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October 30, 2006
thanks !
thank you to everyone who made our cd release show at the engineered air theatre such a joy. a special tip of the hat to joe kelly for the visuals and both jane vain + the beautiful creep cabaret and aaron booth for opening.

cheers!




October 28, 2006
woodpigeon cd release parti
woodpigeon's SONGBOOK cd release show is set for 28 october 2006 at the engineered air theatre in the EPCOR centre for the performing arts. aaron booth and jane vain + the beautiful creep cabaret will also be on hand to open the proceedings. tickets are $12 in advance ($15 at the door), available at sloth records in calgary and on-line through rectangle records in the rectangle store. doors are at 8:00 pm, and the show begins promptly at 8:30 with special visuals by joe kelly.

check the trio of special posters designed by our friends (L to R):
- christy herdman (of carbon media)
- erin woodward
- erin ignacio



also, drop by woodpigeon's myspace for an early peek at four tunes from SONGBOOK. (the rectangle records myspace includes another, if you're hungry for more). SONGBOOK is available in shops across canada as of 31 october 2006 and through rectangle records' online store (pre-release orders taken now).



September 25, 2006
...a given ep, free. aptly titled, you might say.
To celebrate the marriage of our good friends Kevin Allen and Gordon Sombrowski, Woodpigeon presents the A Given EP, available here for free download. Congratulations, and much love. xox.



01. "...a given"
02. our love is as tall as the calgary tower
03. thirteen

download full ep (zip)



August 21, 2006
woodpigeon loves rectangle
Woodpigeon has signed with Rectangle Records and will release our first album SONGBOOK on 24 October, 2006, distributed by Universal. We’re hoping you can make it to our CD release show on Saturday, 28 October at the Engineered Air Theatre in Calgary, on which we’ll have some more info online soon. We’ll have CJSW on hand to celebrate our record along with the end of the 2006 funding drive, as well. Keep yr calendars open...



the redbeard rock opera, 7 september @ ramp / broken city
The Summerlad’s monthly series of “special” shows at Broken City (aka RAMP) kicks off on 7 September with new animation and music from Kara Keith, a new “piece” by Summerlad (they don’t write songs no more, dig?), and the 5-part mini-rock opera REDBEARD by Woodpigeon. We’ll only be doing this thing once, so don’t miss it.





get your beast on, 21 august @ emmedia / quickdraw animation society
Woodpigeon’s happy + excited to be a part of Laura Leif’s Get Your Beast On night this 21 August at the Emmedia / Quickdraw Animation Society headquarters in Calgary. Dress up as an animal, bug, or plant-life and you’re in for $4.00 instead of $5.00. We’ll be doing some nice 3-piece action alongside Dallin U., The Unbundeling, and The Greenbelt Collective from Vancouver.





July 26, 2006
woodpigeon SINGALONG, 10 august @ karma arts house, tickets $5
Come join Woodpigeon for a groupsing singalong at the Karma Arts House on 10 August. We’re hoping you’ll join us on a couple of new tunes, not to mention a few old favourites by folks we’re particularly fond of. Lyrics will be provided, particularly helpful when dealing with the likes of Morrissey. Hope to see you there!





June 24, 2006
woodpigeon + jane vain, 27 june @ broken city, show at 8pm, tickets $5





May 26, 2006
busy busy june.we like keeping busy.
02 june we'll be in fairmont. look for us in the hot springs afer our show at the riverside clubhouse. there's a dance floor, so we're looking to fill it.



03 june it's a swift 6 hour drive over to medicine hat to play with our friends mt. royal at the esplande arts and heritage centre. plush seats, yo, and we're excited about it.

on 10 june mark and annalea appear as part of pride 2006's 'homo hop' evening of live entertainment and youth dance. expect the premiere performances of a few songs from the upcoming SHHH... WOODPIGEON IS SLEEPING full-length that we're also recording this very same month. (speaking of which, it's a full record's worth of all the tunes written during the epic undertaking of SONGBOOK's recording... and as such, they're rather stripped back and calm. mark's even written his favourite song yet, entitled 'the hamilton academicals', named after an underdog football team in scotland. it's about an old professor and it's sad.)

