Rock Plaza Central‘s 2007 album Are We Not Horses was an elaborately plotted and immaculately conceived album that brought the Toronto band’s Northern-gothic folk/rock accolades from both critics (MAGNET named it one of the year’s 10 hidden treasures) and academics (frontman Chris Eaton’s 2004 book The Inactivist was taught alongside Horses in a graduate English course at the University of South Alabama). Last month, RPC hit the road to support the release of this year’s … At The Moment Of Our Most Needing, and bassist Scott Maynard filed a tour diary for magnetmagazine.com. If you missed Rock Plaza Central this summer, catch the group on its U.S. tour with the Weakerthans in September.
“Panama” (download):
A Recap
Milwaukee, July 4: We played a street festival that day, and for once, the weather was good. In the past three months, we’ve traveled extensively through the U.S. and Canada, and it has rained almost every day—usually when we’re loading gear. Philly, for example, is a city that claims to have a very low annual rainfall, but, of course, when we show up to play another street festival there, the heavens open and the rain is torrential. Thankfully, the good people of Philadelphia stuck it out, and one of the highlights for us was the two little girls who interpretive danced with incredible grace and poise right in front of the stage through our entire set, in the pouring rain, but I digress …
The weather held in Milwaukee, and we celebrated Independence Day in some style: Belgian Trappist ale and an entire house as a green room. (The green room is the place where the band gets to hang out before and after the show, often in the basement and covered in stickers and graffitti, occasionally actually green.)
After Milwaukee we played Minneapolis, and then we headed up to Winnipeg to do five shows across the prairies with another band from Toronto: Bruce Peninsula. Over the years, we’ve played with countless bands all over North America, and we’ve been lucky enough to hear some truly great ones. It’s a rare band that I would want to listen for five nights in a row—we once did 30-odd shows in as many days all over the U.S. with O’Death, from NYC, and they were amazing every night—but even on the fifth night, Bruce Peninsula was completely compelling. In fact, that show in Canmore was probably the best show of the tour so far. Folks dancing and carrying on …
What makes for a good show?
There are several factors, ranging from how drunk and/or tired the band members are to how well they have been treated by the venue to the capability of the person responsible for the sound. But really, the main factor is the audience. I am compelled to report that attendance on this tour has generally been meager. It amazes me that folks will fork out hundreds of dollars to go see a band whose heyday was in the ’80s but won’t pay $10 to go see one of the many excellent bands trying to make a go of it today. The festivals this summer pay enough that we can afford to lose money playing our way across, but I feel for bands like Bruce Peninsula that don’t yet have that as a fallback. Come on people, independent music needs your support to survive, so pay the damn cover and buy a shirt; don’t call the promoter and try to get on the guest list, then not show up when (s)he says no. Really, though, that anyone comes to see us at all is quite amazing considering how many bands seem to be on the road these days. And the folks who do come out make up for their sometimes diminutive numbers with their enthusiasm and their incredible stories:
•The guy we met who had done two tours of duty in Afghanistan (and I thought our touring was hard); he told us that our record was what got him through it.
•The siblings who listened to Are We Not Horses over and over while trying to come to terms with the loss of their mother.
•The couple who bonded at a party over their mutual love of that same record, fell in love, quit their jobs, got in the car and drove six hours to see us play, got married and got huge Horses tattoos instead of rings.
It is meeting people with stories like these that make it all—the long drives, the bad food, the hangovers, the loneliness, the doubt, the financial strain—worthwhile.
