Transcript (auto-generated, may contain errors; songs left out)
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What's up, it is Sound Scene Revolution, I am Rich, and today we have a very special thing, interview for you guys here. All the way from Canada, and one of those French-speaking areas of Canada, like Paris or Ottawa, Montreal, some shit. Anyhow, French-Canadian Act, goes by the name of the St. Catharines, really awesome guy, there's like six people in the band, three guitar players, a bass player, a drummer, and the shirtless hairy guy called Hugo, who also specializes in hot tubbing and signing boobs. So, if you're interested in that, you're definitely going to want to stick around for this interview. We got, of course, at the end of the show, we have a giveaway that we will be doing, where you can get a copy of their new album, Dancing for Decadence, which won the Montreal Independent Music Album of the Year for Punk Rock, and we have a t-shirt, I believe it's in the large size, but, you know, if you don't fit a large, maybe your friend does, your boyfriend, your girlfriend, probably your girlfriend, because no women listen to the show, but that's how it is. Anyhow, so we're going to jump into the interview, it's really pretty good, they're fun guys. Before we do that, we're going to play a track off of their album, Dancing for Decadence, we're going to play the opening track called Burn, Golf, Burn, and then we're going to go into the interview, so I hope you enjoy it, and check it out.
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All right, what's up, thanks for tuning in to Sound Scene Revolution. We are coming to you live from the side of the Vets Hall in Santa Cruz, and we're hanging out with the St. Catharines, if you guys can say hello. Hi. Yo. Hello. You guys want to introduce yourselves real quick? My name is Hugo, and I sing in the St. Catharines. I'm Mark, and I play guitar. I'm Pablo, and I play bass. Excellent. So, I guess the first question is kind of the general one, is can you give us a brief history of the band, how you guys got started and all that? Yeah. We started in 1999, and we did a bunch of CDs on our own label, and a bunch of 7 inches and close to 400 shows before signing to Fat Records, and now we're doing more shows on this new CD called Dancing for Decadence, and we played close to 520-something shows. We've had 5 vans. 5 vans, 5 drummers, at least 20 tourists. That dude is totally puking over there. And the dude is puking over there. That's the newest story of the band. That's the way Santa Cruz operates. Nice. So, how many different people have been in the band? 12. 12 different people? Yeah. You guys currently have 3 guitarists? Yeah. Now, how did that come about? Did you guys just decide you wanted to have 3, or just 3 people worked out? It was more, we had a guy that left, and we wanted a new guitar player, and we asked, well, we wanted to have those...
They walk through here, they ride through on bicycles, and they will fuk with you. Okay, cool man. Thank you. So keep it way the fuk out of sight. And that was some sketchy dude. That was Willie Nelson. Willie Nelson just told us to not smoke weed in the van. Thank you, Willie. We wanted a new guitar player, and then we had, well, Mark and Louis, who are in the band, played in a band that we really like, and we were friends with, and we didn't want to break the chemistry they had going on, so we asked both of them to join. So it would be a lot more fun. And the more people in the band, the more fun you have. So that's why we're 3 guitars. Excellent. I guess one of the most recent news articles that's come up is you guys won the best punk album of the year in the Quebec Independent Music Awards. Is that correct? Yep. Yep. How do you guys feel? Were you guys really stoked on that? It was cool. We got like a free satellite radio, so that was fun. That was the best part of it. Was there a trophy or anything like that?
Yeah, we got a sweet trophy in shape of like a moose. What do you call those? The lanterns. The handlers, the lanterns. The antlers, yeah. Interesting award. Did you guys attend the ceremony? Yeah. Yeah, it was pretty cool actually. Yeah, it was fun. Pretty much made fun of everybody there. We could dress well and go on stage and talk shit a bit. It was pretty interesting. You guys rent tuxedos, get real dressed up. Well, not tuxedos, but nice suits. We were the well-dressed band for sure. Wow. Very nice. One of the things is it got quoted, I think it was you, Hugo, that said, doing independent and underground music is not a step before being mainstream. It's a choice and a lifestyle. With that, is there, if you were ever given the right opportunity by a major label, do you guys think you would ever take it?
