My "Fuck Ontario" Attitude...

Stephen just spent the night on a greyhound (after being searched for knives).
It's gonna take him three days to get across our massive, frozen country. (I pity the fool!) (I guess I can say that cause he can't read this for a few days!)

We played three shows in Ontario recently and I wrote an enormous blog-that-took-me-two-hours-to-write before my internet browser crashed. Then I re-wrote the enormous blog and my computer crashed. Then all inspiration left me.
But I'll give it another shot.

WATERLOO

We played at the infamous Trepid House, where Jeff Woods, who runs everything Trepid, made our heads inflate by calling us his favourite band! (and he took us out for tacos, which ranks him unbeatably high.)

The Story of how we met Jeff

We were riding the bus in Vancouver a year and a half ago, (back when we lived on a roof) and Stephen commented on someone's Modest Mouse t-shirt. It turns out that it was the bearer-of-the-shirt's first day in Vancouver. We were going to Gastown to busk and thought he might want to see the area, so we invited him along. Brad spent the entire day with us as we busked in a few locations, and played at a house party that night. We thought he would be completely Triked out by that point, but he invited us to play at his room-mates birthday/Halloween party.

The house was full of tipsy, costumed guests, none of whom felt inclined to watch our performance. Our audience consisted of Brad and his brother, Jeff, who was visiting from Ontario. Jeff took some great photos of us that night (see "Shitty House party, Great photos"), and when we passed the hat and made $2.33, he felt inclined to slip us $40.
He told us that if we ever played in Ontario, to stop by the Trepid House. We finally did.

The show there was amazing!!
Last time we played Ontario, our audiences were on morphine. I didn't feel too inspired to return to the province, but I'm so glad we did.

The crowd was involved, appreciative and bought ALL of our cds. There was an amazing exhibition upstairs by Dave the artist. Steph was there (she saw us in Vancouver and Victoria, and is totally stalking us).

Jeff's room-mate, Steph, made us blueberry pancakes and coffee and great conversation in the morning, something I wish I could have at every meal.
The whole Trepid experience was magical.

TORONTO

My first thought when I walked into The Boat was "Whoa, this place is swanky".
The room is bathed in red velvet, there's a golden stage, and we were immediately greeted by a spiffy-looking fellow in a suit, who introduced himself as "Keith" (little did I know that I would soon see Keith dancing in his underwear).

CJ, our friend from Vancouver, started the evening off with poetry and dark songs as belly dancers tantalized the quiet, attentive crowd. It was great seeing him perform again. I forgot how beautifully dire he was.

Picassio went up next, with fun, drunken, quirky songs about crack.

We went on last, and the entire room danced uninhibitedly. Conrad, the long-haired, peanut-butter drummer was there, with his friends. We ended up hanging out with them, and Keith-the-booker all night and all morning.
It was another magical time.

Keith invited us to play another show that Friday at an 'underwear party'. Trike, coupled with underwear, is pretty much the best match imaginable!
So I got to see a roomful of peeps strip down. (Including Bryn and Liene, two of Stephen's old friends, who both look pretty sexy in panties...)
We stayed with Bryn, who was unbelievably hospitable (though her cats are a little strange, Stephen got into a scrap with one of them.)

My fuck-Ontario attitude did a 180.

PHOTOS!



Trepid House B-fast with Steph



CJ and Belly dancer



Picassio



The Trikey Crowd





Jogging at the Boat




Keith the spiffy booker




Kensington Market



Underwear Party!

nice review of our show in toronto: the BOAT!

http://lonelyvagabond.com/wpmu/2009/01/22/trike-the-boat/

apparently this guy writes for exclaim, too, which is pretty sweet.

check out the link. he writes all sorts of reviews etc. and it's a cool site.

here's what he said... :

TRIKE - THE BOAT
A duo that creates mesmerizing, loin shaking, beat-driven synth-pop that gives a nod to 80’s bands like Erasure and New Order. But that was just part of the fun. Stephen Taylor and Xania Keane is awash in classic New Wave-isms, high-kicking and posturing, sprinkling their set with disco-leaning point-to-the-sky poses. Trike is way beyond catchy, delivering relentless party-style energy that kept the crowd dancing, as well as sparking a trip down memory lane.


xo
stephen

Not enough time...

Not Enough Time In Life...

There is simply not enough time to do everything you want to in life.

I really want to paint. More.

But so many things keep you from really focusing on what you want to do. Me? I get sucked into internet shit, watch too many movies, socialize etc... Yes, focus on the band a LOT, but still never feel like I'm doing enough. Should be writing songs every day... should be working on a painting a week... but I let it slide...

However, I really think we should sell our paintings... both of us make paintings... Xboxx makes large, uber naturalistic pieces with loads of detail. I make small organically abstract, playful pieces...

Perhaps we can sell them on the website. Now that our winnings have dwindled down to about two thou, we have to proceed with caution. We have no idea when we'll get money again, and we have three months planned in Europe. I think we will try an approach of advertising and selling homemade CDs and t shirts from our site (and myspace). I think, if we work on it, it might pay off... yes, there's cdbaby, but the fact is, it costs so much to send them CDs and we're doing this whole homemade thing, so it might pay off to just sell them ourselves. AND, of course, sell songs online. But it's taking awhile to set up. Kinda wish I knew how to make websites. Patrick is doing a great job, but it would be great if I could also do some work... then again, there is already so much to do for the band. It's overwhelming. But this year, we HAVE to make it so we continue to be self-sufficient. It's a necessity. And entirely possible. We just have to figure out how... it's a puzzle.

I have a dream of making my living with art and music. Xania and I have managed to do this for a year and a half, so far, with Trike, but we have to keep focusing on it to sustain it. Neither of us are business-heads, but we have to try ...

We will make another vlog soon. We've been recording so our communication with the public has not been what it usually is... but now recording is done like dinner... and sounding pretty nice...

Not too many people have seen this: us with a drummer in St. John

George Stroumboulopoulos - Samba-style unplugged

Here is our song about G.S. with a samba beat and Chewby and John Keane wailin' away on geetars:

Happy Jesus and Santa 2009: our accomplishments

Happy Jesus and Santa and stuff.

Here is our blog: FINALLY.

I will be pasting blogs from our myspace here, from now on. But this one is a true original.

I'm sitting in our room in Montreal listening to a myspace band: Raul Lavadenz. They're frantic.
I was annoyed because the singer seems to be trying to sing "meow meow meow" all the time, but the vocal-less songs are much more enjoyable.

The last year was aMAZing:

Toured Europe, made three music videos, won $20,000, bought laptops, played about 100 shows (Trike), ended up with a few radio interviews, wrote a wack of new tunes, made a new album which is still in production ... and I started growing my hair long, as you can see in our New Years video we made on... you guessed it... New Years:



And here is a compilation from a bunch of shows we did in the last year:



Here is one of the music videos we made:



Our website is coming along. I have to get the website guy more information, including info about this blog, before he soups it up and makes it sexy... because right now there are links to our facebook and myspace, but that's it.

Last note: Things are good. We are following our bliss and happy doing it. Our last Montreal show was way busier than I thought it would be, and I was happy! Sexy girls dancing, my brother performed (as "Pooprider"... his name causes controversy), and the walls were shaking like it was 2009... and I made fun of Xania's mom from the stage.

Here is an inspiring clip I saw, for anyone trying to make it as an artist/musician: