We’re embarking on our second island run in 3 weeks, this time hitting Port Alberni and Errington (tonight and tomorrow night)
Each little tour will have a video edited of it! If you see the camera at a show, get in front and do something memorable! You might find your way into one of our videos! Follow us as we ramp our way up to some epic headlining slots this summer at festivals around BC. This is only the beginning.
here’s the first teaser. Shot and edited by Tom van Deursen
It’s been a busy week for us boom booms. We’ve taken our work boots off the shelf and are clocking in at the early hour of 7-in-the-AM on the north shore, working in a beautiful building that will soon be the head office of the north shore school district. Maybe we can leave some hidden messages for up-and-coming teachers. Ideas welcome. Sean played 5 soccer games in 2 days in squamish. Geordie was out of the country (no idea where!!) but now he’s back and he’s got a cellphone, and he is constantly answering it and making calls. We’re men of the future now. But still holding strong to the classic appeals of the past. Which is part of the reason we’ve taken some work as a band in the movie industry: A film based in the 70′s that may end up in Africa… I can’t tell you more yet. Stay tuned…
SO, there’s that, and then there is a whole truckload of band movement: We are writing new tunes, preparing ourselves for a rigorous summer/fall of festivals and touring, and most recently waking up to get ourselves on CTV Morning Live! MASH-UP! Check out the link, and our performance of “Dry Your Tears”. We’ll be teaming up with CTV again this friday: they’ll be filming some of our set at PARTY FOR THE PLANET in surrey. Check the tour page for details, we’re on @ 6pm sharp.
We’ll be playing a 3-day island run on the 3rd, 4th, and 5th of May (once again, tour page!) and Vancouver’s EPIC! festival on May 11th – this is a “cutting-edge” expo stuffed with things to simultaneously make your life fuller and cut down your environmental impact. dig on it HERE
Feel the sunshine tickling your fancy these days? ARE YOU OUTSIDE GETTIN’ IT DUN IN THE CITY LIKE YOU SHOULD BE?? Freeeeeedom! Spring is near, never fear.
And we are very happy about this. Our hometown shows have been full of sunshine lately, in many ways. The UBC Block Party crowd was riotous (and, if I may say, equally as horny as those at venue, according to Mike) and we had the pleasure of sharing the stage with local heavyweights Mother Mother. Awesome.
So, as the season turns over, we find ourselves on the long-short list for CBC/Green Couch’s TRACKS ON TRACKS adventure: a whole shwack of great west coast bands and people piling onto a train in june and heading across Canada to Toronto for the NxNE music festival. Sounds great, right? Hours of video footage will be taken as the bands involved stop across our grand nation and play guerilla shows (and learn the local dialects, heh).
SO We would love your help once again! Help us get onto this train by VOTING at the following link! This is a great opportunity for us to take the social mantras born in Brazil and carry them in our hearts across Canada, as we have our own issues here at home that need attention.
Here’s a review of our homecoming show @ Venue, from the Georgia Straight. Read on.
//////
“The Boom Booms must have spent the dying days of an ugly West Coast March wondering what the hell they were thinking. How would you like to be living la vida loca in the sunny, sultry country of Brazil for weeks and then suddenly stuck back in good old waterlogged Vancouver?
That was the setup for this admirably packed homecoming show at Venue. The East Van–spawned septet was coming off a three-month extended tour, its stay taking the band everywhere from the steamy jungles of the Amazon to the red-hot streets of Rio de Janeiro. The trip (rough footage of which can be seen at theboombooms.com/) expanded the group’s horizons from both a personal and musical perspective. By all accounts, the main goal of the band’s members was to immerse themselves in the county’s rich culture, whether that meant educating themselves about mega-dams in Altamira or learning to samba in the favelas. There was also music to be played, with the group’s final days abroad marked by a sold-out Santa Teresa concert played to 500 or so newly acquired fans.
As winter vacations go, it sounded like the kind that not even a 6/49 jackpot ticket is going to buy.