Nope. No, that's not something that interests us, having like a huge ass like debt and having to, you know, like... Some dude called it. I don't like shaking hands and sucking dicks, so I want to... It's the shaking hands mostly. The sucking dicks. The sucking dicks I like, but... I like underground dicks. But you like to do it with people you like, you know? Not because it's business. Exactly. Not because you have to. Because then you just turn into a whore. And that's, you know, that's not why you got into music. No. Partly, but, you know. I would never, no, if I would start like a rap band, maybe I would try for the major thing. Yeah, the fucking Wu-Tang records. It's not what we're all about, and it's...
It was your mad rhyming skills. They would not be fun, so we're trying to have fun there. Oh, very cool. If you guys ever do start a rap act, feel free to let me know. I want to be, I want to check in on that. I want to be the first one to know. Of course. Try the sign-up. You want to be the hype man? Yeah. I'll be your street team. Awesome. Go.
It will be pretty similar to this interview, but you can answer differently. Yeah. And like, yo's and... Yeah. Yeah. Sit downs. So, a couple of things I was noting. It seems there were a couple of stops that you guys weren't able to play or something didn't come up. The first one is, you guys weren't able to make the Seattle stop on the tour? Yeah. We got stuck on the... Just like on the edge of the Rockies in Alberta, and there was like a big snowstorm. Holy shit. We didn't have any winter tires. We had the trailer and shit, and we couldn't even pull out of our motel's driveway. Oh my God. So, and we had to cross over the Rockies, and we were like, well, maybe it's not such a good idea. So, we had to wait it out a bit, because it was like a snowstorm, like a big snowstorm.
We were like, oh, fuck this shit. Better to just miss one show. Exactly. Then we missed the rest of the tour, because we got fucked. Actually, we missed two. We missed two, and we got scared of dying. Oh, it was a sketchy drive, too. Yeah, really. So, we spent two days in the hotel going in the hot tubs, and I think it was probably more fun than the two shows. Especially if your van would have gotten fucked up. Yeah, true. Yeah. You said you went through five vans? Yeah. How? What happened to them all? You guys remember? Well, mostly transmissions. Yeah. Mostly transmissions. We blew up, like, we had five vans, but we probably had like ten transmissions. Yeah. The thing is, we don't have money to buy new vans, so we buy like old vans for like a grand or two grand or whatever, and just run them to the ground, and then sell them to like other vans that don't know better.
It's only slightly used. It's only slightly used. Here we go. No, this is not the van that blew up. No, I do. I remember the first van we had, it died in New York, and we got in two accidents on the same day. It was awesome. We got smashed by who again? In traffic by like this old black lady or something? Yeah. No, no, a black guy. I don't know. A well-known black guy. And then this other time we were parked at the venue. In front of ABC Norio, and like some handicapped kid ran into the van. So twice on the same day, and it died. But we bought that van for $500, so it was like, eh. You kind of get what you pay for. Exactly. That's what it deserved. What's the worst thing that happened to like one of your vans? Was that probably it?
We got stuck for like a week or so in Thunder Bay, Ontario, which is basically like a shithole. Sorry for anybody from Thunder Bay, but you guys probably know it by now. But, yeah. Like we got stuck there. Like our van fucked up like on the Friday and so we had to wait until the Monday and then they figured they had to order a transmission from Toronto. And then, so it basically took us like a little over a week to get out of this place and it sucked. It was one of the worst weeks. My worst experience was I think our second or third van. It died on, like we were back from tour and like 45 minutes like to Montreal. We had 45 minutes to go to get to Montreal and the van died, transmission again. So we hitchhiked.
Like we were two teams of three I think. And we hitchhiked and it took me and the other guys I was with like more than 30 hours to get back home. Oh my God. We slept. To get 45 minutes. Yeah. We slept like in the ditch on the highway. On the side of the road. And then we woke up and then we were tired again so we slept. There was a go-kart thing outdoor and there was like a huge like a, like inflatable go-kart and we slept on it. They didn't kick you out? No. No, they didn't see us. It was a night and then we got arrested and then they handcuffed, we had handcuffs and then they, they searched us like badly. They thought we were like criminals or I don't know. And then they drove us to another town and we had to call our parents.
