WAYFARER TOUR UPS AND DOWNS
BY MATT DIXON, MAY 8TH, 2011.

Wayfarer: And Pass Away

Hey guys, glad I could hook up with you for this interview while you're on tour. I heard you had a bit of van trouble to say the least and had to miss out on your Prince Edward Island date. Can you bring us up to speed on the situation and how you've been dealing with it?

Yeah, both us and the Decay are travelling in the Decay's van and pulling a trailer so it is a pretty heavy load. On route to PEI the cabin of the van filled with smoke. We pulled over to find gasoline and transmission fluid leaking all over the ground. So we got towed to a garage in Riviere de Loup, Quebec and they patched up a crack in our transmission. At this point it had been raining for two days with no indication of stopping. So after we left the first repair shop the wipers stopped working. Now we had to go to another garage and get a new motor. At this point with all the repair times plus the time zone change we knew we weren't going to make it to PEI. After that we just barely got out of QC before the van fully died while driving. After far too many cars passing us by in the pouring rain someone finally pulled over and gave us a boost. This had us driving for about another 15 minutes where the van then died again. After another boost these new people ushered us into town because we couldn't drive with any lights on and were surely going to get hit now that it was night time. We spent all night in a gas station parking lot in Woodstock, NB waiting for the local garage to open. They took a look first thing in the morning and replaced some parts on our alternator and it seems we are back in business now. We made it to the show in Dartmouth, NS last night so hopefully we're fine for the rest of the trip. It was a pretty draining experience just because everything else up to this point had gone so well but morale is a little higher now.

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Holy smokes, draining is a good way to describe it; there's nothing worse than that feeling of helplessness as you sit on the highway waiting for help. I'm glad you're at least up and going again now. I always talk to bands about the ups and downs of touring, during those trying times what keeps you motivated to push on?

Well Wayfarer has never really been a touring band so it has never been bad for us. When you're in Woodstock NB you've already gone too far to turn back and put too much money in repairs to at least chance potentially trying to make some money back. Plus, you told a promoter or some kids you were going to show up so it's probably a good thing to at least attempt to be there. Sometimes we forget but we do have fun playing music too.

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Now of course you have that new record out with The Decay. I noticed you put it up for download with the fine folks from Juice Box Dot Com but there was also talk of having limited edition silk-screened versions for sale at live shows. I thought that was a pretty neat idea, having it online for the masses and the internet generation while also providing a little something special for those people who love to have the actual record in their hands. Your thoughts?

Yeah well both bands benefited from having the free download of our last LPs that there really weren't any second thoughts about having it up for free online again. It's 2011, it's going to be online, I'd rather a high quality version complete with Branko Vranic's amazing artwork and a pdf of the insert over some shitty rip. We put a lot of time and effort into this release, I want to make sure that's what people hear. We write these songs because we enjoy making music. This isn't our job, our rent doesn't depend on how this record sells, this is fun for us so the more people that get to hear it the better. It's not up to me to put a price on our work, I leave that up to whoever picks it up. On Juicebox you can donate if you enjoyed it, we still had records pressed for those who want them and I screen printed some CD's. I think there definitely is a different experience in listening to an album online and spinning a record but that has nothing to do with our decision. Basically we want as many people as possible to hear what we do and this is the easiest way to do that. I could ramble on all day about this stuff but if you want it, take it. If you want to buy it, even better. Neither is the lesser. If it's a good record backed by a solid effort people will recognize that.

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I noticed you were in Ottawa right around the election. What was your take on the election results?

Conservatives retaining power wasn't a surprise, the majority government was a shock though. I often forget about the baby boomers silent presence in the background who still clearly have the numbers to sway the vote. The Liberals really lost this election, Ignatieff got smeared pretty hard and couldn't recover. It's sad that having an educated leader is enough to drown a party. Just as sad as watching Ignatieff dumb down his speeches to try and gain more appeal. NDP clearly made some amazing strides and the Bloc is hopefully fading into non-existence.

It is still hard to believe that a goverment with a clear neglect for environmental and Native rights and questionable ideas about women's rights and anything that doesn't fall under big business can get the majority of voters to side with them. I hope we can avoid becoming a product of the previous generations. They clearly still hold power but I hope we can manage to escape their influence. I think the next few years will be big for this country. I hope for transparency in goverment but expect the opposite. I think the country gets a bad apathetic reputation but I guess we'll find out. I find other countries perspectives on the election very interesting. It's odd to see citizens of another country with a better understanding of our parties policies than most of those who voted.

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The end of civilization will be caused by:

The first world.

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