MUSIC PREVIEW
RECIPE FROM A SMALL PLANET
CD Release Party
Friday, April 20
MacEwan Hall Ballroom
Recipe From A Small Planet, Calgary’s groove, soul, and rock ’n’ roll band, are thinking big and working hard to continue making the music they love on their terms.
Over seven years ago, four 13-year-olds set up shop in a basement and learned to play music together. Soon they moved to a jam space located under a sex shop with a house full of transvestites next door... and so it began. Jason Crocker, Steve Fletcher, Ben Curties and Pablo Puentes (who snuck his way into the band by telling the rest he wrote the bass line for The B-52s’ "Rock Lobster"), have been jamming ever since those starry-eyed days, and more seriously for the past two years.
In the last year they have played over 200 shows, sold over 2,500 copies of their debut album, Hovercraft, and developed a large fan base in Calgary and nationwide. More recently, they recorded their second album, Babel Fish, and just returned from a very successful cross-Canada tour – riding from city to city in their infamous Handi-Bus. Now they are planning one of the biggest, most extravagant rock and roll CD release shows Calgary has seen in a while. Expect strings, choirs and perhaps a little belly dancing – think: circus.
"We’re not afraid to be big," says Crocker, lead vocalist and guitarist, in a recent interview. "We’re putting a lot into this one. It’s gonna be a big rock and roll show."
The CD release party is taking place at MacEwan Hall Ballroom, a much larger venue than these four have ever played. Their past few shows in Calgary have been sold out and fans have been turned away – including their Halloween show at The Night Gallery, where costumed hopefuls lined up down the block and past the Drum and Monkey with no hope of getting in. The band is fairly secretive regarding details about the U of C show, except that the Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir will be opening for them.
"We love that dirty-ass bluesy shee-it," says Crocker, master of the one-liners, about the opening act.
Playing such a large show requires more material than a five song EP. After touring for a year with Hovercraft, the band decided they needed to record another album.
"We didn’t want to be one of those bands where people say: They’re great live but their album sucks," says Curties, the band's drummer. "We wanted to have something different so both would stand on their own."
Thus they took off to Greenhouse Studios in Vancouver to create an eclectic piece of musical art. The band had various guests join them, including percussionist Jeff Kornblum from The Burt Neilson Band, and Vancouver lap steel guitarist Jon Wood, who plays on two of the disc’s more countryish tunes. Inviting strings and mandolins into the mix created a versatile record and demanded intense sessions in the studio.
"The studio said it was the biggest production they had ever seen," says Crocker. "They had three different studios and we had them all filled. We were in there 16 to 18 hours per day."
You'd think after such an undertaking they would take a break, but not these boys. Always persistent, they are headed back to their jam pad to hammer out some new tunes.
Manager Craig Glen, creator of the grassroots Hipstar Productions, is to be held partly responsible for the tenacity of RFASP. Apparently when Craig, a hot-blooded Scotsman, gets something in his mind, he is like a rabid dog. He handles all their management and booking, and recently took care of their affairs at the schmooze fest that is Canadian Music Week in Toronto.
"We wouldn't be here without Craig," says Puentes, the group's bassist. "He is the one who planted the seed in our heads that this could be done."
When it comes down to it, this band is giving everything in their no-day-job creative beings to continue making music and hoping for the best. The foundation of their work is their friendship and the knowledge that no matter what happens, they will be playing music with each other until they are decrepit old men. They plan to go as far as they can because you never know what can happen with four optimistic musicians and a madman manager working around the clock.
"Some bands have been conditioned to believe that they can’t take it any farther than Calgary," says Curties. "We don’t have extraordinary talent or anything like that, but what we do have is that... if we need a jam pad, we’ll build one; if we wanna go tour, we’ll call around and make it happen. We’ll try as hard as we can to do everything that we do and everything we want.
"If things don’t work out tomorrow... well, there are no regrets." |
