BISON bc!

    I have collaborated with Dan And of Bison on a few different articles for both the Skinny Magazine and Absolute Underground, so two months ago when I was working on an article about how Vancouver musicians spent their summer vacation Dan was top of the list of people to harass. I asked for photos and gave out a word count of 200 words, so when he submitted well over 700 words I was slightly taken aback. The worst part about it all was that every word submitted was gold, so editing it down to the alloted 200 words was not going to be an option. Instead I went to the music editor of AU and begged him to give this piece its own page. In the end it didn't take any begging as Absolute Underground are BIG Bison fans, and the music editor was at the epic Sled Island show that Dan wrote about in his story, so everything worked out great. I'm a firm believer that letting these musicians write their own pieces can sometimes turn out a lot better than if I was to interview them myself, especially when they have such good writing chops. Or possibly I'm just lazy and would prefer they do all the work. Well my name didn't go on this piece, as it shouldn't have, but the efforts I put forth to get it amongst the pages of Absolute Underground were definitely worth my time, and you too will soon see this if you read the article below.

HOW I SPENT MY SUMMER VACATION 
by Daniel And

   Any active, touring band that knows the slightest bit about how the 'industry' works knows that the worst thing you could do is put out a new record (DARK AGES, available now on Metal Blade Records) and then not tour behind it. Being the business savvy geniuses (geniui? genie-eye?) that we are, this is exactly what we did! Haza! We toured our asses off from February to May across Canada and America twice destroying towns and our livers with the likes of Goatwhore, Howl, Javelina, Priestess, Black Cobra and High on Fire (to name a few) and our album came out right before we got home. Unfortunately when you tour for three months straight some bills add up at home so back to work we went. That's how we spent our summer...so let me tell you all about how fun my job as a low budget TV movie set dresser is! Ok, first we get into our 5 ton truck and argue over whether or not we have time to stop for a coffee. Then we either go get a coffee or go to the prop house and load in the furniture and whatever else the decorator has picked out for the set, only to find out that they haven't actually picked anything yet and the prop house has no idea what we're talking about so we have to call the decorator (and leave a message cuz they are basically on their phone all day) and wait for them to talk to the prop shop and sort it out...coffee time! Bored yet?

   We DID spend one lost weekend in Calgary for Sled Island (Alberta's SXSW) but I'm sure you don't want to be bored with all that debaucherousness...well, ok. We pull into Calgary all blurry eyed from a late one in Edmonton the night before (when aren't they late ones in Edmonton?). Load into the Ship and Anchor, have some dinner, run into Pat from Trigger Effect and that’s basically the last clear memory I have. Hours and hours and many drinks later we take the tiny stage after being 'introduced' by Katie from C'mon (although she will later have no recollection of this whatsoever). The set starts and chaos ensues. An hour later we're all slumped over, soaked with sweat and beer, broken glass and blood everywhere. Fortunately the blood is from a gash I obtained from trying to play slide guitar with a smashed pint glass. Again, genius. The next thing I remember is dice start flying and James sharks us all. Turns out he's a closet street rules champ. At about 5am we head to our bud Sergey's to crash but he's forgotten to leave the door open so we party in his garage until he gets up for work. End day one.

   Day two, shake off the cobwebs and load in to Broken City. Caesar. Another Caesar. Starting to feel normal. We're playing with the Bronx and some other horrible hipster rock band, but Trigger Effect is here so we hang with them and avoid the El fuckin Mariachi Chongos like the plague. Play our early set and try to come close to replicating the night before but it can't be done. My fingers do continue to tear open and bleed though! Wee! Midway through our set our bud Levon shows up from Kamloops completely shit hammered. He was supposed to be there earlier in the afternoon but started pre-gaming a little too early, missed his flight and had to re-book. Several airport and in-flight cocktails later he touches down and somehow convinces a limo driver to bring him to the club. He hops out and pushes his way through the crowd and past the door guys on the merit that he just arrived in a limo and screams he knows us. I won't see him again until the next day when he catches a ride with us back to Kamloops, but apparently he was taken home by a lady caller then proceeds to pass out on her couch. Yes, he flew to Calgary and took a limo to our show so he could get black out drunk for like 10 hours, not get laid and then go straight back to Kamloops, what a guy! Finish off our Calgary trek by schmoozing my way into a way over packed Melvins show, accidentally hugging Dave Curran from Unsane in a highly erotic manner (thinking it was our bud Phil from the HoF tour who was standing right next to him), and then raging well into the morning one last time at Sergey's house. See ya next time Sled Island...maybe I'll even remember more of it...but probably not.


 Be sure to check out Bison @ The Biltmore on Friday December 10th! 

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