WEBVTT 00:00:00.020 --> 00:00:05.220 Metalhead Podcast, Metalhead Podcast, Go! 00:00:26.240 --> 00:00:28.020 You must listen. 00:00:28.980 --> 00:00:30.180 You must listen. 00:00:31.580 --> 00:00:32.560 You must listen. 00:00:36.420 --> 00:00:38.740 Now, here is the podcast. 00:00:39.120 --> 00:00:40.540 Let's podcast go. 00:00:41.020 --> 00:00:41.940 Hey, this is George. 00:00:42.580 --> 00:00:46.600 I'm here to intro the footage from my recent trip up to Fredericton, New Brunswick 00:00:46.980 --> 00:00:49.240 to meet with Joel Violette of Thrasenblatt. 00:00:49.480 --> 00:00:53.780 We had this idea to record an interview, as well as a handful of acoustic songs, 00:00:54.300 --> 00:01:23.460 while huddling around a campfire in the dark. Somehow we managed to get everything set up in the dark by a campfire light and everything went more or less as planned. We miked up the campfire to try to pick up some of the ambiance of the outdoor setting. This comes through better in the interview, but even the songs sport the occasional crackle and pop, so I'm going to call that a success. The new Thrasenblatt album, Great Brunswick Forest, is now available on Bandcamp, so please go support Joel and pick up a copy of the album. 00:01:23.820 --> 00:01:29.380 All right, without further ado, I give you, there and back again, a Thrasen journey. 00:01:33.900 --> 00:01:42.400 Hello, this is George, and I am up in Canada with Joel Violette of Thrasenblatt. How are you doing, Joel? 00:01:42.740 --> 00:01:44.300 Good, good, good. How's it going over there, George? 00:01:44.760 --> 00:01:46.060 Pretty good. Where are we? 00:01:46.560 --> 00:01:50.500 We are just outside of Fredericton, New Brunswick on a lovely fall evening. 00:01:50.660 --> 00:01:53.380 Right beside, you can hear the crackling. I can't fire. 00:01:53.460 --> 00:02:23.400 That's right. We've got a campfire mic'd up. It's got a better mic than I have, I think. Yeah, yeah. Getting the nice treatment. So hopefully you can hear some crackling in there. We're going for the ambient environmental noise on this episode. So before we get into this, I want to note that I was supposed to make this trip up here last year, but circumstances prevented that from happening. 00:02:24.020 --> 00:02:52.560 But I think that was probably a good thing. Because coming this year makes it better. Because now I get to see the namesake of your new album, Great Brunswick Forest. Yeah, it's good timing. It's almost like I decided the release date would be two weeks right after George comes. Or we decided that I would come two weeks before the release date. So the new album is called Great Brunswick Forest. 00:02:53.460 --> 00:03:22.740 One of the first things that I noticed about this album when I got the promo is that the folk aspect is more in the driver's seat while the metal aspect is more of an accent to the folk. What made you decide to set aside the black metal and make a whole album of it as essentially heavy folk music? Cool. I think that the most important thing for releasing an album is to do something that hasn't been done yet and also to do something that you find interesting. 00:03:23.460 --> 00:03:52.760 And so I guess the question that I posed was, since songs like Maritime Shores and Goose River, you know, a lot of people really like them and I think they're pretty cool. So the question is, what if, you know, we do an entire Thrasenblatt album in that sound, like including all the things that that entails, like, you know, the energy and the lyrics and the full kind of thematic treatment and that sort of thing. So what would that sound like and what would that kind of landscape be? And so that ends up being what Great Brunswick Forest, 00:03:53.480 --> 00:04:21.519 is. So you've got the folk sound in the driver's seat, but then every album needs to have the ebb and flow of different energies, especially a Thrustmullet album. So then I guess the high energy songs are done in the same instrumentation as these kind of soft ballady acoustic songs. And so songs like Here I Am a Fortress, Here I Am a Fortress, here I'm a fortress. Not quite as catchy. 00:04:21.940 --> 00:04:51.660 Here I'm in a forest fortress. Have all the energy of a black metal tune except done to acoustic instrumentation. And it was a neat puzzle to fix because, or to figure out because it's always a different way that the energy flows in a song depending, you know, between acoustic instrumentation and black metal instrumentation. And so that's basically, the idea was to explore that sound and what energy could we kind of do. 00:04:51.700 --> 00:05:21.660 and how can we make a whole album and even the themes and that sort of thing in that acoustic sound. And it's not like this is a complete shock to Thrasenblatt fans. Because as you mentioned, Maritime Shores and Goose River, it's always been an element of your music. And this is just taking that in a whole new, not in a whole new direction, but to a deeper extent. Exactly, yeah. There's a lot of territory that you can't 00:05:21.700 --> 00:05:49.900 and explore in two, three and a half minute songs, but that you can in eight full songs, you know, you kind of hit all the different kind of points in the landscape. Yeah. So speaking of landscape, how does this beautiful New Brunswick environment play a role in the songwriting? Yeah. So I think that Thrasenblatt has always been a sort of, like I've said it before, a New Brunsification of what kind of Scandinavia metal does for Scandinavia. 00:05:50.220 --> 00:06:20.180 because that's kind of the stuff that I grew up on and stuff that I really admire. It brings you over there and it's really rooted in the landscape there. So I guess in writing music you write what you know and you write what you like so I guess I've been trying to do something like that for the landscape that I know and that's basically what Great Brunswick Forest is and so I started putting together this album with the acoustic side of things. It ends up being very 00:06:20.220 --> 00:06:49.480 I guess, you know, rooted in woodsiness and that sort of thing. And so what do you call that album? And so it took me, you know, quite a few, you know, weeks of just trying out different names before I landed on one that I didn't, you know, despise two days later. Okay. Now, I don't want to get too ahead of ourselves here, but one thing that, 00:06:50.220 --> 00:07:20.180 particularly the other guys on the podcast have been asking me is do you think that you'll plan to continue along these lines when next you take up writing music or is this just sort of a one-off experiment? Well, I think that every album has to be kind of a one-off experiment. Maybe not a one-off but it has to do something different. I think with this one the full acoustic treatment of an album 00:07:20.220 --> 00:07:49.500 I don't think that the next album will be like this. It definitely won't. But I think that if people enjoy what it is, you know, maybe then might do a couple more EPs in this vein and that sort of thing. The next album will definitely go back into a different, heavier instrumentation. It'll be an exploration of a different, I guess, soundscape or whatever you want to call it. But yeah, so it's been nice to do this for this full. 00:07:50.980 --> 00:08:19.740 But I think that maybe in the future it'll be nice to do a few more songs like this. For sure. I mean, it wouldn't be Thrasenblatt if there wasn't that aspect. It's true. Yeah, and so it's nice to finally have done a full album with it and kind of allow... Every album has a song that has a ton of energy in it, generally, or a few. And so when you have acoustic songs on an album, they generally aren't that... There aren't those songs. And so here, 00:08:20.040 --> 00:08:50.020 I've had to make those songs acoustic. And so that's been the neat part of it. I don't think they'll... I don't know. Maybe I will do another song, another album that has the energy songs as acoustic songs. Now, the album hasn't been released yet, so I'm sure there's still a relatively small number of people that have heard it. But has anybody, you know... Have you gotten any of the Michael from Opeth, you know, when he stopped doing the harsh vocals? Has anybody given you any... 00:08:50.040 --> 00:09:20.020 I can't imagine they would because this is such a part of your sound but was that a concern for you at all that people were going to go hey where's our metal no the only thing I was worried about was that people are going to say well you actually can't sing so why'd you do a whole album with you singing go back to you know making grunts and stuff so I think you succeeded oh thanks no it was funny one of my one of my friends actually said to me the other day I gave him a copy of the album and he listened to it a few times 00:09:20.060 --> 00:09:49.080 in the car and that sort of thing. He comes over to me. He's like, well, why didn't you do any high singing? I was like, what do you mean high singing? And he's like, well, it's just like you're just saying deep the whole time. I was like, well, I mean, look at me. I'm, you know, six foot four and like large. So do you expect me to do, you know, like, you know, kind of a Bruce Dickinson thing or what? But so I pointed him in the direction of a few of the high notes on the album. And he the next day he was like, OK, I see the high notes. So awesome. 