gtbtim

Hefty Floss n'est-ce pas? Thanks Paisley.

Hope to see you there Shain!

Thanks for the newspage props Mike!

Can't wait to be in the beautiful west again. Hope to see some folks out and about! Peace.

Friday, June 3, Victoria - Steamers

Saturday, June 4, Vancouver - Fairview

Monday, June 6, Whistler - The Boot

Wednesday, June 8, Banff - Rose and Crown

Thursday, June 9, Edmonton - SideTrack Cafe

Friday, June 10, Calgary - Brew Brothers

Saturday, June 11, Canmore- The Canmore Hotel

Sunday, June 12, Kananaskis - Woody's

www.grandtheftbus.com

Mike, too bad you guys didn't come to 40 Main. When we last spoke that night I was unaware of the fact that there was a latenight boozathon to be had. Great times indeed; Nice to see you again man.

Thanks to all who made it out. Maverick's has really become a great room! Thanks to the 40 Main crew and company for the sweet hospitality; sorry for the de-cupboarding by our amish friend;he was a little overwhelmed,haha. Can't wait til the next one! How was work Stapes? peace,Tim

Thanks for your comments Alexis. Much appreciated. Just so you know,

We don't see what we are doing as "switching genres" because:

a)jamband is not a genre. Never has been.

b)we have and will always be gradually changing.We didn't draw a line and step over it.

Also, we are not doing this to 'get big' or anything like that. We will still write a 15 minute instrumental song if we feel like it. We are going to do whatever we feel like doing and that's all. This has always been the case. This is what we want to do right now. Our motivations are exactly the same as they always have been. Make music on our own terms period.

We fully expect criticism and appreciate it.We are grateful if people are talking about us at all! I believe Bob's comment was probably more motivated by the fact that people said we were jipping them. Sorry, but comments like those are the ones that actually sting, not the opinions about our music.

Thanks again.

ps- Thanks for taping Aberg. Sorry for the lack of 'weight'.

I generally only hover here but this thread seems to require a little rebuttle of sorts from our band.

First of all,thanks to Jay Cleary for working so hard on promoting the show and all others who helped make it happen.

To those left out in the cold (literally) we are sorry for that. For our last several shows in TO the Rivoli has been the ideal room for us in every regard. We are sorry that it was a little to small for this night. It is obviously tough to gauge how big a crowd will be.Our sincerest apologies.

About the 1:30 stop. This had nothing to do with our van being towed or because we did not WANT to play more. It was because the bar asked us to be done (including encore-if need be!) by 1:30. We graciously obliged. Sorry if you felt ripped off but this was out of our hands.

About the music. We understand completely why a lot of folks hate what we are doing right now. For people who like improvised music ,which admittedly we used to do a lot of, you probably are wondering what the F happened, and rightfully so. We have changed a lot. What can I say to this really? We appreciate improvisation like a lot of people here but none of us listen to that kind of music that often right now nor to we feel it right now like we used to. Maybe we will again at some point who knows? All we are doing is playing music that we WANT to play. We are writing constantly and are playing songs that are expressing where we are as people and as a band right NOW. 2 years ago or more, we were into stretching things out as far as we could to see where we could go, be it a trainwreck or somewhere great.We had fun doing that then and still do from time to time depending on the situation. Friday night we wanted to squeeze as many tunes in as we could,we had one set!(by the way 'Off the International Radar' were fantastic!)

That being said,obviously there are some folks dissapointed with what we are doing right now.This is something that we are very aware of and are sorry for. However,as selfish as this may sound, we are not going to get up and play music that we are not feeling at the moment. It is just not going to happen. We would be lying to ourselves and to you by doing so. For us, some of our older music is the equivalent of looking back at your high school grad photo and cringing at the mullet (although most here seem to prefer our 'nape-drape' to our current concise cut.)Sorry for the lame analogy.

Whatever.

I don't know what else to say except that we are sorry for dissapointing some of you,and sorry for "ripping people off".

As a band we are going to continue to write our asses off,play hard and make music without compromise that challenges both us as a band and the people listening. If we didn't keep changing we'd be done. Maybe we'll come full circle someday,who knows?

Anyhow, sorry for being so longwinded. If you took the time to read this, thank you for you patience.

Many thanks again for supporting live music and artists in general wherever they may wander and stumble. We greatly appreciated it then and still do now.Peace.Hope to see you at a show sooner than later.

sincerely,

Tim Walker

Grand Theft Bus