Moe is the tops

--taken from: St. Albert Gazette

by Scott Hayes

When I first started as a reporter here almost nine years ago, one of the first things that I did was to figure out a way to interview Moe Berg. The lead singer of awesome CanCon power pop band The Pursuit of Happiness was born and raised right here in St. Albert. I never felt that justice was given to him in the way of some kind of official recognition or even a feature story in the press to acknowledge not only his contributions to the world of music but also his lifelong dedication to his vastly successful and influential artistic practice.

We’ve celebrated Mark Messier in a few different ways but he barely had any connection to this city as far as I’m concerned. Messier has a road and an arena named after him and all he had to do was play hockey. The Moose is retired but where’s the Moe Berg Amphitheatre? What are the directions to get to TPOH Way? Why isn’t Love Junk taught in schools?

Furthermore, Moe is still active in TPOH, teaching music at Fanshawe College in Ontario, producing music for other musicians, and making tracks with his new band The TransCanada Highwaymen. Joined by former lead singer of the Barenaked Ladies Steven Page, Sloan's Chris Murphy, and Craig Northey of Odds, the band is set to tour the country starting in the spring.

Nothing against Messier – honestly – but his connection to St. Albert was pretty threadbare and he’s been retired for more than a decade. Moe Berg, on the other hand, is a workhorse who went through elementary, junior and senior high school here, taught himself to play guitar, practiced endlessly and wrote songs his whole life just to get good at it, and he’s still doing it. He toured around the world and put this city on the map for major musical birthplaces. He’s a self-made Rock God.

Okay, I know I’m sounding too much like a die-hard fan here. I just felt that respect was due. If there’s no statue dedicated to the man then the very least I could do was write a feature article about the life and times of Moe Berg.

And so I spent the years from 2008 to 2016 slowly doing my research and eventually making contact with Moe himself. Earlier this year, I put the plan into action by talking to school librarians and going through copies of old yearbooks, slowly putting the pieces together. I was lucky enough to interview Moe twice wherein I learned about his early bands, especially The Modern Minds that also featured Kim Upright on drums and Bob Drysdale on bass. I interviewed Kim who started up www.themodernminds.ca as a way of cataloguing and preserving the history of that trio that didn’t last long but sure helped launch each of their careers, even on wildly different paths.

Sadly, I missed my chance to talk to Drysdale. He passed away 13 years ago. Even in his short years, he made his marks with The Modern Minds and then the Rock and Roll Bitches before he gave up on being a performer. He didn’t give up on music, however, and kept on composing his own soundtrack. He preferred to march to the beat of his own drum anyway. It was an honour and a pleasure to meet his mother and younger brother to talk about the legacy and the mystery that was Bob Drysdale.
As it turned out, that feature turned into a Rolling Stone-sized triple feature, full double-page spreads with a three-pager for the big finale. It ran on three consecutive Saturdays, ending Dec. 17. I interviewed former teachers, music bloggers, people involved with hosting the unofficial TPOH website and Facebook page, former and current bandmates, and other music journalists.

It was by far the most work that I’d ever put into anything I’d ever written for the Gazette. I lost sleep over it and was endlessly tinkering with it even after I’d submitted it for publication. If it weren’t for the patience and tolerance of my editors and the creative layout team here, it simply wouldn’t have turned out as well as it did. It might not have been the most important story that I wrote this year, nor the most timely, but it meant a lot to me. As passion projects go, I don’t know if I could top it.

--taken from: St. Albert Gazette

Canadian band Sloan will headline Barrie’s Downtown Countdown this year

--taken from: The Barrie Examiner

by Susan Doolan

One of Canada's most popular bands, Sloan, will be performing for their third New Year's Eve, Saturday, in Barrie. The headliners for the annual free family Downtown Countdown also mark two significant anniversaries - Canada kicks off a year-long celebration of events in 2017 for its 150th year and Sloan is wrapping up their One Chord to Another 20th Anniversary Tour.

The tour began in Barrie earlier this year. It marked the Canadian reissue of the band's 1996 release of One Chord to Another. The U.S. release was one year later. It was the third album for Sloan and was their most commercially successful record. The group will be playing some of those songs along with the recently released - "Kids Come Back Again at Christmas" and "December 25" - at the Downtown Countdown.

"We will probably do our most recognizable songs," said bass player Chris Murphy, of their plans for the evening. "We've had songs on the radio a lot of people of the right age - 30s and 40s - would know."

Some of their children would also know the songs as the band has been together long enough - 25 years - to attract a second generation of fans. Murphy and Jay Ferguson (guitar, vocals) knew each other from other bands prior to Sloan but didn't join forces until Kearney Lake Road, an underground band they were both members of from 1987-1990.

