Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Dave Hurlow: Toronto Mike'd Podcast Episode 1875

Episode Date: April 7, 2026

In this 1875th episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike chats with Dave Hurlow about his years in The Darcys, Decafwolf, his new book Deep Sea Feline and more. 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].

Hey, this is Dave Hurlo. Deep Sea Feline is a book that I wrote. DeKaff Wolf is a band that I play in. And I'm very happy to be here with this man named Mike. His name is Mike, as I understand. That is correct, sir. And welcome to episode 1,875 of Toronto Mike. 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 palma Pasta.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 MyElectronics.C.A. Committing to our planet's future means properly recycling our electronics of the past. And Redley Funeral Home, pillars of the community since 1921. Joining me today making his Toronto Mike's debut, it's Dave Herlo. Welcome, Dave. Thanks, Mike. Thanks for having me.

Well, thanks for being here. You had to make the trek on, it's April 7th, 2026 as we record. And you'd think it would be spring-like possibly, but it's like winter outside. This is the time of year that I insist on wearing my cute spring jacket. And then I'm just, I'm like colder than I was in January because. Because you're not dressing for the weather. I'm not dressing. So for me, April is actually the coldest month every year.

Because relatively speaking, I get colder because I'm just being foolish. I so get that because on Friday, it was a good Friday indeed. We hit like 20-something degrees and we're in shorts. And then your brain does like you hit that switch, which is like, oh, I'm no longer bundling up for the cold winter weather. I'm now switching over. And then when you get hit with a day like today and when I was doing this short bike ride of my youngest this morning, it was actually snowing. Like I can see snowflakes.

It's like, oh, I remember now. I used to wear like three or four layers for this and I used to wear the winter gloves. and now I sort of had my brains. I got to switch it back. April can be the coldest month because you stop dressing for the weather. That's correct. That's my experience, certainly. You've already made an astute observation.

I can tell you're a clever man here. We're going to get into it because you just mentioned you wrote a book. That's correct. And I've read your book. We're going to talk about your book. You read it? Oh, thanks for reading it, man. Oh, I read it.

You know who sent it to me? Was it Bedini? Dave Badini. Yeah, Dave Bidini. He's good, that Bidini. Well, off the top. Tell us how do you. know, I mean, we all know him. He's a very famous musician, but how do you personally know,

Dave Bedini? Actually, the way that that came about, it was, it was organic in a really lovely way. It was that I had written this book and I was going through the process, the terrible process that writers go through where I was, you know, I'd written my query and I'd done my research and I had looked up all the different Toronto agencies and I'd send out a lot of my submissions. And while I was doing my research, I think this was like late. pandemic. I don't know exactly when, but I stumbled across something called the Ballpoint Agency, and I'm reading about it, and it's yada, yada, yada, Dave Bidini. And I was like, wait a second. I know who Dave Bidini is. Dave Bidini is a guy who plays in a rock band and he writes books.

And because the book that I wrote, because I'm a musician and I play in bands and the book is so much about the music scene in Toronto, I was like, if anybody, he's going to get this book. I feel like Dave Boudini's going to get it. And then the really nice connection that made it kind of organic is my dear friend and my old boss at a great organization called Story Planet is Bidini's neighbor. So I got the intro through her. She reached out and said, you know, this guy, Dave Hurlo, he wrote a book.

He wants to pitch it to you, but he wanted to know if, you could just email you directly rather than going through the getting lost in the... That's called the rigmarole. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love a good rigmarole. So, yeah, it happened really quick. Like, I sent him, I sent him, you know, like the submission guidelines for most agencies, they want very little.

They're like, like, send us like two, literally two pages of your book. And I sent him two pages. And he got back to me right away. And he said, he said, I like it. Send me the whole book. He read it in two weeks. And so this thing that feels very hopeless where you're like cold emailing agencies and like And they're like we'll get back to you in six months maybe and then and then with Bidini it was like I had the nice organic connection and then and then just super quickly he read it he liked it he wanted to

He wanted to agent it and yeah so it was it was okay well I love that story and I've never experienced that I wrote a book now I needed published rigmarole like I can only imagine you know I can barely read beat a book, okay? So I don't know who I would be to write a book, but I have a friend who just wrote a book and he kind of went through this. I'm looking at it now. It's called track changes. Shout out to Cam Gordon. But like, so, but you're not a, you're not a normie. I don't think you're just a regular guy who wrote a book. Like, you're Dave Hurlo. Sure. But like Dave, you've been in bands, one particularly, that the average Canadian music officiato knows. Yes, yeah. And it's not real statics, okay?

What's the big band that you were in? The band that I was in, I think they go just by Darcy's now. They dropped the The The, but when I was in the band, we were called the Darcy's. Yeah, the Darcy's, that's a highly regarded, recognized Canadian music success story. Sure. You were in the band. Yeah, I mean, I was. It didn't, I mean, we did okay.

Like, it didn't feel like a huge success when I was in the band. And like, but, you know, I mean, I guess that's, that's part of being a writer and a musician is that even if from the outside, sometimes it can look really successful, whereas like actually making a decent living is a whole different. I get it completely. Like, I have so many musicians on this show and it's like, okay, I know the name of your band. I've heard your music on the radio. Where is your, where's the Bentley parked? Like, where exactly? Where is your your limousine going to pick you up after this?

recording. It's like, yeah, I'm going to jump on the streetcar or whatever. There's a complete disconnect in this country, I find between like, oh, I know that band, I know that music. And, oh, they were financially compensated appropriately for their art. I mean, well, even like when, because the Darcy's like, okay, so the story of the Darcy's. Yeah, but you mind? Like, I know you wrote the book. I'm going to talk about the book. Can we do like some Darcy's talk off the top just like a scratch set? I mean, I'll give you the Cole's notes of like, of like, you know, I don't want the cold's notes. I want the deep dive. Well, I mean, I'll see what I can remember.

But basically it was me and some, me and some fellas who were attending UKC, University of Kings College in Halifax, Nova Scotia, which very famously, like the gross population of the student bodies comes from Toronto and Haldonians hate it. And anyway, because you grew up in Toronto. I grew up, yeah. You should establish that. You're a Toronto guy. I'm a Toronto guy.

I grew up in Toronto in Moore Park near St. Clair and Mount Pleasant. And I've lived in Toronto my whole life, except for basically when I was in Halifax for my undergrad. But, I mean, that's what a lot of Toronto kids do is they go to Nova Scotia. They go to Halifax and then they come back. So, yeah. So I was in- What did you study at King's College University in Halifax? I got a degree in, it was called the Contemporary,

studies program and basically critical theory. It's just reading and regurgitating. That's pretty much what I did. And English lit at Dow. So it was all like I just knew I liked reading books. And so I just wanted to do a degree where I just read books and wrote about books. Okay, Dave, here's something we have in comment. So I went to UFT because I didn't get to go to Halifax.

