Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - 35 Years of Shakespeare My Butt with Lowest of the Low: Toronto Mike'd Podcast Episode 1882

Episode Date: April 15, 2026

In this 1882nd episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike dives deep into the seminal Toronto album Shakespeare My Butt with Ron Hawkins and Lawrence Nichols from Lowest of the Low. Toronto Mike'd is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Ridley Funeral Home, Nick Ainis, and RecycleMyElectronics.ca. If you would like to support the show, we do have partner opportunities available. Please email Toronto Mike at [e-mail].

I think Mike's collection of memorabilia is growing over there. Yeah, for sure. My vision is now filled with this hat that says things are as bad as they seem. And I don't know. You're right, Lauren Snickles. Are we here to prove that, Ron Hawkins, or are we here to disprove that? Well, I think the truth is over there. Somewhere, yes.

The Goli Mask, the killer goalie mask is still here. That's the important part. Yeah, that's the important thing for me. Wow. It's good to be active. Mike's basement. Mike's basement is getting more and more crowded all the time. Is this vinyl rack new?

Yeah. Oh, look at that. Went up during the Christmas break. When you'd say something, we would have brought some vinyl to cover over that tragically hip. Well, is that lasagna box? Oh,

is that a Don Smith production? That's a Don Smith production. Yes, it is. Okay, I've heard stories. We've got stuff in common. Should I hit the theme? I'm waiting for like, I don't want to interrupt the flow of genius from you two gentlemen.

I kind of feel like you just did So here we go I feel like you just Can we get off black cars already Welcome to episode 8882 Of Toronto Mikeed An award-winning podcast

Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery Order online at great lakes beer.com for free local home delivery in the GTA. Palma Pasta. Enjoy the taste of fresh. Homemade Italian pasta and entrees from Palma Pasta in Mississauga and Oakville. Visit palmaPasta.com for more.

Fusion Corpso, Nick Aienis. He's the host of Building Toronto Skyline. And Mike and Nick, two podcasts that you ought to listen to. Recycle My Electrable My Electra. Dottings.C.A. Committing to our planet's future means properly recycling our electronics of the past. And Ridley Funeral Home,

pillars of the community since 1921. Joining me today, making their return to Toronto Mike, it's Lawrence Nichols, and Ron Hawkins from lowest of the low. Yeah. Oh, I have one of those. Hold on then.

There you are. There's a little something. Wow. I'm all said here. Thanks for having us back, Mike. It's nice to be here. It's been too long. I love it when you guys visit.

This means a lot to me. And to us. We love to come back. Usually we come back in a new record cycle, but we don't have a new record cycle this year. We have an old record cycle. And we're back here anyway, and that's thank you.

That's really nice. Well, the first question I'm going to ask, right off the top may help us segue into what old album cycle we're talking about. So this message came in when I said you guys were coming over. I'm going to read it. It says, Hey, Mike, that's me.

My question request for lowest of the low. I'm going to read this, except we all know what's going to happen because I've been to 100 low shows, but I'm going to read it. My request for lowest of the low, please don't play Rosie and Gray too early in their May 9th concert. It'll make FOTMs and the audience think the concert is over. That's from Miriam. Because, of course, I close every episode of this podcast with Rosie and Gray.

Yeah. Well, I mean, she's free to leave if she really wants to, but, you know, we'd prefer it if she'd stick around, you know. I hear what she's saying. It's going to be weird for us to play that song. Sorry, Miriam, but early in the evening and resist the urge to walk off stage. Because it's the fifth song on the album, right? Yeah.

Just because it's the end of Mike show doesn't mean it's the end of our show. You can't, so you can't break. Why don't you guys tell us what is going on? What concert is Miriam talking about? What is this old album cycle? And then I'll ask you a bunch of annoying questions. But what does Miriam talk about? There was an album released in 1991 called Shakespeare My Butt.

And some young, impressionable lads went out on the road and played it across this country a million times. And it did quite well for us. And was, you know, hailed as an indie groundbreakinger, you know, which was not our intention when we first made it. We wanted to get signed by a record label. They all said no. So we made it an indie phenomenon instead. And now it's 35 years later. We're out supporting the 35th anniversary.

Still reluctantly independent. Well, you had a moment where you signed with a major. Yeah. Warner, right? Because of the punk rock president? Yeah, because of Steve Kane. Partially because they, well, I don't know if they approached us. Maybe Steve Kane and I might have been jawing about some stuff.

And then Steve mentioned a box set. And I was like, a box set. that. Right. What are we, are we dead? You know, what's going on?

Is it a memorial? You know, has the band broken up again? And, yeah, so he kind of put the bug in my ear, I think, and then it was like, well, if anybody's going to do it,

it's going to be Warner because it's Steve's idea. And then we decided to cheekily join forces. In fact, I wrote a letter to Steve. Steve asked me to write a letter about, you know, to put on the socials about how we were selling out. Getting together.

And I wrote this thing that said something about, you know, after 30 years of of blood, thirsty war between lowest of the low and the corporations, you know, lowest of the low has accepted Warner's unconditional surrender. And I wrote it as a joke, right? Because I thought Steve Kane will laugh.

And then he'll go, okay, cool. Now send the real one, right? And of course, because he's the punk rock president, I sent that and he's like, this is perfect. We're going to put this out, you know? Yeah. So it was very us and it was very him.

I don't know if the rest of Warner's bean counters thought it was funny, but. But you're back to fiercely independent Yes. Yes. Okay. So we are going to go back in the time machine, but can I understand what is happening on May 9th? What a concert is Miriam attending? Miriam will be attending. That sounds like the Danforth Music Hall in Toronto where we will be performing the album Shakespeare My Butt in order. In order. Well, that tells me the fifth song of the night is going to be Rosie and Gray. Yeah, there's spoilers of plenty. All they have to do is look at the back of the record or the CD or, you know, whatever streaming service they use. And they will see our side. list sitting there.

Okay, so wait, so let me understand this because I've told you guys many, many times, one of my favorite album, forget Canadian, forget Toronto. One of my favorite albums of all time is Shakespeare my butt. And I revisited it recently and I'm like, I still love it firstly, but I also maybe more than ever appreciate the locality of it all, like references to places I can see and touch in the city, like it feels very, very, very, very Toronto. and I appreciate it today more than ever. Oh, yeah, you have fist bump there.

Okay. But, okay, so the 17 tracks, and we're going to get into this, but the 17 tracks on Shakespeare, my butt, you can't break format and just skip Rosie and gray in its fifth spot and close with it. Well, in fact, in very lowest low form in a rehearsal, this became quite a discussion because there were other suggestions. First of all, you're talking to the two guys, I believe when the whole idea of the 35th came up,

you know, because of the way the album said, are these days, it was like, well, you guys can either make a new record this year or you can go out and celebrate lowest of the low. Or shakes my butt. And so I think Lawrence and I might have been the two guys who put up our hands and said, new record, new record, because we're always kind of pushing forward. And then, you know, I think probably sane or minds, you know, went out and said, guys, 35 years, we should probably go out and celebrate this record. So, and we did. And I'll have to say, we had a rehearsal on Monday. And I was riding these waves of pride and excitement about how excited I am to be doing it.

I'm actually surprised. Not that I didn't think it would be fun, but just I didn't think it would be as touching and as fun as I think it's going to be so. Well, I'm psyched about it. This is going to be amazing, and I got a million questions here. Oh, but sorry, but I was just going to say too,

that we did have some discussions about putting other songs into the set with it, you know, breaking up the set, you know, and then it was like, well, no, no, it's like if we're doing the record, we should do. the record, you know. Are you aware the cassette has a fewer songs in the CD? Yes. We did have a discussion about if any of these shows don't sell out, we'll do cassette night, which will be two songs shorter. Which two songs? Kind of the lonely one and

letter from Bill Beow were not on the cassette. So why is that? Because the cassette wasn't long enough. I think technology. Yeah, technology. I guess it was on a maxel, Xcel, Excel, 2, or something. It needed to fit 60 minutes. Yeah, and the album's 64 minutes. Without. Yeah, we wrote too much, basically. Yeah.

Shouldn't have written so much. Okay, so 35 years of Shakespeare, My Butt. I can't believe that. And this sounds amazing. You're going to tour the 35th anniversary special here. I'm hoping you'll do it again for the 40th anniversary of Shakespeare My Butt. Can I just say, were those two songs left off because they're the shortest songs? I kind of think they are, aren't they?

Letter from Bill Beo and kind of the lonely one are both very short. So that's probably why they got the chop. Okay, anyway, sorry. No, no, I like, this is what I like. So, because yesterday I had an episode where we went back 100 years. We went back to 1926. Like, I played music from 1926, and we dove deep into the Toronto Maple Leafs baseball club that won the Junior World Series in 1926.

No kidding. Yeah, it was pretty cool, actually. Wow. You know, but now I'm thinking, can we go back? Like maybe, I don't know, 1990, 91, one. Maybe we go back and I know we've covered this quite a bit, but I would like to revisit maybe for the definitive record here in Toronto, Mike, because I'm a natural born archivist here. But I'm, I want to go back to how popular front becomes lowest of the low. And like, what is the difference between these two bands? Hmm. Well, at the risk of going farther back, I'll start with, you're Ron Hawkins for goodness. David, David and I were started in a band called social insecurity.

in 1983 and that only lasted from 83 to 84 but it was a very the mission statement was very clear it was a very political band it was a sort of a punk rock band for lack of a better word but we also did sort of new wavy stuff

and reggae and scah and stuff like that was a grab bag but mostly you know an angry kind of punk rock teen band and so Dave and I were in that band with our good friend Ken and when that band blew up we became popular friend so as I say social

insecurity very clear mission statement as to who we were, what we did. And then we became popular front. And David and I sort of wandered around a little bit with a couple of songs. Then we met up with, I think Dave introduced me to Stephen Stanley and Steve joined the band.

And so the three of us were the core of the band. And then it would grow, expand and contract depending. Because sometimes it was five piece. Sometimes it was an eight piece like we had Latin percussion and horns and different things. But I feel like the popular front, early part of popular front was kind of the wilderness years. we were kind of a little lost.