00:09:50.060 --> 00:10:18.860 Now, even though these songs are acoustic, there are some electric guitars on there. And it's not just straight up folk. It's like a folk rock slash metal with... Well, it's like folk with a metal spirit. How did you go about blending these two styles so that the metal aspect kind of shone through despite the folk? 00:10:19.600 --> 00:10:49.560 Yeah, that's a good question. I think that... Or did it just sort of happen? Well, I think it just sort of happened, really. I think that I started with tunes and, you know, that I thought, you know, these are pretty good. And just kept working away at them and then kept iterating through them until they all had, you know, enough kind of substance to be a full song and enough substance to stand on their own and to have energy and that sort of thing. And I think that the process through which I got 00:10:49.600 --> 00:11:13.920 was to just make them better every time I listened to them and every time I worked on them. And I think making them better meant, you know, infusing new elements here and there. And I think that a lot of the elements that I know how to infuse into a song are metal elements. And so I think that the constraint of the acoustic instruments was kind of how it kept, how it stayed folky, I think. Yeah. 00:11:15.280 --> 00:11:45.080 So, uh, Matt from the podcast wanted me to ask you, uh, about the recording process. You know, was it, uh, I, I know there was something that was unique about this, uh, from past recordings, but basically he wanted to know, you know, was there anything interesting? Was there anything good or bad about the recording process this time around? Yeah, there's all sorts of great stuff. There's all sorts of garbage stuff. So, um, it was, it was wonderful. So the, the nice thing was that finally, uh, we were all able to get, 00:11:45.280 --> 00:12:15.160 together in the studio and hang out with Siegfried Meyer for a week. And so Ray and I took a visit there and Ray recorded all of her drums there. And it was great to have that process of working on the songs with an instant feedback loop. Because generally it's like, hey, here's an idea. And it's like, you know, send it through, you know, email. And then the next day it's like, oh, you know, that's pretty good. But what if we tried this? So, you know, 24 hour feedback loop, whereas, you know, instant is much better. And so, 00:12:16.120 --> 00:12:43.460 So we had a great process, Ray and Siegfried and I. And it was, you know, bits that kind of were a little bit rough, you know, that needed to be sanded down a bit were really easy to sand down with, you know, three mines right there just ready to kind of, you know, throw in ideas and find the best one. So that was great. The part that wasn't as, you know, because I mentioned there's some great ones and there's some not so great ones. 00:12:46.380 --> 00:13:15.240 These huge terrifying things. I don't know if they found their way into the lyrics at all, but they were massive and they had these huge dangly legs and they were... Anyway. Sort of like these spiders that are attacking us right now. They're the shed spiders. Watch out for the shed spiders. We've already found two of these large spiders hanging out on our chairs, so hopefully we survive to the end. But yeah, it was a good process. So basically, I wrote... 00:13:15.300 --> 00:13:45.240 a bunch of the tunes. I recorded all of it, all the guitars actually, before we even hit the studio. So we were able to use all of that, the guitar, not footage, but the guitar recordings for Ray to drum along to. And that worked nicely. Actually, I think the intro to Dark Sky Sanctuary, there's a left guitar that's playing kind of the chords and picking, and then there's a right guitar, which is doing a little solo. And I think those are actually the original 00:13:45.280 --> 00:14:15.240 when I wrote the thing. So it's kind of interesting to see a full completed album two years after having done a little demo that the parts stayed in the recording and became the recording. Yeah, so there's a lot of, it's a very, very unique recording process I think that I ended up having lots of neat kind of unique characteristics to it, such as the intro to Dark Sky Sank 00:14:15.300 --> 00:14:45.240 Did you do much writing in the studio or did these songs pretty much come fully formed into the studio and then just get tweaked as the recording went along? I had two songs didn't have any lyrics done yet so I actually ended up having to record the vocals for those when I got home from the studio which is fine because that's what I did in every other Thrust of Blood album was record the vocals on my own. Ray helped me sand down some lyrics to Via Canada 00:14:45.320 --> 00:15:15.160 in the song of the summit. Anyway, we had a little, you know, kind of polished down some lyrics while recording some of the vocal takes as well. So that was nice that those particular shapes that those lyrics have now wouldn't have existed were it not for the studio. But everything else was written, just some of the vocals literally just didn't have any vocals for Fortress or Thus Spoke the Wind. Actually, Thus Spoke the Wind, 00:15:15.280 --> 00:15:45.240 I rewrote the lyrics seven times for. Seven complete different lyrics. Wow. Because they either fit metrically with the music and then not thematically with the album, or they fit thematically great with the album but didn't fit metrically. So it took, yeah, I think it was the seventh lyric that actually is the one that we see on the album now. Great. So did Ray's drumming style and just the fact of her being there alter the songs as they were being 00:15:45.340 --> 00:16:15.040 recorded in any way? Did they, you know, change the color, the flavor of things? Oh, absolutely. Or, you know, even just inspire you to do something differently? Oh, for sure. Yeah, it's great. Ray has such great drumming ideas. I had, you know, I sit with these songs, some of them for a couple of years and expect them to sound a certain way and to move a certain way. And then when Ray goes and records her parts in the studio, she'll add all these different dynamics. 00:16:15.280 --> 00:16:45.220 that are very much add to the song and keep the same texture and keep the same atmosphere of the song, but just add a lot more complexity and tie the parts together. It's really cool. So the outro to Thus Spoke the Wind, the last 16 bars or so, is my favorite instrumental part on the entire album because Ray has a super intricate drum groove and it sounds so good with the guitar. 00:16:45.300 --> 00:17:15.199 that I had there and definitely makes the part that drum part does. And then Keegan, our fiddler, came and added a pizzicato violin or fiddle part on top of that as well, which just... So those last 16 bars are awesome and they're all initiated by Ray's excellent drum grooves. Yeah, if you hear about this and you're like, oh, this is folk, this is... I know what I'm getting here. Don't even think that because, like you mentioned, 00:17:15.280 --> 00:17:43.340 And there's a definite groove to some of these songs. So don't think that you know what it is based on the fact that it's acoustic. So I'm going to put you on the spot now. I warned you. Hit me. Hit me. But I want to go through each of the songs on the album and just get your take on, you know, what's it about, what made you write it, any interesting information about each of these songs. 00:17:45.280 --> 00:18:15.180 Green Man of East Canada. Okay. Well, what would you like to know about it, George? Everything. First thing I want to know is how do I get this song out of my head? I don't know if there's an answer for that. I think listen to it enough times that you're sick of it. Hasn't happened yet. Oh, you're too kind. So that song is kind of, yeah, so it's a neat one to kick off the album. 00:18:15.320 --> 00:18:44.940 with because I think it talks about folkiness in general through this sort of allegory of the green man. So a green man is kind of like a nature spirit or whatever in a lot of different folklore traditions. And so the song is kind of about encountering I guess something like that I guess. But through the song it kind of explores the whole idea of folkiness. 00:18:46.100 --> 00:19:13.300 There's songs that are folky, and then there's songs that aren't folky. And so what does one have that the other one doesn't have? Or vice versa. And so I think it kind of talks a little bit about... I think I tried to explore the idea of folkiness in this song through whatever kind of means I could figure out. And so that's kind of what Green Man of East Canada is about. And about how is there folkiness here? 00:19:15.820 --> 00:19:44.840 I think the Maritimes kind of have a maybe a reputation but maybe a little bit of a reputation for having a certain folkiness here and kind of maritime music. So yeah what is that? How is it here? And how do I like that? And how am I making that music right now? And so all these questions I think I kind of tried to explore with this song. This was the first, aside from the fact that it's the first song, 00:19:45.820 --> 00:20:13.720 is the first thing that made me think of Jethro Tell. Tell me more. Well, I'm a big fan of Songs from the Wood, and I know we've talked about that before. Did that album, I mean, maybe that's more suited to one of the later songs, but did that, you know, inspire you to do anything on this album? Oh, absolutely and unequivocally. I think actually Green Man, I wrote one, I first listened to Songs from the Wood. 00:20:14.740 --> 00:20:19.600 I think so the first line chances to meet a strange man down in Brunswick Lane, Justin Browns in the 00:20:19.600 --> 00:20:44.720 Vegamonts clothes blah blah blah timeless image