So I got the, you know, bike or jump on a subway, get my ass to UFT. But I took a double major English in history because I like, I like. to read, I was a good writer. I was able to take an information and sort of argue things, you know, both orally and in written form. And what are you going to do with that skill set, except maybe one day you'll start a podcast, right? But, you know, that's why I studied English in history. And it sounds like if you're studying like English literature and critical theory at King's College University in Halifax, similar vibe, except you're in Halifax. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I think there was an expectation to go to university.

and I just thought, like, that's really the only thing I can figure out that I'm interested in. So I ended up there. And it is a weird degree, but I think, to be honest, like, I've had a weird trajectory, and it has actually served me really well. And I'm actually currently, as a mature student, I'm in the Bachelor of Education program at York, and you need to have a four-year. You need to have an undergrad to get your teaching degree. So it's a mandatory prerequisite that came in handy.

Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. So what are you doing back at school? I'm doing my teaching degree. Just my straight, my two year, I've stretched it over three years because I have a young kid at home. So that takes up a lot of my time. But yeah, I know I'm having a little kid at home. Yeah, well, I got four of them. And they're complete annoyances and always in the way. Like I want to do something fun this weekend. And it's like, oh, no, my son's turning 12. I can't go have fun. I got to celebrate with him. I have one kid and he's two and a half now. His name is Leo, Leonardo. Shout out to Leonardo. Yeah, I hope he's listening. In the future, maybe. And he, yeah, man, I don't know, like four. I mean, like, because the first two years, like, it's just like, it's almost like being drunk. Like, you're just totally.

And so now I'm sort of getting to do fun things and go out a little bit more. And he's like, I mean, he's just at the age. And I'm starting a music class with him next week. And like, now when we're in the car, I'll be tapping out a beat on the steering wheel and singing and he'll sing along. And so I'm just like, oh, my God. Okay, this is where it's going to kind of start to get. Well, it only gets better, man.

I can tell you, it gets better and better and better. But I'm guilty of thinking every age my kid is, is like, oh, that's the best age. I mean, I love to hear that. It's all good, man. I love to hear that. As long as your kid turns in to be some kind of an asshole or something. But assuming that you can avoid the asshole gene, you're in for a good time, man. An acceptable level of assholes.

Like a little bit I like. We all need. Yeah, we all need. You know what? There's a line, though. I don't want you to be too nice. Okay. I don't want you to be like Rob Pruss, for example.

You need maybe be a little bit of an asshole. But too much of an asshole, I don't have time for that. I know. And then that's your kid. And then you got to deal with it for forever. You're stuck with it for 18 years. I mean, if they're a real asshole, they'll just stop calling you eventually. Oh, you can only hope.

You know, that would be the silver lining, I guess. So you're at King's College University in Halifax. That's right. Is this where you meet people who would be the Darcy's? Yeah, there ended up being like in the first few years, there were some sort of personnel changes where initially it was a dude named Kirby Best. and he was a very soulful songwriter. And then I met Jason and Wes.

And those are the guys that are still. As far as I understand, it's just a duo now. Like, it's just those two guys. So I met Jason and Wes. We were jamming the three of us, but none of us were songwriters at that point. So we kind of brought in Kirby because he was writing songs. He was actively writing songs.

Right. And what the first few Darcy's shows were, was it was just playing at the pub, the wardroom, at King's College. And what we would do is we would play these long, kind of old school two-set shows. And it was a lot of like, it was a lot of like some classic rock stuff. Like we played, we played like a Stones cover and like talking heads. But because it was like at that time, which would have been, I think like 2005, 2006, it was like the huge like indie rock explosion. So we would do stuff that was really popping off at the time we would do covers by like, you know, broken social scene and arcade fire and kind of

mix that in with some talking heads, some tragically hips, some blue rodeo. And so it's kind of like a weird, it was like a Canadian like indie smorgas board. And then like I think the first show we played, we had like two originals out of like 20 songs that we did. And then slowly over the next couple of years, it would sort of, it got to a point where it was like, you know, a third of it was originals. And it was actually, I think that's a really great way. to start a band because you, like, I learned so much in those years. Like, I don't have any musical training, but I would just sit with my bass guitar and I would listen to all these songs. And like, we did, we covered, we did a great cover of toxic by

Britney Spears. I just remember listening to these songs and picking out the bass lines by ear. And so I got really good. That's how I basically got good at the bass was just learning how to pick out bass lines, playing them. And then we would do these marathon gigs, um, kind of beer soaked university time things. And that was, yeah, that was the start of it. So it started out very much just like, just kind of. You touched on it, but there was this absolute wave of like, you know, big indie rock coming out of Canada.

Like that era, I actually have a ticket. I have a ticket in August to sit on the lawns and watch broken social scene metric and stars. Yeah. Okay. But this, I mean, I just recently watched the, the broken social scene documentary. Oh, so good. Excellent.

They're so good. She'd get a vibe. Oh, there's Leslie Feist hanging out there. I can't believe they got that footage. That's all I was going to say. That one guy just took all that footage. Like unbelievable that they had all that footage because you're watching it just like stars and suns. You've heard it like I've listened to that song like a million times.

And to see him like in real time. He's like, oh, what do I play this? It's kind of like bum, boom, boom, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. And you're like, that's the moment. Absolutely. Brennan Canyon's been over. So I'm going to shout out the Brennan Canyon episode. And that's a great up because.

of course he was in head with Noah Mince and they had some 90s success with Happy and all that. But then he's sort of the, he's the DJ guy who brings the sample to Len. And he's involved in the Len project where you get the big Toronto hit, Steal My Sunshine. So he's,

so just a fascinating, we call him in the TMU, the Toronto Mike universe, we call him like he's kind of like grout. He fills in all these cracks along the way. But in this scene, this explosion, the Darcy's are a part of that.

I know Jason and Wes, like they're the duo who still, they're still Darcy's. They're still Darcy's, yeah. And they were at Tobico guys, right? They were very much so, yeah. Like that said, so they were an Atobico duo and Rio Statics, big famous Atobico band. Yeah. See, you're attracted to Atobico. Sure, I guess so.

And you're in Atobico right now. I think my dad lived here. My dad's dad was a captain in the RCMP, and they moved around a lot, but I think there was a long stretch that they were actually, I'm not sure where. but I told him where I was going today and he was like oh you're really going to get off at Islington or whatever yeah you gave you the deeds how do you get to South the Tobico and here you are it worked out okay

I'm going to give you a couple of things you're going to give me something but we're not done of the Darcy's quite yet that's fine but we're gonna I can't wait to talk about deep sea feline sure which I read it's a piece of fiction I actually find I gravitate towards maybe because of the work I'm doing and I'm trying to fill my head with the real talk the knowledge the fun facts the mind blows

but I typically read nonfiction, like typically. So it was kind of fun to have an escape, and I'll share, I'll elaborate on this later, but what I loved about it is how Toronto it is. Like, I totally love like, oh, I'm on Queen Street now, and it's just, it gave me like Nirvana, the band, the show, the movie vibes. You know what I mean?

