Canadian resident poet laureates of rock music. They are fluent in both Canadian national languages: Rock and Roll. They, we, us, you, me are from Winnipeg Canada. The heart of the heart of the continent. They, me, sing songs in between the time that they are not singing. Songs about us, this place, and why we stay.
- The Weakerthans -

Ooh Canada...I've missed your long, open roads; your wild and ever-changing driving conditions; your beers. Let me put it to you straight: I want you back. I'm a changed man, and I can prove it... I'm gonna love you from Wreckhouse to Rogers Pass. It's like this - Me. You. A beautiful sandy beach just for us. No words. Just the mellow groove and gentle sway of two people who are really feelin' each other. And as I hold you closer, there's this... moment when your eyes meet mine, and the world melts away - your lips touch mine, and I know in my heart nothing has ever felt so good, so sweet, so right. Yeah. It's like that. See you soon, Honey Child.
- The Constantines -

CHECK OUT MORE ABOUT THE WEAKERTHANS & CONSTANTINES:
iTunes Page with an exclusive iMix of the bands' road music!
Tour Dates
Rolling Tundra Contest
News: Record of the Week Club Starts up in Winnipeg, Features Weakerthans' Samson
Exclaim TV: Weakefthans vs. Weakerthans
Pop Rocks Review: Weakerthans - Reunion Tour
News: The Constantines' Kensington Heights Tops Associated Press List of Top Rock Albums
Exclaim TV: Constantines: A Real Interview
Points: The Constantines Are Your Neighbours

John Samson of the Weakerthans here. Some of us on the Rolling Tundra Revue have been reading The Way by Swann’s by Marcel Proust, and have started a club to discuss it together. You can join us right here.  The first chapter of The Way by Swann’s, by Marcel Proust, begins with a long and lovely exploration of the weird spaces between consciousness and sleep, specifically those times when you drift off with a book in your hands: “…it seemed to me that I myself was what the book was talking about: a church, a quartet, the rivalry between Francois I and Charles V.” Seems like Proust is setting us up to see the scope of his ambition for the novel in our hands to include pretty much everything, and it is a nice welcoming sentiment that implies he needs us, the reader, to complete his writing.I was especially struck by this relevant statement a couple pages in: “A sleeping man holds in a circle around him the sequence of the hours, the order of the years and worlds. He consults them instinctively as he wakes and reads in a second the point on earth he occupies, the time that has elapsed before his waking; but their ranks can be mixed up, broken.” This is the best description of waking up on a tour bus ever. Mixed up and broken.  So, so far, so good. Almost too easy. Then we start to read about the young narrator and his home town of Combray, and wander into a long description of his trouble getting to sleep. The description of the magic lantern that the narrator’s family gives him to allay his fears of the dark impressed Weakerthans bass player Greg Smith. Greg is our most accomplished reader—he often takes a classic on tour with him (last time it was Joyce’s Ullyses) and reads for a couple hours every night before the show. Predicatably, Greg seems most enthusiastic about the book so far. Cons guitarist Steve Lambke and myself, however, found these pages about the narrator’s tortured relationship with sleep and his mother pretty rough going. Lambke went so far as to confess that he briefly thought he might have to resign from the club. I found it getting claustrophobic and whiny and had the dreadful feeling that we were in for 3000 pages more of this. But then it all lifts with the beautiful and justly famous “petite madelines” scene. The narrator eats a french cookie type thing and the past comes flooding back, washes over him. Suddenly his memories of his youth at Combray are more that just “the theatre and drama of my bedtime,” which I had feared would go on forever. Now I assume we are prepared for a deeper exploration of time and memory as we move to Chapter 2.  Cons bass player Dallas Wherle is just finishing The Day of the Triffids, and will start in on The Way by Swann’s shortly.  Documentary film director Caelum Vatnsdal just rejoined the tour today, so hasn’t been present at meetings, but he sent this helpful link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwAOc4g3K-g  Please chime in with any comments. Let’s try to have Chapter 2 read for, say, next Thrusday, April 30^th.  Yours Truly, JKS, Secretary, RTR BOOK CLUB 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkyPlKgsc9s

–Audience member at the show in Winnipeg this evening. Help us prove him wrong.

Members of the Constantines and Weakerthans, cast and crew, have formed a book club. To enlighten the western leg of our tour we will be reading The Way by Swann’s (aka Swann’s Way), the first book of Marcel Proust’s massive modernist masterpiece In Search of Lost Time, translated by Lydia Davis.