from the wood I think that was inspired by kind of like this figure that I pictured you know as the vocalist of songs from the wood like what would I do if I met you know. He's sort of the New Brunswick aqualung. Yeah that's exactly yeah so good and so that's kind of where the idea started from like that's how like a person became the subject of 00:20:44.740 --> 00:21:14.700 that song I think so yeah no nice catch there George thank you so the second song here I am a fortress first of all the title alone is like I gotta hear this song and this is probably one of the more unique songs to me on the album because of some of the things you do with like the vocals standing alone and like I don't know if it's like reverb on it so that it sounds further away 00:21:14.740 --> 00:21:44.340 Just tell me about this song. Well, this song, yeah, there's probably, you know, people ask you, what's your favorite song on the album? And then you say something like, well, it's like choosing between your favorite children. You can't. But like on this album, I can't because I think Here I Am, A Fortress is my favorite one because it's just so different from any other ones on the album. And I think it carries this energy that I, you know, that I really enjoy. So basically, what this song is was a straight up, 00:21:45.040 --> 00:22:14.420 Thrasenblatt tune, like once fire-veined, with a very heavy kind of tremolo-picked kind of a Monomarth-style main riff, you know, written. I wrote it all with heavy guitars, and then I decided, you know, a couple years ago that this album was going to be acoustic, and then I transliterated it, I guess translated the whole thing from heavy guitars to acoustic guitars. And so that big Monomarth riff then happened all with acoustic guitars. 00:22:14.740 --> 00:22:44.700 Tremolo picked acoustic guitars. And I was like, what the hell am I doing? And it ended up working. So it very much started as an experiment in that. And I was very pleased with it. But then I had to do vocals. So how do you go from the energy that I would normally put into a song like Black Sky or Once Fire Veined? And then how do you turn that into 00:22:45.260 --> 00:23:14.600 an acoustic tune. And so the very first problem was seven seconds into the end of the song where it goes from this really quiet kind of clean acoustic kind of picking thing to stopping and then everything busting in all at once. And normally in black metal that's easy. You just do a great big growl for like ten seconds. Easy. So I was like, well what do I do here? And basically I was like, well I have to sing. 00:23:15.200 --> 00:23:44.700 That's like, what am I saying here? Like, I'm not gonna, you know, there's a lot of different things I could try. So I was just like, you know what? I'm just gonna belt it. I'm just gonna see what happens. And so that is how the start of Here I Am a Fortress began was basically, this is what happens if you transliterate. Transliterate, I can't say that word. If you translate. It's a cool word. Oh, geez. Well, I keep saying cool words that don't mean anything. And then I see how this goes. Yes, you can approximate the trajectory of the 00:23:44.720 --> 00:24:12.640 the transliteration of the riff. So if you take a black metal scream and then turn it into the whole thing into acoustic, that's what you get is the beginning of Here I Am, a Fortress. So I really enjoyed how that turned out and then the energy behind it and the fact that I could actually perform that vocally. So I really quite have a soft spot for that song. So do I. 00:24:12.980 --> 00:24:40.520 What do you mean by I am a fortress? What does that mean to you? Okay, so the subject matter. So the song is actually about introversion. That's kind of what I was thinking. That's why it appeals to me so much. Anything like that where it suggests a vulnerability and you're building up these walls to protect yourself, it has an appeal. 00:24:42.980 --> 00:25:12.940 is here that like um so let me start let me figure where to start here so um there's a line um oh my allies in and blood and in spirit so basically like you know my friends and family uh together we roam the birming glades which means like when we're together everything's awesome and like you guys are great everything's awesome and it's great um but like the lego movie sure 00:25:12.960 --> 00:25:13.640 Everything is awesome. 00:25:15.100 --> 00:25:40.480 And then, but you know, and there's other times when you are around, you know, people who aren't your, you know, friends and family, for example, or just, you know, or just in different situations where, you know, things aren't a green glade. And you're around people who don't have the best sort of, I don't know, just the best attitudes or the best kind of habits or, you know what I mean? And that kind of, you know, sometimes that kind of, you know, you kind of have to. 00:25:44.240 --> 00:26:12.720 you know how they are and you kind of notice these you know things that you don't like and so the idea of the song is that you know around that around that sort of you no uh situation scenario um you know i'm a fortress you know and that's exactly you know and so that's kind of you know and um yeah trying to think of the actual words that i use to to convey that but you know it's about um being able 00:26:12.740 --> 00:26:42.440 to kind of, in that fortress, you kind of are able to, you know. You're protected. Sure. But it's more about like, think of a fortress that has like a mine in it that you can kind of go in and like delve for gold and grab some, you know, some neat content and then kind of work on it and smelt it out and then have these wonderful things to. Like Minecraft. Sure. Yeah. And so it's about my songwriting process, I think, you know. 00:26:42.460 --> 00:27:09.260 And so there's a line, it's ore I gather and smelt out in the depths of my fortress. And so when we gather, again, my friends and family, then I emerge and I bear for you shimmering ore. And so I'm able to produce things of value to kind of share with you guys from that whole thing. So that's kind of what fortress is about. 00:27:10.020 --> 00:27:37.940 All right. One of the lines that... So I mentioned this to you earlier today, that some of these songs just are continually stuck in my head. And I have literally woken up from sleep to have lines just going through my head. And one of them is from this song. And it is... I can't quite read it. You got a headlamp there, George. You got to tilt it down. Much better. 00:27:41.540 --> 00:28:09.800 But then I rose and strong I stood against the weight I chose to carry. I mean, I love that line. Tell me about this line. I mean, part of it is about sort of that, you know, the will to create something that you then present to people. There's this weight. Yes. And it's, you know, and it's not good or it's bad, but it's something that you chose to carry. 00:28:09.840 --> 00:28:39.800 to do and it's sort of this you know that everyone chose chooses to you know kind of be vulnerable that way you know and you know do something creative you know and show it to other people and that sort of thing and so it's this yeah and it's this sort of strength that you get from from doing that you know it's strong I stood against the weight I chose to carry you know and it's so you kind of gain a strength from from 00:28:39.840 --> 00:29:09.760 this weight that you've chosen to do. It's not like a burden that was placed on you. It's something that you said, you know what, I want to do this. And I'm going to be stronger and I'm going to grow from it. Exactly. All right. This is another thing that I mentioned to you a couple days ago. You did an interview with Pop Matter. And you recently said, I think that there are answers lurking in the depths of the album that require a calm night, a bonfire, 00:29:09.840 --> 00:29:39.280 and 40 minutes of undisturbed listening before they dare to emerge. We're only at about 27 minutes, but we've got everything else. So I don't expect an answer to that, but I'm going to ask it anyway. I mean, yeah, it's one of those things that when you, I mean, I think that a lot of times when we're listening to music these days, it's like, hey, I like this song. I'm going to listen to it. 00:29:39.840 --> 00:30:09.800 and oh hey here's another sweet song on a different album listen to that okay sweet there's other song i'm gonna listen to that and a lot of times you just jump from thing to thing today and it's it's a little bit more rare that you have an immersive kind of experience in in one cohesive you know idea or one cohesive kind of atmosphere i think that that's one of the things i you know strove to do with this album was to you know when you listen to this straight 00:30:09.840 --> 00:30:38.580 Does it kind of have an overarching thing that it will convey to you if you just stay and listen to it through its entirety? And I think it does. And also it just sounded like a really cool thing to say. It did. It's enigmatic. Yes, super enigmatic. 00:30:38.580 --> 00:30:41.580 And like that's yeah, that's that's you know 00:30:42.280 --> 00:30:45.320 Pop a little nugget like that into an interview and I think you've done a good job 00:30:45.680 --> 00:30:50.780 And then you get somebody like me that comes along and makes you expand upon that calls you on it 00:30:53.180 --> 00:30:54.240 Unveiling the enigma 00:30:55.860 --> 00:31:00.440 No, it's good. No, I think that um, I think that the album is probably best 00:31:01.840 --> 00:31:06.919 Consumed, you know 40 minutes straight in actually 30 some 00:31:09.020 --> 00:31:36.620 in kind of the peace and quiet and without anything kind of distracting you, just kind of letting you kind of get drawn into it. Excellent. Moving on to the third track, Via Canadensis, is that how you said it? That was the first song to be released from the album. And when that came out on, who released that? Decibel. Decibel, that's right. 