We didn't have the same kind of clarity as to what we were about. And, you know, the good side of that is we experimented with a lot of things. I think I was telling Lawrence the other day, like if I had to nail it down, I would say it was a bit like a harder edge tears for fears with some 80s stuff and some, you know,

and then some world beat stuff in there vibe. You know, it was just, again, a bit of a grab bag, but, but, you know, I was trying a whole bunch of things and I think, and I was trying to write big theme songs about issues of the, day, big global issues of the day, like a lot of bands. We're like you two and, you know, all those kind of bands. So we were a bit lost and our haircuts would, would show you that we were a bit lost.

And then toward the end of the 80s, like I would say 88, 89, we wrote a few songs that if you heard them, you would go, well, you know, I can see lowest low coming, you know, like along the road. So, and there were, Lawrence has made a very extensive list that he's posted about what songs are older that we've brought back. And, uh, and so there's the wilderness years of popular front. And then there's the last tight little years at the end where we were writing stuff that was going to be lowest to the low and actually wound up on most of the low records. But we had no crowd. You know, we were spinning our wheels. And then there's a kind of a famous story of me driving

Dave home from a gig at Strattingers, which is an east end of Toronto. And I think we played to my girlfriend. And we were so crestfallen and I pulled up to Dave's house and Dave just looked at me and said, we should just pack it in. And we were very, very, very, close to packing in and I did and I just had one of those moments you know not not classic not typical of me to be as level headed as I was but I said I said why don't we sleep on this this is not a decision we should make tonight and we didn't make that decision tonight and the next day it seemed like a little we had a little distance from it and then so we didn't break up but we were you know clear that the change had to come right and then so some of those songs were still being played I think two songs I think bloodline and

taming of Carolyn were at that very end of popular front and went on shake from my butt. And then, you know, we just retooled a little bit. And then I don't know when, when this happened, but I sort of took the classic adage of write what you know. Somehow I suddenly learned that and started writing a song about, you know, maybe the only cafe or something, someplace that we would hang out or a friend,

a story that I knew about a friend. And then suddenly at our shows, that stuff kind of took off. And it was really resonant with people. And I was like, oh, you know, these old professors are not wrong. You know, like if you write about things that mean something to you, they will resonate with other people. And then, but the thing I did not know, which was that the more of a magnifying glass you put on it,

the more personal it gets, the more universal it seems to resonate, which seems counterintuitive, but that started happening. And so then Dave, you know, Dave likes to joke that we were the first people to rebrand because really the first bit of lowest of the low was kind of the end bit of popular front was still me and Steve and Dave. And then we started playing open mic places like the Free Times Cafe,

as a sort of a folk unit, sort of a punky folk unit. What was it? Sarcastic Power Folk or whatever we were calling themselves. Is this like 1990? Yeah, by then it's late 1990, 1991. I met Lawrence in late 1990. Yeah, I can tell you that, but at the end of 1990, it was December 1990 where we met where we played a show together at Lee's Palace.

And at that point, they had, a lot of those songs were there. It was early the next year that you asked the bass player in the band I was playing in John Arnott to join your band. And they gave him a tape, which was, it was generally called the kitchen tape now, I think. And so it was Dave and Ron and Steve in someone's kitchen. My kitchen. Just playing

their fokey, punky, flaky trio versions of a lot of the songs that are on Shakespeare my butt now. And of course, we all got John to make us copies so we could take it home and listen to it. And I thought that was just absolutely amazing. But it very much was what was coming down on the pipe of Shade's Fear My About later later that year. Do you have a copy?

of this tape. I lost my copy of the tape. So does anybody have a copy of this? You know, you know who has a copy of the tape? That's band speak for like we don't want anyone to hear it. I lost my copy. No, I did lose my copy. The girl I was dating at the time still has a copy. She lives in Collingwood. She was in Collingwood. She sent me a photograph of it. No, but she's way in Colleenwood. I couldn't get it. Actually, we took it, I don't know what year we did this, but we decided maybe it was for the box that we took the kitchen tapes into Joe Carval's mastering place. And, and, and working with a friend, or friend Tim. And with the intentions, like, oh, we remaster, you know, because in a lot of people's mind, and even in musicians' mind, who should know better, you know this idea like, well, we're remaster it, which means it's going to go from sounding like crap to sounding like Sergeant Pepper. And, you know, you get it in there.

And then at some point, Tim just turned around and you said, what do you want me to do with this? Because it was recorded on a, like, a four track in my kitchen. I can imagine. I can imagine. And it does not sound good. But, and also, for some reason, it sounds very fast. I don't know if I had the speed switch in the wrong.

Some of those machines just play to the wrong speed. Also, I think, because I actually, it's funny, because it was Fred Patterson, Humble and Fred gave me a bunch of tapes, and they're like circa 1989, 1990, and I was ripping them to MP3, and they all seemed a little sped up too. I don't know if that's like how cassettes age maybe. Like, is that possible? Is that possible?

No, but there was a cassette, there was a cassette duplication place in Toronto. I have to tell you that their machine Rant played too slow, which means that when you played it back on your regular machine, it sped it up. Okay. And I think a lot of 90s bands are slightly tuned up. That's a possible, this is a theory I've been working on.

You're speculating, but you know what I did, what I had to do, Mike, because I'm me and I'm such a nerd about these things. When I decided to digitize some of my indie 90s cassettes, I had to go to Long & McQuade and rent one of those proper cassette machines that you could adjust the speed because I had to get them all in tune because they were all playing too fast. If I can underline what a nerd Lawrence is, I asked a friend of Lawrence's. I said, oh, so then he can just throw the cassettes out, they'll have them digitize it. Oh, no, no, no, no.

Those cassettes go into a storage unit. Well, you know, I know a curator at the Art Gallery of Ontario, I feel like there should be some, you know, 90s indie, Toronto indie rock exhibit. I might be biased, but I think it was a great time. I think it was a really good time for music. in the city and, you know, I mean, it probably still is. People tell me it was awesome. Well, if you can remember it, Lawrence, you weren't there. That's right.

I remember not being there. Like, totally. Yeah, I mean, like, you know, they've got the punk rock museum in, where is it at, in Las Vegas? Friend of ours from the Cadillac Tramps, Johnny Two Bags, he does tour. He's a tour guide there. And they say that, like, all the other tour guides tours are like 45 minutes. His are apparently like almost two hours.

Everybody's like, come on, Johnny. like tighten it up a bit. But yeah, that would be kind of a cool, eh, to have like a little 90s museum. 100%. You know, get that Paul McCartney photography thing out of there and let's move in the 90s Queen Street, whatever. He's had his 15 minutes, that guy.

Seriously, seriously. So, okay, so popular front becoming low as a low is kind of a rebrand, it sounds like. Yeah, in a way, I mean, unless you consider, you know, there was a seismic shift in the writing style. Well, tell me about that because I'd love to know like how you approach the writing of Shakespeare My But, since this is like a Shakespeare My But deep dive here.

Yeah, some of this will sound like, you know, ridiculous romantic pulp fiction. But I think, I think it was clear to me that, that when I was writing those kind of big global, not that I didn't have information and not that I wasn't a lifelong activist since I was a 16 and political person and stuff of that, like I was aware and I knew the nuts and bolts of the things that were going on,

but they weren't things happening to me. and there weren't things in my neighborhood. So I think on some level I was aware that I was being somewhat inauthentic or there was an inauthenticness to trying to do that thing I was doing. And then so a confluence of things happened, which was that my long-term relationship,

eight-year relationship that I sing about in Rosie and Gray, broke up in 1990, in 1991. And I was having, I guess, this epiphany that I was writing things that I didn't particularly know about. And the universe was telling us by nobody coming to our shows that what we were doing was failing. So I think all those things came together and I moved into a little punk rock room in a house

that I shared with a guy who was kind of a little bit of a mentor to me or an older punk rock dude. He came from the Ottawa punk scene from way back in the day in a band called The Restless Virgins. but when I knew him in Toronto he was a band called Human Interest and they were a fantastic band they kind of mixed it was a very pop you know sort of pop punky thing and so I moved in with him and he was a Stephen he was a big

influence on me and and I think I was telling you that we would have these you know though I was paying $275 a month or something for this room in this kind of punk squat still for some reason we didn't have money for rent so we would have these rent parties on the weekend which we would go poster the clubs and say hey come back after hours You know, it's illegal, whatever, but come to our house. We've got alcohol, blah, blah, blah. We have these parties.

And so members of the kids in the hall, like Scott was always there. Kevin McDonald was always there. Molly Johnson was there sometimes. Like a lot of, you know, local luminaries would show up there. And so that was very romantic. And I was kind of suddenly outside. I didn't have a job for the first time in my life. And I was outside of the world of nine to five.

My relationship had broken up. So I was newly single and I was out being a musician and, you know, meeting people and and I would walk around the city with a little notebook in my backpack so and then I would sit with Lawrence Nichols at Future Bakery on Bluear Street for countless hours drinking probably

14 coffees I don't know how we managed to do that Were they free refills or did we just They had to be We must have just treated it that way They had to be free refills or we were stealing them But I just meant like our nervous systems I don't know how our nervous systems handled that

But so all of that together it was like I was saying almost like the universe said to me here you go, kid. If you can't make a great record out of this, then you should just hang up your pens. You know, so, I mean, I was just thrust into a very romantic situation. And, you know, and then if you tie that together with what was going on in the city, which was other people were having that experience,

there was a great institution called 102.1, The Edge, who were willing to take a risk on local bands and bookie would play things. I mean, you just had a sort of a perfect storm of romance, and energy and, you know, it was a very exciting time. This will all be in the museum. So I have questions about that in the role of CFNY and the late grade Dave Buckman here. But what was he playing?

Like, is he playing Shakespeare my butt or does he have access to demo tapes that maybe weren't necessarily going to be the final product? It would be Shakespeare. It would, but they, you know what they did? On Live in Toronto one time, they did somehow unearthed. Kim Hughes? Is this Kim Hughes? It would have been the Kim Hughes. It was before she came out.

