Final shows of tour, World Cafe Session, and Bandbox update

We have just three more shows in the Humanhood tour, and they're happening next week. They are - June 4 in Montreal at Theatre Beanfield, June 5 in Ottawa at the NAC, and June 6 in Toronto at The Concert Hall.

Photo by Brandon Artis

For our Toronto show, I recently became aware of the high fees being charged by the ticketing company, and so I've worked with the promoter to get a discount code for a limited run of lower cost tix.

This code is TWS2025

Enter that code at checkout (there is a small button marked 'got a code?' on the Dice website or app) for tix w/ ten dollars off.

In addition to this, we've worked to ensure that tickets will be available at the actual ticket cost of 40$ at the door on the day of show. So you can get tix for that at walkup (and coming early means catching Joan Shelly, which is a win win).

We also tried to get tickets made available physically for face value, but unfortunately this is no longer possible - I miss the days of Soundscapes and Rotate ticket sales. As an artist, high ticket fees deeply bother me. Next run, I will work harder to do due diligence on the fee situation before shows are booked.

Poster photo by Brandon Artis

Feeling very honoured to have Joan Shelley opening these shows - she's someone I admire and love her music, and also she has never played in Montreal or Ottawa, so Shelley fans, take note.

While we have many more shows planned, these are the last ones of THIS show - with these visuals, this arc, this narrative, this story, this band. Anyone who has seen the show knows how through composed it is; it's a whole thing. I'm sad it's coming to an end and it will be sad to retire this show - but I'm grateful to do it at home, for one big final hurrah in our own towns, having played it all over the world, but not here.

Photos by Brandon Artis

Grateful again for this special band - Dom Billett on drums, Ben Whiteley on bass, Ben Boye on keys, Karen Ng on sax - who will be there for these last three shows along with special guests of course cause it's our home towns.

Tickets are here.

Photo by Brandon Artis

Our World Cafe Live session is up now on YouTube and NPR along with long interview touching on everything from AI to perfectionism to climate disaster. You can watch it now below on YouTube or NPR.

In other bits of news, we covered Broken Social Scene's 'Looks Just Like the Sun' for their new project Anthems. It's a song by song cover of You Forgot It In People, which features covers by Maggie Rogers, Toro Y Moi, Sylvan Esso, and others. You can find it here. It comes out on June 6.

Ben Whiteley recorded and produced our version, Howie Beck mixed it, and it features myself, Ben, Philippe Melanson, and Karen Ng.

It's a soft weirdo of a song and we treated it that way. You Forgot It In People was a huge record for me, hitting me at that moment on the cusp of adulthood and leading me towards experimentation and curiousity and musical shapeshifting. I'll forever remember living in Toronto in 2004, amid such an explosion of music and creativity that BSS was a huge part of. Watching them made me feel that I too could be a musician, that I could join a band. And starting that year, that's exactly what I did.

Really honoured to be a part of the tribute to this seminal record.

And finally, regarding the doomed vinyl pressing of The Line on bandbox - I wanted to speak to this as I've been getting a lot of questions and notes about it. First of all, I'm so sorry to anyone who ordered this record. It's truly frustrating to know that people paid money for it, and never received their copy - or a refund.

Unfortunately though, having put my lawyer and manager on it, there is just no further clarity to the situation. Bandbox went bankrupt, a second company (called Vinylbox) bought the vinyl, but has not honoured the orders made. Instead, this album has been put up for sale at record stores, without my consent, and against the wishes of those who paid money for these same records and never received them.

Unfortunately, we just haven't found a way to resolve this. We don't have access to the list of who ordered the record, we don't know how many copies were purchased, and were not paid for the reissue. I didn't even know it was pressed until someone brought me one to sign and I was shocked to see it in existence.

It would be prohibitive to pursue legal action, though my lawyer continues to push this new company Vinylbox to honour the orders made.

In the meantime, as a token, I decided to make The Line free on Bandcamp going forward. It's something small at least that is in my power to do. Link here.

I also wanted to say to anyone considering purchasing the reissue - don't. I feel the new company has also behaved unscrupulously, and doesn't deserve anyone's hard earned cash.

I'm truly sorry, again, to anyone who didn't get their refund or their record, and got pulled into this whole sorry affair.

-Tam