premiere: Entire Cities - Secret Smokers

Simon Borer and his friends make some raw, welcoming indie rock in Toronto. This new piece has a lot of odd angles and sweet lime juice to whisp the edges. 

Hi Mark,

We were on tour with Bruce Peninsula, and we played in Saint John, NB one night, in the living room of an old audio engineer named Toothless Jim. It was a stone cold East Coast kitchen party, the room was full of aunts & uncles & cousins & babies, a different vibe for a couple of experimental-roots bands from the big city. So the cops show up to shut it down around midnight, but Neil from Bruce Peninsula starts handing out drumsticks to the audience and leading the songs a cappella after the PA gets unplugged. Okay, remember the drumsticks, they’re important.

Neil struggles through a show the next night in PEI. Something’s really wrong with his voice. He’s worried about laryngitis, vocal nodes. He’s literally drinking the honey we brought as merch (my parents are beekeepers), trying to fix his broken voice before the Halifax Pop Explosion, a big multi-venue festival (kind of the whole reason we’ve gone out on tour).

The night after that, we’re playing Halifax. Our drummer at the time, who’s from the east coast and met up with some old pals, got drunk. Pink Elephants, Jim Morrison drunk. He’s got it in his head that we’re supposed to sing backup during Bruce Peninsula’s set, which is totally not the case, and I have to keep leading him away from the stage. I lose him once or twice and actually need to go on stage, while BP is playing, to escort him off. 

Now, I was always a bit intimidated by Bruce Peninsula. I was in awe of their music, and everybody in the band seemed a little older, cooler, more talented. Neil, who I’m friends with now, had a big, slightly scary personality. 

After the show, he comes running up the stairs out the venue to the street, where I’m standing, grabbing a smoke. 

Having Neil run at you is like being charged by a bear. My first thought was that he thought our drummer had fucked up his set. Which he kind of had. I thought I was going to at least get yelled at, but the way he bounded up the stairs, with adrenaline and stage sweat in his eyes, I wasn’t sure what was coming. 

“I just coughed up a drumstick!”

Neil held up a mean-looking sliver of wood, a splintered piece of drumstick, about an inch and a half long. Must’ve gotten stuck in there during the unplugged frenzy at Toothless Jim’s. His voice suddenly sounded fine. He was elated. He hadn’t even noticed our drummer.

Neil’s a good dude.

Thanks!

Simon

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