of times, but I decided to stay quiet and let the man fork out $8500. Then it was ours... oy, vey. Here is a picture of it:

As we prepared to buy the van, I was reminded yesterday of how much I hate The Dread Pirate Druzil and Squid Vicious. Since we were going to spend, like, thousands of dollars of their money on a vehicle, I figured they might want to know the details. I spent nearly ten minutes telling them about payment plans, interest, mileage, fuel economy, spacing, seating and financing, during which time their eyes slowly glazed over.

"Well", I said. "What do you think?"

Neither of them said anything for quite some time.

"Well," said the Dread Pirate Druzil, "I think you're gay." Touché . I hate him, and I hate his stupid giant friend who keeps following us around:

The CD release/tour kickoff is in two days, and apparently we leave the next day. We have secured a laptop, a videocamera and video editing software, so if I were you, I'd stay tuned to this blog. If we manage to upload even 2% of the insane drunken bullshit that usually goes on in the van, you won't be disappointed. I believe this picture summarizes up my point quite nicely:

Love,

-Uncle Touchy