Like, oh, there's the Rivoli. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Have you seen that film yet? I'm very eager to, but I have not. Okay, we're going to pause this recording. I'm going to give you, You're going to go to Islington and Queensway, see if it's playing there. You're going to watch it and come right back.

Sure. And Matt Johnson's sister Emily Johnson was at Kings with us too. So there's another connection. That's amazing. Yeah. And he did the Blackberry movie, which I quite like this well. Oh my God. It was so good. Yeah, that was a great one.

Okay. I'm glad you're here. But I'm going to give you some gifts here and then we're going to get back to the Dersies. I know you have a gift for me too. Sure. I do. Yeah.

But maybe we save that. Not yet. Is it related to the book? No. What's it related to? The gift? Yeah. Uh, it's, it's a, it's a shirt.

Okay. So what's the name of your current band? It's called decaf wolf. Decaf wolf. Okay. Yeah. So after we do the Darcy's thing, you're going to fill me with knowledge about decath wolf and then you can give me that. Yeah. May I send you home with a large frozen lasagna courtesy of palma pasta?

I mean, I would love that. Yeah. Do you know, Italian food? I love it. I do like it. And, uh, my son is going to love it too. He's going to crush, he's going to crush a bunch of that. Kids love Palma Pasta.

So everybody support Palma Pasta. The Petrucci family run it. It's just an institution in the West End here. They're in Mississauga and Oakville. Go to palma Pasta.com. Speaking of institutions in Atobico, because Palma Pasta's in Mississauga and Oakville. But Great Lakes Brewery,

what a tremendous, you know, independent craft brewery in its brood not too far from where we're sitting right now. So I'm sending you home with some fresh craft beer from Great Lakes Brewery. Awesome. Thank you.

Okay. And also one of them, so there's three beers. But this guy here is, I'm going to try it for the first time right now. I'm going to pop it and try it. I've never tried it. It's a hop pop.

There's no alcohol in this. It's not a beer. But it's got, it's infused with coffee. Oh, this is good news. You got one too. Yeah. Yours is actually,

you could pop it if you want. But I'm going to pop it now. I've never had the hop pop with coffee from Great Lakes Brewery. So here we go. You ready, Dave, I'm nervous. What if I hate it and I spit it out? I mean, you should probably lie and say that you like it.

Don't spin it on your computer. Oh, it's very good. I'm glad I don't have to fake it. It's excellent. So it's got that hop hop with a bit of coffee. I'm digging it. I'm going to love this, man. I'm a big fan of Sam James too.

So I'm very excited. I mean, obviously, I mean, Decaf Wolf. I'm very excited in particular about, my caffeinated beverages. Decaf, yeah, but it's going to be decaf, apparently. Well, I mean, I can tell you about the legend of the decaf wolf and where the name came from, but I feel like it's not time for that yet. We're still not talking with the Darcy's.

I'm in charge here, dude. Yeah, I don't. I hear you, man. We're doing a bit more Darcy's. Yeah. We're going to do a little decaf wolf for sure. That sounds good. Then we're going to talk about your book.

Cool. And you're going to have a great time. You understand? It sounds like a good itinerary and now I feel like comfortable and taken care of. Well, you know what? Sometimes we wing it, but today I'm well structured. And I'm giving you to celebrate my structure. I'm giving you a measuring tape.

Speaking of institutions in South Atopico, Ridley Funeral Home are at Lake Shore in 14th. They're pillars of this community. They have a great podcast called Life's Undertaking. This measuring tape is for you, Dave. Thank you. You're welcome, man. This is nice.

Yeah, you didn't know you were getting swag. It's so compact. You know, you never know when you have to measure something. It's true. I never thought I would have to measure things. All the time. It's like, oh, I should measure. sure that. Well, now you can. Okay. I would like to tell you about another podcast. So Life's

Undertaking is from Ridley Funeral Home. Great Lakes Brewery have a podcast called Between Two Fermenters. And Nick Iienes has a podcast called Building Toronto Skyline. He recorded live just last Thursday with, you're from the East End. Is your counselor by any chance Brad Bradford? I believe so. So he's running for mayor. Have you heard this? I have not heard about it. He talked to Nick on building Toronto Skyline. I was hired by Nick to produce the live event. And no technical problems. Sounded great.

We got audio, video, everybody in attendance. There was a big crowd. And it all went off without a hitch. That's me patting myself on the back. But people can hear that conversation on Building Toronto Skyline by Nick Ionis. And last but not least, and then it's all you the rest of the way, Dave. So I would like to tell you about. about recycle my electronics.ca.

Because if you have old cables, maybe you have old devices, old laptops, maybe in a drawer or a closet, or who knows, maybe you have a room for this crap, don't throw it in the garbage, Dave. Go to Recyclemyelectronics.ca. Stick in your postal code and find out where you can drop it off

to be properly recycled. Thanks for the tip. Don't forget. Okay, I'm going to play a little music and then you're going to follow my story. here. So just a little bit to just to get us warmed up here.

We'll see if you can name that tune. That in a long time, actually. He'll bring you back. This holds up. Dave. That would be, don't bleed me. Correctamundo, the Darcy's. So that will help us get going here.

So it sounds like Jason and Wes have a, the Darcy's is like they're two-piece project. It's those two guys, but they're going to university in Halifax. And it sounds like they meet a guy named Kirby Best and some handsome young man named Dave Hurlow. Does that sound right?

That's so far correct. Now we have a full band formed in Halifax, Nova Scotia, that is the Darcy's. Do you know how they came up with the name the Darcy's? I mean, it's actually I came up with the name. Whoa! And it was because we, in my English class, we were studying Pride and Prejudice.

And it's actually a very, looking back, I guess when you're 20, you can be very vain and egotistical, but it's quite a vain thing to call yourself, like the Darcy's after Mr. Darcy, because he's like the most eligible bachelor in fiction. Absolutely. So you're the man who said, hey, how about the Darcy's? And it just stuck. That's, I mean, that's my memory. Well, I just wasn't sure.

I wasn't sure. And I'm glad you're here. You're setting the record straight. if those two guys had already go in by the name the Darcy's in Atobico before they head out to Halifax. But it sounds like that name the Darcy's is coming out of Halifax because Dave Hurlow was taking that English class and said, hey, how about the Darcy's?

Yeah. Okay, so then we're not going to go too deep because you're not going to spend 90 minutes on the Darcy's. But can you tell me a little bit about how you get signed to a deal with the legendary record label Arts and Crafts? You mentioned broken social scene. I mentioned Leslie Feist. This is the place to be back then.

Yeah, so what happened? So, yeah, we all moved back to Toronto. Kirby's still in the band. Those guys, Jason and West are getting a little bit more involved in the writing. And then a guy named Mike LaRees joins the band. And it was funny. Yeah, he came on and we had him playing a lot of trumpet initially. But at some point, we lost the trumpet.

And he was sort of our guitar ninja. He just, like, really could rip. I think he lives in me. Mimico. Wow. I think he lives in Mimico. Send him over. He like builds his own synths and shit now.

