This is the first song written and recorded after moving to my new place a month ago, my fourth apartment in Montreal, and my fourth apartment with a shitty shower. To get the temperature right, I have to turn the cold water as high as it can go, then turn the hot a water about three millimeters. Any higher than that it would burn, and any lower than that it wouldn’t even be on. At my last place the shower was squeezed beneath a stairway so that it was shaped like a right triangle, with the highest point still too low to comfortably stand. Before that, my shower was in one of those tubs that stands on four feet, but the feet were uneven, so it would rock back and forth while I was in there. Finally, at my first place, where I lived several years ago, the water pressure was so low that it felt like someone was peeing on my head (don’t ask me how I know that). The point is, if you come to Montreal, take a bath.

This song, called “Wood,” is inspired by the idea that “If you didn’t know the history, you’d never guess it,” such as in contemporary Lithuania or in Northern Ireland, places that are full of ghosts, both figuratively and literally. The first part of the song is about the little clues you find lying about the place, little puzzle pieces, remnants of things which are no longer there. The second part is about the idea of moving on, of letting the ghosts leave. Not that I would know what it’s like, living in a place with such pressures and allegiances to history.

People say there’s a stigma about being an Anglophone in Montreal, especially one who doesn’t feel obliged to speak French (oh mon dieu!), but that’s nothing. What makes Montreal so unique among North American cities is that everyone speaks their own languages proudly. The English/French divide is a myth. Hebrew and Italian, among others, are just as much languages of this city as French and English. If the rest of the province wants to feel offended by this, rather than proud of it, that’s their problem.

By the way, check out the new page The Dregs, which includes a couple of our tunes!

I’ve revamped the blog (still in progress)! This was done mainly so that it would have the capacity for more information. Notice the new Upcoming Shows page. I’m also working on the About page and will be making a page for my new band The Dregs. I’m finding it difficult to write about my own stuff, which is why I may never have an EPK. I definitely don’t want to talk about myself in third person, and nobody can really “tell it like it is” about their own material. That’s why people are always so unhelpful when you ask them what kind of music do they play. You always walk away shaking your head and wondering how many times someone can say “kind of like…” in 30 seconds.

Photo by Samantha Scafidi

As you can see on the upcoming shows page, I just got back from a short tour out to Halifax with The Custom Outfit. The day after the second show in Halifax, I had to be in Montreal for a 6 PM sound-check with Zoutenn de Mondélé, part of the Nuits d’Afrique festival. That meant driving straight from the venue in Halifax to a friend’s place in Moncton, NB, where we had about 3 hours of sleep before getting up at 4 AM and getting back on the road. This was on top of an already significant case of exhaustion brought on by the necessary heavy drinking involved in touring, the unnecessarily long travel distances for such a short tour, and the hit-or-miss (and I mean MISS) accommodations on the trip.

Like my last posted song, this one was recorded and mixed several weeks ago, then forgotten about. Let me know what you think.

dgh

It’s June.

Today I performed a fantastic trick. Using only the side of my thigh, while my cellphone was in my pocket, I managed to call 911. When I heard the female french voice coming out of my pants, I was so surprised that I ended the call without explanation. I spent the next hour fretting about when the police would show up and if they would call my family to warn them that I may be in a life-threatening situation.

They never came, which I suppose is what I had hoped would happen, but it left me wondering what if I had actually been in peril? What if I had been tied up in the back of a van and I had secretly managed to dial 911 without my abductor’s knowledge? I would have been sorely disappointed at their failure to rescue me.

It’s a strange feeling, being disappointed when something that you hope doesn’t happen doesn’t happen.

So I wrote a song about it. Not really though, this song is not at all about that and this recording had been kicking around for a couple weeks while I have been washing old beer bottles.

A set of mandolin tunes.

“Oh…my…GOD. The triumphant return!” – Travis Reitsma

Last week, Thunder Bishop released The Shape of Shapes to be Shaped, an album of 14 brand-new songs written and recorded in the first week of February.

The album was recorded off-the-floor, with the minimal use of overdubs and a conservative number of takes. Most of the vocal songs had some overdubbing, the exceptions being Eat More Bread and Everybody Has The Same Coat, while most of the instrumentals don’t, the exception being Spanish Fly.

The music is pretty well balanced between classic-sounding stuff and newish territory. There’s less of the trademark sloppyness, but it’s there. Tracks like Punt-All, Lyt?, Whiskey Thief and Turtle Bat are distinctly Thunder Bishop, as is the angry keyboard of 72nd Reconnaissance-Commando Battalion, where the three of us all traded instruments (and not for the only time). We’re also no stranger to the punk sound of Everybody Has The Same Coat or the raw pop of Eat More Bread, the centerpiece of the album.

Deep Skin Peel, performed by Eric and his cat, is a bit of a tangent, and is quickly followed by Brush Your Teeth, performed without Eric, which includes Joe playing the accordion, a new instrument for Thunder Bishop, also featured in the aptly-named Spanish Fly, the intentionally non-Thunder-Bishopy introductory track.

God Invented Advertising arguably crosses over into hip-hop territory, across the fine line from the spoken word of Whiskey Thief (which features Maria Pranschke on bgvs). The bass line quotes Bourée by JS Bach in the chorus, and Joe plays the washboard tie.

With Are You Dead?, we successfully turned a normal-sounding song into… something else. It features one of the relatively-few jammy moments on the album, sharing that distinction with the end of Whiskey Thief and the verses of Eat More Bread.

72nd Reconnaissance-Commando Battalion would qualify as a jam, probably being the song with the least planning done prior to pressing record, but it has turned out to be one of my favourites.

Echolocation is one of our sloth-songs, slow-moving and ugly. It was the last thing recorded and it was designed to close the album.

The album can be streamed in its entirety at thunderbishop.bandcamp.com.