Currently based out of Toronto, Sloan started out in Halifax, emerging out of the early American punk alt-rock scene before it became mainstream music. Patrick Pentland (guitar, vocals) and Andrew Scott (drums, vocals) both of whom played in other bands in the area, joined them 1991. For the past 10 years, Gregory Macdonald has become their regular keyboard player.

While Sloan never became a world-wide phenomenon, the band did have a lot of exposure on Canadian radio and television from the 1980s to early 2000 and acquired a dedicated following in the U.S. Along the way, they released 20 albums - including two compilations, one of singles and one of 'B' sides - and collected several East Coast Music Awards and nine Juno nominations.

All went university but all studied different subjects. Murphy acquired an English degree at Dalhousie in Halifax. He did it to "stay friends with his dad forever" and then moved on to study at NSCAD (Nova Scotia College of Art and Design).

For Murphy, it was always music, even though as a kid the genre was different, and that impacted any formal training in guitar.

"I was set up to take guitar lesson in Grade 3 and I was so into KISS that I wanted to be a rocker already and when I went to guitar class they wouldn't put me on a guitar - it was all clapping and ta, ta, t,t, ta stuff," he recalled. "I was so turned off. I was an impatient kid, I would have shown up for guitar in full KISS makeup but ta, ta, ta - I'm out of here."

His mother ended up teaching him a few guitar chords and by junior high he was really into music, mostly punk. While Sloan is far from punk, it does tend to defy genres - band members like to argue about whether they are more of a pop rock band or a rock pop band. Whatever the end result, they all come to songwriting a little differently than a typical band.

"Everyone is in charge of their own real estate on the records and the set list and whatever you want to do is your prerogative and we'll all do it," said Murphy, adding that kind of approach could run them into problems but it balances out when 25 per cent of the time, each can do exactly what they want to. "Every decision we made from day one was for the longevity of the band whether it was getting everyone to contribute creatively or splitting the money."

Twenty five years later, the original lineup remains the same. For Murphy, touring with the band and the extended crew is also a lot of fun because they are his best friends. When he's not touring, he's a homebody, living in an artistic household with lots of music and dance. His longtime partner is a dancer and the couple of have two children age nine and six.

--taken from: The Barrie Examiner

The Happiness of Pursuit

--taken from: St. Albert Gazette (read more here)

by Scott Hayes

Ladies and Gentlemen ... The Trans-Canada Highwaymen!

Next year, Moe will be zig-zagging the Great White North as part of supergroup The Trans-Canada Highwaymen along with Sloan's Chris Murphy, Steven Page (ex-lead singer of the Barenaked Ladies), and Craig Northey (Odds). They're being guided along by theatrical director and producer Jim Millan, the fellow behind the most recent Kids in the Hall reunion tour.

Millan said, “I had the idea of putting Moe and Chris Murphy and Craig Northey together as a group people would die to see. Craig was on the road with Steven and they all jumped on the idea.”

In a recent FYI Music News article, reporter Kerry Doole quoted Northey saying that Moe was a driving force in the project. Perhaps that's putting it mildly.

“If Moe Berg wants to rock, you don't get in his way, you just say, ‘let's go.'”

They've had a gig or two in Ontario to find their sea legs but the great news is that a tour is already in the booking phase and it's set to kick off in April. Fingers are surely crossed across the Western provinces for a date or two where Moe first stomped on campus stages and hotel rock room fold-up platforms.

My fingers are crossed.

--taken from: St. Albert Gazette (read more here)

Listen to Sloan's New Christmas Songs

--taken from: Exclaim!

by Josiah Hughes

As previously reported, Canadian power-pop heroes Sloan got into the holiday spirit with a new Christmas-themed 7-inch. The record has since sold out, but in the spirit of giving Sloan have made their tracks available online.

"Kids Come Back Again at Christmas" pairs a sprightly bass line with some holiday bells. Similarly, "December 25" offers plenty of piano alongside its sleigh bells. Both songs give you the best seasonal feelings with none of the schmaltz.

Listen to both songs below, where you'll also find a Christmas greeting from Sloan's Jay Ferguson.

What did you find yourself doing on the hottest day of this past summer? Hanging at the beach? Going for a swim? Relaxing with a book under a tree? Having a tall cool drink by the pool? How about standing in front of a microphone with sleigh bells and singing about snowballs, sleighs and Christmas day? That's the position we found ourselves in this past August while recording a brand new 7" single of 2 original Christmas songs. I think It's safe to say that it was a challenge, but we still managed to get into the holiday spirit while it was 39 degrees (that's 102 degrees fahrenheit, American friends) outside the studio. 