He has a great, um, what's hit? He has a new, he has a record that came out a few years ago. Oh, I wish I could, if I remember the band name, I'll let you know, but really good record. Um, anyway, Mike joins the band. So there's, for a while, there's five of us. Um, we did some really like road dog indie cross Canada tours like really well. I think like a hardcore logo style.

it was like at one point there was like a there was like a weird show where like a kid like had a knife and he stole our van just the just this stuff that's just like and just right it was it was it was like thinking back to those tours man like that was really crazy if you had a person just filming that whole damn time you'd have yourself a documentary right yeah we would for sure it was it was it was it was some compelling stuff but anyway let's see okay so so then there's five of us and then uh at some point along the way, I feel like Kirby, there was, I think it was a combination of things. I think it was that he had a lot, he had trouble, like, when we would perform. I think he would, he had a little bit of anxiety around it sometimes. And then I think there was some, some interpersonal stuff where there was some creative conflict between, um, between Wes and Jason and him, because he was, he was writing these songs, but then the songs were kind of getting changed around a bit. And so it was maybe not, like totally comfortable. But,

but anyway, at some point, he, he sort of exits. Um, and then we're four. So it's Jason, Wes,

me and, and Mike Lareech. And, and then it was that our, um, our manager, uh, Aaron Miller,

he, uh, you know, he took us on to manage us. And he worked, he had a job for arts and crafts. And what ended up happening is he basically snuck us in. He somehow,

And it was funny too because I remember at the time, they were like, oh, we're going to start this like arts and crafts junior like imprint for like smaller bands or something. And then I think as far as I remember, the only reason that they didn't do it is that they couldn't come up with the name that Kevin Drew was happy with. So they just said, all right, fuck it. We're just, we're just, you're going to be on the big boy label. Wow. And so and I was, I remember being amazed because I was like, I was like, we're on the big boy label. We don't have to be on like the little like Arts and Crafts Jr. thing. And so that was it. And our first record, our first, because we had an indie record. We had a, we had an EP in a record that had come out, self-released. And then self-title. Yeah. So then self-title came out.

That was, that was on Arts and Crafts. And that was part of the three record deal. That was my sort of, you know, tenure with the band was like there was an EP. there was an indie record that we made. There was self-title. Then there was warring. And somewhere in there, there was the Steely Dan, Asia, track for track. I was going to ask you, where is, yeah.

I mean, I haven't listened to it yet, but I was reading about. Yeah, that one actually. So those two guys, Jason and West, they are like hardcore heads for Steely Dan. And they got me into it. And I got to say, like, I love Steely Dan. I mean, every record, so good. And so this was a thing that we did where we just said, I don't remember where the idea came from, but we did track for track every song on, and picking out bass lines by ear,

like, man, some of the playing on those records was nuts. So that was- Well, when you're testing a new high-fi stereo system, you might go in some steely Dan to test it. And actually, I have such a distinct memory of like, we did. did a five-night tour where we were doing all of Steely Dance Asia and then a few of our, you know, Darcy's tracks. And because it's so difficult, it was so difficult to execute, I remember the first three shows were like, we're terrible. We like couldn't get it together. Right. And it just, it wasn't clicking. And it, and it, and it just didn't feel good. And then the,

I remember the second of last night was, was Ottawa at Zafod-Beeble-Brocks. And, and, and it just, and, And then the last night was like sold out Lee's Palace. And those two, I remember, I distinctly remembered those two shows as like my favorite Darcy's show because we were playing this crazy like Prague music that was so intricate. And, um, and, and, and I just remember being in that, that total sort of hypnotic flow state on stage where some of the, some of the sections that there's like, you know, I'm hitting, we're hitting like 13, you know, notes in a row. and like through these crazy sections and very memorable.

So yeah, so that was it though. It was self-title. Did you call it? So it's the Darcy's interpretation of Steely Dan's 1977 release Asia. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And it came out on vinyl. I think it was colored vinyl. And yeah, I was, that was such a weird thing that we did. And really proud of that one. That was really cool. Sounds cool.

But then warring. I have questions about warring. I'm going to play, can I play one more song here? Yeah, yeah, go for it, man. You can't stop me, can you? You gotta play a Decap Wolf song, though, later. I will, I will. If it's on YouTube, I'll plan.

How's that for a pledge? That sounds fair. Well, I think this is ripped from the videos, so you got a bit of... We're talking warring. Hard to say the word warring. Yeah, maybe just me. It is a bit awkward. I agree.

I agree. I wasn't in charge of coming up with the album titles. You didn't name that. You named the band, not the album titles. album. That's right. Okay, so Warring, the third album by the Darcy's, this gets quite a bit of critical acclaim. It is not just nominated for a Juno. Who won the 2014 alternative album of the year? Oh, it was a great privilege to lose to the Arcade Fire that year. What a juggernaut. Okay, so Arcade Fire, tough to take on Arcade Fire there. Okay, so you were nominated, though, and that's pretty awesome.

Also, you earned a spot on the Polaris Music Prize long list, the 2014 Polaris Music Prize long list. So maybe it's interesting to me that this album comes out in late 2013 and you're out of the band in 2014, right? I don't know the timeline exactly, but I think we did. I distinctly remember when I decided I wanted to leave the band that I was like, we had one more tour and that was doing, it was still on warring. And then I was like, okay, I'm going to fulfill my commitments. And then I'm going to call a band meeting and I'm going to, and I'm going to quit. Why were you going to, why did you quit? Actually, just to add one thing.

One really nice thing was I remember the very last show that I played was when they were, I don't know if they still do it, but it was Friday night live at the ROM. And so getting to play a rock show with like, you know, like dino skeletons around me. I was like, this is a good way to go out. But I mean, there's a lot of reasons. think part like I would say you know this the simplest way to to say it is I was about to turn 30 we weren't you know making a living necessarily as musicians and it felt like the end of something like we had kind of completed this album cycle and like we were kind of starting to go in a

different direction musically I had put out my first book which was a collection of short stories called hate letters from Buddhists, which I don't believe is in print anymore. And I kind of wanted to go more into writing fiction. So it was a confluence. Like there were a lot of different things, but it was a very natural point. Like we had just, we'd been touring so much. Like I was kind of just tired of it. And did you think it would be more lucrative by that point? Like, is there any of that? Like, oh, I don't know. I want to have a family and I don't know if I ever, I don't know if I ever really thought about that. I think to me, like it was less a financial consideration. And I think it was, to be honest, I think it was a lot of it was that Jason and

