the shadowy birds stare desolately at the illuminated cityscape below. "is there any fucking reason this place leaves the lights on all night? this incomprehensible prison! whose buildings are judgment! whose mind is pure machinery! whose blood is running money! whose eyes are a thousand blind windows! whose skyscrapers stand in the long streets like endless jehovahs! these lights don’t really seem necessary as the minions will always find their way to their hollow cubicles every morning!" the birds cackle, for lack of a better word. squandering in the distance is a wolf traveling through the alleyways. he too feels the angst of a glowing ghost town at night. "either you act like vegas/manhattan or shut the shit off!" he howls (pun intended). "visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies! all going down the ... the ... (quick think of a body of water nearby that you can reference) thames river! ... robot apartments! invisible suburbs! arrgghh!" wolf smashes through a store window and declines the opportunity to steal anything. the siren call out into the streets is content serenity enough. the sound is like a sad dove crying in the night, crippled in the curbside drinking the fledgling rain water left behind in a city where they repeatedly step over him to get coffee. "whose soul is electricity and banks!" dove scowls. "who chained themselves to subways for the endless ride!" who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving behind nothing but the shadow of dungarees and the lava and ash of poetry scattered in fire place Chicago." "we haven't done that quite yet" says wolf, "but it was good." "oh" realizes dove. "yeeahhh ... try again" pleads wolfy. "k ... who howled on their knees in the subway and were dragged off the roof waving genitals and manu-scripts" "hmmm sounds like something i'd do. got any more for me?" toils wolfman. "who balled in the morning in the evenings in rose gardens and the grass of public parks and cemeteries scattering their semen freely to whomever come who may" cries dove. "what a wicked potty mouth you have! must be the water you're drinking" "yum" "i think i like you." "likewise alot" and so begins the journey. two separate breeds looking for that one piece of liberal promiseland that the west propagates. upon the rooftops, crow curses the buildings as he watches his pals fly one by one into the windows like foreshadowy broken beer bottles on an assembly line. "maybe this is all wrong! maybe we should do less! do nothing! if we didn't fly around so much, we wouldn't diiiieeee!!!" he screeches. this revelation, causing several breeds to freeze mid-air and drop in a coyote/roadrunner-like fashion, makes the ornithologists question and retrace their steps. regaining composure, the flailing wings rebuild their stride, coming back to join crow on the rooftop. "you know, you're right" says sparrow. "i don't really know how we got into this mess to begin with. we should stop grinding the day to day night by night and start looking for the .. the ... the ancient heavenly connection." "right, like that time you ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in paradise alley with wolf?" asks crow. "no, but i mean ... it just seems like there's more." "it's true; we have been and we are incomparably blind" ensures robin. a quiet moment passes as an army, a civilization if you will, of birds watch wolf and dove pound the pavement below. (a beat) (then ... another) "well we're not gonna do this any longer. not until we (as in they) can change the way we're (as in they're) treating the environment globally. how about no birds flying around your city? that'll teach em. we will from now on always be on the tops of cities contemplating jazz, not just burning for that angry fix" leads crow. heard from far beneath, wolf and dove bond with birds in the bliss of a broken supernatural alley darkness. "you know, maybe we should just move to new zealand" says wolf. after a ponderous moment passes, dove replies ... "i'm with you in auckland."
howl was formed by synchronistic odd happenstances & strange occurrences within the inner cinesphere that is ontario's capital in our home and native land. from ontario's great north emerged a bass player who saw the world through dark and dismal clouds from his dark and dismal cavern in a dark and dismal barrie-ul-ground. in constant will to thrust about bass swell after bass swell towards the cruel earth, it could only be for so long till he sought camaraderie to fill the ever prevailing gap within his lonely soul so that it could project something deeper, crisp, encapsulating into the universe. enter ricardo jonathan lawrence - a dazzling redhead with enough empirical narcotic/intoxicant knowledge, economic gene and cell count & tasty phish lix to boot. a ‘jack’ of all trades and travels, the only thing he considered himself to have not done? well ... toured with phish. that would've and would still be awesome. but he'll settle for howl if they can wield the sword that is rock upon and through a post-modern era of wanker making money music where the quality of your tuneage is often judged not by its well ... quality but by how many times you've been shot. next we see a shift back to ontario's greater north area (the g.n.a. if you will) to the mental patient/prisoner capital of canadanistan otherwise known as 'the tang.' out of the pen of madness came/sprang forth not the turkey, not the chicken or rooster but the ... (yes you guessed it) rod! conceived with drumstix in hand and death metal eardrums, also enamored and influenced by dance beats and the grade school girls of his past, one pete rodgers dove head-first into the kit that was to back the tonal noises so far created in the duo soon to graduate cum lada trio. lastly in due time, words and even more instrumentation if even possible, didn't seem to be a bad idea for the few and far between who couldn't speaketh the language that was so far being spoketh. long hibernateth in a world ranging from folk musik to theatre, to bboyism to dial-up porn, willeth hemmings came out to slowly recover from musical cabin fever. a mutt to canada, but unable to find a reason not to settle within the city from whence he was born and came with this interesting trio of sorts, will’s dramaturgical background and obvious crush on joni mitchell directed his axe wielding and piano thirst toward the already blossoming melodic tree that howleth in the wind. it was not long before will's ultra sad nostalgic bastard persona met the darkness of scotty's notes, the illicit fingering effects of rick lawrence and the deus ex machina des darling pete rodgers to collaborate and co-exist somewhere between the lines of indie rawk, folk rawk and badass beat poetry. this be the band that is howl, who enjoy horseback riding, climbing ridiculously tall trees and even a playful game of chess every now and then. these 4 men with cat and house and basement rehearsal space and shopping cart long to serenade you – the lonely star-gazed traveler/tourist/angel/rebellion. the ep is being recordeth as we speak … eth. so I guess that means we’ll be seeing you soon? to be continued …
i have two songs ready for you and scott to work on... i'll email them tomorrow... they're played to a click...
brad and i recorded at my house.... george bailed so brad just went and rented some shit.... it actually sounds really good... send them off tomorrow... j. xo
Happy Friday. I'm playing at the Drake Underground this coming Wednesday (June 4th). It's a really sweet bill and I'm excited for it! Please come out if you can. Your support is much appreciated :-)
I just missed your set at Rancho Relaxo, but it's great to see the band moving forward. I was at the Holy Joes show awhile back, and knowing how much the band rocks, people are gonna love you. Onwards and upwards guys.
Thanks so much for coming out on Friday - hope you enjoyed the new set and material. Let us know if the new tracks hold the same rhythmic weight as old Maple Wine seems to!
Yo gents... Sorry we couldn't make the trip down last night ...just way to much shit on the go right now. Hope all went well though! How is the Drake to play?
Hey Guys, I wish you were playing at the drake at the end of april, because right now i'm in Tampa, Florida. I will be back in Toronto end of April. If there are any shows in Toronto then please let me know :)
weird compliment here but I gotta say it. Awesome bass drum!
haha , I've been working on my first album and for some reason out of all the instruments in the world, the bass drum is the hardest to record. I must have spent at least two hours just making a single bass drum for my most recent song.
Hey Guys, let me know when you have a concert in Toronto, or in London ontario because I would go! I just went to the Collective Soul concert and it was so fun and the fact that you guys sound better then collective makes me believe that your concert rocks too :) Take care :)
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix; Angel-headed hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night. (Howl by Allen Ginsberg)
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