In the early 90s, it's Kim Hughes. It would have been 1991, but early in 1991, there was a show that you were playing, maybe at least Pallas or something. And live in Toronto played, found a demo version of the Taming of Carolyn and played it on the air. And it was, it was much, much slower than the final version eventually. But yeah. But they did. They were so desperate. I mean, you guys, you guys managed to blow up without any radio play, like just as a, as a local phenomenon. And you were so popular, they were absolutely desperate to play you on the radio. They were like, we're going to play anything of yours we can find on the radio. And that, what kind of support is that? That's amazing.

And if you sprinkle in, like, you know, Lawrence wasn't in the lowest of the low at that point, but somebody would be, was Lawrence in the low at that point? And I'm like, well, no, Lawrence was a friend of the band who jumped up with the band. I'm like, but he jumped up 250 times a year. Like, we just moved in a circle of people.

Like, I tell my daughter now, like, it's interesting that I have, a couple of friends from high school. I have a couple of friends here and there. But in 1991, I met like 20 people that are all still very, very close friends because this explosion happened. And we were just in each other's pockets the entire time. And playing, you know, like messing around with each other's bands and sort of like,

you know, poaching their bass player. But everybody played a lot more too back then. There were those nights at the Blue Moon Saloon on Bloor Street that were Thursday to Sunday. There were four nights, four sets a night. And I went by to see lowest of the low play. When I was on a date, actually, when I got there and they're like, no, you can't come in. It's too full.

I was like, yeah, okay, whatever. And then they started playing a song that I wrote. And I'm standing outside the club watching you play it because they, you know, you had to play four sets a night. They were doing all sorts of covers they wouldn't ordinarily do. And I was just sitting, okay. You know, in a way, it's like, well, this sucks. But also it's like, this is a great time to be alive.

Like what on earth is going on here? Is this real life? I'm sure you didn't have that epiphany. though you're probably no no no probably soul searching and oh probably I probably went home and wrote it down some sort of agonizing deep angst did you say to your date I wrote this song

I'd like I'd like to say oh no I just said hey that sounds good I don't like it I probably yeah you know oh I honestly don't remember but I probably did I was like she said it's no how do you resist yeah I know it's like adding to my frustration I don't know how you could I think no matter even if you're

Elton John I'm thinking if you hear your song in the radio. You're like, that's me singing. It doesn't matter how big you are, right? I don't know if you encounter it in the wild or whatever. Okay. So CF and Y has Shakespeare My Butt. We're going to get to Safe Y because I still want to hear a little how the CF, sorry, the Shakespeare My But sausage is made here, okay? So who produced Shakespeare My Butt? A good friend of ours, Andy Koyama, who was working as a film mixer. He mixed sound for film. an interesting story about Andy as Steve knew him long before we knew him because Stephen and Andy and Andy's band Andy's brother Gord were in a band called Four on the Floor back in the 80s and uh Steve

band or like comedy troupe no band okay because there's a comedy troupe go four on the floor and Steve but well they are a bit of a comedy troupe when Steve tells you that he said every they would rehearse like on the weekend and he said every Sunday they would rehearse and he said every Sunday Steve Stanley and the other guy who wasn't Andy or Gord in the band would pack up their gear, you know, halfway through a rehearsal because Andy and Gord, his brother, would get in an argument, which would become a fist fight. And he said like to the point where they would like tables would be getting knocked over and lamps would be getting broken.

And Stephen and the other guy would just go, okay. And then I guess put their guitars away and just sort of back out of the room. And so that was Andy. I mean, by the time we met Andy, he was very, very peaceful. and his brother Gore is a lovely man. But so Andy was working at a film house, which was downtown at the time. And I don't know how it happened,

but he approached us. We did a, we did a demo with him at Comfort Sound. He was working at Comfort Sound for a while. We did demo for salesman and fatalist with him. And then that turned out to be like, hey, we should demo all the songs for the record

that you want to shop around. And we did that. We went to metalworks. to do the drums because we thought, oh, you got to go to a real studio to do drums. And so we did that. And then everything else was done at Filmhouse in a Foley booth, which is about as big as your podcasting room here.

And, you know, we were like literally back in the day when they would have gravel and they would have broken glass and so that people would walk in the gravel when they were recording gravel sounds. And so Lawrence and I would be in like straddling that to do, you know, harmonica or vocals or whatever. And that's how we did.

And with the idea that we were going to shop that demo around and get signed to some label, because as indie as we are and as much as I think even then we realized that was probably where our home was, you know, we still were young and sort of thought, you know, real bands get signed. Like the clash was on Epic, you know.

We could be on a label. But this sounds interesting to me knowing about the corporate rock sucks t-shirts and all that. Like it doesn't jive. Well, I know. Or maybe it does. I mean, it doesn't jive.

And it's like I think we were under a false impression when we were shopping it around because I think that would have been a mistake and I think it would have been a mess. And it's a way better story that we got turned down by everybody and then went out and made it a real thing anyway

on our own. And then they came crawling back like they do, you know, and said, oh, well, well, maybe it's, well, I don't, we didn't really mean no. We meant later. Okay, so you record Shakespeare, my butt and you've told us now, like, who produced it, where you produced it.

Tell me a little bit about the role, of Page Productions. Do you know more about that, Lawrence, than I do? I mean, I know that Stephen Page's dad. Victor, Victor, I mean, I believe it was something that was put together primarily to distribute the yellow tape that the Bernickeleties made. And I could be wrong about this, but I think one of the next big indie explosions was probably shakes through my butt, wasn't it?

See, I feel, why do I think it's the other way around? why do I think Shakespeare My But Goes First Becomes the biggest selling independent Release in the country And then the yellow tape beats that record I think it's like Friday Saturday Like I think it was all happening at the same time

Because I remember we would be playing sneaky D's And then they would be playing sneaky D's And you know like I think we're I think because I think you hold the wreck I mean I think there's a short, very short It's very brief But there's a period of time

When Shakespeare My But is the best selling Independent Release in Canadian history Like I believe that to be true. We still tell people that. Well, I believe that to be true. So no lie there. Tell no lies as a spoons would sink. So that means it goes first because the record is broken very shortly thereafter by the yellow tape.

Right. Okay. Which tells you, and this is in the great I got to recommend, shout out to Simon Head. I thoroughly enjoyed Simon's subversives documentary and I urge all low fans and all music fans to check it out. I had a copy. I was looking over here. I don't know where it is. Like, I had that DVD on display somewhere here,

and I have no idea where it is. There's a lot of stuff over there. There's a lot of junk. I'm going to go rifle through this again when I play a song. It's probably behind that tragically hip album. But they talk to, yeah. No, you know what I think is behind the Blue Jays 45? I've got to check it in a second.

But basically there is a moment in time where it appears as if Stephen Page's dad, with help from Stephen Page's brother. It almost looks like they've got the magic ear. Like, they seem to know what. cooking because they release both Shakespeare my butt and the yellow tape, which became the two biggest independent releases in Canadian history. Of course they did. It was just a happen.

Yeah, but you know what, if you believe in karma and however you might believe it, Stephen Page's dad, Victor. Victor. Victor. Victor Page, in his defense, he loves music. And he also said right from day one, like, guys, I'm, I just want to be a conduit. And if something comes along and it helps you move into a bigger arena, I'm not going to, there's not going to be a sunset clause.

There's not going to be a blah, blah, blah. You know, so I, you know, I mean, I don't, I don't fully believe in manifestation. But I mean, like, things like that, you know, tend to be real sometimes in the world. Like, and I think that might be part. of it is that, you know, he, he was open to the idea of that kind of stuff. This begs the question. I've always been curious because you mentioned this explosion on CFN. I do remember so many songs from Shakespeare, My Bud, getting heavy rotation on CFNY in the, in 91, 92 there.

And I also remember the similar bear naked ladies explosion on CFNY. I mean, they were playing this crappy cover. I'm not that the song was crappy, but the recording was kind of crappy. this, I fell in love of a McDonald's girl. Do you guys know this song? So that's not a Barenequin Lady's song, but they covered it live and someone recorded it. And it was getting spun a lot.

Really? Yeah, McDonald's girls. So they were like, you know, they had the yellow tape and they were, before Gordon, they were really. Well, that's the thing about the edge, right? That's the dream, which is that it's like a college, it's like a college radio station with, you know,

a much bigger tower, you know? Sure. Yeah. So in that little window, beautiful little window. It was like they could do all the great things that college radio does, but they could do it on such a scale. They were really, really, really into it. They were like, we want to play you this stuff and we're going to, now we're going to play you this, this goofy cover live version of a song that we've got a copy of.

I don't think, did they ever release that? Like the McDonald's girl, no, no. But some, but there was some, I know I have it on a tape somewhere. Yeah, there was a live recording. Was it too goofy for the rivoli or something? That's impossible. But here's just my question, my big question here. What do you guys think? of the bare naked ladies. Oh, I, I, those are, those are guys to me who absolutely did it right. Now, I played in a band, oh, it was the pale criminal. It was the band that I was playing with at Lee's Palestine,

and they met Ron. That was the pale criminal. And John Arnott was the bass player. I remember probably a year, a year and a half before that, we played at Sneaky D's on like a Tuesday night, and the opening back was this, the opening band was this, this gangly collection of dudes from Scarborough called the Bear Naked Ladies. And we were all like, they're never going anywhere with a name, like that.

And we saw, we saw, so we saw the proto bear naked ladies and they, and I kind of sat there and thought, this is a bit of a mess, but it's also kind of great. And, and,

and then, you know, we ended up, you know, in the same circles as them a lot. And I know that they were doing all the right things that they were making plans from day one. They had,

they had it all put together. They had their sound. They had their stage show. And they were making plans like, like financially. They were putting aside a lot money. They were playing all the time. They were putting aside the money and saying, no, no, we got the site set on the world. And they, they did it. They did it. They absolutely did it. And,

and total respect for that. And I also heard Stephen Page just, you know, I think he was, I think he was probably pretty self-assured at the time. I think he knew he was onto a good thing. And I remember I remember reading, I think in Now magazine, that he had started a correspondence with Howard Jones. And he was started to write Howard Jones letters. And I guess they were so noteworthy that Howard Jones actually started writing back and you know and and Stephen Page was saying oh you're gonna you're gonna hear about me soon don't worry well let me bring up another name we've already mentioned him but bookie because bookie would play before I think this is before like Tyler Stewart's even in the band like when it's just sort of like an Ed and Stephen thing I think

but on uh CKLN I think it was bookie would play uh Brian Wilson which is like a Stephen which is like a big yeah which is really Stephen Page he wrote it he sings that it's his baby it'll be, you know, attributed to bare naked ladies, but Stephen Page's song. So, I mean, the role of Bucky in both bands, both Toronto bands at the same time breaking huge in the GTA. Yeah, there were a lot of parallels. Not just the two of us, like countless, countless bands.