West had a very strong creative partnership and songwriting process. And it wasn't a, it wasn't a project that I was contributing to in a significant way, like the creative materials of the band. Um, so it was their band. It was their band at that point. So it's hard to want to put like, all of your life energy into something where, you know, it was a fun band to. play the bass in, but like, I didn't want it to be the sort of the, the primary thing that I was doing and not be, you know, like, yeah, like it was, it just wasn't fulfilling enough to keep putting, like, so much energy into, like, just playing the bass. Oh, that's a good song. Oh, you're not supposed to be peeking at my screen here, okay? I'm setting things up, you know? I'm, like,

the wizard behind the curtain. You just, you just, just click. on one at random, that's great. That's coming because we're going to turn the channel to that. Sorry for the spoiler there. But it is worth noting. So, so if you hear new, there's still Darcy's right. So if you hear Darcy's now, you're not playing on it. So you left

at some point in 2014. You did mention that you had already kind of pivoted to writing because you mentioned hate letters from Buddhists. And I also was reading about story planets. So hate letters from Buddhists, this is you

realizing, oh, I can publish like a short story collection and that, you know, I can be a writer. I can be an author, if you will. So I'm just wondering, so that happens and StoryPlanet. Maybe you can say a word or two about StoryPlanet, but this is all like post and then we'll do DeKaff Wolf and then we'll talk about this great new book. I mean, I would love to, I would love to say a word about StoryPlanet. Huge shout out to StoryPlanit. If people don't know about it, it's a really, really great Toronto nonprofit organization. They actually have a storefront on the west side of Bathers just south of DuPont.

So pop in if you get a chance. But in essence, what they do is that they provide creative workshops. So a lot of it is creative writing, visual theater workshops for schools. And primarily their funding is earmarked for schools in neighborhood improvement areas and schools that are at the top of the what's called the LOI, the learning opportunity index. So that basically just means the schools that need resources more than other schools. And a lot of the facilitators are, you know, professional writers,

actors, a lot of graphic novel. Actually, Balal was someone who I worked with when I was working for Storyplan. And they have a show that I think was a big success called Sort of on CBC. Do you know that one? Not ringing a bell. Anyway, so a lot of cool people. That just means it's so cool. I'm not cool enough to consume it.

Check it out. Check it out. It's really strong. Anyway, anyway, point being, I got involved with Story Planet. And so what I was doing for them, I started as a volunteer. And then I kind of got the hang of it. And then I started facilitating workshops. And then I actually started developing some of the programming that we were delivering in schools.

And it was just, it could be challenging and it could be stressful. But when it went, when everything went well, it's just like the pure joy of, of spontaneous creativity coming up with these like really wacky, weird stories. Yeah, it's so fun. Which sounds really, I'm glad that exists. Like, that's great that you got to, you know, work with that organization. Yeah. That's cool.

Okay. And the hate letters from Buddhists, you just up and said, I guess we're in about 2014 here, which is the same year that you leave the Darcy. So it's like, you know, it's not my project. I'm going to start doing other things. And you started writing.

Okay. Yeah. So this is all setting us up for deep sea feline. But we're going to take a piss up because you're in a band right now. And your band is called DeKaff Wolf. That's correct. May I play Noss? And I got to, okay, so the song I played from Warring,

I don't think I ever. named the song. What was the name of that? Oh, it was, that was pretty girls. Pretty girls featuring and then the Moog bass on that. I was enjoying, remembering, because it was quite choice. Well, let's listen to Nauseferatu Hands. By Decaf Wolf, everybody. I believe a 2023 release. I found you living with its rock or crookeroom, subterranean tunes. And a million candles, lots of candles, oh. How's are you working on your eyes and support?

With your nose for a two hands, with your two hands. Came here trying to get my head strained. And love, won't you take off your gloves? Please don't be so self-conscious. We both want this. But every time we're speaking, that sort of feels like hypnosis, bed of roses. Decaf Wolf, please.

I need to know everything. Wait, wait, you got to get the chorus. We're turning it up. We're turning it up. You know I love you, but you got to stop drinking my blue. You know I love you, but you got to stop drinking my blue. Well, you're the conductor, man. If you go like this, it comes up.

If you can bring it down and comes down. I just want it. I feel like that chorus laughs. No, I love it. No, this is cool. Decaf Wolf, this is Nospharatu hands. Yeah. And just tell me about this band you're in now.

Yeah, well, that song in particular, that's a song about a man who is on vacation and he goes to a castle and he meets a person and falls in love with them. And then it turns out they're a vampire and they eat them and they eat them up. So, yeah. Which happens. It happens. So anyway, yeah, Decaf Wolf. It started out, I'll tell you about the name actually, because it is a weird name. I was working at a coffee shop, lit espresso bar at like College in Ozington.

This was like, I don't know when this was. But anyway, for some reason, someone had left like a Halloween wolf mask and we put it on the hopper that had the decaf beans in it. And there was a staff party where there was a lot of drinking that happened. And at one point, someone was taking a video and I took the mask and I put it on and call me out. by Paul Simon was on. And you know when you're drunk and you try to break dance and it just looks fucking crazy

because you don't know how to do it? It's tough to break dance that song. Yeah, I don't know. He says, why am I soft in the middle now? Why am I left? The rest of my life is so hard. I don't know. It's not typically broke dancing too.

But anyway, and then people just started calling me Decaf Wolf. Okay. So it happened again organically. And then the other reason that I liked it as a band name is it sort of was an homage to the Wolf Band Band of our youths. Speaking of the indie explosion,

we had, you know, our... Wolf parade. I just talked to the guy from Wolf parade a couple weeks ago. The main guy... I feel like there's two. It was like the two. It was like Dan and then Spencer.

Spencer. I was chatting with Spencer. Oh, cool. He's having a moment because of the heated rivalry thing. 100% having a moment because a heated rivalry. The second last episode,

there's a big scene and that's the song. And then suddenly people are discovering this jam. I was all over that jam in like 2004 or whatever came out. Darcy's covered that. That was a wardroom special. I'll believe in everything.

I'll believe in anything. I'll believe in anything. I'll believe in anything. Not everything. Not anything. But Spencer was in the calendar. And I shared this on a previous episode, but he was going to come on Toronto Mike.

He's in BC. So, Victoria or something. He's in BC. And he was going to remotely join because of geography. And then he wrote me what I think is one of the nicest little notes to say, I'm sorry to do this, but he goes, I hate how I sound on podcasts. And I hate doing podcasts.

and I would like to respectfully cancel our... And I've been, you know, a lot of times people just like, I had a guy in the calendar for a long time, and he just, like, last minute, he's like, oh, my car broke down. Never rescheduled. Like, he's like, you know, whatever, what's going on with that? This was the nicest, like, I'm not going to do your podcast, but don't take it personally.

And I just running back and I said, I totally get it, I understand. But next time you're in South Etobico, because he will be in South Dakota, well, he'll be in Toronto, at least at some point. I said, just know that there's an open door. You can come in and do it in person and it's not like a stressful thing. Dave, speak to him now. He's not listening, but pretend he is.

Is this a stressful thing? No, it's very relaxed. I don't do this kind of thing very often, but I feel like I'm just chilling with a guy and having a nice conversation. So Spencer, just come on by. It's going to be chill. Right. And we'll just do 90 minutes on heated rivalry. What's the Harmon night?