Given the journey was officially over with the group’s return to Vancouver, it was nothing short of amazing that the men of the Boom Booms looked anything but sorry for themselves. As cold, rainy, and all-around fucking miserable as it was outside, Venue was hotter than Avenida Rio Branco during Carnival, and in more ways than one. Sexxxed-up didn’t begin to describe the shiny, happy, and evidently riotously horny crowd, half of which seemed to think it was in a contest to see who could suck the most face in public. And that was before the show had even started.
The Boom Booms had no trouble keeping the good vibes going, the group ambling out to a rapturous welcome. In marked contrast to the rest of the set, things didn’t exactly get off to a high-octane start, with the beaming hometown heroes settling in on stools placed at the front of the stage. What followed was something you’d expect to see around a campfire in the rainforest, the group picking up tin-can drums, acoustic guitar, ukelele, tambourine, and triangle for a sung-in-Portuguese rendition of Chico da Silva’s “E Preciso”.
Shortly after that, all hell broke loose in the most joyous of ways. The Boom Booms have stumbled on a cocktail that’s guaranteed to please crowds of all ages. (If the Vancouver International Jazz Festival isn’t already calling, it needs to seriously get on it.) Over the course of an hour-plus performance, the band’s members left you wondering who they love more: Martinho da Vila, Bob Marley, Sublime, Caetano Veloso, Amon Tobin, or João Gilberto. As for the mosaic of a crowd, they were all about the Boom Booms, who—from conga-thumping Energizer Bunny Theo Vincent to perma-grinning singer Aaron Ross—never seemed to stand in one place for longer than a couple of seconds.
There were straight-outta–Sao Paulo dudes dirty dancing with bleached-blonde hipsters during “Lonely”. North Van adventurists played fevered games of tonsil hockey during slow jams like Seu Jorge’s “Burguesinha”. And Commercial Drive soccer fans showed their appreciation for Sue Jorge’s “Burguesinha” by yelling out incomprehensible (unless you spoke Portuguese) things like “Ash boog zhee”. Just when it looked like things weren’t going to get any hotter, the band sprayed a tanker truck of gasoline on a raging dance floor with a note-perfect mashap of Bill Withers’s “Grandma’s Hands”, Black Street’s “No Diggity”, and Kool and the Gang’s “Jungle Boogie”.
Even if you entered Venue soured on life by the shit winter weather, it was like being on a tropical vacation for the night, to the point where the audience should have been thanking the Boom Booms and not the other way around. Watch for these guys, because, as the good people of Brazil will happily confirm, they are onto something special.”
//////
For the record, WE ARE playing the Jazz Fest. Check the “Tour” page for details. And head to the “Boom Boom Brazil” page up at the top to see some teasers from our trip.
The sun rises, the sun sets. Eyes blink open in the afternoon and glow into the night, until the pending dawn tells them to shut. New experiences like nodes of energy along the string of life, clustered together, or sometimes far apart. When you hit them, they burst open and fill you with a palpable feeling of wonder, reminding you of your faith in humanity. And at the same time, the effects of the decisions of people in places of power, people who may not be having these life-affirming changes anymore, can be felt everywhere. Solutions float in the consciousness above all our heads, and in the tools in our hands. Cultures open their doors to you, and you must relax and open your doors to them. In these respects, traveling is one of the most important things you can do.
We’ve been on the road for 63 days. We’ve studied under masters of percussive drumming. We’ve documented controversial issues. We’ve been through the heart of the Amazon, down the river to the coast, and finally to beautiful Rio de Janiero, which has opened it’s doors to us and made it so that we never want to leave. Honest. And the whole thing has amounted to over 25 hours of footage that will be culled into a manageable length and released sometime late this spring, we’re hoping.