And the thing, too, is like it's, it isn't, it isn't a one-way street in terms of like, I think part of the reason they were so excited to do that was because for whatever reason there was such a bubbling energy in the street, you know, at that time. I mean, you know, in Toronto, if you look back, I remember the early 80s, and there was lots of hell of luck going on then, too, Le Trangier and, you know, Altamota and Parasier Club started and all that kind of stuff. Like, there was a scene.

Didn't see if I start playing breeding ground a lot when they put out Tales of Adventure, I think, and that would have been like 88 maybe or something like that, and that started to get on the radio a bit too. And it really, I think, I think sort of woke people up to the fact that music that was not sanctioned by a major label wasn't necessarily too weird to listen to. It was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, that you could really like and really enjoy. And then the key is local too, right? Like is that not only that, but you can sing,

you can be from Toronto and still be cool. You know, you don't have to be from New York. You don't have to be from London, you know. And so that's, those things are major points. And the door opens. And I think it's a matter of, you know,

a few integral people. And then you get, you know, you get Strombo in there shortly thereafter. And, you know, he and I had a laugh because he was on a podcast. I heard him talking about, on Graven Town, Graven's podcast. Oh, yeah, I've been on there.

And Graven said, yeah, Ron, Ron's a really nice guy, but he's like, when I first met him, I thought he hated me. And George goes, yeah, the first time I met him, I interviewed him, and I, you know, Kim Hughes had just left. And he said, Ron showed up in a handmade t-shirt that said, reinstate Kim Hughes, right?

And so George took that personally, and he said, and then Ron was very clear that it wasn't aimed at me. It was aimed at. He's like, I was 20 years old. He's like, I thought, fuck, this guy hates me, right? And so we had a laugh about that. But like, you know, there was just such a clutch of characters, you know, and then you throw Steve Kane in there, like punk rock president at Warner. And it's like, you know, there was a time where people were making decisions that weren't

necessarily the smartest for the bottom line. And it wasn't even the smartest for their careers, in quotes. You know, and that's why I think lowest, low slotted really nicely in there because we made lots of decisions that, you know, to the unaided eye look pretty stupid and pretty self-destructive. But, you know, and now in this, now we're celebrating 35 years, I look back all of it. I'm going, I wouldn't change a single thing because we don't belong here. We don't belong in this industry. We don't belong in this society.

We, you know, but we're here and we're going to make the best of it and we're going to be us, you know? And sometimes people do it and it's that little window at CFMY or it's us or it's other bands like us. And, you know, and then sometimes we're now, you know, in a dearth of that where it's like you look around and it's like, can I get, can I look at something that's authentic? You know, everything seems completely constructed and manufactured. No, absolutely.

I think I read somewhere. Did I throw you, Mike? No, I was going somewhere and then you kept going and then I forgot where I was going. But I did read somewhere to get back on track here. I did read somewhere that you didn't like how Shakespeare my butt sounded like sonically. Oh, no. Is that true? Or was it true?

I mean, I'm of two minds because I just had a, I had an email with Andy. Andy, you know, I think I said it in the, in the doc, right? Like, you know, when I, I think the way I said it was that it's funny that the, our most successful record sort of is the least well produced or whatever, right? And of course, Andy produced it. And it wasn't a slight on Andy. It was like, it was like we were all kids. Andy was new to it.

And Andy was making a rock record in a, in a film over. dubbing, you know, it wasn't the greatest scenario. We'd had no money. What was the budget for Shakespeare? The budget was zero. The budget was less than zero. I think Andy might have, you know, bought dinner a couple of times.

Like, literally Andy has never been paid. The greatest value in the history of music. The tapes that Shakespeare was recorded on were recycled dialogue reels from television shows or movies, right? Like, you know. So I listen to it. And it's like, well, of course, it's, it's, it's a great, it's an iconic record in our,

in our catalog. But I mean, a lot of the things, too, have to do with, like, Stephen and I, I don't know, it's like, did they speed up our voices? Like, we sound like little kids. And I take a great deal of responsibility for the things I don't like about the record is that I've now been singing for 30 more years.

Like, I hear the delivery of some of those vocals. They're so incredibly straight. There's no, there's places that I swing those vocals now that I didn't swing them then, didn't know how to do that. And, you know, so, a lot of it has nothing to do with the production itself. But, so I felt bad and I told Andy like, oh, please, like, I'm not saying that it's, that we all did a bad job or that you did a bad job.

This is like the t-shirt you wore on Live in Toronto. It's like, no offense to Strombo. It's a pro-vis huge. Yeah, exactly. The other thing, too, is it's... So many misunderstandings. I just hate things, but it might not be you. Yeah.

I'm really hate myself. No, and I think part of it is that, you know, it wasn't mastered the way other songs, albums were mastered. So if you heard it on the edge, it was hilarious because you would hear, I don't know who, like, let's say, moister whoever. And, you know, and it would be like a certain volume. And then a low song would come up and just drop in volume because, you know, there were the loudness wars were happening. And, you know, we just, it wasn't mastered the same level. So there's a lot of reasons.

It sounds very rag tag. But, you know, anytime we've talked about it, Greg talks about the replacements remastering and they've done remixing and some of that. And he's like, you know, for anybody who's a fan, they're like, you know, you release that stuff. new remixed or whatever and they go, yeah, that's a thing. Yeah, yeah. But I'm still going to listen to the original one because that's the record. 100%. On that note, why am I under the impression that CFNY was playing what you might have deemed

demos and then you come to a conclusion that those are now the songs because that's what everybody knows and love? Why am I under this impression? Like is that complete BS? Like Shakespeare in your butt was you thought you were recording demos. Okay, so maybe that's the disconnect here. Okay, so the album, that's celebrating 35 years,

the album we know is Shakespeare, my butt, this gem of an album, it wasn't intended to be the final album. Well, it's not, it's not like it wasn't intended to be the final album. It was like, you know, like separate from what Lawrence is saying about the,

the Bernicolaiters or Stephen Page, is that there was no plan. And there's, to this day, there's not really a plan. Like, we don't have a five-month plan. We don't have a five-year plan. Like, we don't have a plan. We basically fly by the seat of our pants.

And we did then, too. And I think we just, Andy offered us to this opportunity. I think we thought, well, hey, that'll be cool because we'll have all these songs that we can then shop to labels. And I think it just, because that went nowhere, we were like, well, we can just pack it in

or we can do it ourselves, right? And I think the idea, I think all of this, we were just growing into this, yeah, screw it, man. Like, we'll just do it ourselves. And we made, you know, and then we made those, like we almost didn't make CDs because we were kind of thinking like, our CD's going to last, you know, we'll make cassette.

And of course we weren't making vinyl because that was just dying, you know. And so, but we decided, ah, you know, like Nostradamus, we'll make CDs and we made CDs. And then we, like I think John Brooks said he feels like he sold 7,000 of them off in the merch table, you know, over a period of time or whatever. So they were just flying like hotcakes. And that thing happened that you cannot plan and you can't, you know, like lightning in a bottle or whatever. Like it just happened. And then and then it just had its own. wheels. And then after that is when we got involved as much as we ever did in the industry itself.

And, you know, and then that was a disappointment on some levels because we got to learn, like when we talk about Lawrence and I meeting and we just moved in this cool community of weirdos and freaks and geeks and there were just people who loved music and they came out and it was people all walks of life. And then we got, you know, some singles on the radio and everything. And then Universal started talking to us for hallucinia. And then suddenly, you know, there was a lot of backward baseball caps at our shows and we were just like suddenly the crowd got a little more homogenous and right less cool and then you know and it was I had to do the learning curve that Kurt Cobain had to do and a whole bunch of people had to do like what are we doing that's drawing these

people you know it must be something that we're doing and then you find out no let's just this is the nature of mass consumption is that once it's a thing out there in the world you can't control who's coming to your shows right well that that line and uh coax me uh it's It's not the band I hate, it's their fans. Yeah, exactly. And then you get to see that firsthand. And it's real, you know, like the struggle is real. Because as we joke about,

we used to stop shows and throw people out a lot, you know, have people thrown out because they were just jackasses being a nuisance up front. We never had that before. We never, ever had that before. Yeah, interesting points. Now, when I look at Shakespeare My Butts playlist, so there's 17 songs, right? So are they, bloodline is a chick-

attributed to Stephen Stanley. But, like, is every other song a Ron Hawkins composition? Yeah. Yeah, like, it's funny because there's been a real mythology built up that, like, Stephen are like Lennon and McCartney or, you know, Jones and strummer or whatever, but that's not the case. I mean, like, what usually happened is I would write a song, bringing into the band and then the band would arrange it.

Steve would bring in a song and then the band would arrange it. And the arrangement process is very important, and that's what turns it into a low-st-a-low song and still does to this day. But, you know, the lion's share of the writing would happen. outside of there. Yeah. And I think you're right about that misconception. So I'm glad you're...

It's a romantic misconception. If you have to have a misconception, that's a pretty fun one to have. So it sounded like, you know, you had to go to 15 songs for the cassette because of technical limitations and stuff. I'm wondering, like, how many songs were recorded for Shakespeare My Butt,

but did not end up on Shakespeare My Butt? Well, none, actually. It can't be none. Like, don't I have one in my possession? No, you see, but that wasn't recorded for Shakespeare. Oh, okay. That song existed. It existed.

