It’s the morning before tour and it just occurred to me that this is really happening. Jesse and I are leaving this afternoon to go to another town and play our songs (some old, some new) for our fans (some old, some new!). There is something really special that happens between a band and an [...]
Ok.
Almost exactly eleven years ago to the day, Jesse picked up a bass and wrote three songs. He recorded them to his 8-track recorder (far too many tracks as it turns out) then played them for me in his car and said, “We should start a band.”
I said, “Ok.”
So we wrote a couple more songs.
Nine months later Jesse said, “We should go play some shows.”
I said, “Ok.”
We got into Jesse’s car (‘93 Honda) and drove to Cleveland to play a show in a wrestling gym. After sitting around the parking lot for a couple of hours while a modest crowd of angular-groomed kids gathered, a wrestler with a bleached blond mullet-mohawk drove up in his pick-up truck and said that there would be a no show tonight.
We said, “Ok.”
So we drove through the night across the I-80, counting splattered deer carcasses all the way to New York City, absolutely out of our minds on tall can energy drinks and Ephedrine pills (which were, at the time, still legal).
After arriving Jesse admitted to me that he’d been hallucinating old men walking onto the interstate.
I said: “Ok…”
This was my first trip to NYC, and to say I was happy to be alive would be an understatement.
I may have been really living for the very first time.
We spent that day walking around Manhattan smoking cigarettes, going to record shops and loitering. That evening, still with no sleep, we drove to Long Island and played our first show on a rooftop at someone’s house whom I have no recollection of. We played our five songs as fast and as hard as we could, and within eleven minutes we were done, both of us drenched in sweat and ready to die.
I said: “That was Ok.”
Jesse agreed and we continued in this way, never stopping to think for the next few years. Our way of always moving forward took us from that living room in Long Island, to hockey arenas and around the world a handful of times.
What next? Want to do it all again?
“Ok.”
So here we go. Jesse and I have been writing new songs and the only way we feel like we can make them any good is to go out and play them for people. We’re going to throw our little muscle bound babies to the lions and see who survives. We tried just jumping into the studio, but the songs lacked spirit. They lacked life.
So this tour is song CPR.
There’s no way for us to do it anonymously anymore, so we’re inviting you to come along with us. Watch us Do It. The way we used to. The way everyone used to. We’re a band, and bands just work it out together.
See you soon.
Sebastien 1979
SOME WORDS
It’s been 5 years since Death From Above 1979 played a show, 10 years since Jesse played me the first demos & 11 years since we sat in his parents basement and played so loud we knocked the china off the shelves upstairs. 11 seems to be a YES number for me. Though I am usually a pretty rational guy, if I have something on my mind and I see an 11 somewhere, I know I’m on the right path. It’s one of my last remaining superstitions. 2011 has a nice ring to it & if you’re so inclined, it may be the last year ever! So why not say YES? Why not say YES to Coachella? Why not say YES to playing the music we designed to be an undeniable source of power? Why not say YES to stirring up a writhing pit of sweaty humans? YES to riots! YES to heavy music! YES instead of maybe, and YES to make death your adviser and remind yourself always, that this is not a dress rehearsal. This is the big show.
Jesse and I have decided that what we can do together should not be denied.
Together again, as was always the intention, as a collaboration.
The collision of two different worlds.
As this all takes shape, we will reveal it to you.
All of it happening, as it always has, in our own way.
Thank you all for sharing in our excitement!
Yes.
SEBASTIEN