00:31:36.700 --> 00:32:05.340 How Could I Forget? Our Friends at Decibel. I must have streamed that song 20 times that day. Just over and over and over. And first of all, perfect choice for a song to lead off with. Oh, thank you. Super catchy. Another one that keeps getting stuck in my head. On we go. Tell me about this one. So I chose that one because it's, yeah, it's the single off the album. It really is. You know, if you had to, thanks. 00:32:06.700 --> 00:32:35.860 to pick a rockish, kind of upbeat single off the album. That's 100% the one. And it's got kind of a microcosm of all the things that the album as a macrocosm have. Another enigmatic statement there. And so this one, so Via Canadensis, it literally just means the Canadian road. So it's about, you know, 00:32:36.700 --> 00:33:06.420 The Images on the highway when you're traveling across the country or traveling through New Brunswick. And you're always traveling for a reason, right? And so the Standing Stones are, I guess, a metaphor for all these kind of different great things that you go to travel for. You go to see a concert. And so you're going to see some idol of yours. I've driven to Montreal or Quebec City so many times to see some of my favorite bands. 00:33:06.700 --> 00:33:36.660 It's always, you know, we're riding to see these like this great kind of monument and it becomes kind of a monument in our mind after the event. And so, of course, every Thrasymlet song kind of tries to have kind of not necessarily a message, but almost like sort of a, you know, kind of like, oh, it's got a thing to it. And so here it's about, you know, having experience 00:33:36.700 --> 00:34:06.240 So many of these ourselves, soon we prepare to carve out our own great things that we want to show other people or that we want to kind of do or see or all these kind of things that have our mark on it a little bit. And so that's kind of what the song is about. I noticed after we crossed the border into Canada while trying to decipher the Canadian road signs that some of them say via this or that. 00:34:07.640 --> 00:34:36.260 Was that taken at all from that? Or is that just coincidental? I honestly wish I knew. I can't say no. So, no, it's just, I don't know where I got the term. I wish, I hope that it's from, I hope that it's from something. Or maybe I just did it. I know that the beaver is Castor canadensis. So I literally might have just moved, removed beaver and put in road and got the title. 00:34:36.700 --> 00:35:06.620 But there is actually some real Latin. Well, that is real Latin. But there is some real Latin in it. Amari usque admire. Yeah, I was wondering about that too. So that's the Canadian national motto. So it literally means from sea to sea. But in English, we translate that to from sea to shining sea. Nice. So it's a little bit of, yeah, so it's just basically specifying where you are. It's crazy because there's literally this connected piece of tar. 00:35:07.660 --> 00:35:35.420 that goes from one sea to the other sea. It's connected the whole way across. And it blows my mind. It's nuts. Anyway. Yeah. All right. Track four, Song of the Summit. Hmm. Yeah, so this one... Yeah. Actually, before we get into that, why don't we talk about what we were drinking and what you are drinking now. Wow, this is good. Okay. 00:35:38.140 --> 00:36:06.280 And I'm drinking as well. The off-grid ales Campfire Red. Very apropos. So it's from Harvey New Brunswick and it's this great brewery which runs completely off of the electricity grid and does everything without it. Solar and other things. And the Campfire Red is delicious. So George... It is. Oh excellent. Yeah so just finished that and now George has been kind enough to bring a... It's a droid theory. The devil made me. 00:36:07.340 --> 00:36:31.920 from a droid theory and it is a... It's got a lung. Red wine finished rye whiskey barrel aged porter with smoked serrano peppers. And it's got a bite to it. This is delicious. Wow. Yeah. What's the acronym for that? RWF... No, it doesn't have a word. Okay. No. Worth a shot. Yeah. So yeah. Yeah, have a taste there. 00:36:36.700 --> 00:37:04.700 Song of the Summit. Yeah. What does it say to you, George? That you were on a summit and you decided to write a song. I didn't. Yeah, I'd have to delve into that a little more myself. That's why I'm asking you. Well, I mean, sometimes it's nice that you can take meaning from a song having just literally just seen the lyrics without having heard the intent behind it, which is kind of cool. I like that aspect of music. 00:37:06.700 --> 00:37:14.440 does happen. I would say, you know, Here I Am, a fortress was probably one that I did that more with than this one, though. 00:37:14.640 --> 00:37:35.620 Ah, cool. Yeah, so this one, it's about sort of the value of journeys, I guess. And, like, you know, literally, I mean, I like that you can take really fancy-sounding things, and then you can boil them down to really simple-sounding things. 00:37:36.160 --> 00:38:05.260 So like a journey is like, oh wow, it's this amazing thing. But it can also literally just be walking. You know, just moving from one place to another. And so literally, this song is kind of about the value of just literally just walking from one place to another. And kind of the, I don't know, just that sort of the value you get in kind of just that simple task that you're doing and then nothing else is on your mind. 00:38:06.140 --> 00:38:34.940 You know, and when you kind of... It's kind of about camping, I guess, a little bit too, and that sort of... I think what it's really about is being away from the craziness for, you know, a day or two, and kind of that space you get into, which is, you know, which just is nice and peaceful and kind of... I don't know what else. It's, you know, it's just kind of almost meditative, but you're not meditating. You're just being normal. 00:38:35.360 --> 00:39:05.320 And I think that you get, there's stuff that you can see in that headspace that you can't see when you're constantly answering text messages and that sort of thing. So yeah, that's kind of what it's about. But it sounds way, way more enigmatic. There's not as much talk about the perils of technology as there were on the last album. I mean, even that one is just about, Metakthonia is literally just about, you know, it's not about disconnecting from things. It's about what things to connect to, to make you feel. 00:39:05.360 --> 00:39:35.220 you kind of, you know, gain some things. But yeah, this one's kind of about, I think. After you've disconnected. Yeah, yeah. And so this one's kind of that place that you kind of want to be in when you're worried about, you know, like, oh, man, I feel so connected. I like to, you know, frazzled out and, and, you know, fragmented. I want to like go somewhere and be, you know, you know, kind of way more peaceful. I think that's that place is kind of where I kind of, it's kind of what the Great Brunswick Forest kind of embodies. 00:39:36.160 --> 00:40:05.260 I would have to say so in a very literal sense. After having been here for a few hours, it's an incredibly beautiful place. And I imagine it must be very relaxing when you get to, you know, just take some time off. Yeah, no, for sure. I would say thank you, but that would imply that I had anything to do with making it. Okay, track five, Thus Spoke the Wind. Oh yeah, this one. This was the one that I wrote. 00:40:05.360 --> 00:40:35.280 seven different lyrics for. I did one that had some Joseph Campbell mythology in it, which was pretty cool. You've talked about that before? Yeah, on Wanderer. I did another one with a different type of Campbell mythology in it. And a couple of those worked, but there just wasn't any other Campbell on the rest of the album. And so this one ends up being about, yeah, again, I think all of these kind of really apply to, 00:40:36.499 --> 00:41:05.300 that kind of, I keep calling it peaceful, but it's more than that. When you, excuse me, are, you know, camping or just kind of in the middle of the forest or whatever, and that kind of piece that you have, I think that kind of headspace that you're in, you can find a lot of, I don't know, I don't want to say you can find answers, because that's also enigmatic and kind of ridiculous. But, I don't know, you just do some good thinking when you're there. And I think this song is kind of about that. It's kind of, it's, it's, 00:41:06.120 --> 00:41:35.320 I think it's about the chorus "Ancient Mist" "Show Me Now" Is that even the lyric? Crap! Anyway there's a line "kindle the fire and dispel the thundering skies behind my brow" so it's basically about like I don't know it's kind of like kind of help me kind of sort out my thoughts or whatever and 00:41:35.340 --> 00:42:04.040 and then so I can give into this world. Let me produce something of value. Help me kind of get into a good mode here and produce something. And so it's kind of, I don't know, it's a little bit about helping yourself get into a good headspace to, you know, create something. Yeah. And it also happens to be a metal song that started out as literally just super heavy with guitars, blast beats, everything. 