17 june we'll take a quick 2 hour break from recording SHHH... to appear at the main outdoor stage at the university of calgary's Campus Fair 2006. find us on the south lawn, wherever that may be, from 11:00-11:45 am. immediately after, it's straight back inside under the sharp watch of our producer arran fisher. he's a bit of a slave driver, really.

finally, on 27 june we're headlining at the broken city, other acts soon to be announced, but we've got a couple of cool ideas and can't wait to share them with you...

and to wrap up june in style, we're playing the hi-fi club with our friends the agnostic mountain gospel choir in celebration of canada day on the first of july.

and then, after that?
after that, we sleep.
 
xox,
w.p.



May 10, 2006
The Merry Month of May (and a couple of things in June)
Tune into Eyeopener on CBC this Friday 12 May for a short interview with Mark and Kenna, along with a premiere of SONGBOOK’s ‘Death By Ninja (A Love Song)’ featuring our friends Jay Stanley & Megan Mitchell on horns, and Rachel Wise from Remote Kid on violin.

Drop by the Palomino Social Club on Saturday 13 May to catch Woodpigeon with The Summerlad and Gunther.



Get your driving shoes ready for the first weekend of June, wherein Woodpigeon are playing Fairmont on Friday 2 June, and Medicine Hat on Saturday 3 June at an old-school movie theatre to help our friends Mt. Royal celebrate the release of their debut EP.

If that weren’t enough, we’re also hoping to have a couple of new self-released EPs to share over the summer, including the afore-mentioned REDBEARD EP and the second volume in our SNOWSHOVEL series of extra treat EPs.

Hope to see you all soon!

xox,
w.p.



May 1, 2006
SPREEPARK - we’re reinventing music
Check out Woodpigeon side-project extraordinaire SPREEPARK (formerly known as SPARKSWOOD, until we realized that’s kind of a lame name) at
myspace.com/spreepark.

Membership is as such:
SPREEMARK HAMILTON: vocals, guitar, piano, drums, glockenspiel, but mostly drums.
LORDY LORDY, ANNALEA SORDI: vocals, piano, glockenspiel, guitar, Beyonce-like vocal gymnastics, napping.
GRAND WIZARD ERIC CHENG: vocals, guitar, bass, glockenspiel, drums, trombone, organ, wizardry.
THE ARTFUL DODGER, MARSHALL WATSON: vocals, bass, guitar, keyboard, drums, vibraphone, hand claps, silly hats.
ERIN IGNASASSMATAZZACIO: artworks and hotness.
RAMIN "REY REY THE REVOLVER" YAZDI: videographer and better ideas than ours.



Written and recorded in Edmonton over the course of a single weekend, Spreepark’s first album We're Reinventing Music is a concept album with the concept of: AWESOME.
these songs are on it:
01. spreepark jetzt!
02. cinnamon kiss
03. shut up up up up up (and die)
04. theme d'olympiques / absolutement!
05. omg! wtf? bbq! bff!
06. a trampoline i am not
07. hotel spreepark
08. we're reinventing music

BONUS CD-R: spreepark jetzt! video, directed by Ramin Yazdi, aka “Rey Rey The Revolver”.
you are going to love it.
holy cow. you're going to love it SO HARD.

Until then, enjoy a preview shot from the video for ‘Spreepark Jetzt! (030 533 350)'.



xox,
w.p.



April 10, 2006
mark's song-by-song notes.
so we've been going through mixes, taking notes, mixing again, and getting ever-so-gradually closer to SONGBOOK being done and ready. today, for the first time, i listened to the record in its correct running-order, and feel like we've achieved something rather grand.

please excuse the self-centered exercise which follows, a song-by-song write-up on the tunes on our album, where they came from, and what they make me think of.

