The End of the World Music Festival

Sometime in late 2011, as we were starting to embark on our next record, a specter arose and laid claim to our current moniker, throwing in a threat of legal action. Rather than continue to beat a Dead Horse, we took it as an opportunity to look for something new.

Then an entire year passed… no legal action occurred, and as we have always liked our name, it was easy to avoid making any decisions. The world is coming to an end soon anyhow, so perhaps avoidance is the best tactic:

As the universe crumbles around us we will yell out or new name into a churning black cloud, saving a mystical world from certain destruction………

Actually we were given a great opportunity to officially retire the name “Deadhorse”  in grand and ritualistic fashion as part of the The End Of The World Music Festival on Friday December 21st. After all, if it really is the end of the world, what better to send it off than at a giant party filled with alien ambassadors, strange rituals and a whole lot of wild caterwauling. We look forward to that night, and partying with you all as we spiral into the next dimension.

If we are still here on December 22, it will be a new era for bandkind!

Mini Winter Prairie Tour

One thing about being a Canadian band is that you just cannot avoid the influence of the winter. It can be felt over the many dark months as we fend off the cabin fever by making the blistering noises that float up from the basement, its in the shuffle over ice-slick ground hauling heavy gear into the back door of a venue as your breath steams the air. It’s there in those days when ice crystals recreate the familiar as surreal, and you write sunshine-tinged music to transport you to to the beach in your mind.

During the summer you try your best for a few short months to forget that it exists. But sometimes it’s the winter that really brings us together, once all the distractions of the summer have passed, it’s the best time to get down to business. Maybe there’s a reason why the last time I did a piece of writing for this blog it was also about the influence of winter, for a Canadian this is the definition of a recurring theme.

Sometimes the winter turns up unexpectedly, like the time it found us smack in the middle of the # 1 highway between Regina and Winnipeg in the middle of April, as we were trying desperately to make it to the next gig. Well, it may have been a while since our last attempt but we are not to be deterred, at least this time we have come expecting it.

We kicked off our mini tour at Costello’s in Calgary night, squeezed 5 of us onto the tiny stage and kicked off the tour in style. I’m writing this from our van, we are doing the long night drive, it’s 1:38am and we just passed Swift current.There is a fine art to passing out in a van that is inconsistently heated and driving though a prairie winter that I have yet to master. Here is to another 9 or so hours on the road, can’t wait to finally rock out in Winnipeg!

Rainbow Faces

MTT

Well I know it has been a long time since you heard from us.… mostly it’s been winter and we have been in basements making strange noises trying to keep ourselves warm. These days we are stirring up some delectable new sounds, and this happens to be an ideal weekend for you to come out and hear them.

On this, the first day of spring, we can give you some pretty good ideas about how you might go about thawing your brain. MTT Fest warms up Friday with our show at the Palomino. Saturday it’s full steam ahead at the Legion, with another show for us, then events spread to multiple venues on Sunday with a plethora of good things to hear. That wacky duck that has been Calgary’s fledgling psych scene might just become a big wild swan, with the help of some international heavyweights.

Here are some of the radical promo videos our friends have been making:

MTT Fest from Down Home on Vimeo.

MTT FEST | MARCH 24-25 | Promo 003 from Ryan Von Hagen on Vimeo.