It’s been amazing. I sit here on the last day in Rio, before we catch the long night bus to Sao Paulo and our flights HOME. We have made a serious base camp in Rio Hostel, a wicked mansion perched on the hill on the outskirts of Santa Teresa, overlooking Lapa (the street samba district!) and in the distance, the downtown core. We basically took over a whole room of the hostel for 3 weeks, with out-trips to Filipe’s home in the mountains to the north for some songwriting and soccer & cageball training, to druglord-controlled Favelas to study samba, and to Belo Horizonte to stare at the stunning women there, er, and visit Villa Isabel, a community with a leprosy clinic and a budding music school for kids… awesome. We’ve celebrated 4 birthdays, played 8 shows, with the last one selling out OVER-CAPACITY – 500 people in a palace on the Santa Teresa hillside. Not bad at all. The foundation has been poured, the groudwork laid… we shall return. Options hover above us, opportunities here… but I can’t tell you yet.
So, we’re coming home. Home to create the most Brazilian summer you’ve ever had in Vancouver. There will be another block party. There will be epic jams. And most impending: there will be a kick-ass show at Venue NEXT THURSDAY!!! A week today!
People: we need your help. There are only 250 people confirmed on facebook. Venue fits over 500. And with 3 weeks in Rio we managed to sell out a mansion… if you or anybody you know doesn’t have plans for next thursday, the 29th… COME ON DOWN!!
Well, it’s finally arrived. The first official content from Grounded TV, Point Blank Creative, and yer ol’ pals The Boom Booms. And there is, as per usual with these posts, an adventure involved. So I’ll hesitate no longer.
We’ve been on the road over a month now. A colorful hurricane of vibrant culture, engulfing jungle, and the constant percussive assault of beautiful Brazilian music. Our trip has taken us from the deep jungle to the eastern metropolis. And we haven’t even hit Rio yet. As you may know, this trip is not only about the shows and the people, it is the maiden voyage of our music-meets-media project, BOOM BOOM BRAZIL. We’ve had a wicked camera crew along with us, and we’re sitting on a truckload of absolutely beautiful footage. You might be wondering why you haven’t seen much of it – well, any. Our original plan was to release an episode every 10-12 days or so, keeping you up to date, bringing you along with us on the adventure. However, after many technological hurdles, a member of our production crew (Jorah – thou shalt be named, Johan! respect) coming down with real, full-blown malaria, and the constant call to get out and just EXPERIENCE it all… we’ve decided to hold off on our longer, more extensive episodes, and switch to a more inclusive style: bangin’ teasers. This way, we can give you more content, faster, and wait on the episodes until we return home and have time to tackle the meat of it. And it’ll be worth the wait! I promise.
So this is better for everyone. It is with much aplomb that we present our first TEASER TICKLER TRAILER! Watch, enjoy, SHARE! And stay tuned as we’ve been in a ton of incredible situations and you’re gonna get a taste very, very soon. sooooooooooooon. You can follow the whole thing over at Grounded TV – http://getgrounded.tv/boomboombrazil/
If you like the video, head over to our Facebook page and officially “like” our band! (not to mention click the little button at the bottom of this post – this just “likes” the post, not the band) This way we can amass a solid list of interested and interesting folks like yourselves and this will give us some real clout to apply for funding to keep traveling and bringing attention to world environmental and political issues, as well as digging into the bottomless well of world music and doing our best to make sure you feel like you’re there.
And don’t forget to send Grounded TV and Point Blank Creative some love, we all need love, all we need is love!
First road post on here. Been in the thick of it for close to 20 days. Updates happening frequently on www.getgrounded.tv, in the form of pictures and text. This is a juicy teaser of what is to come… we are using these things called “HD video cameras” to take hundreds of pictures at a time! it captures motion! Very cool technology. I’m told it’s going to blow up and someday people will be watching “moving pictures” or “videos” in big theatres! Loko.
We have over 18 hours of footage already. Almost more than we can handle! Good thing we brought the bright minds and deft skillz of JORAH PORTEOUS from POINT BLANK CREATIVE and SYD WOODWARD from GROUNDED TV along to add their buzz to the beehive. The content is presenting itself rapidly, with more opinions and stories and moments captured in Altamira, Para than previously believed possible. We are really excited to share it all with you. You may have noticed the new page on our website titled “Boom Boom Brazil”. This will refresh once a week, starting next week, with all the content released up until then. So how it’s going to work at this point is you’ll be trundling over to www.getgrounded.tv to check out things as they are happening, and then each weekend we’ll release the whole batch of footage along with additional content and write-ups on our new page. So for those of you who know people in media who need some good, colorful travel music stuff with a strong social message… send them to our page
http://theboombooms.com/boom-boom-brazil/
As far as the trip goes… Richard has taken up scribe duties and is doing a wonderful job: again, check it out at grounded for now!