01. HOME AS A ROMANTICIZED CONCEPT WHERE EVERYONE LOVES YOU ALWAYS AND FOREVER
most of this one came together in brighton, before we'd even decided to drive our car je je bouvier all the way to russia. the realization of having to go home eventually was putting awful thoughts into my head. i hadn't even gone off on the cross-europe trip i was saving up for, and already i was dreading the idea of having to go back to calgary, of getting my feet stuck in the mud again. it's not the deepest thought in the world: coming home after you've been away isn't easy, and it's not just you who have changed. i always knew this would be the first song on our first album -- so much so that it was the very first song i taught to kenna in our very first practice together. the "forest critter" percussion we put together for it in the studio is something i'm particularly fond of. the 10 melodies fighting for space at the end makes me feel like i'm fronting a group of musical geniuses, everything so perfectly complimentary. and oh. i wanted the longest, most pretentious title i could possibly think of for an album-opener. i think we did pretty good with that too.
 
 
02. CHORUS OF WOLVES
for this one, originally i thought i should have been shot. i became one of those people during the writing of this song, describing it in terms of "hard snow that just barely holds your feet up, eventually crumbling through," and "purple." it's one of those songs that's about a specific love affair which culminated with a walk across a huge piece of toronto after a night's worth of dancing. written and demoed in toronto, it was initially 7 1/2 minutes long and slow slow slow. now it's fast as you like, spruced up with horns, peter's great guitar solo, and some lap steel guitar from sandro perri in the t-dot. that and people can't seem to get this one out of their heads implies, i suppose, that were we to talk in terms of "first single", this would be it. (consider it a testament to my stubbornness that the waltz 'death by ninja' is coming out on 7" instead).
 
 
03. THE ALISON YIP SCHOOL FOR GIRLS
before i even met alison yip, mark clintberg told me i would love her. we worked together at mcnally robinson, and i was immediately obsessed. i spotted her down the street one day, shortly after we'd become friends, and swore she was wearing riding pants and carrying a rider's crop. i gave her a photograph of an ornate palace hallway, over which i'd written "the alison yip school for girls" (along with some class signs: ENUNCIATION 101, GETTING THE MOST OUT OF YOUR DEBUTANTE BALL SEMINAR, etc). the song's dedicated to her, but doesn't really have all that much to do with her. she's the headmistress, but the real story is between one of her proteges and a young lad from the town outside of which the school rests atop a hill. by the end of the song, the girl's climbing out over the fence on one end of the compound while the guy's climbing in on the other side. they miss one another entirely. tsk.
 
 
04. MS. STACEY WATSON, STEPNEY GREEN
most often, when i'm writing about someone i know, their role is somewhat peripherial to what actually happens in the song. 'ms. stacey watson, stepney green', on the other hand, is the most straightforward one i've got. ms. stacey watson is a wonderful friend, living in the stepney green area of london, famous for its sheep on the stepney green itself. my last weekend in the uk was spent with stacey, eating late night sweet potato curry and dancing at detournament in brighton until the sun came up. the second half of the song is as deep as it gets: "why must love play games with geography?" it's all a love-letter mash-note thank you-gift to stacey for helping me get over my first real heartbreak, and it's epic and propulsive just like she is in person. and oh. "she's making foutains out of puffs of clay" is a weird line unless you know some of stacey's work -- the below still, for just one example (where "puffs" came from, dig?). the current mix we've got sounds a bit like george harrison's 'wah wah' where it should sound like the velvet underground's 'beginning to see the light'. h'm.


 
 
05. A SAD COUNTRY BALLAD FOR A TIRED SUPERHERO
i went to edmonton to visit mark clintberg, and stopped by a music shop on whyte ave. minutes later, i walked out with a banjo (upon which stacey watson has since done a lovely drawing - a detail hand from her 'i know a dog named rope', a personal favourite piece of art on my wall, and some smiling dew drops). in spain i started writing a script entitled 'barry shallows' with ben soper. in it, a woman's husband is killed when a superhero makes the choice of saving his girlfriend over a busload of innocent civilians. their handicapped daughter is named gogol, and eats pages out of books, coughing up the most suitable pages at fitting intervals through the story. she's named after the author of 'dead souls', given that's the first book she ate. i suppose this song comes out of there somewhere, not to mention that occasionally awkward feeling of everyone wanting something out of you. and oh. it's still one of only two songs i've ever finished on the banjo, not to mention the only song i can think of that has a whistling choir solo in the middle.
 