So they couldn't pick us up. I felt like a loser. Jesus. Hey Mo, I'm back from tour. Back from tour. Well, not exactly. I made a ditch. I didn't need to come pick me up. That was awesome. I'm in the ditch behind the go-kart. Nothing makes you feel like, your parents make you feel like you made the right choice. Yeah, exactly. They were convinced. I was like, oh yeah, my son made the right choice. So you sure you don't want to go back to school? I mean, my son's in a band. He called me the other day. He's in the ditch behind the go-kart. I'm so proud. You know they don't ask you how was the tour after that one. Yeah. They don't care. Tell me about the tour. It was awesome. Keep it quiet. Other than the last part with the ditch, it was alright.
That was fun, wasn't it? We're going to take a break from all the joy that the French-Canadians can bring us like French-Canadian toast and French-Canadian bacon. And we're going to jump into another track off of the St. Catharines, Fat Records debut. Not their debut altogether, but just their first record on Fat. It's called Dancing for Decadence, which we have a chance for you to win at the end of the show, along with a free t-shirt. It comes in large only. They gave it to us. I mean we could resize it if you want, like shrink it, or cut the seam out and sew it up. But it probably looks shitty. So just so you're aware, it only comes in large. And we're going to play the track called Amonicoms, Punk Rock Experts, off of their album Dancing for Decadence.
And then we're going to be right back. So check it out and stay tuned for the rest of the interview and learn how to enter to win free shit at the end of the show.
We have just completed the first part of the course. You are now midway to success. Oh yeah, the original question that I was talking about shows you guys weren't able to make. The other one was, what was it? I can't pronounce it. Salute St. Marie. Oh, Salute St. Marie. Salute St. Marie. Thank you. Like I said, I can't speak. That was really sketchy. We had a tour booked. And we went online and looking for a show. These three kids contacted us to set up a show in Salute St. Marie. And we're like, okay, fine. And this one guy was really persistent and was like, I want to do the show, I want to do the show. I'm like, alright dude, you seem to be really into it. By the time we got there, the dude was like, at all the excuses in the book.
Didn't rent a PA. It was just like, oh, there's a rumor going around that there's no show going on. And we're like, what are you talking about a rumor going on? There's like no rumor, you guy. It's like, this is Sault Ste. Marie. There's like three people here. Of course, you were the other two people that were starting the show. And I told him, where did that rumor come from? My girlfriend. I mean like, if someone's going to tell you like, yeah, I hear the show's not happening. He's telling you. You're supposed to say, no, it's happening. I'm putting on the show. Yeah. He was like, okay, so that's what people are saying. So we just left. So we're going to go back, but we're not going to do shows with those dudes anymore.
We're going to do shows with Amber. She's a really nice girl. Very cool. The thing is like, the guy was pushing the thing out. Like if the show would happen, he would have to pay for the hall. And then if we would do the show, then probably like two kids would show up because of this bullshit rumor that there was no show. Yeah. We wouldn't have any money because he would have to pay the bar and the. We just asked for money and said, well, give us whatever you would give to the bar. And we went to a hot tub motel. It was back to the hot tub. Back to the hot tub. More fun. There's always the hot tub motel. Yeah. It's always better than the show. If you could do that for a living. You mean hot tubs? Yeah. If he would give me 20 bucks a day to go in the hot tub, I would do it.
Like a little buyout? I would quit. Hot tub and a buyout? Hot tub tour, best thing ever. If there's an arcade too. A couple of pinballs. Pinball machines. Pinball machines. I can play a couple of games of seal for cigarettes. And maybe cable TV too. If you find that job, you let me know. I'll get my resume. We're trying to make it happen. Yeah. I don't know what it's called though. Trying to transform it. Very cool.
Alright, I want to ask. I guess this would be mostly directed to Hugo. You play in a country band, right? Yeah. Two country bands. Two country bands? Yeah. Can you give me the names real quick? Well, one is with everyone else. It's called Yesterday's Ring. It's more like a folk country punk thing. The other one is just me and a guy from Inepsy. And it's like country covers from before 1960. Oh wow. And yeah, I really like country music. That's cool. It's just hot tubs kind of. Now, is it hard to do either of those? Like when you guys, the St. Catharines, you guys have obviously been touring a lot for this. Is it kind of hard to do both? Or just when you got there? Not really. Because it's just... It's on the down times.