And you remember the kitchen tape. Right. Not every song in the kitchen tape ended up on Shakespeare in my butt because the kitchen tape didn't have Rosie and Gray. The kitchen tape, what else? It was fatalist? I don't think fatalist was there yet, was it? So like some of the stuff came later. But a lot of the stuff that was sort of like, you know, right there at day one from sort of lowest to the low forming,

some of those songs have now been recorded for the first. time. Okay, so elaborate. Okay, so I have, and this is huge for the low heads, I shouldn't call them low heads, the low fans out there. What do you call them? Low lives? Low lives.

Low lives. For the low lives listening, and this is huge, okay, so buckle up, settle in here. But I have in my possession a track called Another Year in Limbo Town. So in my understanding, it was not recorded in 1990 or 91, but it was really, written in 90 and 91 alongside all the other Shakespeare My Butt tracks. When did you, you just recorded it recently? Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. I think at the end of last year. End of last year at Union Sound here in Toronto. And the whole point of that song, another year in LimbaTown, as I wrote it at the very end of Popular Front, based on that Stratinger's show, basically saying, you know,

do we pack it in? Can we spend another year in Limbo Town? Can we just do this and have our wheels spinning forever? I mean, spoiler, yes, they can. but but yeah but the song doesn't know that yet right and you know probably the funny thing is the way this works probably another year in limbo town was probably written closer to something like under the carlo bridge than rosy and gray was because i think there was a little like caroline and then maybe it was like let's say it was carla bridge and a few of those songs up front and then you know into early

91 i had a giant spree of like maybe rosy came and bleed came and henry came and, you know, like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, a big clutch all of a sudden. But, you know. But that's a wave of creative, dare I say, genius that delivered these iconic songs. I mean, I obviously iconic Toronto songs, but I don't know how to, I struggle with, I'm doing this now of Nirvana, the band, the show, the movie. Have you guys seen this yet? I haven't. You got to see it.

Like, they want to play the Rivilly, but this is all part of the show. And it's just the most Toronto thing ever. And I'm trying to think to myself, like, what would I think of this song if I were like born and raised in like Chicago? land or something. Like I don't have, I don't have this ability. I don't know. I don't know what my ears and my heart think about Shakespeare, my butt if I'm not born and raised in the former six. Well, I can shed a little light on that, which is that when we wound up doing now sort of famous shows in our, on our lore with weddings parties, anything from Australia, we did two nights. We opened for them first night. They opened for us the second night. They fell in love with

our band and they took, you know, I learned this about Australians. They come to, to, to, to North America, they see a band and they buy seven CDs, they buy 10 CDs and they give those CDs out to their friends when they go home if they really love it, right? I can't imagine doing that, but they do that. And so they took that record over there. And one of the things I love about art and music is that Mick much later told me that he said, you know, in 93, you know, you guys were going about your lives in North America. He's like, there was a bar in Melbourne. He said that every Saturday night, whatever locals were there and the staff, they would go lock the door, they would pull down the shade, and they would start shakesprum of my butt, and they would sit

and listen to the entire thing every weekend. And I'm like, I just love that I was going about my life, buying my groceries, doing my thing, whatever I was doing. And that was happening over there, right? And it's just such a, like, it blows my mind if I think about it too much, just how effective that could be. But at the same time, Ron, because that's, that's amazing. And great music is great music, great songs are great songs. But at the same time, it's, it's seems like you could look at a map of the world. And then whatever part of that map received the signal from 102.1, that created the vast majority of low life. Do you know what I mean? Sure. And then that's Buffalo, of course. Are you? Well, that's, I think that's due to access to it.

But as I say, the Melbourne connection is an example of, you know, because when I went there, I went there in 2008 to support those guys on a tour or 2010. And we played, you know, the social working men's club and whatever. And when I walked in there, I was like, oh, this is the Rivoli, you know, or we went to their local and had a beer and it was like, oh, this is the only. Like, you know, they have that stuff. So it's like you sing, this is what I learned about the make it as personal as you can. And then it becomes universal because everybody has a watering hole where they're like, you know, yeah, I used to go those ones where I get punched out every time. And then I found this one, you know, place where people were reading books and they were playing

chess and it's, you know, and then that became my place, you know, and it's like, well, that's the only, right? That's the only. Fabian worked at the only for many years and he's now at Great Lakes Brewery. So I'm going to just let you guys know I have fresh craft beer for you from Great Lakes Brewery. Oh, sweet. So shout out to Fabian from the only.

Absolutely. I once biked. It might have been kind of COVID-y times, but it was opened up enough enough that we were allowed to do this. but I biked in a blizzard from here to the only to see Ron Hawkins. Oh, that's a song. Yeah. I have to write that song.

I'll make that my closing theme here. Okay, so I, what I like about, so I'm wondering with your permission, may I play another year in Limbo Town, which was written. That was, that I'm pretty sure. You tease me.

I'm pretty excited about this one because we're getting to record this finally because I think that was the first song on the kids. tape. Like if you put on it, he's like, oh, this is that popular front,

lowest of low bank. We're really in a time machine here. And that was the first song was another year in Limbo Town. And it was either that or Armageddon Street. But anyway, but it's 35 years ago.

But what is the reason you didn't record it then? I think, you know, we have this. Tough questions here on Toronto. Well, as you said,

there's 17 songs on the record and some stuff. That was one more. I don't know. Well, I think it was more a matter of like, because we were young and dumb and full of come,

we were, you know, shit like this happened, which was like, that song was written like four months ago. Like, yeah, maybe. Blow the dust off in it. If we're going to, you know, there was a real sense of urgency. Ancient. You know, now, now, now, now, now. And then, you know, the joke is like, so we waited 35 years to record it and put it on a record, like, and put it on the same record. Interesting, because I know your favorite band of all time that tragically hip. What would they do in this scenario? They had it. Well, they recorded a song that was left off

up to here. It was recorded at the time of Up to Up to. here, but it didn't make up to hear it because they had another song that was similar enough. They just preferred called 38 years old. And then they only re-released this song last year. Get back again. Get back again. So, but that was written and recorded for up to here. So that means we're talking like 89, I guess.

So, but this song I'm about to play, which is a mind blow, was written alongside all these great Shakespeare my butt songs, but you did not record it. No. Because you had enough songs. Because they were dumb. You had enough songs. Okay. I'm going to play it.

Okay. And I'm actually going to play. Can I play the whole thing? Yes. Okay. I don't know. I don't want to waste your time, you rock stars. Okay.

So this is like a world premiere. Mm-hmm. They're not playing this in Australia, are they? No. Not yet. Would they play it tomorrow or would they play it yesterday? That's right. They play it backwards, upside down.

Okay. Here we go. Somebody's ripping it to MP3. I don't want to talk over it. Okay. It's going to be a tour of considering. I know it would piss me off here. Okay.

It sounds great. I have a couple of questions. And I will say, you know, maybe because this band's on my mind, I know we talked about Kisna Hall earlier, but I feel like there's a little shadowy man on a shadowy planet in there. In that guitar line. Yeah, and I was just hearing it. I don't think I've listened to it in headphones.

It was like very sort of. What's I called? The panning of the guitars. Yeah. It's nice big. Well, it's funny too, because I can hear, like, I can just hear the era. Like, you know, predilections I have, like, give me one more beer.

I got to get out of here. Like, I would never write that now. And it's like, I wrote it then. And it's like I remember that sense of urgency like, you know, like we've got to do something. And here we are, you know, at the end of the night. And it's like, it's funny because I heard somebody tell me about somebody interviewing Bob Dylan and talking about writing songs like the freewheeling era. And he was like, I couldn't, I can't do that anymore.

Like I don't know. I had a window where that was coming through me. And then he said, you try and write that. He said, that's hard. Right. Yeah, no. And I remember Dylan Part. when he was playing bass with us.

I can't remember maybe it was around the sorted fiction. No, probably after sort of fiction. But anyway, he said, you know what would be cool? You should write like Shakespeare 2.0. And I was like, yeah, no, no pressure. I'll just whip that off. I think Evan Dando did that, I think.

It's a shame about Ray. When I listen to a shame, it's a shame about Ray. It reminds me of Shakespeare in my butt. Like it sounds like, oh, did he just listen to it, Shakespeare and by butt? It's funny because when I hear that, I can hear the hoodoo gurus, which I was listening to at the time. right. I'm like, you can always, I always think like everybody's, it's really obvious where I'm, who I'm nicking, you know, like, but then you talk to people and they go, well, what? That doesn't sound like that. I didn't hear any slightly punkier tears for fears though. I think that had been chased away. That had been chased away at that point. I didn't say punkier. I said harder edge. Harder edge. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. So did you change anything from when you wrote it in the early 90s to when you recorded it in 2025? It's slightly longer now. Probably a bit slower.

Yeah, the lead guitar part is longer. because we're digging that. The lyrics are intact. There's not a single change. I dig it. Yeah, I dig it. One of the other ones that's coming out, one of the other songs that's called,

Reiches, has a lyric in it saying, just be somewhere near a phone. And I'm just like, nope. Kids today, they were like, what does that mean? What's he talking about? How nearer could I be? How far away from a phone can I ever get, you know? That is funny.

When you say coming out, what do you mean? So what are the plans for... This will be in the... There's a vinyl reissue of Shakespeare and Buck coming at the 35th anniversary edition. And there will be a bonus EP called the Limbottown Revisited. And it will have three songs. And you say you don't have a plan. You know, it sounds like you got plans.

Well, back then we didn't have a plan. Now we're all grown up. What would we do without our plans, right? Right. But, yeah, it will have another year in Limbo Town, a song called Righteous, and a song called Meroin Bone that was also on the kitchen tapes

and is finally seeing the light of day and I think that's long overdue that's a really good song. Yeah, it's funny because Dave and I, because Dave, again, back to this idea that something's old and Dave has an association with Meroon and Bone and just like, really? Really?

And I'm like, dude, I play that at solo shows and people go like, when are you going to record that? You know, like if you're not attached to it and don't have some kind of emotional damage you know from the era the EP will also have the demo recordings that Andy Crayama recorded of

salesman cheats and liars and eternal fatalist two amazing songs yeah so they they they're slightly different you know the vocal vamping and the harmonica solo like they're different right so like that'll be fun for people I think it was a sort of proof of concept for the for what became Shakespeare my butt they recorded the drums at

comfort sound and the overdubs were done at film house. In the folly booth I mean, I remember going to the folly booth for the first time to play that harmonious solo on Shakespeare on Shakespeare on Salesman the end, which is different from the one that ended up.