 
06. FEEDBAGS
the first song i ever actually felt happy enough with to play to others (besides 'the one for ching' from her last radio show before we moved overseas). my friend jason interpreted it as a proclamation of independence, but there's a little more regret to it than that. if only the words in it were true, i'd be a happy (and most likely married) guy. as it stands, we attempted to ape the sound of an antique 78, clouded by some bizarre glockenspiel and xylophone business near the end. this may be the only song where my voice doesn't make me occasionally cringe. i hope it doesn't get overshadowed by the bigger trees.
 
 
07. A HYMN FOR 2 WALKS IN DIFFERENT CITIES
speaking of big trees, this one's quite possibly the biggest. we've done so many versions of this song that i think it may very well be the one constant we keep plugging away at for as long as we're all making music together (we've even got keywords for what version we're going to perform at each show). the melody's from 'come thy fount of every blessing'. the words are rather specific ones about someone i thought i'd move across the continent for. sometimes you change your mind when you realize you're not in love. and so it goes. this song, however, still captures that whole thing for me, despite my choice at one point to change all of the words around to no longer point at that person and that situation from which we both emerged rather bruised. (i ended up keeping it just as it was written). this song gives our producer chills. i suppose that's a good sign. (at one point, i asked for everything to drop out save for 100 flutes. he gave me 8 recorders instead, but damn it sounds lovely).
 
 
08. IF ONLY I WERE A PAINTER, I'D PAINT FOR YOU THE MOON
i love pop songs. this one's a big pop tune that makes me think of tommy roe's 'sweet pea', and on which alison yip did handclaps. the 8th track on an album's an important one, and this one lives up to its job. written and demoed in brooklyn last summer.
 
 
09. TAKE THE HINT KID
this one's my personal favourite, along the lines of 'feedbags'. sometimes, after you've tried your best to get something to work, the only suitable response for all involved is to toss your hands up in the air and realize it's never going to make anyone involved happy. mid-way into recording, we decided as a group to no longer continue working with jole, which was a rather sad and unfortunate turn of events. while there's not much of him left on the album, he plays just about everything on this song and i love every note. kenna likes this song because there's a reference to jerking off in it.
 
 
10. DEATH BY NINJA (A LOVE SONG)
originally this was just going to be on our split 7" with remote kid, but it turned out so well that we thought it deserved a spot as a hidden track on SONGBOOK. after we added the extra strings and horn sections (the 7" version is a little bit smaller, albeit slightly longer than this version) we realized it had to be a main player on the record. it's a waltz, written at al jen's house while i housesat for them. all i had was the chords and a melody. i sat down, hit record, and sang the words as they are now. i'm pretty proud of having made this thing up on the spot, and the orchestral arrangement we've pulled together here blows me away. on a record of more than one climax, this one's pretty big.
 
 
11. JONATHAN ASHWORTH ROLLERCOASTER
a rock song. a fast rock song. it sounds kind-of like it's melting in the middle like my bloody valentine. we recorded a couple of parts on one of the mellotrons at cantos, and when kenna and arran did this one, they had it piped up so loud through an over-driven amp that i had to hide in a room a couple of floors below. jonathan ashworth is a great artist living in london, who came through to calgary for a residency. he gave me an etching print of the rockies re-imagined as a rollercoaster. he's now set to marry stacey watson and move back here in the fall. the song sounds far meaner than it should given what a nice lad he is. but it's a bit like 'the alison yip school for girls' in that the lyrics really have next to nothing to do to him -- it's just my response to the etching, and the oh-so-easy metaphor of a rollercoaster.
 