Yeah. And it's kind of not, you know, it's not like you don't think about it, I just do it. Like Yesterday's Ring, we just started doing this band for fun and then we like it so much that we do it. It's not like, alright, let's try to find times for it. We just, when we're tired of playing fast music, we play slow music. But there's less tours and stuff with the other bands too. Yeah, exactly. It's local shows and some out of town shows with Yesterday's Ring, but not tour. How's the response to it been? It's actually really, really good. Which is kind of a problem. Actually, girls are like, oh, you should drop off the St. Catharines. Yeah, everyone's like, I like St. Catharines, but Yesterday's Ring is way better.
We're like, yeah. Well, yeah. I can't please everyone. We will, yeah. In Montreal, it's as popular kind of as St. Catharines. Really? And around Quebec, it's getting really, it's good. So you're going to have, you should just have St. Catharines open up for Yesterday's Rising. Yeah. There you go, problem solved. Moving on. Oh, one of the things I was looking at, I was trying to do research for you guys, and I looked at your journal section and your webpage, and that shit's entirely blank. Why is that? Yeah. I dropped a ball on that. We had one for the others. Yeah, we had one. I'm actually working on one right now. For the tour that we just did, but it's on the computer. And I keep on getting like... What tour that we just did?
The Canada. Okay. You're adding to this one. In June. We had the one in June. The one we just did. The one we just did in June. But it's still way better than the message board section, which is just about Viagran. Yeah. Oh, if you're looking for like cheap drugs or like how to get laid or like penis extension. It's going on our message board. It got hacked and now we don't know what to do. But yeah. Did you have friends? Our website is somewhere like in Tibet. Like... Saving lives or something. Websites are kind of overrated. Yeah. People just go to MySpace now. Yeah. It's not that important. Unfortunately. Yeah. Well... Someone's excited outside. Yeah. They saw me signing a tip. How's... Real quick. How's the tour been going for you guys thus far?
It's been fun. It's really fun. It's been good so far. Like the shows are full and I mean people are good so it's fine. Yeah. It's a great tour. We play in front of a lot of people and the... Although in Portland we had some interesting moments with the crowd, right? Oh, yeah. That one. People were grabbing Hugo's cock and... And they stole my hat and they ripped it off. Aww. And they were unplugging shit off the board and... Yeah. People hated us. Because they were just like bratty little kids I guess. Just doing whatever they wanted. Yeah. They were like, fuck it. Will your cock recover one day? Yeah. It's good now. After that hot tub. Couple ping pong games. Couple hot tubs. It's back. It's back in action. It's good.
Well, we just want to make that sure in case you know someone's interested. We don't want them to be disappointed. Yeah. I'm sure someone's interested. I'm sure someone will be disappointed somewhere. I can sign dicks too, huh? If you want me to. Wait. I can only put the H on this one. This sucks. Why'd you bother me with this? That's your thing. Gotta get him aroused first. Yeah. Then you can put the other letter. H-U. Yeah. Oh, you just put hug on it. Oh, there's Willie Nelson again. What's up, Willie? That guy, if he, I hope he doesn't hear you because he'll kick my ass. I'll be the first one who gets, well, probably not. He's not that big. Yeah. Oh, shit. Oh, shit. He's coming back. He took out his shotgun. What? Oh, fuck.
Shotgun. I would be the first one to get shot here. Alright. One question I want to ask because, I want to ask because you guys are from Quebec. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. And you are French-Canadian. Yeah. Well, two questions. Uh-huh. Do American girls really dig chicks? Yeah. Do American chicks really dig guys who can speak French? Yeah, dude. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Wow. You just, you just. Let's go, huh, huh, huh. You just saw that before. I signed a boo, you know? Yeah. You just signed a boo. You don't see an American band do that. I remember, like, last night we were in San Francisco and we were playing the show and people were, like, into it. Hugo said, like, one word in French and, like, everybody was like, fuck yeah, dude. Circle pit.
People were, people were masturbating and, like, grabbing. That's sick. Throwing panties at us. If you could avoid that for this show, I'd be grateful. I really don't need to see most of the people here masturbating. 600 people masturbating at the same time. 600 cresties. Yeah, that's the thing. There's not even 600 people, it's 600 of these people. And they're nice folks, but, you know. They smell a bit sometimes. Yeah, that's not the kind of people I want to see naked. That's just, that's me. Except that dude there with the Amirbix patch. Yeah, there we go. What's up, homie? Alright, the next question I want to ask, are you guys, uh, separatists? Yeah. Yeah? Yeah, mostly just to piss off English people. Yeah, we are.