We’re in Salvador on the beach, it’s summertime which means it takes about 5 minutes to burn. We spent a jam-packed 9 days in Altamira, home to the controversial Belo Monte dam, and 120,000 people from all walks of life, who’s lives are changing rapidly. So much amazing footage from here: we did our best to capture the situation and we are really excited to share it with you over the next few months. Bear in mind that to release high-quality stuff takes time (they say a minute of footage is an hour of editing AT LEAST), and we can’t just pop out videos every day (clearly, it’s been 20) so don’t forget about us! Content SOON!
We’ll be back in Vancouver around the 25th of March, and we will be headlining Venue on Granville St. on the 29th of March for our homecoming show. Hope to see you all there!!!
the big countdown w/ current swell at the vogue
a wicked night.
thanks to everyone who put us on their new year’s daytimer and didn’t go to a DJ!
LIVE MUSIC LIVES! IT WILL NEVER DIE! just like that crazy flame you’ve got, inside.
So, with that under our belts, as usual, it’s on to the next one, on to the next one.
W2 this friday! with a really awesome line-up of booty shaking musica para ti.
check the FB events page and get involved..
http://www.facebook.com/events/333496620012579/
we’re trying to stop a dam in the amazon from destroying and displacing a huge number of locals and causing an ecological disaster. go to the page and follow the media strands to learn more – so many people are involved in this, and so many more people need to be involved. do the amazon a personal favor and push the snowball a little farther down the hill, PLEASE.
this show will be streamed live to the Gota D’Agua web community, which has 480,000 members, so let’s pack it up and show that vancouver gives a fuck!
thank you.
NEXT on the docket is
CBC LIVE! we’ll be playing a live show at the CBC building downtown @ 7:30pm on thursday, january 12th. This event is open to the public… wait, THE PEOPLE! That’s you! Gonna be sweet. If you’d like to come, get some tickets HERE
THEN we play at sugar nightclub in victoria! we love victoria! this will be our last show on the west coast before we catch planes down to brasil. come and see us.
here’s the event page:
http://www.facebook.com/events/193997964022160/
and again
always a pleasure having you all as fans!!
Back from the road. 10 shows in the same about of days. A voyage to be sure. Where’d I leave you last time… Ah; Elkford.
*goooiinnngg bbaaacckkkk inn tiimmmeeeee SHWEEEEOOOOOOOOEEEEWWWWW**
So we woke up in the am. That’s what you do when you stay in hotels. It’s not always pleasant. And to compound the already grim reality, most small town breakfast joints shut down their morning menu at the un-rock-and-roll hour of 11am. So you end up wandering around for longer than you’d like to find a freakin’ sausage and egg thing.
The next stop is the snowboard and ski mini-mecca of Fernie. The drive was a beautiful one, through the perfect cross-section of sun and snow, turning each flake into a little firefly. Magic. Theo and I kicked some freestyles. At this point, the car rotation had settled for what ended up to be the remainder of the tour: Theo, Rich and I in the super-sleek Chevy Malibu, and Aaron, Sean and Geordie in the slightly lumpier yet equally sexy Dodge Caravan. Got the car up to 120 km/h* (*may actually be more) and pulled up along Fernie’s old-style main street to The Northern: a long bar with a big stage and free pool. We love free pool! Hauled in and set up, and soundcheck turned into an hour of jamming! So much new music waiting to come out! We are very excited to have some time after christmas and before Brasil to hole up and create some new songs. Came back for dinner and got involved with the first BINGO NIGHT of the year! Epic. Prizes were items from the dollar store + drink combinations from the bar. Penalties for cheating were severe. Tie-breakers were deadly! The first tie was broken by a freestyle battle between opponents, backed by Geordie, Theo and myself giving some hip-hop instrumental action. The first battler got up and spat his piece, and the girl who was his enemy refused to battle, and was boo’d out of the bar! Cutthroat! Wow! Harsh punishment. She didn’t look very stoked. The second tie break was a very entertaining game called “Gay Chicken” in which the boys in question were to walk towards each other in a romantic way, and then the first one to pull away from a kiss was proclaimed the loser. As the boys took their spots, the MC (also our soundguy) said “who do you think is more gay?” and this whole table screamed wildly “HOT SAUCE!” and sure enough, when the music started, “Hot Sauce” strutted up and planted a big wet one on dude #2 to much screaming. The Third tie-breaker was a Dance off, and I threw down my best treeplanting camp moves and took the win. In fact, 3 our of 6 Boom Booms took home prizes! Theo won a toy electric keyboard, Geordie a fake tattoo set, and myself two ninja swords and a pack of plastic warriors!
