Hey gang,
Alot of you have been asking how we made out at Indie Week 2008 with our showcase at the Reverb in Toronto this past Thursday.
First off, we want to thank Darryl and his staff of Indie Week 2008 for selecting and having us as a performer this year. We are truly honoured!
It was a long day to say the least, but we were totally running on adrenaline for days leading up to the event. We had considerable press coverage too, which furthered our excitement.
If it hadn’t been for hitting Toronto rush hour traffic we would have been to the venue earlier, however, we arrived about 5 pm, downtown Toronto.
First meeting up with our good buddy Justin with whom brought a film crew to film our set, then we scouted out bar staff for load in instructions etc.
3 flights of stairs and considerable amounts of heavy gear was a treat, however thank goodness for several strong roadies (Bobby, Jon & Pete) that came with us to assist. Made this part of our job much easier.
After getting all gear inside, set up on stage and then a quick cover sound check (Audioslave), I had a brief production meeting with Justin from the film crew about how filming would be conducted that evening. He had some really great ideas and I think with his talent his video of us is truly going to shine.
For those of you that don’t know what I’m talking about when I refer to the video, Justin and his crew were capturing our set and focusing heavily on filming our new single “Loaded Gun”. This song has just been released by us to radio and the video featuring footage from Justin will be going to Much Music/VH1/MTV and other music video networks worldwide in the very near future.
We are sitting down together shortly to work on the scripted and acted footage that will compliment the video and work on landing the actors that we’d like to appear in the video! Watch for an update from us on some special secret location shots that we’ll be inviting people to for capturing additional footage.
This video shoot all came within perfect timing of our announcement of being selected to perform Indie Week, from over 350 acts worldwide that tried to get in. Narrowed down to 80, I’m pleased and thrilled that we even made it. Plus the luck continued with the additional announcement of Loaded Gun being picked up by the upcoming Action Movie “Under Currence”.
So, you can see why we were just a little excited to get down to Toronto for Indie Week.
Back to sound check. The venue had a rather large stage which was a bonus as we pretty much need some space for our on stage antics… I’m sort of pleased I chose not to go wireless that night, or I surely would have been sprinting across the stage and who knows what kind of band member collisions may have arisen from that!!!!
The vibe on stage was great, low end from the front of house subs rocked with every kick from Adam’s (backline provided) drumkit. Even though it wasn’t Adam’s kit, he truly made it sound “owned” by him.
Monitors were a bit weak on stage, but then again, I can count on 2 thumbs the amount of times I have ever had enough monitor to hear the lead and backup vocals anyway, so, no biggie. The front of house was loud and clear enough anyway, so we could at least hear splash back from that to hear vocal cues etc.
We decided with time restraints that we would go without our traditional samples that we usually travel with, and go with raw, yet intense Finding Core setlist. I do like playing without intro samples too, as there are alot of bands out there that depend on samples as vital parts of their songs. What happens when you can’t hook up your samples, or you player goes dead? A train wreck.
This show was too important for us to have anything go wrong. And law says, if it can go wrong, it will. So, samples stayed at home.
Days prior to departure for Toronto bassist JZ, myself and Manager Sandra Lee had a talk about our set list. Normally I do a guitar solo in our live set that seems to go over well with the fans. We had it in this set list as well. I was feeling uneasy about it, and voiced my concerns about dropping it for Indie Week. I thought it was best that we not do the solo at the showcase. I was talked into it by bassist JZ and then after talks again between the 3 of us, it was added back to the set. And with good consequence as I’ll get to in a moment.
So, 9pm would be our stage time, and just shortly before taking stage we got to meet Darryl (Indie Week founder) downstairs as he was dropping off promo and meeting with staff etc. It was great meeting you Darryl, see you next year!!!
Also, just prior to stage time, we met our great friend Chris M., whom was the organizer and marketing genius behind last year’s Great Canadian Band Challenge that we were in. A marketing guru and incredible musician himself, it was an honour to have him in front of us for our set.
I’ll be honest I was a little extra nervous with him there, but it helped me play even better.
So, we were given our cues from event staff, we made our entrance up the stairs while being filmed from behind and in front of us with remote cameras and made our way to stage. We did our typical hands in center stage at the drumkit, a regiment that is a must in this band. We are just as superstitious as any hockey team out there when it comes to our performance. The hands in gives us good luck.
The lights onstage were intense, and hotter than a bake oven, which in my book, is good. I would rather be hot than cold. I play much better. I may fall down and nearly die as I exit the stage, but during performance it’s my recipe for success.
We were told 30 minutes for our set, so I planned a setlist that accommodated that to the second including solo. Looking back it felt like our set could have been longer as the bands that followed us were much longer in set length, but that’s fine.
We picked some of our best songs from our first album, and really focused heavily on our new single Loaded Gun. You can tell when you watch us play this song live with newly added lead vocalist Albert Huggett and drummer Adam Tuckwell that there is a new level of excitement within the band. While Adam has been with us for over a year now, he is no longer playing our previous drummer’s parts and has freedom to explore new realms of percussion. Anyone that is a fan of Mike Portnoy from Dream Theater would love Adam’s playing, no doubt.
Between our 2 newest songs, we sandwiched my guitar solo in there nicely, and it went off better than I expected. We received some great compliments from many that attended and the host of the evening made a comment over the mic while announcing the other bands, something to the nature of “Thanks to Finding Core for that guitar solo, it was Sick..”. (a very humbled thank you !!!)
We played probably one of our best sets to date that evening, the only other live show I can say that may have came close with this new personnel lineup and setlist may have been at Rockstock 2008. They were both close in feel, but I think this may have been the one though that we turned up to 11 giving the extra push over the cliff.
On to the end of the evening after listening to 4+ other bands whom in my book ALL deserved to be there (there was considerable more cover material performed then what I would have expected at a showcase) however these bands were great. As a guitarist I was enthralled with the talent (in guitar players alone) that night. I know they all caught me staring at them, heck I was right up front watching without blinking. Great talent, great gear, good all around.
There was some terrific vocal talent throughout the evening too, and there’s no doubt in my mind that there could be some real super bands composed of several of the musicians that performed and showcased that evening.
In the end, the drumrolls lead into the reading the winner of that evening’s performance. It was not in the cards for Finding Core this time, with the winning band “Random Robbery” from Toronto being crowned the evening’s victor.
So VERY long story short, for those of you that asked how we did, the verdict is in. We took many positives from this and had a very good evening. We met some great people and hey, got a video shot for worldwide television viewing, so I’d say we did really well.
For those of you that kept asking about the outcome of that evening, please excuse our delay. We only got 2 hours sleep that night, after 8 hours of driving, and not to mention extreme muscle agony from a very physical onstage performance.
So, in closing we’d like to thank everyone who made this happen for us, especially Darryl at Indie Week.
Take care everyone, and watch for more (spam) I mean news, from us in the near future 
We also remind you that you can download our new single “Loaded Gun” for free at www.findingcore.com.
Cheers!
All photos © 2008 Sandra Lee/Finding Core
