Riley Brandt

Left to right, Bong Piedra Le Rouge Baron, Cam Hayden and 66

DETAILS

Cripple Creek Fairies CD Release with Black Dirt of the West
Stetson
Friday, February 13 - Friday, February 13

More in: Rock / Pop

Space is an infinite non-entity defined by the absence of matter, light, heat and, until now, rock. On a cloudless night, a silver star cruises the northern sky in a needle-straight trajectory. It’s this spot of light to which we are now talking. The satellite phone bleeps. A man’s voice speaks brightly. “When we started the CCF, we wanted to make a rock band, not an art-rock band, a math-rock band, a post-punk band or any of those kind of highbrow sounding things,” says Les Izmoore (Cam Hayden), lead vocalist and bassist of hard-rocking Calgary band the Cripple Creek Fairies. “We liked Kiss, AC/DC and Motorhead. That was our template.”

While the CCF hold the world’s ultimate dress-up band, Kiss, in high regard, the group’s holiest spiritual monolith is the decades-long line of local costume bands: The Forbidden Dimension (baroquedelic horror rock ghouls), The Mants (ants plus guitars) and the Von Zippers (balls-out, hollerin’ punk rockers who’ve now shed their trademark lederhosen). The CCF took to the stage and sky in aviator goggles and leather helmets.

“It looked like so much fun,” says Izmoore. “And we wanted to play garage rock, but the songs we were writing were more complicated. We wanted it to be a simple, fun, down-and-dirty rock band.” Eschewing goggles and biplanes for space suits and space capsules, the group is releasing two full-length CDs, War Amps and Metal Arms, largely recorded in the band’s homemade orbital space station. They have yet to come down from their zero-gravity recording session.

Fast Forward: How long have you been in space?

Les Izmoore: Monster Zero [Bong Piedra], 66 [Geoff Hample], Le Rouge Baron [Greg Connon] and I have been out here since July 27, 2008.

What were you doing when you heard former Kiss guitarist Ace “Space Ace” Frehley plans to record and perform in space (www.acetospace.com)?

We were fixing the latrine suction tube. Le Rouge Baron had split the hose, like when a snake tries to swallow a pony. All of a sudden, our communications system went nuts. There was a flood of messages from our fan club members talking about this Ace thing.

How did you react to the news?

We were ticked off. Nobody gave two shits when we ventured into space. The first time was in the spring of 2006 for a couple of weeks. But y’know, we’re Ace fans. If he’s into it, he can use our studio up here.

Frehley’s people have spent months and, presumably, millions of dollars preparing to send the Kiss guitarist to the stars. How did a Calgary rock band put together the cash and technology required for space travel?

Well, it’s never really been about money for us. When you’re not worried about money, money ceases to be an issue. We’ve always been pretty DIY. It just takes drive, determination, passion and a love of rock ’n’ roll. You can do anything if you just never give up.

The Frehley space shot will be ultra-high-profile. I’m reasonably certain no one knows you guys are already up there. Why, exactly, is the CCF in space?

Noise complaints. We’d been trying to get some recording done, but the friggin’ bylaw officers kept coming in and disrupting our process. Finally, we just said screw it, let’s record this shit in space where there’s nobody to get on our case. There were technical hurdles, but before long, we were in orbit. With no distractions, we were getting a ton of recording down. Halfway through, Le Rouge Baron started to lose some bone density in his legs. They kept snapping. We had to bring up Phil Inne [former CCF drummer Jon Hayden] to finish half the tracks. We’ve split the sessions with the two drummers into two albums.

War Amps is based on older songs and harkens back to an earlier vocal-oriented sound. It’s based on guitar parts I wrote. Lately, Monster Zero [who once played in a Manilla Megadeth cover band] and 66 [formerly of power punks 66 Breakout] have been writing a lot more of the songs. They push each other to do weirder stuff. So Metal Arms is much more guitar-oriented and way above and beyond anything I would’ve come up with.

Apparently, Ace is going to do “the first live rock broadcast from space,” too. We find that pretty funny since we’ve been broadcasting live stuff to our fanclub for months.

What are you doing after your double CD release show at The Stetson on February 13?

We’ve been talking about tunnelling to the centre of the Earth.