00:42:04.520 --> 00:42:05.480 and trans... 00:42:09.240 --> 00:42:14.000 Well, I was going to say transliterated again, but translated to acoustic guitars. 00:42:14.730 --> 00:42:16.240 And so there's some good instrumental parts in this. 00:42:17.350 --> 00:42:25.740 If I would have had a string quartet or a symphony or something like that, then I really could have made the middle instrumentation really pop. 00:42:26.910 --> 00:42:32.860 But Keegan does some crazy arpeggio thingies on the fiddle and it sounds super good. 00:42:33.980 --> 00:42:34.380 Yeah. 00:42:34.780 --> 00:42:36.180 This is more instrumentally. 00:42:36.400 --> 00:42:38.540 This is probably the most intricate instrumentally of all the songs. 00:42:39.640 --> 00:42:40.040 Yeah, definitely. 00:42:41.740 --> 00:42:41.980 All right. 00:42:42.240 --> 00:42:43.820 Track six is the title track. 00:42:44.300 --> 00:42:45.420 Great Brunswick Forest. 00:42:48.120 --> 00:42:48.740 You know, okay. 00:42:50.100 --> 00:42:50.220 What? 00:42:51.120 --> 00:42:52.480 First of all, what's the song about? 00:42:53.480 --> 00:42:55.560 And I guess you may be already covered, but why? 00:42:56.180 --> 00:42:58.100 Why did you name the album after it? 00:43:00.020 --> 00:43:01.780 So I'm going to let you in on a little secret. 00:43:02.480 --> 00:43:32.440 But only you, George. Don't tell anybody. Okay, let's turn off the mic. Yep. Microphone's off? Yeah, it's totally off. I wouldn't lie. Okay, perfect. Okay, since the microphone's off, I'm going to tell you a secret. And that is, I named the album first, and then named the song after I named the album. Oh. Yeah. So, the song is about... I think the microphone's on still, George. No, no, no, no, no. The album's kind of... 00:43:33.559 --> 00:43:33.880 "Boot"? 00:43:34.940 --> 00:43:35.260 "Boot"? 00:43:35.340 --> 00:43:36.060 "It's a boot"? 00:43:36.120 --> 00:43:37.180 "No, it's a boot." 00:43:37.580 --> 00:43:38.120 It's not a boot. 00:43:38.420 --> 00:43:39.340 Sorry, it's a boat, it's not a boot. 00:43:39.680 --> 00:43:40.660 "Gosh, a boat." 00:43:41.099 --> 00:43:43.220 "Yeah, it's a sailboat, it's not a boot." 00:43:45.000 --> 00:43:46.780 "Basically, the song is a boat." 00:43:47.300 --> 00:43:47.620 Um... 00:43:49.000 --> 00:43:50.040 It's kind of this... 00:43:50.620 --> 00:43:51.120 I had this... 00:43:51.160 --> 00:43:54.000 You know how sometimes you'll be just thinking about something, or you'll be watching something, 00:43:54.020 --> 00:43:56.360 and this thought will just strike you that, you know, 00:43:56.460 --> 00:43:59.580 it's that like, that gif where that guy's mind is exploding. 00:43:59.600 --> 00:44:26.960 It's just like explosions going off in his mind. So I had an experience like that. And I realized that... Well, so it's actually this fact that made me think about it. So P.G. Woodhouse is one of the greatest musicians in all the canon of English literature. His stuff is just so delightful and such a master of the language. 00:44:29.600 --> 00:44:59.400 was born the year Darwin died and was writing well until The Beatles. And it's like this huge scope of this huge span of time that this guy, you know, to describe his life in terms of Darwin and The Beatles is nuts. And so it's this like this like continuum of people and but also not just of people but also of, you know, different types of music. 00:44:59.600 --> 00:45:06.800 and that sort of thing. I get a lot of my inspiration from a lot of Scandinavian 00:45:07.180 --> 00:45:29.160 stuff and also all sorts of other stuff. Who and these other things that I got my inspiration from got their inspiration from something else. Who got their inspiration from something else. And it's this huge overlapping crazy continuum of people and of culture and of music and of literature and all these things. 00:45:29.440 --> 00:45:59.260 that stretches back like so far and so it's that's pretty deep it's crazy and so and i i think i was kind of able to express this in in this in this song and so it's like about there's a line in the in the bit in the bridge bit where it's like a chorus of many joels it's um shoulders to shoulder you and i stand with all who will ever have been and it's just like whoa super deep um and so the great brunswick forest is kind of uh in in this song at least it's it's 00:45:59.300 --> 00:46:28.340 It's like a sort of metaphor for this forest that kind of when one falls another takes its place and it's sort of a symbol of humankind I guess. Passing the torch. Yeah exactly and passing the torch physically and also in art and other different sorts of thing and culture and that sort of thing. We are the torchbearers. 00:46:29.300 --> 00:46:59.240 Yeah, that's a whole other little tune. Interesting fact about this song. Do you want to know a fun fact about the song, George? I do. Can I turn on the microphone for this one? Yeah, turn it back on. Okay. Okay, I think it's on. Okay. So, this song, I've been performing live for three years, I think, but not as these lyrics. So, I was reading a poem by Rudyard Kipling in 2011 or 2012. 00:46:59.960 --> 00:47:28.540 maybe even before that 2009 even and it's called a tree song and I was reading it and just music kind of just like popped off the page like I like the rhythm of the words I was just like holy crap this this like I hear this song already and um so I it's so it's called the tree song and I I wrote music to the words um and so then and so I called that song tree song I guess and performed it live with with Kipling's lyrics 00:47:29.920 --> 00:47:57.580 for three years. And really liked it. Well, obviously, it's the same music that's in Great Brunswick Forest here. And so, but I didn't, I don't know. I'm not a lawyer. I don't know about copyright. So I decided to write my own lyrics to it. And so this was how the song turned out. So basically, I wrote music to a Kipling poem, and then I wrote lyrics to that music. 00:47:58.820 --> 00:48:28.740 So I don't know how, anyway, so it's a long kind of convoluted way to get a song, I guess. I mean, some people just sit down with a guitar and hit record. But, um. So, so the people that saw you perform these, this song, uh, before, they might hear it now and go, oh yeah, I know, wait a minute. Yeah. That's not the song I thought it was. Yeah. Well, there's the bit that goes, the time and the immortal wind. It used to go, oh, can dash and thorn. Anyway, so it's, uh, yeah, I can do both versions for you. But. Were you performing that? 00:48:28.820 --> 00:48:58.760 with Oak, Ash and Thorne. That's where we get the name. Our bass player, we were trying to find a name and our bass player was like, let's just pick that. It's great. I was like, okay, great. So yeah, it's kind of nuts because that song is like eight or ten years old and finally just got onto a Thrasenblatt album. And I think this is the perfect album to put it on. I agree. All right. Track seven, Singer of Ageless Times. Oh, this one's, there's so many tips. 00:48:58.800 --> 00:49:28.260 of the cap to Jethro Tull on this one. I guess I just preempted you though. You were ready to say that, weren't you? I was going to say, where did you get the song title? Kipling poem. No. Songs from the Wind was, I listened to that at a time in my life when I really needed it. And so it really stuck with me. And I actually wrote this song in like 2011, 2012. And, you know, fixed up the lyrics a little bit in the last year or two. But for all intents and purposes, 00:49:28.820 --> 00:49:29.280 same song. 00:49:30.520 --> 00:50:00.020 And it's, yeah, it's, yeah, there's a couple nice little tips of the cap to Tull. So I debated whether or not to kind of overtly say, you know, in the style of, you know, Jethro Tull or whatever. Well, not in the style of, but like, you know, special thanks to Jethro Tull for inspiration on this. But I think it's clear enough. You know, let me sing you songs from the maritime. And then literally, 00:50:00.520 --> 00:50:30.480 "Singer of Ageless Times" is another line from that song. Yeah, no, Jethro Tull, that album "Songs from the Wood" features on that one and on "Green Man" I think pretty heavily in terms of having the inspiration for it. But again, obviously it's my own spin on, you know, if someone said, "Let me sing you songs from Blah," where would it go from there? And so then, "Let me sing you songs from the Maritimes." Let me tell you a little bit about 00:50:30.520 --> 00:51:00.480 this place. And so I kind of explored on that song, you know, just like how... So like things change a lot and some things don't change at all. And so it's kind of that, that, you know, like, you know, we're still driven by the same things, you know, and we still sing the songs of people who came before us. So this is another theme that kind of goes between songs like Sing of Ageless Times and 00:51:01.260 --> 00:51:28.960 Great Brunswick Forest both kind of talk about this kind of, I guess, passing of the torch or also, you know, this sort of continuum of, you know, music being passed down. And so it's, yeah, and it's kind of a little New Brunswick kind of, yeah, not like, no, it's just kind of a nice little New Brunswick-y tune. Yeah. All right. And here we are at the last song, 00:51:30.540 --> 00:52:00.480 album, Dark Sky Sanctuary. Where'd that come from? So I was talking to this guy from Maryland a few years ago. Yeah. And he was talking about these things called Dark Sky Preserves or Dark Sky Sanctuaries. Sounds like a smart guy. Yeah. Well, I don't know. At least a handsome one. Well, definitely handsome. And I said, you know what? I'm going to write a friggin' song about that. Since I'm from the Maritimes, I literally said friggin'. 