But, you know, it's good. I think that's the first lowest little low song I ever heard with Salesman. It's hard to remember back then because it was on the radio, but I think so. Oh, the other thing that's in the, I made a little, I drew a little map for the EP vinyl that's sliding in there

along with the original record and it's just a map of all the sort of landmarks of the time. So it's kind of, it looks a bit graphic novelty, but it's like a little map to follow. Move over Johnny Dovercourt. We got a new map coming. I think that's cool. I think that's right.

But here's what the big question, I know I've asked you this in the past, but when I listen to my 90s Canadian alt-rock bands, and there are many I loved, but of course I loved you guys. Almost to a T, I can envision in my head the video I would see in much music. Like I feel like for every single one of them, I feel I can see the video in my mind's eye that I would watch

because in the early 90s I watched a lot of much music. But can't do it with Shakespeare in my butt. Like I can't close my eyes in, oh, that iconic video for Bleed a little while tonight or that great video for subversives or whatever. Yeah, it's just part of the, again, remember I was saying like, you know, I always feel like we're in the industry, but we're not of the industry, we're in the society at large, we're not of the society at large. It's like there's a lot of things asked of, uh, there's more things asked of you now than there was

then, but I mean, I remember us thinking that it was weird, uh, that you had to have some kind of performance film for your music, right? It's like we make music, you know, we don't make movies. So this is like your punk ethos, uh, yeah, we just didn't want to like, we didn't want to play the game, we sort of felt like it was selling shoes, you know, it was a thing, you know, and, that said, there's lots of people who made very artful videos that were pieces of art in their own right.

But most of them weren't. Most of them were stupid, you know, trailers for a movie, right? And we didn't want to do that. And we thought, you know,

that our bread and butter was made on stage live. So we made a couple of live videos that went out. CBC shot a couple of those. And, you know, and now it's worse because now it's like, anytime you do anything, they're like,

well, can I have a 15 second clip of you, you know, saying something about, you know. And it's like, well, of course you can.

and of course we need to do that stuff, but it's like, it all is really tangential to the idea. I would love to live in a world where if you're a musician and a songwriter, you make music and the music speaks for itself. Well, of course, of course, of course. But you talked about how the goal originally

was to get the demos for Shakespeare, my butt and then have a big label, you know, release it, basically. This was the initial goal, right? So it just, I just wonder if you had any regrets at all because what much music did. You know, you can talk to most. Mowberg about this, he'll be like, yeah, like from the Atlantic to the Pacific, Canadians will have, you'll be in their living room and it's a way to reach people. So yeah, CF&Y is playing

lowest of the low, a lot. But imagine much music playing lowest of the low and all the new ears that would discover the band. Like any regrets, I wonder. I'm not beating you up 35 years later. Where the hell of my much music videos? I have zero regrets. And the only regrets I do have are when we've sort of varied from that formula and wound up like, you know, I have a few regrets of us making hallucigenia on universal because I feel like, you know, our producer was not a great fit for us. There were things that they were asking us to do on Universal the minute we got there that we hadn't done for Shakespeare and wouldn't have done for Shakespeare. And, you know, it's this thing that you run into, which is that, and I think if you're not in an art form, like

corporations of all of all complexions do this, which is that they find something that they like and that works. And then they immediately need to put a stamp on it. So they start to change it and tell you to do this or tell you to do that. And it's like, you know, I remember when we started working with Universal, they wanted to re-release Shakespeare in my butt.

And it was like, we were like, we'd just come off two years of touring this. And they were like, there's people in Timmons that haven't seen it. And at the point, I was like, and again, with all due respect to the people of Timmons, I'm like, I don't give a shit about the people in Tim is. Like, we have, an audience has been following us for two years.

that, you know, they want new music and they deserve new music and we have it. Like, let's just move on. And then the people in Timmons can jump on for this one. And, you know, like what we don't need to do, if you want to destroy our band, then put us out for another year and a half doing Shakespeare in my butt, you know.

So I think that's a problem is that that's what you get involved with because those people don't care about the art that you're making. They care about the fact that your art might be able to make, you know, all of us money. And it's like, that's important, but it's not. It's really good that you didn't end up a big label for Shakespeare and we record it because honestly at the time at the time you you guys were managing to blow up just by playing shows and playing lots of shows and more and more

people were coming all the time 1991 was a very long year waiting for that album to come out and it came out in December um and if if you had used that as a demo and then gone and re-recorded it would have been like another year before that album came out we'd have been talking about the end of 1992 by which point it would have just all turned into you know just a cool rhyme. Well it falls into that category. I have a friend

I was in a band with and we're listening to Billy Bragg and he's not really a Billy Bragg fan and it was early Billy Bragg and he was like he's like he can't sing and I'm like I know he's like you can't play the guitar and I'm like I know it's like he knows it's like you know that's not what he does this right and it's like if you cleaned it up and if you fixed all the quote wrong things

and you polished it up like if we had polished up Shakespeare in my butt and made it a different thing, like, it wouldn't have made it a better record. It's like, it is what it is. And it's partially the charm is because it's the way it is and because we were a rag-tag bunch of guys that didn't give a shit about niceties. And we went and put a ferocious live show on and you never knew what was going to happen. And it was fun, you know, like. Yeah, no regrets, no notes from yours truly, okay?

Don't touch a damn thing there. I'm glad it all worked out as it should here. So here's my plan. Oh, I do have some regrets, Mike. my regrets are to the people in my personal life who I was shitty to and an asshole to because I was so angry about the industry part of my, you know, so that's an added thing is that the industry made me, I feel like the industry helped me develop a substance abuse problem. And I took that out on the people, you know, I couldn't get to the people, the CEOs, but I could get to my friends and relatives and, you know, so they've unfortunately paid the price for some of that anger. And when did that dissipate in your life? well you know like getting off that label breaking up the band unfortunately you know i don't think i'm being like many things went into breaking up lowest and low but i think making the mistake of trying to be on universal and and do the dog and pony show with them was the final you know was the final

straw and i think that blew up the band and then you know i think i i feel like i coarsed through the rest of the 90s um developing or riding a substance abuse problem like a lot of my friends and I lost a couple of friends during the 90s, and I came out of it at the end of the 90s, you know, pulled the plane off the runway in. And, you know, it got better. But I think it was just, you know, I had no way to know how to regulate myself

and how to deal with feelings I wasn't enjoying, you know. I appreciate your candor. I think sometimes we think it's all, you know, it's all rosy, but now, then you'll think it's rosy and gray here. So, okay. So I. What did I say, Mike?

What did I say in that song? I never forget you two gentlemen playing, I think it was like TMLX3. You know, I'm losing track here, but it was, I think, the third Toronto Mike listener experience at Great Lakes Brewery,

and that Ron, you played that song because the listenership would hear that song and no way, the night was over, basically. That's why Miriam's worried. Welcome to our world. After the fifth song,

she's out of here, okay? Yeah, what's going to happen here. But you change the lyrics, like I'll never forget. I'm sitting, It was my birthday too, as I recall. And it was, I want to take a streetcar downtown, listen to Toronto Mike and wander around,

drink some great lakes from a tin. So, there you come. Much love to you both. That was an amazing, amazing thing. And they say, I don't play the game. No, listen. You play the game here. Invented the game.

If Ron was still surly and on drugs, he would never have done that. Yeah, well, listen. I love both Ron's. All you had to do is tell me to do something that you didn't want me to do, and then I would, because I'm a contrarian, I would do the thing that you didn't want me to do. Well, I'm the father of four. That's how I operate by Deepwater.

That's how I get shit done around here. So I'm going to thank some partners for making this happen because I am also a big sell out here. So I'm going to thank some partners. And then I'm going to do something that I hope you guys are cool with. It's going to be like a rapid fire thing. And then there is another FOTM that put out a new song that Ron's involved with. And I would love to play a little bit.

I promised Cam Carpidre, I'd play a little bit because it's good. And I want to ask you about that at the very end before. we say goodbye. But I have in my freezer upstairs a frozen lasagna for you from Palma pasta. How does that sound? Woohoo! That's why you're here, right? That's why I can get

come for the pasta. You come for the pasta. You get a beer, you got your pasta. You have your measuring tapes from Ridley Funeral Home. Yes. I know you probably get a drawer full of those. How many things do you think we got to measure? Loved ones need gifts. I just used the one that have at home the other day to measure

some shoelaces. Because you know how you can ever buy good shoe laces and shoe stores, you can't get the good flat ones. Do I ever? Yeah. So I had to take the laces off my shoes and shake them and measured them up so I could order them off the other way. Aren't we supposed to be into sketch or slip-ins by now or at our age?

Actually, that's right. No, no more time of shoes. Skecher, no. But thank you to Ridley Funeral Home. You know, I got nailed. I mean, I could go into this, but I don't know. But I'm going to close this episode with a song from Shakespeare, my butt. I'm just saying that right now.

but the actual song from Shakespeare, my butt, not a cover. Because the algorithm, Spotify particularly, I'm going to do a really quick rant on Spotify, that we had a little bit of John Williams in the opening theme to Life's Undertaking, which is a podcast from Ridley Funeral Home, Brad Jones. He makes no money on this podcast, but there was a little bit of a John Williams composition,

and we did this for years, and suddenly this week, Spotify is sending me these mean emails about how I've got seven days to prove, I have the license to play John Williams or they're removing these episodes and I had to get an emergency replacement and I'm working on doing all this. But anyway, this is... How long a segment? It's just a little bit of the imperial death march.

Sure. That plays when Darth Vader enters the room. Should we humming now? Is that going to get me more trouble? You can hump it? That's what I learned. You just have to... They're not humans, right?

You're just eluding the bots. The algorithm has to like you... But somebody might have to... problem of Rosie and Gray. Somebody might want to tell Spotify that I bought, is it Stravinsky? What's Rights of Spring? Stravinsky.