Just like Mike invites this guy over who wrote a book and said, Let's talk about the Dorisys for 90 minutes. But here we are on Decaf Wolf. And yeah, so you said Wolf parade. What are the other wolf? I mean, there was, I feel like there was a period where it was like, Wolf Mother. Wolf Mother, yeah.

Are they Australian? There was, then there were some Canadian ones. It was like, We Are Wolves. There was like wolves in the, on the throne. And there's something about a throne. I believe not later. Wolf Mother, which I think. There's a lot of wolf bands, man.

I feel like at some point, not at this time, but later, the Rio Statics put out an album called Wolves. Yeah, it was, here come the wolves or something. Yeah, like before they did this Great Lakes thing they just did, which was rad. Really cool. They did the here come the wolves or whatever. Yeah, yeah. And of course, we all, you're younger than I am, but one of my first albums was Rio by Duran Duran.

Hungry like the Wolf. Yeah, we want to cover that. We want to do a Halloween show and do like, I want to do like espresso by, oh wait, I'm giving it away. Well, it's too late now. I want to do like espresso by Sabrina Carpenter. and then like hungry like the wolf. And my daughter likes Sabrina Carpenter and I always remind her that Sabrina Carpenter's aunt

is the voice of Bart Simpson. Wow! That's a mind-blue. Dave, you can borrow that. Oh, my God. You know, you can have it. That's cool. I can't own fun facts.

That's for the world. Thanks for that. I want to tell everybody I'm thoroughly enjoying my hop-hop that has coffee in it. Like I didn't know what I would think of this. Troy Birch from Great Lakes left me a couple of cans. I put one in your pack and I said, I'm going to try one now. I love it.

This is great. It's refreshing. It's tasty. I'm digging this. I just want to throw it into the universe and I'm digging this. So, decaf coffee, decath coffee. Decaf Wolf is your band. Yeah, let me tell.

I'll tell you a bit about. Keep going. So the way that it came about was, um, I was finishing writing deep sea feline. And I feel like after I left the Darcy's in my head, I was like, okay, I feel like, I feel like I'm done with music. And I, you know, I was like, I'm going to be this writer person now. And then this really nice thing happened, which was my sister was moving and she had the piano that was in our house when we were kids. And I had enough space for it in my house that I was living at at the time.

Let's be a millionaire. Queen and Coxwell. Well, no, it was because I moved to Queen and Coxwell like, I don't know when that was, like 12, 13 years ago. And rent prices at Queen and Coxwell were still reasonable. Right. So I got the piano in there. and then I had learned, actually, big shout out to the Chili Gonzalez, uh, reintroduction etudes piano book.

I had worked through a bunch of that. So I had taught myself from being just a basis to playing a little bit of piano. And then I just started sitting down at that piano and noodling around. And it was really nice because there was no expectation that I was going to do anything. There was, I, I didn't have any plans. And I just started slowly putting. together a collection of songs. And honestly, that way, it was so, it was so pure because of that fact that I was just like, not on a timeline and it was just pure exploration and enjoyment.

Love it. And then somewhere in there, I started figuring out how to record myself on logic. And then once we got into the pandemic, you know, what are you going to do? Right. You're going to make, you're going to make an EP in your bedroom. So, uh, so I made this five song EP with the help of my dear friend Andrew Latona co-produced it with me and he's actually, he lives in Peterborough now, but he's, if you

look up Andrew Latona on the streaming services, he's got some fantastic record. So he co-produced the EP with me and I put it out sort of as like a solo bedroom. Is this ventriloquist EP? Ventriloquist EP. Because we're listening to no need yeah. From that very

EP right now. There you go. Yeah, crank it up a little bit. Sounds great. Thanks man. Yeah, I'm really proud of it. I think it turned out really well. And we made it on like a very, like very, very, very low, low budget. And I think we, the song sound really great, all things considered. So, so yeah, so I made this EP and then coming out of the pandemic, um, I, I got together with some friends to jam. And again, it was very organic where we had, we went to, we went. to the, what's it called, like main stage, the rehearsal factory on Geary. And we just were jamming just for the fun of it. And then I said, hey, I have this EP. I have these songs. Do you guys want to learn how to play these songs with me?

And then the first gig that we did, this is actually really cool, was the Deep Sea Feline book launch, which was on Geary. and it ended up coinciding with the the Geary Art Festival. Which I love. Which is awesome. I saw Gah perform there with the aforementioned Cam Gordon. Yeah.

So my book launch, it kind of ended up getting swallowed up. It was in like an unofficial event during the Geary Art Crawl. And so I did. So the book came out, Deep Sea Feline came out. I did a reading. And then we played. It was our first show. And then I remember the way I ended up.

the night was at a rave at Queens Park Circle because I think when they do, because it was Newie Blanche too. So it was like, it was like Gary Arrcrawl, Louis Blanche, like book launch. What a Toronto day that was. And it was just so cool the way, I think it was like the, the, is it the equinox in September or is it the other one? I can't remember. The solstice. I think it's the equinox. I think it's the equinox. Anyway, anyway, so it was a very, yeah, it was. The solstice is like December 21st or like that. I feel like I saw like a burning thing in Kensington market. Well, because the solstice is like the, that's like the, winter solstice.

Like the whole note. It's like, it's like the summer and the winter. And then the transitional ones are the equinox. Okay, I'll call in an expert. I don't know. David Suzuki's online too. Anyway. But I love how this, like, it's when a plan comes together, because the, um, decaf wolf is now intersecting with deep sea feline. Yes. And you had to be, but now I'm Unless you have wrap up something on Deep C. You have to give me my gift. Let me do a quick. Well,

I'll do a quick wrap up on that because there's a couple other things worth mentioning. And I think I'm going to help you because I think we can kind of segue this over to Deep C. Feline. So one thing that. Who needs a segue on front of my name? One thing that. So then what's happening now with the band, we have this really great amazing situation where our drummer and his partner,

they live in a loft at the Sterling loft. It smells like chocolate there, right? I don't know if I've noticed that. So Dundas and Sterling, I bike quite a bit. And it's a heavy smell with chocolate in there at Dundas and Sterling. It's up by bluer, so it might not be in the chocolate zone. But anyway, we have this really funky, awesome rehearsal space. So we spend, I was there last night.

We just had a rehearsal. But we've been, so we just put out, because I like things to be confusing, instead of a single, we put out something that we decided to call a double single. So that's two brand new songs that just came out of last month, drinking in my dreams out of manna vodka. And that was produced as a band rather than me as my kind of like bedroom thing. Right. And we did a great release party at Basement 254.

