This Saturday (Dec 8th 2007) is "Happy Endings"- the monthly Boston dance night. theWANDAS are big fans of this night, and have made it a habbit of attending almost everything month over the last two years. It's a huge thrill that I will be a guest DJ this saturday. You can probably expect all of my favorite GDM; i.e. Erasure, Flesh for Lu Lu, When in Rome, and whatever else strikes me at the moment.

Anyway, get there early as the night usually fills up. I'll be looking forward to everyone shaking it on the dance floor. 

-Ross 

After our crazy thanksgiving, criss-crossing the state, family events and over eating all brought to a climax by one raucous show at Tammany Hall in Worcester, MA, I think it was inevitable; we got the flu.

I got it first right after the weekend and Keith followed suit a day after me. Our house looked like a quarantined hospital after a biological outbreak.  Lifeless bodies sprawled out on the couch, tissues everywhere, half drank mugs of tea, a few grunts and moans can be heard over the old Seinfeld reruns  playing in the background that no one has the energy to watch.  Fast forward a week and we're pretty much back to good health.

I just met up with Chris O'Coin. He headed up the PureVolume .com video piece we filmed a couple months back. The video includes some live tracks and an 8 minute press reel. He showed me the first cut of the press reel and it looks absolutely amazing. It has some studio footage along with live performance and some interviews.  He does awesome work, and we're really happy to be teamed up with him. As soon as the piece is completed we'll be sure to get it out to WANDA NATION.

Expect more on the blog now that we're back in good health.

-Ross 

We're back in Boston with our final mixes for the new ep. We took it relatively easy our last night in Montreal. We went out for a late dinner and drinks and called it a night. Even though we were planning on an early night, I think we ended up staying out until about 3:30am which felt like 10PM at that point. We got a good night sleep and headed back to Allston rock city.

We have some cool plans for the release of the EP so stay posted for the latest updates here. We'll see everyone this Saturday at Tammany Hall in Worcester, MA

-WANDA 

After our hefty 2 hours of sleep we set out to go to Clement's home/studio to finishing mixing our songs. Clement lives about 45 minutes outside of Montreal. His place is  completely in the boonies which makes it a very peaceful place to visit. The scenery on the way there was pretty impressive. 

Just to give you some background on Clement. We were introduced to him through Patrick. He works with practically everyone in Montreal. He's also an accomplished vocalist and his been playing in bands, touring, recording, etc for over 20 years. He's been mixing our album with collaboration from us via phone and email. However, we haven't actually met him in person until today.

We pull up to his house and he meets us outside. "The Wandas are in the building he yells in a welcoming tone". He brings us inside, shows us his home, his studio, offers his home to us as if it was ours. A very nice guy.

He can tell we're pretty beat from last night as Brent says "yeah, we're a little hung over; we didn't sleep much". "No problem my friends, I have just the remedy for you" says Clement. He brings us into his kitchen pulls out 4 shot glasses and a bottle of 10 year old malt scotch whiskey. "You may not like the remedy at first, but I gurantee it will make you feel better". I can see Keith almost gagging from the sight and smell of the shots being poured. "Cheers!" we throw back the shots. 

Keith braces himself over the sink for support from feeling woozy and just in case the scotch didn't settle so well. I look at Brent and he has a giant smile on his face with tears coming out of his eys "I feel much better" he says. He puts is index finger pressed against his lips as if he was 'shushing' someone. His cheeks blow up like Dizzy Gillespie and he casually walks to the trash, opens the lid and pukes directly into it. Clement pulls out some gum and puts his arm around Brent and says "what a great first impression, I love this guy!"

I  must say I actually felt fine for the rest of the day. After that, we fired up "Thank You Note" (one of our new songs) and proceeded to work out some kinks in the mix. We really plowed through everything at a good clip. Some of Clement's friends came by chatted with us for a bit, listened to some of the mixes and just hung out. Clement has a great house for relaxing and working on music. They've recorded a bunch of albums in his house because it has great acoustics. 

There is a real sense of local music and strong support that follows it. Over the course of the day, about half a dozen friends came by to say hello, talk about new projects they're working on and just hang out. Martin (Bassist of The Dears) was among the people who popped in, as he's good friends with Clement. He's also been recording a side project at Clement's house  too.  We're hoping to play a couple shows with them in Boston and Montreal.

We're real happy with how everything came out. Clement did a great job and he even offered to mix one more song for us that we recorded after the initial 3 songs. Once we wrapped things up we headed back to the hotel for one more night on the town. All in all this has been a great trip. Lots of fun and lots of progress for the band.

Cheers,

Ross 

O.k. so we've seen in the past we're not big fans of moderation. Last night was no exception. After getting settled in we decided to take in some of the Montreal night life. We got to the first bar on Peel St. around 10:30pm. Obviously we can't go ten feet without bumping into a high-fiving Red Sox fan. Everyone in Red Sox nation is in good spirits. Looking for a change of scenery we decide to check out another bar around 11:30.

Not everyone was in as good of spirits here. While we were in line for the coat check, there is the standard- guy who has had too much to drink and is in limbo between leaving on his own and being kicked out.  He's standing at the top of the stairs and the bouncers are not going to let him get past the entrance way. All he wants to do is "talk to his friends" who are at the bar, but can't put two sentences together. At this point his friends come out to meet him and the bouncers are backing them down the stairs.

The three friends are standing halfway down the stairway and the leader of the pack is still standing his ground at the top of the 20-stair staircase. After about 10 minutes of this charade, the bouncers have seen enough. I whip my head around to what just sounded like someone throwing a bag of bowling balls down a stairwell. The bouncer had picked the one guy up and threw him down the stairs where he hit his three friends and they all rolled to the bottom for a perfect strike. Brent looked at me and said "this is my type of place, let's get a drink".

We stayed at this bar for another hour and then headed over to "Pistol" on St. Laurent to meet up with Patrick. George (The Dears drummer) was sitting right by door and saw us walk in. He had no idea we were in Montreal so it was quite a surprise for him to see us walking into his local bar. Soon after, Patrick showed up sporting his finest playoff beard. Andre (Bassist for Krief) Oliver (Bassist for The Stills) and a bunch of other friends were there as well. We all stayed until the place closed down around 3am.

Patrick took us to a friend's apartment where we hung out until about 6am. We took a cab back to the hotel and called it a night; a morning? I woke up to Brent's cell phone alarm blaring that he had tactfully set for 8am. Off to the studio to mix.

Rock & Roll

-Ross