 
12. SONGBOOK
this album stopped making sense to me until i wrote 'songbook' the song. we set mics up, the horn players stood on the second level of the old marble stairwell at cantos, and we sang it through live. it's the most perfect thing i've ever done in my life, all of two-and-a-half minutes long. it also makes people cry, which i suppose, is a good thing as long as it's not done out of agony.
 
 
13. A SLIGHT RETURN HOME
because a song entitled 'home as a romanticized concept where everyone loves you always and forever' isn't pretentious enough, we've added in a 6-minute instrumental reprise that starts tiny with two glockespiels and builds into something huge and horn driven, christmas bells and mallet drum rolls along for the ride. we recorded this one live at the cjsw studios, and it sounds awesome.
 
 
14. THAT WAS GOOD BUT YOU CAN DO BETTER
an ode to our producer, whose favourite saying during recording became the title. everyone sings a line in this one - peter as "the preacher", jason as "the doctor", etc. - and it may very well be the most fun piece of music ever written. ever. ha! right. a 6-minute shuffle that feels like 3. i love this song. is it okay to say that? of course it is. you're reading our damn website and i can say whatever i want, right?
 
next: more mixing
next next: mastering
next next next: unleashing the beast.
 
but our record... it's good. it's really really good, and i'm oh so happy.
 
and oh. ps. we kicked off 'clearing the decks'. we know we can get that song better next time. tsk. such a hard thing to do, cutting a song. it's some genuine sophie's choice drama. pick one of your kids and drown them. eek. sorry baby.
 
xox,
mark



February 25, 2006
the tale of redbeard (in 5 parts)
coming soon, a home-recorded rock opera of sorts, telling the tale of redbeard the pirate. until then, a look at the artwork created by anna coe and marshall watson in edmonton. mark and marshall will also soon enter the studio in edmonton as SPREEPARK, our '80s synth pop project. check out the marshall stack here.









February 24, 2006
kenna, dear.
please do drop by karma on thursday, 2 march, 2006 for a solo set from lady kenna burima, prodigal woodpigeon pianist. expect to hear some new kenna penned tunes, some brenda vaqueros favourites, a few covers so obscure we'll probably all just think kenna wrote them (and she won't correct us on that, no sir), and some woodpigeon re-writes a la burima.

things kick off at 9:00-ish.



February 21, 2006
woodpigeon hearts mary christa o'keefe
from an upcoming issue of SEE magazine:

WOODPIGEON Sketchbook, (independent)

Spiritually Glaswegian yet geographically Calgarian, Woodpigeon is cardigan handclap pop at its finest, lovingly crafted by Mark Hamilton and executed by his perma-expanding and contracting faux orchestra of musical allies. Hamilton has a sweet choirboy voice that could meet Stuart Murdoch's after school by the bike racks for a tweefest bitch knockdown any day, and he uses his vocal gifts to animate agonizingly wide-eyed ditties about love and other longings and cravings of the soul. Displaying a Morrissey-esque sense of scale and a manic Dave Fridmannian (producer of Mercury Rev, Flaming Lips, etc.) glee for whimsical instrumentation and studio witchery that sometimes verges on the frankly bonkers, the adventuresome 'Sketchbook' is still as likable and smart as Murdoch's sonic stomping ground, Belle & Sebastian. The album flutters and swoons like a heart in the first lurching throws of a crush and in certain moments, such as on the stupendous 'Alison Yip School for Girls', even ascends to brilliance.

CHRISTA O'KEEFE



February 13, 2006
and oh. magazines y'all.
hey.
calgary friends can pick up beatroute this month to read all about woodpigeon's fascination with things 7"s in size and bigger.
everyone else in canada can get chart. our name's even on the front way down at the bottom. apparently we're going to rock your life in 2006.
www.chartattack.com



