Preview
GLAMOUR PUSS
Friday, November 9
Kaos Jazz & Blues Bistro
While tear-in-your-beer music is one thing, it’s not every band that can say they’ve given the blues to everyone who buys a six-pack. But the ironically named Glamour Puss gained wider audiences than the ones they enjoyed at their house gig at Groucho’s in Moncton when one of their songs was included on a compilation CD that was tucked into boxes of Moosehead beer. That goes to show that even in a natural paradise like the land of New Brunswick, where the people are friendly and the oceanscape friendlier, the economy, causeway and a box of beer can give you the blues.
Or so guitarist-vocalist Travis Furlong explains over the phone just before his band flies to Winnipeg to begin a driving tour of the West. "(Getting the blues is) not too hard, economics being what they are down this end of the country," he says, adding that politicians also are useful in creating the blues. He cites the example of greedy city planners who built a causeway across Moncton’s Petitcodiac River, putting an end to the famous reversing of the tides known as the tidal bore. The amazing backwards sweep of waves that the causeway halted occurred only in New Brunswick and in a place in China.
Furlong says he got into the blues at the age of 17 after starting out playing heavy metal. "I was reading interviews with some of these bands and they were giving hair tips and it wasn’t about the music, but about all the foolishness around it so I started getting into blues. I found that more real. Then I found out you could actually play it for the rest of your life."
He set out to do just that, playing with various bands before founding Glamour Puss nine years ago. The group has since won several East Coast Music Awards, toured North America and Europe and opened for B.B. King in Moncton. In between, they’ve released four albums, including their latest Wire and Wood.
The band actually won their first East Coast Music Award, a People’s Choice Award, without ever recording an album. It was then that a studio owner approached them with a cheap recording deal.
"He gave us a good price and stuff, but we had to write some songs. So we wrote some songs and really surprised ourselves." Today, Wire and Wood is filled with almost all original tunes.
Furlong laughs when he says the blues is the only genre where you can be around for nearly nine years and still be considered a young band, but he plans to heed the advice King gave him backstage while signing Furlong’s hollow-bodied Gibson.
"No matter how hard it may seem, keep at it because the longer you last at it the more chance the wheel of fortune comes around."
Besides, playing the blues is such a feel-good thing that it’s a kind of remedy for worrying about the economy, politicians, causeway and hangover from all that Moosehead. |
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