11:38 PM. I keep wandering around our hut and our room looking for things. Every 15 minutes I’ve managed to lose something else, only to find it a moment after. But sometimes when we’re looking for one thing, we end up finding another.

• Under, Behind, & Between

Tomorrow afternoon, WP leaves the comfy confines of our prairie Canadian abodes for a short string of festivals and shows in UK cities we haven’t made it to quite yet. In preparation, the focus has not stayed on booking the necessary train tickets or filling the gaps left in accommodations. No, instead, it has been the far more important act of filling up one’s iPod touch that has taken up much of this last-minute panic zone.

Just added: Scout Niblett’s This Fool Can Die Now, Quasi’s Field Studies and Featuring “Birds”, Stereolab’s Sound-Dust, and The Magnetic Fields’ 69 Love Songs. These join Coeur de Pirate’s Coeur de Pirate, Do Make Say Think’s You, You’re a History in Dust, and John Cale’s Paris 1919. I’ve been figuring out a perfect time and place to listen to some of these records. Am I alone in thinking Scout Niblett’s simply perfect for an Icelandic sunset? (On second thought — scratch that. The sun doesn’t set in Iceland this time of year. Drat).

Anyway, there’s also a little record on this here iPod we’ve been working on for quite some time now titled Die Stadt Muzikanten. We’ve tweaked the mixes and mastered the mastering. It sounds just about as big as we’d hoped it would, and there’s a few more surprises in store for its release, which we’re prepping ourselves for in January of 2010. We’re at the final round of making sure it’s all good to go, affectionately referred to as “the part where Mark travels somewhere and listens to it 1,000 times, finally ends up either liking it or just getting sick of it, and then most likely never really listens to it ever again” stage.

But at least there’ll be distraction. A small bit of recording is on the table in London-towne in the next couple of weeks, and hopefully we’ll have something to share with you on that soon. Until then, here’s a little recording we did in a Dublin hotel room this past May. It’s a song called ‘So Hold’, a version of which will appear on an upcoming split EP with our friend Chris Smith. All of the rooms in this hotel had a name, some of which were awesome (Vampyre, for just one example), except for the one in which we recorded this (which just so happened to be the one in which I slept) called Faerie Star. The chorus comes in a little off-the-rails, but that’s OK — we were probably just laughing about the name of the room.

• So Hold (Dublin Hotel Room)

Damn, Toronto. This is total ‘from the bottom of our hearts’ kind of stuff: thanks for the amazing weekend. Thanks for packing into the Horseshoe and making us feel welcome (and a tip of the hat to Grant Lawrence for reminding us that NXNE was also our return to playing on Canadian soil for the first time in months), and for somehow letting us go over the written-in-stone LIVE ON CBC / NXNE set time allotments. And oh, the whole surprise live-on-air awarding of the NXNE Galaxie Rising Star award thing was an added beautiful surprise. We’ll come back any time you’ll have us, Toronto.

As for the rest of our trip, that too was grand. Boompa Erin and I tried to take in as many Pad Thais as possible over the course of four food-stuffed days. The Red Room gets points for being nice and spicy (and cheap), but I think I’m going to have to proclaim Queen Mother the winner in the Toronto’s Best NXNE Pad Thai Race 2009. (And when it comes to breakfast, Sandro Perri revealed the incredible Café Lula’s poached eggs on cheesy polenta as one of the city’s finest morning offerings).

It was great to see so many friends again, and exciting to walk past so many artists recognizable from our music collections at home. A festival like NXNE is a rather heady, panicked, and overwhelming experience (so a special thanks to the pal who let me use her apartment ever-so-slightly off the beaten path this weekend), but at least in this particular instance, everything went off without a hitch.

PS. Cheers to the Woodpigeon NXNE 2009 band: Annalea Sordi on Nord, flute & vocals; Foon Yap on violin, Mandobird & vocals, Paul Aucoin on vibes, Arran Fisher on bass, clarinet, percussion & vocals; Garrett McClure on guitar, and Dean Martin on drums. And oh. I’m Mark. I wore extremely white trousers which Maggie MacDonald spilled a full pint of Coca Cola on in the Red Room right after our show. From here on out, whenever I see a faint brown stain I’ll think fondly of Toronto.

Seriously, if you’d ever told me that we’d someday find ourselves on a list of names alongside Leonard Cohen vying for the same prize title, I’d have laughed in your face. Really close and spitty-like. With deep, throaty guffaws. But, alas, it’s happened, and Woodpigeon’s Treasury Library Canada c/w Houndstooth Europa was named this morning as one of the records on the Polaris Prize’s long list, alongside such personal favourites as Chad Van Gaalen’s Soft Airplane and WOMEN’s self-titled record. And oh. Leonard Cohen.

But where’s everyone else? It’s easy to feel complimented by this sort of thing, but once you realize who didn’t make the list, it’s kind of mind-boggling. Every blogger from here to Halifax has already written on who they think is missing, but here’s a couple of others we really think you should check out: The Blistering Sun, The Pale Moon, Hahahaha by Knots, In Flesh Tones by Azeda Booth, and where the heck is Julie Doiron? Still, despite the omissions, it’s great company to be in and we’re well pleased to be included. Thankyouthankyouthankyou, etc. It’s a real pleasure just to be nominated, and so forth.

But, there’s no time to rest on one’s laurels, so we’re right back at it. Want some new summer tour dates? Well here. Look. We got some right here:

Canada!