Fair enough. Let's have a country, man. I like, I like that. Let's fuck shit up. I love, I love the fact that we sing in English and we, like, we're separatists. That's amazing. And yet, you want to be separatists. Yeah, well, I think, uh, Quebec is, uh, really better than everywhere else. Well, the English singing part, it doesn't really have anything to do with, like... No, but usually, you know, separatists are, like, uh, really pro-French and sing in French. Yeah. You know, there's not a lot of English bands that, uh, are separatists. You guys get a lot of, like, people from your area who ask why you don't sing in French? Yeah. Yeah, actually. What do you guys say? Well, the thing is... We say we want to play in California, you douchebag.
I tell them I'm Spanish, I'm like... Exactly, it would be hard to... Okay. It'd be hard to do, like, all we've been doing if we were just, like, singing in French. We'd be kind of stuck in, like, Quebec and going to France and stuff like a bunch of other bands are doing in Quebec. Yeah. And to me, that was not what we wanted to do with the bands. We like the bands that sing in French, it's fun, but, uh, we always wanted to travel with music, so... Yeah. Well, now you can hold up your moose antlers and be like, that's why we don't sing in French. Exactly. Best punk album of the year. Where's yours? You got one? Oh. When you get one, you can bring it and we'll fight with them. And we'll see who wins. Actually, we're the only English band in that, well, English singing band in that thing that won an award.
We're kind of the only English singing band in Montreal. In Montreal, that draws more than, like, punk band. That draws more than... There's Arcade Fire and all that stuff. No, I said punk. Oh, yeah. From that area? Yeah, they are. And we got all the wolf bands. Name a wolf band, we got it. We got them all. Chances are, it's weird. Except Wolf Mother, though. They're trying to get on to that bandwagon. They were trying to go to Montreal and we're like, nah, dude, we ain't getting that shit here. Dude, sorry, the wolf quota is already full. Nice try, guy. Trying to sneak it in. Poof! Second guy. Awesome. Awesome. Well, I think we got enough. We're going to wrap it up. That was fun, man. Is there anything else you guys want to say?
Any plugs? Websites? Shows? Something like that? Um... We're going to be across America. America, fuck yeah. Yeah. And we're going to... We've got about a month left on this tour and then we jump on a small tour with me first. And so yeah, come out and get your boobs signed by us or something. I don't know. If you download your shirt, you can buy your shirt. That makes it up. Yeah. Check out those awesome bands from Montreal. Fifth Hour Hero, Dirty Tricks, Inepsy. Born Dead Icons. Born Dead Icons. Grim Skunk. Malcolm Bold. And Grilled Mustache. Yeah, dude. Peace, y'all. Fair enough. Thank you guys. Thanks. Cheers. All right. So that wraps up our interview for this week. I hope you guys enjoyed it as much as me and the respective members of the St. Catharines enjoyed doing it.
Really good guys. If you guys get the chance to see them, check them out. And if you're a band who ever tours on the West Coast, invite them to tour on the West Coast with you because they were saying it kind of sucks. They get a lot of invites to do East Coast but nowhere on the West Coast. So bring them out. We'd love to see them. We'd love to see them. All right. So we got a contest this week where you can enter to win a copy of their Fat Records debut Dancing for Decadence and a large t-shirt given to us by Hugo of the St. Catharines. So maybe it still smells like him a little bit, which may not be so good. But to enter to win, all you got to do is send us an email or MySpace friend message-y thing with your name, address, pertinent information, and make sure you put the St. Catharines contest in the subject line.
Include your name and address because if you don't include your name and address, we're going to email you like you won and ask for your name and address and then mail you a shit in a Pringles can. And fucking no one wants that. But to win, just send us, because the St. Catharines are French-Canadian and bilingual, send us your favorite catchphrase in a non-English language. So it could be Spanish, Israeli, Dutch, heavily accented, Asian, cashier, anything to that effect. And if you don't speak another language, fucking get Babelfish. It's online. You could figure it out. You're not totally retarded. Maybe you are. Anyhow, so that's how you do it. Send it to us, and we will draw a winner from those. Alright, we're going to play one last track off of Dancing for Decadence, and then we're going to wrap it up, call it a week.
The last track we're going to play is called If There's Black Smoke Over A Bridge It's Over. I don't even know what that means, but it's a good song off a good album. Hope you enjoy it, and we'll see you all next week.
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