Maybe that’s what created the rift… The bar, while packed when we started, quickly filtered into about 12 loyal dancers, who left their sweat on the floor and for that, thank you!! A fun show either way. A fun night. Our last show with Jayli, who performed admirably and left a lasting impression on all of us. She caught the bus home at 4am in the morning and got a taste of life on the road. Keep and eye out for her, people!
No afterparty, so we got some shut-eye in. Drove to Invermere the next day. Rented sticks, helmets and skates, and PLAYED HOCKEY ON A LAKE!!
this is actually a photo from the next day; this lake is hidden up in the mountains behind the city and tended by Bud’s Bar’s sound man. The first day we played as the light was fading on the huge lake infront of the city and you could skate out (if you wanted to) for a few kilometers. Pretty cool. Show was awesome, good amount of people, great venue, and some interesting developments in the lonely freeze: had this french-canadian guy jump up during and twist wind-ups on all our backs, releasing a robot army of reggae, and aaron wandered around the stage like a toy. You never know, man, what’s gonna happen at a Boom Boom show. You could get lucky! Come see our band!
Woke up and drove to Revelstoke, home of the smokey bear campground, which I thought about alot. Had ANOTHER WICKED SHOW there at the Regent. We started doing this thing on tour where we go on stage for our second set and copy whatever music is playing on the PA at the time: this time it was some afro-funk… so we each pick up the part of our instrument and turn it into an extended jam. Sean told me he leaned over to Geordie and said “hey, we should start playing this song!” and Geordie replied “Dude, We are”.
Next stop Kelowna. Another bomb show. Three in a row! Thank the powers above! Starting to get a bit road-worn at this point. Played with atmospheric indie implosion and fellow Peak band Behind Sapphire. Hooked up with some old friends from all points in our past, played some high-octane ping pong. Drank beer. Had a really good time. The Habitat was nice and full. Saw Fields Of Green in the house, I love that band so much! They are in the middle of recording their next album, go check out the VLOGS on youtube HERE http://www.youtube.com/user/FieldsofGreenmusic
my parents showed up randomly too!
Stayed up a bit later this night: it’s friday! What else to do?
Went out with Treeplanting homie Dave and SHOT GUNS IN THE FOREST. Shotgun and a 22. Short. Pulled discs and blew them out of the sky. Geordie took the trophy for best marksman.
Next stop Salmon Arm. Another bomb show. 4 in a row! Jesse always pulls in the people. Had the most energetic jumping of the tour, both by band and crowd here, and walked off stage exausted. 9 in a row!
One more to go. Made it to Kamloops the next day, watched Sherlock Holmes, which I loved, and played for 9 people, making a total of $45 at the door.
Ah, Fuck it. We still played good and hard.
Drove home that night. Slept. Returned the rental cars today and are about to meet up and get our Brasilian Visas in order.
Here’s a GROUNDED VIDEO UPDATE from the road.
BRASIL GETTING CLOSE FOLKS!!!
happy christmas all
see you at the VOGUE ON NEW YEARS W/ CURRENT SWELL!!!!
remember, if you can help AT ALL with the cost of this brasil trip
please go to http://www.indiegogo.com/The-Boom-Booms-Grounded-TV-Brazil-Tour
we are running out of time!!