daniel barrow: friend of the people / beija flor: friend of the woodpigeon
just today, hot off his multi-talented sketch-pad, winnipeg artist daniel barrow has graced woodpigeon with a limited edition badge of our very own. you should check out daniel's work at http://www.danielbarrow.com if you're unfamiliar, although you've most likely already seen his stuff in collaboration with the hidden cameras, or his ingenious solo projection work. the badges are at the printer's now, ready for our show on 21 february at hi-fi with remote kid.
(that means badge-wise, we've worked with 5 of canada's finest artists already... alison yip [calgary], mark clintberg [montreal], stacey watson [alright, alright, she's officially london, uk now], jillian tamaki [yes yes, i know, brooklyn ain't canada, but at least she grew up here], and daniel barrow). best get them while you can...
details on vancouver are coming in... so far, we're confirmed to play on 25 march (at the moment as a 5-piece and a real piano) at the prince albert music society, a grand old house. excitement abounds.
and recording? well, recording's going swell swell swell. (as in, read: we're almost done, although i've lost track the number of times i've typed that up in here).
ps. extra props to beija flor for their lovely on-stage shout-out our way last saturday at their swoon-worthy show at the palomino avec the brenda vaqueros.



December 20, 2005
Beofre Woodpigeon's Snowshovel show at the 2006 Mutton Busting Festival, drop by the Rheostatics' set at the Big Secret Theatre across the hall in the Epcor Centre to catch Mark and Kenna providing vocals on a "Statics" tune each. (And then, of course, once that's done, get yourself over to the Motel Room to catch the Woodpigeon frenzy. Mark your calendars, 13 January 2006 is set to be one busy night.

In other exciting collaboration news, Sandro Perri (aka Polmo Polpo) is laying down his honeyed lap steel cameo in Toronto as we speak, while Vitaminsforyou are warming up their laptops to take on a remix of Sketchbook's "A Hymn For 2 Songs in Different Cities".



December 16, 2005
Chartattack's Elizabeth Chorney-Booth interviews Mark Hamilton.
Read the article at MySpace.



December 15, 2005
FFWD's Jason Lewis interviews Mark Hamilton.
Read the article at MySpace.



December 1, 2005
Woodpigeon are busy nested away, recording Songbook, the group's first album proper. Expect french horns, lap steel, saws, tasteful saxophone solos, melting mellotrons and marching school bands alongside instruments we don't even know the name of. Arran Fisher of AcoustiKitty Studios sits in the producer chair like Captain Kirk or something. The album finale (a real barn-stormer, we'd like to think) 'That Was Good But You Can Do Better' is dedicated to him both in endless tribute and mocking echo of his favourite recording session slogan.

In the meantime, you can hear a sample of what is to come on our limited edition EP Sketchbook, available at our live shows.

Were that not enough, Woodpigeon and Remote Kid will be releasing a split 7" just in time for Valentine's day 2006.
A. Woodpigeon - Death By Ninja (A Death Song)
B. Remote Kid - Kill Me With A Single Blow



November 25, 2005
Welcome to Pigeonbooth!
Pigeonbooth = Two songs by Woodpigeon. Two songs by Aaron Booth. Two days to record...!
(2 x 2 x 2 = ?)

Woodpigeon (Mark Hamilton) and Aaron Booth have infused their vocal acrobatics like *steeped* tea in a cave on the shores of Lake Iroquois. We sounds pretty we does.

In early November 2005, while enroute to playing a show in a cathedral in Glasgow, Woodpigeon visited the house of Booth in Toronto so the two songwriters could make some music and take Aaron's 10 month old daughter, Ruby, to have her Christmas picture taken in a faux snow sled. Mr. Moms, indeed.

Mark pleased us with his acoustic guitar, voice and a glockenspiel.

Aaron made sounds with his voice, bass, piano, synths and he also produced the songs.

01. Woodpigeon - Epic Home Movies & Flying Machines, Oh Dear! (an ode to Remote Kid)
02. Aaron Booth - Closer To The Vine (The Racoons Want Them But I Like Them More)
03. Woodpigeon - The Elegy of Mr. Dakota Stumps
04. Aaron Booth - Sleep in Cinescope (Pigeonbooth version)

This music is not for sale -- it's for you.
Visit Pigeonbooth at MySpace
 

Copyright © 2006 Woodpigeon
Visit sketchbook site 2005