We've tried our hand at Christmas recordings before. In 2011 "The Twelve Days of Christmas" got an elaborately musical treatment that would have made Perry Como do a Hollywood style double-take, while Slade's "Merry X-Mas Everybody" got a rocking tribute in 2012 commandeered by Patrick on lead vocals.  

This year we decided to add 2 original songs to the canon of holiday fare. On Side A, Chris, with Patrick harmonizing along side, takes the lead on his galloping, acoustic driven future-holiday-classic "Kids Come Back Again at Christmas". On Side B, I contributed a snowy piano song suitable for a slow skate called "December 25". Thanks as well to our Gregory Macdonald for adding his touch of seasonal splendour to these recordings. 

Andrew chimed in with the wintery collage artwork found on the 7" cover and the 4 Christmas cards that come with this package. The cards feature seasonal messages inside in the form of lyrics from our catalogue. Some miiiight be a stretch, but hopefully the merry sentiment remains intact and your relatives and recipients won't be puzzled!
One final note: as a tribute to our One Chord To Another album that we've been celebrating this year, the drums on these new songs were recorded direct to 4-track cassette just as we did with that album 20 years ago. I'm not sure if Chris' or my engineering skills have improved since 1996, but I still think they sound kinda cool. I've added more blank C-90 cassettes to my Xmas wish list. 

From us to you, please have a merry holiday season and a happy new year! 

Yo Ho Ho, 

Jay F. 

--taken from: Exclaim!

Hear Sloan's Chris Murphy perform 'Kids Come Back Again at Christmas'

--taken from: CBC (listen to the song here)

On Dec. 2, CBC held its annual Sounds of the Season charity drive event in Toronto and q host Tom Power was there (festive sweater and all) to talk to Sloan frontman Chris Murphy about Christmas songs and traditions.

Murphy, who was there to perform a Sloan Christmas original called "Kids Come Back Again at Christmas," talked about staying in touch with his family after moving to Toronto from Halifax many years ago.

"With touring in the band, some years I'd be in Halifax three or four times a year, but now I go back pretty infrequently," Murphy explains.

Now, Murphy's parents make the trek to Toronto for the holidays, where they continue their tradition of listening to Christmas music of Perry Como.

"Kids Come Back Again at Christmas" is part of a special holiday 7" vinyl single by Sloan, which is currently sold out.

--taken from: CBC (listen to the song here)

Sloan headlines Barrie's Downtown Countdown

--taken from: Simcoe.com

by Janis Ramsay

Juno nominees Sloan will take the main stage to help welcome the new year in downtown.

Sloan is headlining the city’s 19th annual Downtown Countdown on New Year’s Eve.

The band has been together for more than 25 years and is known for songs The Good in Everyone and Money City Maniacs.

Also performing that night are Treehouse TV’s Splash ‘N Boots and local band Cardinal Street — who was picked over 35 submissions to the city.

Along with the music, guests can join the free celebration outside City Hall starting at 6 p.m. with skating on the Circle at the Centre rink, horse-drawn wagon rides, family activities and fireworks.

--taken from: Simcoe.com

Canadian band will headline Barrie event

--taken from: The Barrie Examiner

Sloan will headline Barrie’s 19th annual Downtown Countdown on New Year’s Eve.

The popular event will once again feature an amazing line-up of Canadian talent that is not to be missed.

“Sloan has been nominated for nine Juno Awards over their 25- year career, and the success of their many hit singles, such as 'The Good in Everyone' and 'Money City Maniacs', has made them one of the most popular Canadian bands,” said Arin Donnelly, community event co-ordinator.

Sloan has released 20 albums and EPs since 1992 and celebrated its 'One Chord to Another' album with a 20th anniversary tour.

Originally from Halifax, Nova Scotia, Sloan is a Toronto-based rock/power pop quartet.

The Downtown Countdown will also feature entertainment for the younger crowd with Treehouse TV’s Splash ‘N Boots, who have performed thousands of shows all over the world, released nine award-winning CDs, have been nominated for JUNO Awards, and were crowned Canadian Children’s Music Group of the Year three times. They will bring their exciting and fresh approach to entertainment for families to enjoy right here in Barrie.

Every year, the City of Barrie invites local acts to submit for the opportunity to perform on the Downtown Countdown stage. From over 35 submissions this year, Cardinal Street was selected to perform their original music and classic covers in front of a hometown crowd.

In addition to a fantastic entertainment line-up, this free celebration outside Barrie City Hall in the downtown will include skating on the Circle at the Centre rink, horse-drawn wagon rides, roaming performers, fun family activities, and fireworks all beginning at 6 p.m.

--taken from: The Barrie Examiner