00:52:00.500 --> 00:52:01.520 And then it happened. 00:52:02.480 --> 00:52:06.620 Yeah, so yeah, and I sat on it for a year or two. 00:52:06.940 --> 00:52:08.020 I didn't even show you the demo. 00:52:08.800 --> 00:52:13.860 And then, yeah, it was, because that whole idea was really, really resonated with me, 00:52:14.080 --> 00:52:19.340 because Mount Carleton would be a dark sky preserve. 00:52:19.660 --> 00:52:21.260 It actually is a dark sky preserve. 00:52:21.340 --> 00:52:29.600 And Mount Carleton is very useful because that's the top of the, sorry, 00:52:29.620 --> 00:52:57.700 from the top of Mount Carleton is the image for the... from Thrasenblatt 2. It played a big part in Thrasenblatt 2. And Mount Carleton is the highest point in New Brunswick. And so then we have this place that it actually turns out to be a dark sky preserve. So I was pretty fascinated by that. And so I kind of wrote a song around it. Awesome. 00:53:01.599 --> 00:53:28.940 So the song begins with an instrumental passage before kicking into the rest of the song. How did you decide that that was going to start it off? How did the two different parts come about and how did they get stuck together? Well, that really felt like... That first part really feels like sitting around a campfire and just like the piece that goes with it. 00:53:29.620 --> 00:53:58.860 You know, kind of under the stairs and just this kind of really relaxing thing. And it's a Thrassemblatt song, so like, let's hit something and let's go for it. And so then that's kind of how the second part went. Yeah. Super catchy. Oh, thanks. Yeah, it's a, I mean, the titles, like, you know, the main line. Smart Man came up with that. So. Did you know when you wrote this, 00:53:58.980 --> 00:54:28.820 that it was going to close out the album? Because it feels like an album closer. I think that I did know. As soon as it happened, I was like, you know what, that's a closer. That's 100%. It has the energy of something that just picks up at the end, smashes you, and then just kind of fades out. Awesome. Well, thanks for going through all of the songs in depth like this. I meant to ask you before we started, 00:54:29.040 --> 00:54:58.960 talking about them so that we could talk about it with each of them but you have an interesting way about you I don't even know how to say it but synesthesia oh yeah yeah yeah and I was curious which could you explain what that is real quick well as far as I know it's sort of the mixing of two senses so like when I see a word or 00:54:59.000 --> 00:55:28.420 or a letter or something, then it has a color kind of associated with it. And when I listen to music, it kind of has colors and textures associated with it. That's kind of my particular variant of it. So there are people who have, you know, they, you know, they, they see a color and then smell cheese or something. Right. And so everyone has, you know, whoever, you know, I think everybody has a sort of different, you know, everybody has at least a little bit of it, I think. 00:55:28.460 --> 00:55:58.400 But I know somebody who, when they are very energized or something like that, when they're reading words, when they're reading books, each letter has a color and it's just so vibrant that they can't read. For me, though, it's like listening to music. It just has textures and colors. I meant to ask you for each song, what color is this song to you? But for the sake of brevity, can you do that on an album? 00:55:58.480 --> 00:56:27.740 scale. Oh, it's all greens and browns and the texture of tree bark. Interesting. Awesome. All right. So by the time people hear this, if I plan this correctly, if you're listening to this, you should be able to go out and buy the album. Yes. Or you could pre-order it. But I know one place you can get it is Bandcamp. Yeah. You can get the digital version, the CD, the cassette even. 00:56:27.900 --> 00:56:57.720 Even a cassette. And a t-shirt. Why a cassette? Well, I mean, for the very simple reason that it's way cheaper than vinyl and way quicker. But I think it's just... It's kind of a trendy thing these days. Well, trendy is fine. Trendy is this and that. But I'm not accusing you of being trendy, by the way. I just mean it's sort of a thing that's come back. And those of us that live through cassettes the first time are shaking our heads going, what the hell? Why would anybody want these? So I think this goes back to that same kind of conversation of like, 00:56:57.900 --> 00:57:27.620 you know, 40 minutes of this album in kind of one spot. And because I think that what a cassette provides is it provides you a solid, here it is in your hand, thing to associate with a sound, with a set of songs, with a feeling. And that's something that you don't get with, you know, no matter how great, you know, Bandcamp and Spotify and iTunes. Actually, Bandcamp is probably, anyway. 00:57:27.900 --> 00:57:57.860 Let me just backtrack. It's something you don't get with a Spotify playlist. Yep. For example. So a cassette is a thing that you can associate with a feeling, with a sound, with an album. And I think that for me... And a time in this case. Yes. Yeah. Absolutely. And so I think that the cassettes were just a quick little thing that we thought would be fun to do and try it out and see if it works. And then we've sold a dozen already. So it's like, well, I guess there's a dozen people 00:57:57.880 --> 00:58:27.400 whose lives are made at least slightly better by the fact that we put out these cassettes. Yeah. One of the bonuses of driving to Canada to talk to you is that I got all my pre-orders early today. You got them all today, George. And I got to say, the cassette is pretty sexy. Oh, good. Glad you like it. Yeah, we decided to do the cassette, and then I whipped up all the art, sent it over to the press the next day, and then paid for it instantly. 00:58:28.000 --> 00:58:57.320 And then about a month later, there was a box full of cassettes on my front door. And it was pretty painless. Nice. Yep. So go online and order this now. Yes, please do. So do you think there might be a vinyl coming next year? Oh man, vinyl is so difficult. Vinyl is so hard because it's, there's such a long wait and it's just so expensive. And it's also so hard to ship. And so it's like, anyway, yeah, it's, it's just difficult. Um, I don't know. 00:58:59.059 --> 00:59:27.460 I'd love to have a vinyl. We'll see how, I mean, if the CD, if we sell out of the CD super quick, then yeah, we'll make a vinyl. So if you can find, I don't know, a few hundred people to buy the CD instantly. I'm working on it. Perfect. Perfect. Then we can do a vinyl. What about Wanderer? Are you ever going to do a vinyl for that? I'd love to. Problem with Wanderer is that it would be, it's the perfect, perfect length for three sides of a vinyl and double vinyls are twice as expensive. That's right. 00:59:27.900 --> 00:59:55.840 as single ones. Just thinking logistically. Yeah, so we would probably do a best of on Wanderer. Interesting. Yeah, so it'd be, I wonder how, okay, George, if you were, if you were to, not to pick yourself, well, I mean, we can do that too, that'll be a question too, but if you were to say, listen, world, we've got these 12 songs that don't fit, and we need to get it down to 40 minutes. 00:59:56.860 --> 01:00:22.820 How do we do that? I would say to do a Kickstarter and get enough money to do the whole thing. Oh, interesting. I'd pay for it. Okay. I mean, you know I would. Yeah, I know you would. Appreciate it. But, I don't know. I mean, you know, you know more of the details than if somebody's backing up just in case you didn't notice that. We're backing that question up. 01:00:28.580 --> 01:00:56.820 Yeah, anyway, we'll just go through that. Yeah, obviously you know more about that than I do, what would go into that and how prohibitive the cost would be to do a double. Yeah, I mean, the problem too with vinyl is that it is so expensive to ship it across the ocean. So it's like, you know, 20-ish bucks around North America. And with vinyl, like, you need a tracking 01:00:56.920 --> 01:01:26.820 number generally. Well, you don't need one. So, I mean, we can send it across without a tracking number and it takes, so, I mean, without a tracking number and sending it the cheapest you can, it's about $22 to get to Europe and it will take between, I'm not kidding, between 8 and 14 weeks. Shut up. Yep. So, apparently the way it works is that 01:01:27.520 --> 01:01:56.800 there's a container on a ship and once it fills up it goes. Wow. Or not it's not on a ship yet but like there's a container that once it fills up it goes. So one time people didn't get their CDs because I was sending Surface. They didn't get their CDs for like three months and I was like. Wow. That's some 1980s shit right there. Yeah so I always I always send airmail now and airmail with vinyl is like 35 or 40 bucks and so it's like fuck. Twice the cost of the vinyl and so. You know maybe. You got to consider though the people that buy vinyl. 