Five Alarm Funk

West coast drum scene with FAF!

Tim Proznick with the westcoast drum scene came down to our show at venue nightclub and put together this killer video!!! check it out

It’s almost time for us to get in the van, put on the winter tires, and go visit all the lovely people west of Ontario. Here’s all the dates:

Vancouver, BC – Nov. 10 – Venue - http://on.fb.me/u8OK0i
Revelstoke, BC – Nov. 11 – Big Eddy Pub
Nelson, BC – Nov. 12 – Spirit Bar
Banff, AB – Nov. 13 – Wild Bill’s
Jasper, AB – Nov. 14 – Horseshoe Club
Edmonton, AB – Nov. 16 – Starlite Room - http://on.fb.me/v3Crqv
Regina, SK – Nov. 17 – Distrikt - http://on.fb.me/vgYufO
Winnipeg, MB – Nov. 18 – Pyramid Cabaret
Saskatoon, SK – Nov. 19 – Amigo’s - http://on.fb.me/sKZdsV
Canmore, AB – Nov. 20 – The Drake
Lethbridge, AB – Nov. 23 – The Slice - http://on.fb.me/uorS27
Calgary, AB – Nov. 24 – Republik - http://on.fb.me/rNdbmb
Fort Saskatchewan, AB – Nov. 25 – Dow Centennial Centre
Rossland, BC – Nov. 26 – Film Fest at Miner’s Hall

We just found out that we got the award for Instrumental Recording of the Year for for our album Anything Is Possible. Thanks!!

Okay. Here’s the facebook event link for our Nov. 10 Vancouver show: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=266123323419740

And here’s the deets:

Five Alarm Funk
with guests The Boom Booms and Timothy Wisdom
November 10, 2011
Venue
881 Granville St.
Doors 9:00 PM
Tickets on sale October 3
$20 in advance from Zulu, Highlife, Red Cat records
Online at http://fivealarmfunkvenue.eventbrite.com/

www.fivealarmfunk.com
www.theboombooms.ca
www.timothywisdom.com

The other Western Canada dates are going to be announced real soon!

Just confirmed we’re playing Venue on November 10 as our fall tour kick-off show. Going to be announcing special guests and ticket details soon. The tour will take us across Western Canada so stay tuned for dates.

We just got back from Jazz On The Mountain At Whistler and with that completed our run of summer festivals. It’s been great times from Sunfest in London, Ontario to Ness Creek in northern Saskatchewan to the Salmon Arm Roots and Blues. It’s great to see so many festivals doing so well across Canada and thanks to everyone who supports them!

Really, really fun. We played Sunday at the Vancouver International Jazz Festival on the Gastown stage at Water and Carrall streets and truly had the time of our lives. Looking out at the crowd was an awesome experience. Most shows there are lights shining in our faces and it’s hard to see past the first couple rows of people. This one I felt like I could see every single person’s face and it was inspiring to see all the positive reactions. I think there were 2000 – 3000 people there and the organizers said it was an attendance record at that stage. Thanks to everyone who came down and made it happen!

Next show is the Victoria Jazz Fest July 3. Then we’re excited to be flying out to Ontario! Here’s the dates:

Toronto – July 6 – Horseshoe Tavern  - http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=119253204830464
Burlington – July 7 – The Red Rooster
Windsor – July 8 – Phog Lounge
London – July 8 and 9 – Sunfest!

This is an interview done right after the Jazz Fest show with Tom and Tayo. The beverage Tom is consuming is a Blueberry Tilt, a 12% malt liquor available for $2.50 at American gas stations.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrsVM4SlN7Y

Here are a few other videos from the show people have posted on youtube. Thanks for sharing!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vt6UNsYPUpI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOm8C1Clwcg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYnpKsNY2ds

Thunder Bay rocks!! Who knew that place has some of the best parties around? This is a video from our show at Crock’s in Thunder Bay, Ontario during our spring cross-Canada tour. We’re playing one of our new tunes – “Wash Your Face”. We’ve been getting a lot of offers from soap and shampoo companies to use this song in their commercials so if you happen to be running a marketing campaign for facial hygiene products I suggest you get in touch quick before the rights get snapped up.

Watch the video here!!

Thanks to everyone who came out to the hometown show. It was a real heart-warming and inspiring night. Check out these two links for awesome photos from the show by a couple of cool online magazines:

Scene In The Dark

The Futurists

Also this review from Scene In The Dark captures the sexual energy pretty well! She even describes “the deeply depraved antics of percussionist Carl Julig.” FULL ARTICLE

I just recently had this Twitter exchange and it has inspired me to try to answer this question with a little more detail.

Here’s an example: The tune we’re working on right now is a groove that Neil came up with on his loop station back in February. He had two funky single-note guitar lines and a bass part. It gave a real old-school Parliament, Funkadelic kind of vibe. We didn’t have time to work much out for it before we left on tour though. A few weeks into the trip, somewhere in Ontario, we came across a terrible review of our album on the internet. The guy pretty much hated it, which we thought was quite the honour. I mean, you really know you made it when some random dude gives enough of a shit about you to write 1000 words on how much you suck. Later that night, inspired by the critic, Tayo came up with some vocals to go with Neil’s groove.

When we got back to Vancouver we knew this was one of the things we wanted to work on so Neil got together with Kent for a writing session. They came up with a chord progression variation, a few horn lines for the main groove, and a general idea of a form. We rehearsed on Monday and started playing the intro to the tune which is just Ollie’s guitar part from the main groove. At this point Tayo suggested that when the beat kicks in there should be a giant horn blast – like the “biggest ever.” Now, usually when there’s an idea Tayo likes he gets pretty stoked about it. He’ll be sitting behind the drums saying “the horns should go like this – BAAAAAAAHH!!” and his feet will come off the floor and he’ll have this giant grin on his face and it’s pretty hard to not like the idea with that kind of infectious enthusiasm. After that, Kent and Nimish proceeded to work out the details of the “verse” horn lines, which transitioned nicely into the vocal section. After a little debate it was decided the horns shouldn’t come in behind the vocals and should wait until after to start doing some swells. The swells would build into the chord progression variation, which we decided to call the chorus. The only problem was this kind of sucked. The swelling build didn’t flow well into the new chord. Instead, we decided to go to an amped up version of the main groove with this super busy, punchy horn line for 4 bars and then hit the chorus after that.

That’s about as far as we got on Monday. We left rehearsal with Neil mentioning there should be a part with the guitars and bass matching, kind of a super-funky soli section. For our Wednesday rehearsal I decided to get there a little early and try to figure something out for that part of the tune. While I was on the bus on  the way down I started getting some ideas. The thing is, I’m not a good enough musician to have ideas in my head and then get them to flow seamlessly out on the guitar. It’s a pretty big process of trial and error eventually settling on something I like, usually quite different than what I had in my head. The original idea is essential though. Without the idea I pick up a guitar and it just looks like a guitar. Anyway, I came up with this section of guitar lines that trade back and forth a bit before culminating in a massive rising 16th note run. The guys got there and we started working on this new section, looping parts and playing them over and over again so everyone could get them down. Especially this epic rising part we slowed down to a crawl and played about 15 times in a row. By the end it was sounding pretty good but we pretty much spent two hours working on 16 bars of music. It was a productive rehearsal.

Hopefully we’ll be playing this one for you soon!

-Gabe