Shout out to Basement 254, a really great venue. So now and now I've written, I have like another five song EP that I've written that I want to make. I would love to get a bit of money for it or something. I don't know. So we're going to try to do a grant or whatever. But so yeah, there's more stuff in the works. One thing that I did put out kind of as an Easter egg for people who read

Deep C. Feline is that in the novel, and you'll know this because you've read the novel, the song, the sort of the record that the protagonist puts out, the fictional record is called Antidotes for Manicode's. And I put out with, through DeKalph Wolf, I recorded a track. and released it so that you so the people could listen to sort of my fictionalized version

of what you know this is very very much Nirvana, the band, the show the movie because there's a song that plays a pivotal role in this film

that you're going to see because it's a very Toronto, very cool film and the song is a real song put out by what, not Matt,

who's the other guy. Jay, Jay McHill. Yeah, who's a fantastic musician. The band with his sister. Brave Shores. Yeah.

I also have trouble saying Brave Shores. Okay. But it all, you know, and we just played it on FOTM cast if you're, you know, a listener. And that was our Friday episode. We played that song. But yeah, it's, it's very meta, if you will. And I love it so much. Like hook it to my veins. So, give me my damn gift because then. Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah. So this is a, this is a shirt that it's a great shirt. I'm begging you. I'm begging you to gift me something. Begging you. It's, uh, I learned a lot about how they make T-shirts. This one's direct. Tell me, because the listenership wants t-shirts, and I don't know anything about it. So what? You buy the t-shirt and then you get some-so the company, man, I wish I remembered the name.

They would love it. But the thing I remember is like they were so pretty, I had to keep annoying the guy who designed it because they were like, we need a higher dots per inch or DPI in the industry. They need a high-res graphic. But then the way that they did it and they sent me, so it's direct print. So it's not, not there's anything wrong with it, but sometimes you get the thing where they like, it's almost like a sticker that's like on top of this shirt. Which doesn't feel good. It doesn't. On your body.

I guess, yeah. I mean, it'll stick to you and you're like spiking. So the nice thing about these shirts, again, I went down a bit of a rabbit hole because the people I worked with were like shirt nerds. But it, but it's direct print.

So you don't feel like a textural difference. Like what do you pay and are you allowed to disclose? Yeah, I can know. I can talk about that. It was, uh, I think the deal was like,

it was like just under two grand for a hundred shirts. So we do them at 30 per shirt. And it's not, like, it's not a, like, great profit margin. But I feel like it just makes me happy because it's a great shirt. Is that 20 per shirt? Or did I, does my mask skills? It's been a while. Like, because you said, okay, I'm putting on my shirt.

You're putting a shirt on over your sweater. This is an interesting look. Because I need to wear it for the picture by the tree. Oh, it fits you. This is great news. Well, it fits me over the sweater. I'm worried because I'm a medium when I'm not wearing a sweater underneath the t-shirt. Oh, yeah.

And this is a large? I went large just as a safe bed. Well, because you know I'm growing. I've been, I've been working on the gut all winter. Well, you were sight unseen for me.

You know what? You should have said, Bedini, what kind of t-shirt size is this guy wear? But you said, if I'm hearing you correctly, you said for $2,000,

you were getting a hundred shirts. I think that's right. That's easy math because I can do that in my head that's 20 bucks. Oh, I meant I'm charging 30 bucks a shirt. Oh, you're charging.

Okay, because it's going to be much lower the cost. That's what I meant. That's what I meant. I'm sorry. Yeah, I'm looking to see, like, can I get some t-shirts to sell at my Elma combo gig? Because I'm headlining the Elma combo on May 21st. And I was thinking about T-shirts. So I was going to get some-

The people I worked with were, they were really lovely. So I can get you their info. Because that would be cool to sell T-shirts at the Elmo gig. You know, if you're taking a bath, why not make it a bigger fucking bath, right? Sure. I mean, I like to take a bath. I like to take a big bath. Do you bathe?

I'm sorry? I do. And yeah, I like to, I'm a big fan of reading in the bath is like a big joy. Do you like candles? Sometimes I do. Sometimes I do like candles. Learning a lot about you, Dave. That's amazing.

I haven't had a bath in a long time. Like, I'm a shower guy because I don't know, maybe I don't have the time. I don't know, but I could, I have a radio in my bathroom, like, and I have it set to CBC Radio 1 and I'll have these showers and I'll listen to CBC Radio 1. I could, I could have a bath, right? I mean, try it, but don't force it. Okay. but do I need, I mean, lighting candles. I think that would be...

Yeah. I mean, it's good for self-care. Like, it just helps you relax, you know? Yeah. Okay, thank you for the T-shirt. I appreciate it. Not enough guests bring me gifts. Tell me why you wrote Deep Sea Feline.

Oh, I mean, that's a great question. I think that... Who are you to write a book is what I'm wondering? Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I mean, it took me a long time to get up the gumption because, to be honest, that's a big question. people who are musicians, people who really love music and books and they think like, oh, I kind of want to try this out. Like, I feel like there's a big, like, thread of self-criticism where, like,

I was writing short stories and making, you know, like demos and stuff for a long time where I just hated it and I hated myself and I was like, why am I, why do I keep trying to do this? and I don't know like yeah deep sea feline was I'd gotten to a point where I had some confidence but it was it took it took me many years um it it was there was a lot of stress around writing it and it was very ambitious and how long did it take you to write like when did you start writing i mean i started i mean i think i had the idea when i left the darcy's and then I think by the time it got to Badini. So at one point, I'll talk about the process a little bit

because I really like sort of long wandering books. Like, you know, for example, some of Haruki Morikami who wrote 1Q84, which is, I don't know how long it is. It's like over a thousand pages or something. And sometimes there's these sequences where it's like, there's like 100 pages and it's just like a character sitting on a bench outside of a subway station just like,

making observations about people and it's hypnotic. And so I wrote deep C. Feline and the first draft was like, it was like 150,000 words, which is like, that's really long. That's probably like 500, 600 pages or something. And the first, uh, so before Bidini took it on to represent it, um, uh, what's his name? Uh, great, really nice guy, Toronto agent, Ron, Ron Echle is his name, um, Cook McDermid agency. He read it. and he wrote back and he said, I really like this book. There's a lot of good stuff going on here, but you need to find 50,000 words to cut out of 140,000 words.

So then I just thought, well, I'm fucked and this book is just never going to get published. And then six months later, I kind of, you know, dusted myself off. And I went in there and I found the words to cut. And then what I think I figured out about myself as a writer is that I am maybe not so good as other writers at this trick where you can kind of have these long, wandering ambient sections. So I have another book that I'm working on the second draft now. And it was nice to know going into it that like, okay, just tell, tell a story, tell an exciting

story and don't like, don't fuck around too much. Just like, just kind of, you know. Okay, but it took you, it sounds like it took a decade to birth. Yeah. It took a long time. I mean, I think that part of that was that probably the draft that, Badini Red was finished for like a couple years and it just took that much time for me to find an agent who wanted to take it on. But it did. Yeah, it did. It did take a long time. But how long do you think the, uh, this next book? Do you even have a title? Like, I know we're, talking about deep deep feeling here. No, I mean, I'm happy to talk about the new one. That's like definitely more exciting to me. But it's, uh, their working title, which initially was kind of a