So I bought the Stravinsky Rights of Spring. In the middle of it somewhere, there's a piece that starts to go, dun, dun, dun, dun, and I was like, are you kidding me? Really? Totally ripped.

Is that right? Oh, I don't know. If you ever listen to hosts the planets, you'll hear a lot of Star Wars music in there. Wow. John Willie, John sings for Toto. Do you know that? I'm not here to try.

So I hope John Williams is getting a message from Spotify as well. From, wow. From, from, Wroinsky's lawyer. You know what? Wow. Okay,

that's the real talk you guys are here for here. But life's undertaking. It's a great podcast. I mentioned you had a drawer full of measuring tapes from Ridley Funeral Home. I'm sure you have a drawer full of old cables, old phones, old devices, old, I don't know, laptops, possibly. Maybe. I do. If you do, yeah, I'm waiting for that affirmation.

Don't you dare throw it in the garbage. No, that would be terrible. Those chemicals end up at our landfill. Go to recycle my electronics.ca. And put in your postal code and find out where you can drop it off to be properly recycled. Recycle my electronics. That's an excellent service. That really is because battery disposal is very important to you.

Don't be throwing those out. Don't be throwing those out. No, no, no, no. All the tips are here. All the tips are here. And last but not least, I would love to tell you about Nick Aienis' podcast. It's called Building Toronto Skyline. and we got a new episode recording on Friday morning.

He also does a little show with me called Mike and Nick, and that is available wherever you get your podcasts. Now, if you guys don't want to do this, that's cool, because sometimes I feel like, I say, give me an inch, and then I take a mile. This is sort of how I'm wired over here. But your mic, though. What if I, what if we, like, I just what I want to do.

I want to name the song on Shakespeare, my butt, and you each get to make one succinct, statement. Just one reaction from each of you. Then I go name the next one. This won't take very long at all. Like if I said to you, four o'clock stop, and then Ron, you get to make one statement about the song

4 o'clock stop, and then Lawrence gets to make a statement about the song. About the same song? Yeah, and then I'll say, So Long, Bernie, and you'll do the same thing. And we'll do that 17 freaking times. Like, what if I say it now? I'm going to do it right now. I'm going to see if you say anything. Four o'clock stop. A test of wills.

Alex was nice. Okay. See, yeah, he's rapid as you want. You can go longer than that or shorter, whatever you want. So long, Bernie. Oh, things are not as we suspect they are. Also, not about Paul Bernardo. Oh, good point.

Just about the only blues. Bolsheviks like to drink. Yeah. I once ripped off the title. How so? I wrote a song called the Edwin Aldrin Blues, and it wasn't really a blue song, but I just, you know,

I thought, well, if Ron can write a non-blue song and describe it as such, I'm going to do the same thing. Salesman Cheats and Liars. It's not what you think it is, Moulson Canadian. Sorry. So nice, we recorded it twice.

Oh. Rosie and Gray. Oh. I was there the second time you played it. That was my response. I was there the second time you played it. And it was at the Traditions Room? Was it one down?

No, no, wait. Is that Traditions? Downstairs from the Cabana, right? And at the show, people were telling me because they were so excited that you had a new song. This was in, you know, the time we were discussing. You know, like, you won't believe this song. he has. It was a bit rosy and something

and they'd heard it and they thought it was great and I guess I'd missed that gig but yeah. And it always had the long instrumental at the beginning right? Yeah, I mean you were just playing solo when I saw you do it. I can't remember but yeah that was another one of those anti-radio things. It's like well you can't have a song that doesn't know. Well not to yeah not and not to get too in the weeds over this but like our manager at the time we always talk about how unmanageable we were

he was like you know very reasonably saying like the guitar the guitar the guitar plays it and then the harmonica plays it. Like, can't we just cut one of those out and we're like, no? And then we're like, well, maybe they won't play it on the radio and we're like, well, then fuck the radio. Like, you know, it's like, maybe one day a podcaster will use it so we could talk over the instrumental. We did, we did chop the instrumental intro in half when we played it on CBS TV though.

That's true. In New York. So. And I have a version that's different. I have a different version of that. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That was, that was that's a very secret recording.

No, nobody's heard that. Because that, that was, you, you did that. get all the goods. With garden songs. You recorded Rosen Gray, right? But I missed the long intro. Like, I did, I appreciated it, but I missed. Yeah, he just starts right in.

Because, you know. So you can't fuck with these songs. Like, it has to be the way you heard it on when you were like, you know, when you're six, how old am I in 91? Hold, I'm doing some quick math here. When you're 17 years old and you soak it in over and over again, that's the way it has to be forever more. You can't fuck with that.

Oh, man. You should have seen when we brought a piano out, or when we were putting piano and bleed a little while tonight. I thought. Yeah. Villages were going to go crazy. Yeah. I still like that version, but you're right.

You're right. What Mike's saying is very true. It's not safe to play. No. Don't mess with it. Not a note. Kind of the lonely one. Aw.

Not on the cassette. Oh, you know, a nice homage to my friend Ken. Yeah. Eternal Fatalist. That got a lot of airplay, man. A lot of people still think it's life's a bitch for the Eternal Fatalist, but it's not. It's not. It absolutely is not.

That's like the monies. for the hand of Magdalena. Oh, that's just a, that's just a rip of Spanish bombs, but sure. Part of the unofficial Spanish Civil War trilogy. Yes. Yeah. Aren't they in a museum or something? Yeah, the Spanish Civil War Virtual Museum.

There's a cultural wing and there's three bands in there. It's like Manic Street Preachers, the Clash and the Lost of the Low. Not bad company. Yeah. Wow. Oh, sorry, were you done there with your, for the hand of Magdalene? Okay.

Yeah. Subversives. Which I sing, I find myself singing, I know I'm here, I am interrupting you guys from Los Alow, but I do find myself singing that song out loud as I just go about my day. It just comes out. Recorded live in two takes in a Foley booth? Mm-hmm. And I wrote that because I had this weird situation in which I was still in the relationship

that broke up very shortly after that. And my partner went to New York, and for some reason I had this dream that the plane was going to go down or something, and it was very visceral, and I couldn't shake it when I woke up. And then it made me sort of take stock of, like, what happens. So that's where that came from.

And then you broke up with it? Yeah. And well, the whole point was, like, I got a song out of it. So that's the songwriter's, you know, morality. I got a good song out of it. bleed a little while tonight. Wow.

Testim, test of will. Alex is very nice. I feel like there's follow-up there. Okay, so that jam. Yeah, that's a big one, I think. Bleed a little while tonight. Like, I think that's just a gorgeous song. Thanks, man.

That's a good one as well. Yeah. I had that same reaction in 1990 when I first heard. Is that that a good one? Got this new song. You won't believe it. Something about bleeding. Something about damning circumstances.

Yeah, it's great. The harmonies are great, too. Bloodline, you did not write this song, Ron Hawkins. No, but I remember when Steve did, and I was pretty impressed because, you know, as I say, we both came out of popular front writing kind of making questionable choices, and, you know, and Steve came up with this,

and I was like, wow, that's really a great tune. It made the leap. It's a great tune. Also on the kitchen tape. St. Brendan's Way. Oh, I was, reading a book called Paddy's Lament and speaking of Future Bakery. I guess it was one of the rare moments I wasn't sitting at a table with Lawrence Nichols.

I was sitting in the window seat reading Patty's Lament, which is where St. Brendan's way came from. And a person pulled up on a bike and that person became my girlfriend and as my friend Kate from Black Monday. I saw her at a window. I was like, oh, she's cute. And then she came in and I was reading this book. and then about 10 minutes later, she tapped me on the shoulder and said, hey, aren't you in that band?

I saw you guys at Traditions with her friend Frankie. And yeah, so that's a nice reminder of that. When I was in high school for a project, I had to write a short play about St. Brendan. And he was not one of the better known saints as far as I knew, but when I met Ron and discovered he'd written a song about St. Brendan, whose story I knew pretty well, I was very, very impressed, very blown away.

I don't remember you're correcting me on anything. I didn't correct you on anything. Your song, your song had fewer sea monsters and lightsaber duels than my play had, but, oh boy. But it was, you know, it was good. All right, the song I refer to as letter. Letter, well, there you go. Another one for the Spanish Civil War Museum.

Yeah. Yeah, I was kind of obsessed with that time in history just because I really think it's a, it, it speaks volumes about. supporting socialism. And when you don't support socialism, what you get is World War I, sorry, World War II, and possibly what we're going through, about to go through now.

Do you just call it letter because you don't like to mispronounce the name of the Spanish city? 100%. 100%. Sure enough. Safe to that way. We don't need to go that way. Under the Carlaw Bridge.

That also reminds me of Ken from Social Insecurity. We used to walk past the Carla Bridge to this little tea, coffee shop and we used to drink tea. Social insecurity was a teetoteling straight-edged band. So we drank a lot of tea and we ate a lot of butter tarts. I love butter tarts. Was that Dave's influence, the butter tarts?

No, that was before Dave came. But with or with raisins. This is the debate. What do you got, man? Either or. We were in all access band. But do you have a preference? No. I like a piquant tart too, so like, give me whatever you got, almonds. What are they sticking there? H almonds?

I like the raisins. If I have a choice, I want raisins. Yeah, I think so. I'm okay with that. But yeah, raisins, they add a little something. What do you say about under the Carlisaw Bridge, Lawrence? That's a big bridge, and it goes in two directions. And I was a little bit confused as to where, you know, when I tried to do the tour.

Which one is he talking about? I was like, wait a minute, where were they standing, you know, somewhere. When he says somewhere under the Carlisaw Bridge, you see why, because it could be anywhere. Like, it could be over there. you. It's a big, big intersection there, you know. The Taming of Carolyn. Oh, there you go. That's about, that's also about the person I was in relationship before social, before, uh, Jake's remember, but, and how I watched her family sort of like, uh, minimize

her. She was quite a, quite a, uh, an amazing person and watching her family sort of like, take her down a peg and, you know, it was also funny because I said once to, to, uh, the band. I said, oh, it's funny that we have that record Shakespeare in my butt, and then there's clearly a song that reference in Shakespeare. And then Dave said, what song? And I said, Tame Mcarolin. He was like, Tame of the Shoe and he's like, oh shit. It's like, the decades had gone by.