01:01:57.580 --> 01:02:25.080 They're a spare no expense kind of people that are like, I don't care. Give me that vinyl. I mean, not all of them, but they're a pretty rabid bunch. I know a few of these junkies myself back in Maryland and Virginia. Well, luckily they're in Virginia so then they can, you know. California. Yeah, I mean, it's a tough question because I want people to get the medium that they want. 01:02:26.860 --> 01:02:55.820 So don't want to have to charge exorbitantly for it to make it worth our time to do it. It takes time to ship all the stuff out and to do all that stuff. I don't know. I think honestly people want probably to hear more of Thrasenblatt albums than they do to get a slightly better medium of this album. So I don't know. It's a funny question. Fair enough. I'll stop harping on it. 01:02:56.860 --> 01:03:24.940 If you had a harp, I would love if you'd keep playing, actually. We have one of those sound effects on the podcast. All right. Well, to harp on something else, then. I've talked to you about this before, but I know that there's others wondering the same thing because they keep asking me this. Will you ever play these songs live, specifically outside of New Brunswick? Crap. I was about to say, well, I already have. 01:03:27.540 --> 01:03:33.800 I know touring is complicated especially with the members of this band yeah I mean everyone's 01:03:33.980 --> 01:03:56.820 everyone's super busy in their own things as well and to put together a live throstenblatt show it would be intricate in order to make it worth it for a the listener and be the players yeah and yes it's it's the scheduling is always the difficult part I mean you could do but sorry I was gonna say rather than you know a 01:03:56.840 --> 01:04:25.680 full-blown tour, which would require a lot of time off and, you know, everybody's schedules aligning, you could do, you know, do more of the huge celebrity-style select shows here and there. You know, I know a guy in D.C. who owns, not owns, he doesn't own, who schedules shows at the Atlas Brew Works. His name is Will. He's on the podcast. 01:04:26.580 --> 01:04:56.340 I know he would love to set you up with a show in DC. And I know someplace you could even stay in the area if you needed a place to stay. If we could somehow convince you. But the point of the question was not to try to lure you to DC. Just saying. I feel like you're the kind of guy who probably has a nice strategy. You're probably good at board games. You set up all your moves way ahead of time. I actually asked this question. 01:04:56.580 --> 01:05:25.960 because my friend Josh in Michigan is dying to see you play. And so the question is for him. I'm just, you know, mentioning the Atlas stuff because I can. That's great. No, I think that if, I mean, if we, you know, if we were sitting there and then all of a sudden we got an email from Vaken that was like, Thrasenblatt, please play at Vaken. There's no way you could say no to that. No, of course. And so that's probably, I don't know, that's one way we'd play live. I don't know. 01:05:26.320 --> 01:05:50.260 Anyway, it's one of those things that it has to be... We have to be able to prepare for it because there's no point in us playing a Thrasenblatt show and then having it garbage. That's a good New Brunswick word for anybody who wants to learn to speak a little New Brunswick. In different places it might be gorbage or gorbage, but here it's garbage. So we use that a lot as well. No, that's garbage. 01:05:56.320 --> 01:06:26.280 And you missed EP as well. Oh sure. Because that has come out since last you were on the podcast. Tell me about this EP. How did these songs come about? So Thrasenblatt 3, Metathonia, is very unique in that it fills three sides of a vinyl perfectly. And there's no triangular vinyls. So then we had to fill the other side of two vinyls, the fourth side. And so when we were doing that, I was like, well listen, I'll just record two acoustic versions of a couple of 01:06:26.320 --> 01:06:56.280 songs and so we did. And so they sat on them and was like, you know, let's wait till the vinyls, you know, the company that put out the vinyls, let them kind of make back their money. And then so then, you know, two years later or so, it's, you know, everyone kind of was ready for that to kind of be put on Bandcamp. So I just popped it on Bandcamp and it was quite a 01:06:56.300 --> 01:07:26.280 I'm excited to have those versions up because I really like how much they exhibit the I don't know the how much is going on in those songs a lot of times like in in fires and and also in in mist there is a lot going on and there's also a sort of ferocity of certain parts that might overshadow or sort of maybe cover up the complexity or the intricacies on the stuff and so the nice thing about the acoustic bits is that 01:07:26.320 --> 01:07:53.600 that they're at a nice kind of easy tempo that grows, but also that is able to exhibit all the different things that are happening. So it's really nice to be able to, I guess, exhibit that part of it as well and to also show people who don't buy vinyl, here's what those songs sound like. Yeah. All right. 01:07:56.320 --> 01:08:24.140 If you want to delve deeper into maritime folk music, what would you recommend to them? Okay, excellent. So there's a splendid band from Nova Scotia who I don't think they're together anymore. I think one of the members passed away, but Mick Ginty, M-C-G-I-N-T-Y, they're just stellar. Like everything they do is just so good. And they've got some great versions of some great maritime folk songs. 01:08:26.319 --> 01:08:56.279 up new maritime folks so they're from nova scotia um obviously a big one is great big sea they're from newfoundland i know them yep good excellent um fun fact about great big sea is uh one of the main folks in in that band is good friends with russell crowe so he was actually in robin hood the movie um but they're they're kind of the the most uh probably famous of so i think technically newfoundland isn't in the maritime 01:08:56.319 --> 01:09:25.560 They're only in Atlantic Canada. There's this weird Atlantic versus maritime thing. I don't understand it. I think it's kind of crazy. So I guess they're not... I don't know, man. It's nuts. Look it up on Wikipedia. So maybe they count or maybe they don't count. I don't know. But they count. Close enough. Close enough. And obviously Stan Rogers, even though he's from Ontario, but he spent most of his... a lot of his summers in Nova Scotia and really grabbed the maritime vibe. 01:09:26.760 --> 01:09:54.259 Yeah, so let me try to think here. I hope there's somebody, I guarantee there's somebody that I'm missing and that I'll wake up tomorrow morning and just like be horrified that I forgot. But, you know, I'll give you two good ones for anybody who wants to listen. Yeah, there's some pretty good stuff there. So there's this great comic for anybody who doesn't know the Maritimes well. So there's a song called Barrett's Privateers and it's the one that goes, 01:09:56.360 --> 01:10:26.280 and then there's a response that goes "I wish I was in Sherbrooke, no!" And everybody in the Maritimes knows it and pretty much any time that the bar closes down, you know, somebody will start it up and everybody knows, you know, at least the first two or three verses. So there's this great comic where there's like, they're in like a house and there's this kind of murderer who's chasing, who's trying to like, you know, kill somebody who's trying to hide from them. And, you know, there are a couple of frames where 01:10:26.320 --> 01:10:56.220 that were, you know, the person's hiding and then the murderer's like, doesn't know where they are. And then the person's like, oh my goodness, I don't think, I think I finally got rid of them. Then the murderer goes, oh, the year was 1778. And the other person goes, how I wish I was, oh, fuck. And then they get stabbed. And they get stabbed. Yeah, so that's how you kill a maritimer. Awesome. Now, I'm sure Will is going to want me to ask this question. You know, we're going to go out tomorrow. 01:10:56.300 --> 01:11:26.260 and you're going to introduce me to some of the local beers. But for those that aren't going to be along for that trip, what are some of the good beers in this area? Troy Away, Grim Ross, Pickaroons, Maybes, Greystone, Off Grid, of course, Off Grid. Of course. Eureka as well. Big Axe from Mackwick. They're incredible. So many breweries have just exploded. 01:11:26.360 --> 01:11:56.280 in New Brunswick in the last five, ten years. It's just wonderful. We have so much selection and so many great beers coming out. So it's really difficult to kind of list them all. But we've got a lot of great spots that will... I don't know. All of the different breweries also kind of join in this kind of group and they all have taps of other breweries as well. So everybody kind of shares the... 01:11:56.940 --> 01:12:25.360 and it's great for all of us because we have delicious beer. Delicious beer. All right. Well, thank you for taking all this time to answer all these questions for me. I greatly appreciate it. Now, if we can make it work, Joel's going to play us some songs. See what I can do here, yeah. So we're going to take a break and set that up and we'll be back. Great. All right. Thanks. 01:12:30.699 --> 01:12:35.440 So this one's called Maritime Shores. It's from Wanderer on the Continent of Saplings. 01:12:47.860 --> 01:12:48.640 There's usually fiddle. 01:12:52.200 --> 01:12:53.100 Just imagine the fiddle. 01:13:05.500 --> 01:13:22.800 Well, I've seen this continent's ocean, and all its creatures in motion, but above it all the splendor stemmed the briny maritimes. 