Jun 20: NXNE at The Legendary Horseshoe - Toronto, ON
Jun 25: Sled Island at Central United Church - Calgary, AB
Jul 18: South Country Fair - Fort MacLeod, AB

Over Yonder!

Jul 25: Trowbridge Village Pump Festival - Wiltshire, UK
Jul 26: Gateshead Sage - Gateshead, UK
Jul 30: The Swan - Ipswich, UK
Aug 01: Field Day - London, UK
Aug 04: Brudnell Social Club - Leeds, UK
Aug 05: The Fishmarket Gallery - Northampton, UK
Aug 06: The End - Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK
Aug 07: T on the Fringe Festival - Edinburgh, UK
Aug 08: The Bandroom - York, UK
Aug 14: Haldern Pop Festival - Rees-Haldern, DE
Aug 15: Way Out West - Göteborg, SWE
Aug 16: Summer Sundae - Leicester, UK

Finally, we’re back at it, back in the studio, back to what we like doing best. In the next few weeks we’ll have details on a nice limited edition split EP coming out on Boompa Records here in Canada, shared with our friend and new label mate Chris Smith. It’s called Trouble, and it’s awesome. Our next long player Die Stadt Muzikanten is under-going the delicate digital massaging known in the biz as “mastering” (I have no real idea what it means or how it’s done) in Montreal and sounding great, and while we may have originally promised to have it out by September 2009, it’s looking like we’re all just going to have to wait a little bit longer and mark the start of 2010 with it instead.

Were that not enough, a couple of our side projects have been working on records of their own, including the debut LP from The Brenda Vaqueros, available only on vinyl (and it’s a beaut). Our Foon Yap has started recording her first EP Summer 2009 #1 as foonyap, and it’s a pizzicato thing of wonder. The Pigeonettes are plotting their next doo-wop assault, and the WP girls have also started up a garage-band four-piece called The May Pangs that features a different hot lad on percussion at every show.

Life is good. The sun is out, and dinner calls. Hope you’re all keeping busy too.

Thanks to everyone who came out to our last round of shows in the UK, Ireland, and Sweden (the very first Woodpigeon shows in Scandinavia, yo). Extra Special Thanks to the great new bands and performers we met and shared the stage with along the way — Music for Dead Birds, Dag för Dag, Beardfish, Stuart Silver, Serafina, Murray Lachlan Young, and on and on … It was great to premiere a couple of new songs for everyone, and collaborate with some new pals too.

I rode my pal Hampus’ bike through Stockholm the other day, and wandered through a children’s library, looking at the best-designed kids’ books I’ve ever seen. We planted potatoes in Hampus’ garden allotment with Phoenix on the portable stereo, and found ourselves dancing until the wee hours of the morning to Daedelus at the Normal Books publishing party. Three weeks before, we stopped through Bulgaria in search of gypsy folk music and hand-knit slippers, and a visit to the rather awe-inspiring Rila Monastery up in the mountains. En route to Ireland, we took the ferry from Holyhead, Wales, a tiny settlement worth exploring if you ever get the chance. In Cardiff, our hosts Liz and Ryan of the band The School took impeccable care of us (including a visit to Spiller Records, the world’s oldest record shop).

Woodpigeon’s coming back overseas for some nice festival (and otherwise) action in July and August, and we’ll announce all of that soon. First up, however, we’ll be broadcasting live from NXNE on CBC on 20 June from The Legendary Horseshoe in Toronto, then heading home for our first hometown show in ages at Sled Island 2009 (sharing the stage with The Alberta Rural Advantage, our friends Knots, and long-time hero-figure Mt. Eerie). It seems like we’re playing London more than Calgary lately — and it’s time to make up for it.

It’s nice to see the sun out in Calgary, and the bike paths full of cyclists. Hope it’s sunny where you are too.

Anyway. On to business: WP’s first proper tour of Ireland, and our first date in Wales, as well as a spot on the annual Phrased & Confused tour, focused on lyric-writing and the collision between words and music. It’s a chance to hit some of the UK’s smaller centers, not to mention an interesting opportunity to premiere some new works. For the first time on a tour longer than 3 days in duration, our producer Arran Fisher will also be coming along, so we’re sure to have some interesting recordings to share with you all at some point in the summer.

But! Before we get ahead of ourselves, here’s the P&C dates:

09 May: South Hill Park - Bracknell, UK
10 May: Cross Kings - London, UK
11 May: Norwich Arts Centre - Norwich, UK
12 May: Arc - Stockton on Tees, UK
13 May: Assembly Rooms - Derby, UK
14 May: Exeter Phoenix - Exeter, UK

Secondly, WP will be appearing once again at this year’s Great Escape festival in Brighton (May 15-16). You’ll most likely find us down on the beach throughout the days (and nights) of the festival.

Then it’s off to Ireland (and Wales):

18 May: Roisin Dubh - Galway, IE
19 May: Auntie Annie’s - Belfast, N. IE
20 May: The Academy 2 - Dublin, IE
21 May: Cyprus Avenue - Cork, IE
23 May: Clwb Ifor Bach - Cardiff, WALES

As for the summer, there’s a few things coming up that we’re rather excited about, but for the time being here’s just a hint of what we’ll be up to (first up, for our Canadian friends):

17-21 June: NXNE - Toronto, ON
24-27 June: Sled Island - Calgary, AB
17-19 July: South Country Fair - Fort MacLeod, AB

(And then for our European ones):

25 July: Trowbridge Village Fest - Wiltshire, UK
15 August: Way Out West Fest - Göteborg, SE
16 August: Summer Sundae - Leicester, UK

And yes. There’s more to come. Join us, won’t you?