Confirmed members who are just cracking the spines on their copies include Steve Lambke and Dallas Wherle from the Constantines, John Samson and Greg Smith from the Weakerthans, and Caelum Vatnsdal, the director of the documentary crew we are traveling with.

It looks like this in Canada and the UK:

http://www.amazon.ca/Modern-Classics-Search-Lost-Swanns/dp/0141180315/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1240093284&sr=8-2

And like this in the USA:

http://www.amazon.com/Swanns-Way-Search-Penguin-Classics/dp/0142437964/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1240093340&sr=8-1

Please try to find a copy at your local independent bookstore or library and start reading. We aim to have a discussion on the first chapter by the time we reach Edmonton on Thursday. We will then post our thoughts, and invite you to do the same. We look forward to exploring this wonderful piece of fiction with you.

Yours truly,

John K. Samson, Secretary, Rolling Tundra Revue Book Club

Round 2:Western leg starts tonight in Winnipeg, MB @ the Burton Cummings Theatre.CATCH IT IN 3D!(photos by: Jeremy R. Jansen)

Dallas Wehrle was nominated for the coveted Juno award for “Best Album Design”. He lost to Anouk Panil, who brought home an inanimate statuette. Compare and contrast with the First Annual “Rusty” Award for Best Album Design. In this category,  Dallas won and recieved for his prize an eminently edible, completely microwaved Pizza Pop. The decision of these judges: Dallas 1, Anouk Panil 0.

Love,

“The Party Bus.”

Beginning:
Go to the Bruleurie.
Drink -Cafe au Lait.
Eat- Croissant Au Chocolate.
Read a French News Paper article about volcanoes in Alaska.

Middle:
Film a scene for a movie with the Plains of Abraham in the background.
Walk through the old city.
Wear an old man’s hat.
Go back to the Bruleurie for more Cafe Au Lait.
Eat - Spinach Soup.
Stare out window sometimes watching people who are walking by sometimes
just staring.

End:
Take a taxi to L’Echaude.
Drink a made in manitoba Crown Royal Manhattan.
Chase a mouche from la Salade.
Drink Cote de Rhone wine.
Get harassed by a Quebecois man about both your hometowns sport teams,
especially the one that left.

Much Later:
Drink a beer on the bus.
Walk through the cold night with friends to have
squeeky curds that float like clouds in  a heavy gravy rain
falling on a bed of chips.`

The forest of New Brunswick enters the city near the venue, and wanders at will
in between buildings and up the other side of the St John river.

To the south the bay of Fundy tilts as the ocean slips out caught somewhere between the pull of the sun and the push of the moon. The province rises higher as the weight of water moves off.

During the day we make repairs. Cables that crackle are mended, dirty strings are changed, smudged drum skins are replaced, calloused are made where fingers blistered.

While the cons play a heavy night fog rolls into the room. Men and women come in from the woods sweep shavings from the lumber mills off their shoulders, stamping to the beat to get the snow off their boots. Out side a angry winter squal settles over the venue and the snow violently circles in the air but never falls.

The pulse of the tour now has its own rhythm that we do not control. While we sleep we  are passengers in a swaying vessel that tilts as far side to side and it does towards any given point. Our instruments are the ballast in the hold. Like our far off Golden Boy a top the Manitoba legislature who crossed the ocean over and over in the dark hold of a ship during the war. To one day be removed and to have all the lights you can shine, shine on him.

We left the East Coast just as the snow started falling.
Halifax is supposed to get thirty-five centimeters today.
I’m ready for Spring, I can tell you that much.
The optimist in me never packs the right coat or footwear.
The pessimist is still half-asleep.

My pagan ass was out there on the Equinox, just waiting.

As you may have read, Will had a fall in St. John’s, but he’s feeling much better now.  According to Dallas, his doctor was the most beautiful woman in Newfoundland.  I watched two-and-a-half episodes of Mythbusters in the waiting room with a man named Igor and a woman angrily coughing.  Bless the heart of the Triage Nurse.

I hope the Maritimers had a good time.  It goes by so quickly.
I’m wondering now if I left my green toque in St. John’s.

What to do in Quebec City?
Chateau Frontenac.
Bonhomme Bonhomme.

Stephen just tried to convince me that Depanneur is French for,
“Remove your pants.”

Mais Oui.

Enchanté.

BW