Looking Back

Well it's another new year. Before we get into some of the stuff Charge might be up to in the coming year, I thought, damn, we did some pretty awesome things in 2011.

The Defiant Ones came out in February, our first full-length album. Following up on our EP We Haven't Been Properly Introduced from the summer of 2011, the album gave us a chance to really stretch out and try a lot of different things. From the alt-punk riffage of opener "Last Door Down" to the spaghetti western bombast of the closing title track, it's wide-ranging and intense. Lithium Magazine gave it a rave review, saying we had "a rugged flare for bringing raw yet melodic sounds of alternative rock to life alongside the boisterous style of indie darlings like The National and Band of Skulls. 'The Defiant Ones' also features dynamic drum beats, punchy bass lines, jagged guitars, and haunting piano passages." ExploreMusic.com picked "Young Love" for an Indie Track of the Day, and CBC Radio 3 featured "The Real Heart". Late in the year, blogger T.O. Snob chose "Desdemona" as #4 for his Best Songs of 2011. Pretty sweet, and everyone seems to have a different fave.

We did our first real video for "Charge!!", a short and punchy take of the band sweating out the track, directed by Paul Thompson. Check it!



Jason and I got over to the UK to play some dates in Liverpool for the International Pop Overthrow, including a hilarious stint with Japanese tourists in the Cavern Pub.

Then we got to do it all over again the fall for the International Pop Overthrow right here in Toronto!

That was a pretty intense gig. I'd just had surgery for a hiatal hernia two weeks before (which you can read all about here). Sure I was recovering, but they'd made a knot out of the top of my stomach, so maybe playing was pushing it. We did have a really good show, but hoooo I was feeling that the next day!

What else happened?

We played a boat.

We played a garage.

We played a mess of club shows and wrapped the year up with a great benefit gig for Sick Kids where the bands raised nearly a grand for charity!

All in all a pretty solid year.

What's coming next? Well, that's for the next post!

I survived the Toronto IPO

Well I can now say gigging after surgery is totally possible. Recommended? No. But doable? You bet your sweet ass!

Charge played the Toronto edition of the International Pop Overthrow on Thursday, November 10th. We were in classic post-infirmary shape. I'd just had major surgery to fix a hiatal hernia, or tear in my diaphragm, two weeks before. Owen was getting over laryngitis, nasty enough on its own, but he has to keep an eye on these things, having suffered through a collapsed lung in his twenties. Yipes! Jason was totally fine, except for the fistful of tequilas he'd been handed by an overzealous fan just before his other band Clockwise hit the stage that same night. In spite of all that, or maybe partly fuelled by it, we put on a rockin' tight set. David Bash, the always affable host and organizer of the IPO events, remarked how Charge can "play any kind of pop song", something we really pride ourselves on. Sometimes we're punky, sometimes progressive, but it's always hung on a power-pop skeleton. That's just the way we roll.

I've been experimenting with playing keys as part of my set-up in the band, but this time we kept it lean and mean. Festivals are always about tight turnovers between bands, and I didn't want the added strain when not in top form. But it made the gig really free and easy for us, not having to sweat all those other parts. The stripped-down power-trio works well for what we do, and as we blasted through everything from "Charge!!" and "Last Door Down" to "Young Love" and even a wrenchingly minimal "The Defiant Ones", the audience was with it every step of the way.

Boy was I sore the next day though.

Really looking forward to our next show, playing a benefit for the Toronto Sick Kids Foundation at Lee's Palace on Friday, December 2nd. It's going to be fun. We're appearing with Toronto roots-rockers The Alter Kakers, the slick pop of Little Creatures, and the cool acoustic stylings of Angela Saini and the Residents. And another change-up for us: Owen's tied up with a different gig, so Charge will be appearing one night only with our original drummer, Zack Mykula. Can't wait to reunite with one of Toronto's great up-and-coming musicians. Seriously, Zack can wail.

We've got a great deal going for tickets for the benefit. If you pick one up direct from the band, you can get a ticket to the show and download our album The Defiant Ones for $10. Buy tickets here. A good cause, four bands, and a free album. Makes a great stocking stuffer too! Seriously, benefit shows are a great way to do something nice around the holidays. Your support makes a difference.

And by December, I should be fully ready to rip again. Okay, poor choice of words. You know what I mean. See ya there!

Yoo-Kay!!