I made that, I didn't make that realization either, so like, there you go. There was a time when the band reformed in 2000. Is this when the Elliott Lefko brought you back? Yeah. Yeah. And so they've been rehearsing and then I came into, because I was going to jump up on a few songs, 250 times or whatever,

but I remember when you when you played the Tamir Carolyn, it was the first time in years and years I'd heard it. And they'd been practicing it and then, but they were doing it slightly differently. They started it just with Ron playing it on guitar. And then they accidentally skipped a whole chunk of the song when the whole band dropped it

and none of them had noticed. And I had to be, of course, the guy going, um, but what about the second half of the first verse? You know, and, you know, And everyone looked at me blankly. He said, what a nerd. Yeah, right? So, yeah, anyway.

Gossip talking blues. Oh, that's funny because I think that's, you know, along with, you know, I was talking about walking around with a notebook in my pocket and the romance of it all. And I often say, like, I felt like I was the protagonist in the film of my life, kind of, and sort of like in that, in that ambiance, like, how could you not write songs, right? But what also comes with that is this overinflated idea that the, world is looking at you or that everybody's paying attention nobody's paying attention but you know I wrote that song because it was sort of like thinking that everybody's talking about us and you know

they weren't to my knowledge we haven't played that one in a while it's going to be good to play that one again let's hope we play it at the right speed yeah it'll be let me predict it'll be the penultimate jam i think so when people buy tickets to see lois a low on this tour yeah yeah miriam i'll already be at home yeah she's there for five songs yeah she's there for five songs well miriam a nickname in the TMU, the Toronto Mike's universe, and her nickname is Lieve Fumke, which I believe is like Dutch for Sweetie or Sweetie Pye or something like that. So shout out Lieve Fumpka on stage, and that's very much. Or is it Dutch for I'm out of here? Yeah, Rosie and Gray is like Pavlov's dog. Her and Juan, her lovely husband will be out of here.

She comes to all the events. She was there that night. You guys performed at Great Lakes Burries. And then she left, of course, because. Yeah, well, that's like Pavlov's dog. All right, last song. Henry needs a new pair of shoes. Almost saying and then I caught myself. Okay. So yeah, that one is just about a guy I met. Like again, sort of just writing about real characters in my life. I used to write songs for this record sitting in the park,

Riverdale Park, looking over the Don Valley to the city I would eventually move to. But this guy would come up every day and ask me for money. And he asked for a very specific amount, like 33 cents or something. And we'd get actually kind of angry if you, gave him 50 cents or what like he for some reason was fixated on this amount. Anyway, his shoes were, I remember just looking down and it was like no matter what the weather was, it was like gaff tape holding the shoes together and thinking, wow, that guy, maybe his name's Henry really needs a new pair of shoes.

His name wasn't Henry. But maybe sometimes art improves upon life. Yeah, maybe he had a worse name then. Maybe. Shout out to Art Bergman. Yes. Yes. Art imitates life.

Yes. Okay. Can never shout out Art Brighman enough. Okay, I'm playing a song Not by Loast at the Low, just a little bit here. This is Take It All by Elephants and Stars. Of course, Manfred Sittman is a beloved F-O-T-M. Who produced this song? Do you know Ron Hawkins?

I think Ron Hawkins produced it. So I knew you were coming in, and this is super fresh. Is this his new single? Yep, this is his new single. That's great. Manfred's awesome. He writes really, really good songs. Yeah, I think Manfred, I hold Manford and Vince Nicholson from Sarah Lanslide up as like probably the two best melody writers I've ever met.

Like they just have this magic and prolific. Holy crap, the two of them are insanely prolific. Well, great job producing this. I know he's worked with you in the past, right? Where'd you do this? Was this Union? We did it at Union Sound and my place, yeah. We did our recording last year in Union Sound, which was recently.

revealed to be where Rush have been holed up for the last year rehearsing their upcoming tour. So shout out to them. That's a really, really good studio. If you want to go and record stuff, go to Union Sound Company. They're amazing. And where should people go if they're interested in catching you guys on this 35th anniversary of Shakespeare My Butt tour? Well, they can come and see us at our sold-out show in Kingston.

Or our sold-out show. So is there any tickets available anywhere? Tickets are still available in Ottawa on May 2nd. And tickets are still... It's a good problem to have. Yeah, there's still a few tickets available for May 8th at the Danforth Music Hall. May 9th is sold out. And then Hamilton and Guelph are also sold out.

Oh, yeah, my buddy Ian Service, I was chatting with him earlier, and he says he's seeing you in Guilf. Oh, yeah. Oh, good, good, good. Yeah, that's... This has been organized so that there's a spring... jaunt and there's a fall jaunt in November

and then you know there'll be a few summer shows there's a show in Aurora there's a show in Huntsville yeah there might be there might still be a few tickets left for June 20th in Aurora at Aurora Town Hall around no Aurora Town Square Town Square yes

but so for those people who miss us in the spring there's going to be November there'll be more announcements will be coming very soon and for those of buffaloans that listen to Toronto Mike we won't be crossing the border but we have set up a situation at a venue very close to the border that we feel people from the States

could easily jump across the border to see us if they would like. Sorry about that. Because we're fielding a lot of, you know, there's a lot of mis- I'd love to clear up a lot of misgivings about... Well, you know what, this song, I'm bringing it down, actually,

just for a moment here, because I had this chat with the Andrew Scott from Sloan and then talk to Chris Murphy and Jay Ferguson about this from Sloan. And then you and we did, Last time you were here, we actually, I think we touched upon this if I am remembering correctly, but. But to clarify, because I'm getting a lot of, we're getting a lot of, like, last week there was a person who posted like, oh, please, please come to Buffalo. And then somebody answered, you know, they're not coming to Buffalo. He hates America. And I was like, you know, and I said, well, to clarify the situation, yes, there's an element of the administration. There's also some very real things on the ground, which is that it costs money. It costs money for us to get a visa.

to cross the border and it's quite expensive and if we hit the border uh assuming that there's a very very large chance they're going to see our socials and whatever and turn us around and we're going to flush all that money down and spend all that time for nothing that's a that's a major part of it you know the other part of it is of course a crazy hyperbolic idea that maybe we get detained or something is a real hassle because of who we are that's a that's a thing too but it's you know also this this visa thing is huge right like it just doesn't make any sense because there's so many way, reasons in which they might turn us around, you know, because we, you know, once and for all, we consider the good people of America to be hostages to this administration. So it's not, you know,

if there was a way that we could be flown in under cover of darkness and play all of our shows, we certainly would do it. Like, and when band, when American bands come to Toronto, they don't deal of the same. No, they don't, I don't think so. No, because we, we had some American friends come up and play with us and we told them, oh, you got to get your work visa. And then they, they inquired it there and said, we're told there's no. work visa. You can just come to Canada with, if you have a copy of the poster advertising your show, they'll be like, oh yeah, come on in. I've heard this. It's not a two-way street. It's very difficult for Canadians. Unfortunately, it's just gotten a little more expensive and a little more

difficult. They want 10 months lead time before you do the show. That's how long it takes to process. So here you pay to get a visa. They want to take 10 months. And if you want it to be, say, three months instead of 10 months, you have to pay almost $4,000 just to apply. And then they can say no. And then even if they say yes, when you get to the border, they can say no. It's at their discretion, right? And that's, you know. And even if they say yes, we've had situations in which we've paid, we've expedited. And

they still don't process it in time. And the situation is like, well, and one time it was processed the day after we were supposed to play. It's so frustrating. But, you know, but we're going to get us close. We do miss those people. And I, you know, I miss our trips to Buffalo because it's a really, really, really

great town. And we always have an amazing time there. And the people there are great. So we're going to as close to them as we possibly can in the fall and play a show. So hopefully they can come. We'll see. Well, I'm honored you guys came here today. Always love our chats. Love the band. Long may you run.

Shout out Daniel Young. And congrats on 35 years since Shakespeare My Butt. What a fucking great album that is. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Amazing. Thanks for having us back. Let's see it old friends here. We've got to take our photo by Toronto Tree. Don't leave without

the lasagna. And Spotify can bite me. I am playing the Shakespeare, my butt version of Rosie and Grey. With our permission. You know what? I would say if you love Toronto Mike,

there are so many places you can access. Toronto Mike, XML is an open source schema. No one owns XML. This podcast is, there's so many apps you can use that won't have such strict rules

regarding, you know, licensing and music and stuff. So listen to Toronto Mike to one of those, like podcast addict or something. You know what runs in my head when I hear the word. word Spotify. Dun,

dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, is that Stravinsky? And that's

And that and that brings us to the end of our 1,8802 show.

Oh, I'm playing the alma combo, but not like musically. I should

word it differently. I'm not playing the alma I am headlining at the

alma on May 21st. Sweet. Like a one-man show. I know.

Lawrence is like, what are you doing? You're singing? I'm not singing, I promise. But I crafted a one-man show, and Roth Prus is my... Gonna do tricks with the... It is, I mean, it's coming together, and I do have some musical elements, but I have Rob Pruss on keyboards. He's like my Paul Schaefer. He'll be on stage with me. But this is all coming together, so people can go to tronomelmike.com and click Elmo gig at the top, and then hopefully buy a ticket or two, so I'm not playing to Ron's ex-girlfriend. Terrible. You played to that time.

So Elma Combo, May 21st, that is happening. Much love to all who made this possible. Again, that's Great Lakes Brewery. Shout out to Fabian from the only. Palma pasta. I've got a lasagna for these fine gentlemen.

Nick Aini's, Nick, I'll see you Friday. Recycle MyElectronics.ca and Ridley Funeral Home. We have a new theme for life's undertaking. See you all tomorrow when Do you guys remember stargazing in the Toronto Star with Rita Zicus? You guys remember this?

Rita Zicus. So Rita Zikis is making her Toronto Mike debut alongside Rob Salem, who covered entertainment for the Toronto Star Forever. Maybe we'll talk about Shakespeare My Butt for 90 minutes. That's tomorrow on Toronto Mike. See you all then.