Victorious Combinations

Isabelle and I had a great time down at Roundhouse Radio on Tuesday afternoon and are pleased to share our interview.  We discuss music and fashion.  It was a lot of fun and we performed a couple songs acoustically: Glasgow and Brotherhood.   Have a listen, we are both rather pleased with it. Click the link to jump over to to the interview. http://cirh.streamon.fm/listen-pl-735

We've just done a serious reworking on our latest single "Brotherhood."  This new version is the result of several months of listening and pondering, as well as absorbing the comments of several producer friends of ours.  I'd like to thank everyone who's helped us so much over the past many months in the creation of this song, it really means a lot to us.  So big thanks to Justin "Juice" Kadis for his guitar playing and arranging, Misty Reid on drums, and Stefan Sigerson, Jimmy Zee, Jason Corbett and Jordy Birch for their assistance /comments with the production. And, of course, the wonderful Robert Edmonds for the cover art! Cheers to you all! Hope you enjoy the song.  I think it's one of our best to date. Mark Brotherhood by Combine the Victorious

Brotherhood is a song that I started writing in response to a very dear friend taking his own life back in 2012.  Our friend Todd Simko , who I'd played in Pure with back in the nineties, and who later performed with Combine the Victorious for several shows in 2007 and 2008, left us in the spring of 2012.  His death created a disturbing wake of emotions that eventually found their way into this song. Back in January or February of 2013 I remember starting the core idea one afternoon and the song took shape quite rapidly.  The lyrics are personal but I tried to keep them open to interpretation rather than literal; it's been a sad realization that this kind of incident isn't as rare as it may seem.   The truth is all four of us: Juice, Misty, Isabelle and I were heavily affected by Todd's death, and it's been many months of processing.  We recorded this version back in the summer, on a beautiful day in Vancouver full of sunshine and laughs.  Misty is pl...

Just spent the last three days on our song Brotherhood.  Last night I re-wrote the lyrics to make them a little more personal, a little less generic.  I think the new words really helped.  Singing came a lot easier.  It's funny how that could work.  Having the right thing to say helps you say it well. It's coming along.  I think we have a mix tonight.  Will know in the morning I'm sure! The lyrics now are: I dropped out of school when we first met but we still tried to take on the world Just fighting for laughs while we're looking for hits until tension and rejection wore me out In a Brotherhood I thought it was understood that we always should look out for each other I guess it's times like these when lost in your memories you some how fail to see how much you matter And over the years you would constantly fret but still seemed fine as we'd all get together Then your little fears turned into our dread until you became...

We were busy this past week.  Between mixing several songs for other local groups I managed to fit in a couple excellent sessions on our new song Brotherhood . Last weekend we tracked Misty on the drums, and the bedtracks still make me smile.  There are little subtle noises in the background which seems to bless this song with extra life.  I'd finished my bass part early in the week and then Juice added some expertly played hand percussion to give some polish to the song.  After that we put a guide guitar part down.  It was Juice's idea to track his guitars on two different sessions, the first time to simply capture what we were playing live, giving us a chance to listen back to the arrangement.  That was important because it allowed Isabelle and I to record our vocals to a backing track that had the full dynamics of the song.  One should never under-estimate how important the vibe needs to be before getting a keeper lead vocal.  Seems simple bu...

This past weekend the four of us started recording new material.  I spent the Friday setting up mics for the drums and recorded me attempting various beats with the hopes of getting a good sound and possibly even creating a few loops.  Of course it's always a challenge to engineer oneself on drums.  Much too much time wasted running back and forth between the kit and the studio, adjusting things after you've recorded, trying it out again and then listening back to see if there's been any improvement.  However, on Saturday Misty Ried came in an laid down the law!  We swapped out my dodgy snare for Juice's vintage Ludwig snare and suddenly everything came to life! Misty it turns out is quite a good drummer!  She has been performing drums on one song live, Brotherhood (the track we were recording bedtracks to on Saturday), but I will admit I never dreamed she had such good groove.  I think we recorded at least three killer loops for new song ideas, all...

We shall be performing tonight over in New Westminster as part of the Change of Frequency festival.   Combine the Victorious will be on around 8:30 and we'll be debuting two new songs, one of them written specifically for the event.  It's titled Brotherhood and was written about our departed friend Todd Simko who left us last year.  The other is the song we revealed earlier this week called Hardly Spoken .   The four of us are sounding exceptionally great and really looking forward to this one. We checked out the Columbia Theatre last night and I have to say it's a lovely venue, with great sight lines, acoustics and a cool stage.  Quite looking forward to sharing our music in such a venerable space! Hope you can join us, and then stay for the Pure / Guilty About Girls set (which shall contain all of us with the added bonus of having Leigh Grant join us for a very authentic rendition of Denial) .  Lots of talent on stage tonight, and it's all to be...