Greets, guvnors and ladies fair! Charge is back from gigging in the U.K. A fab time was had by all. We were invited to play the International Pop Overthrow in Liverpool, hosted by David Bash at the legendary Cavern Club. Jason and I headed over as a duo, while Owen was tied up with studio work in Canada. We played some great sets and soaked up the night life, sampling the fine cask ales to be had from The Ship and Mitre, among others. We caught some great bands. 54321 delivered spectacular polished pop, as well as the most singularly note-perfect cover of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" imaginable. We shared the stage with the Bloc Party-like stylings of Cardinal Jack, who put on a fun, energetic set. There were tons of bands playing the week-long festival, day and night. A few others we enjoyed were stalwart rockers The Contrast, the jangly pop-punk of The Dirty Royals, the Ramones-esque 60s surf-garage-rock of The Beat Rats, and The Who-The Jam mash-up of The Len Price 3. And of course Clockwise, Jason's other band, put on a few great sets of their super-tight swaggering power-pop, in this the third year of their attendance. The overwhelming theme of the event was jangly garage-pop and effervescent harmonies, as befits a festival housed where The Beatles first held sway.

Liverpool itself is an interesting town, like so many others reinventing itself and smoothing away some of the nervier rough edges. Not entirely though! We did catch some fisticuffs in the street early one Saturday eve, which was unnerving. But mostly the city thrummed with vibrancy, ladies dolled up in their Spice Girl on the town best every night, gents friendly and pints cold and fresh!

There's good pubs and shopping to be had, delicious Indian food, a mammoth ferris wheel by the windswept Mersey, and shock of shocks, not one but two excellent Beatles museums. Any fan of the Fab Four will find some interesting mementos on display there, mostly concentrated on the early days of the band. We were there for the music, though, as the Cavern became a second home. I'm pretty sure Jason saw forty bands himself. There's photos from our shows at http://www.facebook.com/chargeband, with more to come later. All in all, a very cool time.

The long slog...

So long 2010! And what a long ride you've been...

Highlight of the year is definitely recording the best material Charge of the Light Brigade has done, our debut full-length record The Defiant Ones. It's been a long arduous process, and we switched drummers as recording drew to a close, but the end result is shaping up just fine. There's some great tracks coming, from opening rocker "Last Door Down" to the rolling pop swing of "All You Are To Me" to the epic pomp of closer title-track "The Defiant Ones". We've revisited the material from our first EP We Haven't Been Properly Introduced, and those tracks have bigger cojones now, some real hairy mojo. In a good way! We've even dug further back in the vault, polishing up earlier Sneyd pieces "Wheels Come Off" and "The Real Heart". Marc Koecher's production is superb as ever, really rich and complex, and Jason and Zack did wonderful work on bass and drums. My own writing continues to develop, along with that fragile instrument people call a voice. All in all, it's a great mess o' tunes.

Beyond that, getting out our first EP and going out with a newly revitalized band (twice) was a great feeling. Jason joining the band made a huge difference for getting back in the live world, and his half-cocked jocularity, steady playing and mad range of vocals have added a lot of great dimension to the band live.

The lowlight was definitely the great drummer hunt in the summer. Zack Mykula, a long-time stalwart playing with me, decided to move on to focus on some new projects he was getting going, just as we were finishing up the tracks for The Defiant Ones. Talk about hard to replace! Zack's a superb drummer, and an original thinker behind the kit. And wonderfully stoic and dry, one of the city's true curmudgeony best. We auditioned a good bunch of guys as replacements, and boooooyyyyy was it tough finding anyone even remotely in the same ballpark. We did meet a few really great guys, but it ain't easy when you're looking for the right combination of technical skill, hard-hitting, and someone on the same wavelength to top it off. You know, those alt-rock-prog-pop sophisticated-creative-but-restrained guys don't exactly grow on trees. After many auditions and a few near-hits, we finally lucked into playing with Owen Tennyson, the drummer for Toronto new wavers Blue Peter. Owen's worked out fantastically, bringing his own panache and outgoing style to the band.

Can't wait to get the album out, and get on with the scads of work that entails! But fuck, it's waaaay better than waiting around mixing. Sometimes, the recording process can be a huge grind, and it's easy to lose sight of what you're trying to achieve. But the beast is done, the beast lives! More details about the release coming up real soon.

Happy New Year, and bring the good times. Charge!!