IMPORTANT DATES:

Nov 8/2011: Our EP, “New Brighton” is available.
Mar 6/2012: Our full-length album (yet to be titled) is available.

From this news you can probably surmise the following;
1. Our summer of recording went extremely well, and the album has been successfully completed.
2. We have in fact decided to release an EP this fall (see first line of this post)
3. We have been lackadaisical when it comes to updating this news feed.  Please excuse us.  For the very latest news, make sure you’re tuned into our twitter and facebook pages.  

Winning America

Our trip to the Austin SXSW Festival in March was the subject of a CBC documentary that will air on July 23 in BC!  If we get a high viewership, CBC may consider broadcasting it in the rest of the country shortly thereafter.  For anyone outside of Canada, this will likely be online by the end of the summer.  Help us spread the word!

Recording Begins…

Hello all,

We are currently in the studio recording our 3rd full-length album with our good friend Tom Dobrzanski (of local band The Zolas) behind the console as producer.  We plan to record all through the summer, and if all goes well we may be able to share a few songs in the form of a short EP this fall.  The bulk of the songs won’t be released until early 2012 (bummer, I know), but please stay tuned to our blog for updates from the studio, as all of us will be updating with photos and videos on a regular basis.  Have a great summer everyone, can’t wait to share these songs with you!

Love,
Whales

We’ve just landed in the UK, and will be touring here for the next 2 weeks. Check out the tour section for full dates! 

An update from the middle of the desert in Texas

March 20th, 2011

Our lack of written updates on this tour has not been for lack of documentation – Spencer has been keeping a daily journal, as well as taking photos and audio clips. Our friend Matt has been along with us filming almost everything and making videos which can be found on our youtube channel (www.youtube.com/saidthewhale). But things like Twitter and Facebook make it easy to forget about the long-winded updates you can come up with while you’re driving across the desert in the middle of America. Not to mention our mobile devices which have been rendered useless by laughable roaming fees from certain wireless providers. So on a stolen wifi signal I write…

The first thing that comes to mind when thinking about how this trip has been going for us is how surprisingly beautiful the drives have been. I’m not sure why I thought Canada had “the best scenery, hands down, end of story”, but if I thought that before, I’m certainly rethinking it now. In fact, everything about this country has surprised us so pleasantly that I’ve found myself at times overcome with guilt. The Canadian patriotism that I conceal with Canadian modesty (of which I am also proud, ironically) has been challenged to a battle I’m not sure it can handle. The state of California alone has more diverse scenery than I have ever laid eyes on. Not to mention the shores of the Oregon Coast, the vastness of the Texan Desert, and the dunes of New Mexico… And then there’s buying beer at corner stores, but thats a whole other box of smarties. (Smarties as we know them in Canada do not exist in the US, so minus one point for that I suppose).
This is not to say that we’re denouncing our home country or putting America on a pedestal, but only to say that our eyes and our minds have been opened by this journey so far. Canadian patriots take no offense, please and thank you.

For any Americans reading this, thank you for the warm welcome into your country. With the exception of only one (possibly two?) men/women in Sacramento, every single person we’ve met has greeted us kindly and with open arms.
Also I suppose I should put a hex on the wench who attacked Spencer with a bottle of mustard in Austin, but that was during SXSW so it almost doesn’t count as real life. For anyone who was in Vancouver for the Olympics in 2010, let me draw this comparison; the SXSW music festival this past week in Austin was like the Olympics in Vancouver except instead of everyone celebrating sports, they were celebrating music and alcohol. It was a dream come true for 6 wide-eyed Canadians. We played 5 shows during our time there, and were followed by a crew from CBC who are filming a documentary about our journey to Austin. The documentary will air in BC sometime in July, and if well-received, it may air nationally (no guarantee though). More on that later.
Aside from beautiful drives and the debauchery in Austin, we’ve all been having an awesome time together. We’re really lucky to be in a band in which we all get along so well. We’ve been using our time off as best as possible, seeing the new sights and getting to know our new band member, Nathan. None of us can say a single bad thing about the guy, on or off stage. He fits in with us like a brother, and musically he brings a tightness we’ve never experienced before. Many awesome times to come ahead, I’m sure of it.

I’ll wrap this up by letting you know that we’ve been playing a few new tunes on the road, and if all goes according to plan we’ll be recording a new album this summer, which means we’ll likely have a new album for you early 2012. An EP could drop sooner than that depending on how things unfold for us this Fall. We’re just taking everything in stride right now, nothing set in stone.
If you’re still reading this, congratulations for making it past the first 140 characters! Virtual high five!
Much love from the road,
TB (on behalf of Said The Whale)