We’re on the road! I’m sitting at a rickety table in Elkford, BC. The Redneck… er, Wildlife capitol of the WORLD. Or at least BC. Saw a guy pull out of the gas station and drive up the street on his skidoo. Reminds me of growing up in Meadow Creek in the wintertime. Deer antlers bolted to your handlebars, puffing out specks of black smoke, fishtailing out of a parking lot and down the highway. It’s -20 degrees celsius. That’s below zero, folks. Somebody lets one go in the car and you gotta roll down the windows, and then you’re caught in this vicious crossfire between smell and feeling. Truly we are up against obstacles that would turn a weaker band back to their warm houses. Actually, I have so much respect for the bands that dare to traverse this country in the wintertime; it only gets colder out in Alberta, and colder again in Winnipeg. If you’re out on the road right now, THE BOOM BOOMS BELIEVE IN YOU, YA’LL!
We decided this time to leave the Boom Bus at home in East Van and rent two vehicles with things the bus does not have… heaters, winter tires, speed up hills, brakes, windshield wipers… you know. Left in the early AM on friday, dec. 8th, and were blessed with excellent road and weather conditions all the way to Nelson, where we had a great show at the Spirit Bar. Our first time playing instruments together in 2 weeks! Nice to shake off the dust and work up some sweat again. Went out with Brazil-bound Syd Woodward before the show to White Crow Farm and met some friendly animals… They have a very sustainable and ethical way of living out there, and we love it. they also have one of those ancient organs with the built in bossa nova beats, you know the ones? so killer. Woke up in Nel-zion and made our way to Kaslo, and met with a friend of mine, Susan Mulkey, to combine our pen skills for Amnesty International day. We sat around the van Deursen kitchen table and addressed letters to various people in power around the globe, who are perpetuating injustices such as the continued criminalization of homosexuality (or even “perceived” homosexuality) in Cameroon or the evicting of a community of Nigerians who live near a waterfall thought to have oil deposits in it’s vicinity… basically, loads of horse-shit. Know what I’m saying? You can go to Amnesty International’s website and read the cases, and write your own letter. Please do.
SO no band is complete without a fan club! We seem to have picked one of these up. Jessica and Jewel of Kaslo were there to greet us as we rolled in, sneaking into the 19+ hotel to sit with us at dinner, and then gathering us in my living room to award each of us a stuffed animal that matches our personality. Sean = Lion
Theo = Penguin
Geordie = Porcupine
Richie = Frog
Aaron = Pig
Tom = Unicorn
attached to each of these was a note explaining how the animal’s traits aligned with our own. hahaa! so awesome. Up for contention with Sue Tremblay’s CUSTOM BOOM BOOM VESTS (which if you haven’t seen, you will see soon) for the best holiday gift so far. Not to mention all the donations for our BRAZIL TRIP! Thanks to everyone who has thrown their pennies, or in some case, much more, our way. We couldn’t do it without you. thank you.
Kaslo was a riot.
Off to Creston, to play the Snoring Sasquatch again. Met a girl there by the name of Jayli Wilson, 23 years old, who watched our first set and told me that she was a singer-songwriter… so I asked her if she wanted to play a tune, and she said “yes!” and promptly opened our second set with two excellent original songs. She got a standing ovation from the crowd and we joked on the mic that “if we had more money we’d take her on the road for a few days!” so this idea obviously got her pretty stoked and by the end of the night she had convinced the band to bring her as our opening act for the next few days. She’s sitting beside me as I write this, in Elkford, at Sneaky’s. Pizza has gone down the hatch, as has a much-anticipated mug o’ brew… life is good. Cold, but good. This venue has Subwoofers, so I couldn’t be much happier than I am right now.
BAAASSSSSSS
BASS.
bass.
in yo face.
white pants, I’m stuck in a trance
white dove, I’m looking for love
white dove, on top of my head
white pants, just trying to dance