01:13:22.800 --> 01:13:52.780 Where the mist and the rain Blast life into me And the old white pines Stand God over the sea Stand God over the sea Though I have left a resolve time before Oh how I long for a maritime shore 01:13:52.800 --> 01:14:05.460 And I am but one of thousands of lore Oh how I long for maritime shores Oh how I long for maritime shores 01:14:26.060 --> 01:14:50.940 Well, I've lost myself in the greenery and all other distant scenery, but none match the climes of the misty maritimes. And elsewhere pipes are singing and strings and drums are ringing, 01:14:51.020 --> 01:15:20.980 But none with the life of the briny maritimes The briny maritimes Though I have lefters of time before Oh, how I long for maritime shores And I am but one of a thousand of the ore Oh, how I long for maritime shores 01:15:21.020 --> 01:15:24.760 Oh, how would I hope for the maritime shores? 01:15:54.060 --> 01:16:07.880 Alright, and this next one is... Goose River from Thrasenblatt 2, wandering on the continent of Saplings. And okay, campfire light, please show me where the 7th fret is. Okay, got it. 01:16:32.020 --> 01:16:50.460 We'll walk through the day, on down to the bay, claim old Goose Mellie Point. So haul on your mugs and growler jugs. It's a long road, but not as long as the dry road. 01:16:52.600 --> 01:17:18.600 We'll drink the air, spin many a tail, come rise the final day. We'll pour out some beer for the one not here. Cheers be by once more, cheers once more be by. It's the long road and the sorrow low. 01:17:22.240 --> 01:17:49.580 It's a long road, and it's a road load. Cheers, me boy, once more. Cheers, once more, me boy. Where could we throw the ash but the end of the path? Swirling Goose, rear of the point. Where he'll stand with the trees and run with the streams where he once roamed. 01:17:51.020 --> 01:18:20.980 How can ever again go? And again next year we'll feast out here An annual march to the sea We'll raise up a toast on the rocky coast Cheers me boy once more Cheers once more me bye It's a long road and a sore road 01:18:21.000 --> 01:18:35.240 No, it's a long road, and a sore road alone, cheers me once more, cheers once more, me bye. 01:19:04.960 --> 01:19:19.940 It's a long road, and it's a road alone. Oh, oh, oh. It's a long road, and it's a road alone. You choose me, my arms, whoa. 01:19:52.280 --> 01:19:53.640 Oh, thank you. 01:20:00.660 --> 01:20:01.560 Time for the tuning. 01:20:02.500 --> 01:20:02.920 It's cold. 01:20:20.000 --> 01:20:20.680 Okay. 01:20:21.620 --> 01:20:39.480 What do we have left here? So... Okay. So this next one is going to be difficult by the campfire light, but it's called Via Canadensis from Thrasenblatt IV, Great Brunswick Forest. 01:21:06.660 --> 01:21:17.060 "Thus a river flows a maré, squared maré, tethering city so distant. 01:21:20.840 --> 01:21:50.720 The great standing stones, they tower like the memories and the myths they mar. On we go to the standing stones we've made. On we go to the standing stones we've yet to raise. And so stand the stones are my risk we admire. Tethering, dying, so great. 01:21:52.139 --> 01:21:56.720 And as we stand in awe, 01:21:58.740 --> 01:22:03.460 we prepare to come at our own. 01:22:04.980 --> 01:22:10.160 On we go to the standing stones we've made. 01:22:10.540 --> 01:22:15.680 On we go to the standing stones we've yet to raise. 01:22:15.900 --> 01:22:29.460 On we go, Anchor in the earth. On we go, thank Olympic God for these transient times. 01:22:55.160 --> 01:22:57.980 On we go 01:23:01.140 --> 01:23:03.840 On we go 01:23:07.380 --> 01:23:09.600 On we go 01:23:10.900 --> 01:23:13.180 To the stepping stones we've made 01:23:13.740 --> 01:23:15.860 On we go 01:23:19.340 --> 01:23:44.660 On we go, to the standing stones we've made. On we go, to the standing stones we've yet to raise. On we go, anchored in the earth. On we go, make a lifted guard for these transient times. 01:23:51.760 --> 01:23:52.240 Awesome. 01:23:55.280 --> 01:23:56.480 Thank you, thank you, thank you. 01:23:57.400 --> 01:23:59.580 Alright, well this next one is capo time. 01:24:01.080 --> 01:24:02.600 Thank you, George, for the spotlight there. 01:24:06.220 --> 01:24:09.740 So this next one is called Green Man of East Canada. 01:24:10.240 --> 01:24:12.200 And it's from Thrasymlet Four, Great Brunswick Forest. 01:24:12.800 --> 01:24:13.960 Any guitarists out there, 01:24:14.560 --> 01:24:25.840 Right now I am tuned to one step down from standard with a capo on the 9th fret. Which means if you're in standard, it's a capo on the 7th fret. And I'm going to start in A minor. Relative to that. 01:24:44.560 --> 01:25:14.360 Justin Brown, Santa Vagabond's cloak, a timeless image from the wood. Stop, and I said to him, before he passed me by, Stranger to these maritime shores, bury a moment of your time. Green Man of East Canada, the dark shores of Northumberland. Green Man, Seaman of your journey across the way. 01:25:15.520 --> 01:25:26.780 Green Man of East Canada, the dark shores of Northumberland. Green Man, sing man of your journey across the way. 01:25:40.480 --> 01:26:04.800 I'm no stranger to these lands, though they're not my own. Left with exchanged ties to call this Brunswick kingdom home. It's shores alive with green, it's cities cloaked in trees. Like the hazean of my youth, thousands of your summers past. 01:26:10.520 --> 01:26:16.180 Green man, seeing man, of your journey across the waves. 01:26:17.700 --> 01:26:23.580 Green man of East Canada, the dark shores of Northumberland. 01:26:23.980 --> 01:26:28.440 Green man, seeing man, of your journey across the waves. 01:26:30.180 --> 01:26:36.240 I bear the emblems of the summer, and I bear its passing song. 01:26:36.500 --> 01:27:02.380 I carry it through winter, spread it when the snows have gone. Across the jagged seas I've traveled with a thirst to cross them, and kept my arms across the richest of the listed lands. Green Man of East Canada, the dark shores of Northumberland. 01:27:49.660 --> 01:28:00.420 All right, thank you. And that's the end of capo time. Okay. How are we doing for time there, George? 18 minutes. Perfect. 01:28:06.480 --> 01:28:21.360 How do you feel about throwing another log in there, Nick? Don't throw your phone on it. I just took some great pictures of you. That'll be a shame. 01:28:52.540 --> 01:29:06.420 I can't see anything, alright, last tune is, um, one that's never been played live, ever, uh, gonna do an acoustic version of it. 01:29:06.480 --> 01:29:07.720 "Once Fire Veined." 01:30:00.340 --> 01:30:06.440 Browser of mine, how could you thrive 01:30:06.460 --> 01:30:07.860 In constant peace 01:30:08.520 --> 01:30:09.860 Thrive without the struggle 01:30:10.060 --> 01:30:11.880 For always more 01:30:12.520 --> 01:30:15.620 Oh no, it is really more 01:30:16.300 --> 01:30:16.940 Sister 01:30:18.020 --> 01:30:19.840 What shall you bring 01:30:20.280 --> 01:30:21.980 With tides and victories 01:30:22.020 --> 01:30:23.740 Shall you ever sing 01:30:24.560 --> 01:30:25.660 What did it bring 01:30:26.040 --> 01:30:27.380 In your idleness 01:30:28.180 --> 01:30:29.640 From a great journey 01:30:30.100 --> 01:30:31.340 To the rest 01:30:33.940 --> 01:30:36.420 The peace for its universe 01:30:41.460 --> 01:31:06.080 If you get to wonder, why do you rest like trees for which you long is but rest for grown ahead? Empire, lost empire I found, I sing to you, ye dead, above the ground. 01:31:23.099 --> 01:31:35.160 What of mine? What of the lightning that had governed you? What cluttered the clouds, grey thunderhead? 01:31:56.420 --> 01:32:02.540 The peace for which you long is but rest for the road ahead. 01:32:05.220 --> 01:32:27.700 The world gets to wonder why do you rest like the peaceful which you long is but rest for the road ahead. Fire I've lost and fire I've bound I sing to ye dead above the ground. 01:32:51.300 --> 01:33:02.840 And you can hear the fire. That was awesome. I want to slide over to your mic a little bit just to say a few things. 01:33:05.240 --> 01:33:35.200 I just wanted to thank you for that performance that was amazing you know to have listened to all these songs for well not all of them obviously the new ones but some of these songs for a few years now and to see these performed now I would say if I wasn't already sporting goosebumps from it being cold there would definitely be goosebumps on top of my goosebumps that was that was stellar thank you oh you're welcome George it's a pleasure it's a pleasure 01:33:35.240 --> 01:34:05.160 Wonderful to have you up here. And wonderful to be able to play these tunes for you. Thanks for making all of this happen. And until next we talk, I guess. Sounds good. All right. Thanks. All right. Thanks, George. There you have it. The Campfire interview. The Campfire songs. How incredible was that? That whole trip was such a blast. I cannot thank Joel and Nikki enough for hosting us that week. 01:34:05.240 --> 01:34:35.200 for putting up with my podcast garbage for showing us around the area and allowing me to experience some of the great Canadian beers local to the area. I also got to meet some great people, Joel's friends Colin and Kat, and at long last I finally met one of our long-time listeners, Gregory Kelly. Well met, sir. I also got my first taste of poutine, not poutine. And while I didn't end up seeing a moose, I saw plenty of signs warning me of the possibility. Thanks again to everyone who helped me to get a chance to get a chance to get a chance to get a chance to get a chance to get a chance to get a chance to get a chance to get 01:34:35.240 --> 01:34:51.760 to make that weekend happen. It was wonderful, and I hope we can do it all again. I expect by now you've beaten a path to band camp to pick up Great Brunswick Forest, but if you haven't, I'm going to encourage you one more time to go do it now. All right, until next time, take it easy. 01:35:29.980 --> 01:35:31.980 CAPTAIN CRUNCH!