troll, but I like it now. It's called a nocturnal glowing jungle fungus. rolls off the tongue. I take it, man. And, and yeah, I mean, that, I feel like, I don't know, man. Like, like my life has been pretty busy and chaotic. And I feel like I keep thinking it's just going to take a couple years to write a book. And then it ends up being this whole, like, epic odyssey of like, you know, I had probably written half of the first draft of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of,

jungle fungus when my son was born. Uh, and he's two and a half now. And so it was so start, stop where like the year after he was born, like I didn't touch it. Like I didn't even get at it for a year. Right. Because you were at war. Yeah. I was, I was warring to borrow a phrase from the Darcy's. Um, right. But, uh, no, I don't know. I, I, it has been an easier process. I've had more fun with it. I have Bidini in my corner who's read, you know, he's read a draft of it and, and just have, the thing I would say about like, the, the, first time you write a novel. Like, you kind of go crazy. And one of the reasons for that is you do think, who am I to write a novel? Because there's a lot of people out there who are writing novels. And most of

them don't get past the gatekeeper. Don't get an agent. And then your agent has to find a publisher. So, you know, you really feel like a salmon swimming upstream in a big way. And, and you kind of go crazy because you think, am I just diluted? Like, is this just like, is this just like, is this just like, crap or dribble and like no one's ever going to read it. But for me, I mean, with deep sea feline, you know, I, um, for one reason or another, like I'm not that modest about it because I'm, I'm so proud of it. And I think it's a great fucking book. And I think that, you know, most people, you know, would really enjoy reading it. Well, I agree. It's a great fucking book. So let's say you're in an elevator with somebody and you got what, that's the elevator pitch. You need to explain to them, what is deep sea

feline about because we got to sell some books here. Yeah. How would you describe deep sea feline to somebody in that elevator? Yeah. No, I got you. I got you. I got you. Yeah.

So basically... I mentioned you're in an elevator. Basically, deep sea feline is... Here's what we're looking at. So we've got our two main characters. We've got Charlie. And he is a sort of eccentric, chronically ill, shut-in musician who makes scores for nature documentaries and makes weird.

experimental ambient music. And then we have his best friend who he grew up with sort of his brothers, whose name is Greg, who is best described as a bon vivant and world famous opera singer. And he is much more active. He's got a wife. He's got a big family. He likes to get drunk.

And anyway, so you've got these two guys who are very much kind of foils to each other. And what happens is that the Charlie character does something very early in novel that upsets the power balance between two ancient long-forgotten gods, one of whom is the titular Deep Sea Feline, the other of whom is a gigantic chaos pelican, of course. And what happens is that a series of sort of biblical plagues, but in a fun way, descend upon the city of Toronto. And the characters, for one reason or another, realize they have to stage an epic, long-lost opera

written by a a finish man to restore the power balance was a little long well hopefully we were it was a long elevator ride okay so hopefully we were on like the 65th floor or something we had to get down

it was a slow elevator but how important was it to you Dave that this take place in Toronto because what I loved about it which is what I loved about Nirvana of the band the show the movie is I just, I've, I've, lately, and again, I've only lived in one city. At least you've lived in Halifax, okay?

My daughter's living in Montreal, and I'm like, oh, she's like 22 years old. She's already lived in two great cities. I've never lived beyond the 416, okay? This is my cross to bear, if you will. But I love it when I see art, be it movie or read a book or whatever, and the backdrop is the actual Toronto that I'm biking every single day. Like you took, I was reading about the art gallery, you know, there's a bunch of Queen Street stuff, the Glenguild Lounge, you know, there's TTC references, Trinity Bellwoods is in this book. I love novels that take place in Toronto. How important was it to you that this take place in Toronto? Oh, man. I mean, so I mean, first off, yeah, it was super important because when I was, when I was like adolescent teenager, like I remember we had an awesome creative writing teacher who would bring in Toronto authors. And, and, and, you know, And there were, there were some good ones.

I particularly. Robertson Davies? Well, no, I think he would have been maybe a bit old. But Russell Smith was the one that I remember. I'm dating myself. Fifth business. I do love fifth business though. Well, we had, did you have to study that?

It was on our curriculum. Fifth business, I honestly, I think we, we had to read. I actually have a very specific memory of sitting in math class with my like, with my math binder, like tilted up, like reading fifth business. and my math teacher being like, being like, what are you, what are you doing? Like, are you reading fifth business? Like, which is honestly like the classiest way to like, oh, that's funny. Fuck off from math class. I mean, what's bread in the bone? I remember a bunch of Robertson Davies, but, uh, yeah, it's really Toronto stuff. So I, but I do, so I do remember like, um, uh,

oh, Angels and Demons is one that that's a super Toronto book. And it's like, you of T. There's this great character, Palo Bain, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, yeah, Russell Smith was, was, was, was And it was very like hip and contemporary. So I got really excited. And but then the other side of it though, too, I mean, is that it was just a little bit lazy because I know Toronto better than any other place in the world. So, so I mean, even like the book that I'm writing now, I was, I went traveling several years ago.

And I ended up staying for three months in this expat village in Cambodia on the Gulf of Thailand. end. And it was just one of the weirdest places that I'd ever been. Like, the culture there was so strange. And it was just people like part, like partying in the jungle. Like, um, and these are all Canadians. Uh, no. So it was, it was, it was, it was, expats. What does that mean? Expat. Expat's, sort of expat Canadians. Well, it was, it, well, there were Canadians, but it was a lot of Aussies, Americans, but people from all over, really. And, um, and, and, and, and so I think for me, like, I, it's just easiest to think, okay, well, this.

is a place that I know really well. I know a lot of interesting things about it. So I'm just going to put my characters in this playground. But I mean, I mean, I know that you're going to just agree with me on this or at least like echo my sentiment. But the longer, the longer that I live in Toronto, like the more I love it. And I love just having like a deep knowledge of it. I love, you know, I take transit. I bike. I drive. You know, having been here as a kid, being here as like a guy in my 20s, being here as like a parent in my 40s now, where it all revolves around like taking your kid to like the aquarium and the ROM and the zoo like where I'm like I haven't even been to the ROM or the zoo since I was like 10 years old, you know?

Well, you played the ROM. We played and played the ROM. Yeah. So there's, so there you go. So there's a lot of, you know, there, uh, I mean, it hasn't been open since the 90s. And again, I got a lot of years on you. So you might not have the McLaughlin planetarium, um, planetarium experience I had. But it was a big deal in the 80s that, you know, your class would go and learn about the stars and planets and stuff, but they're currently bulldozing it because UFT's building this new building there. But yeah, not that it's been open in one. But they put that crazy new spaceship in where the dynos get to live now. So that's good. That was the crystal. The crystal. Yeah,

I love that crystal. Michael Chin, I think, did that. Yeah. I watched it being, I was working at Avenue Road and Bluer. And from the window I'd watch every day is that crystal was being built. It's, it's awesome. I love in the summer when you're biking on Blue and you bike past it, then they leave the lights on. Did you know that? I don't know if I knew that. They leave the lights on

so that when you, if you go, if you walk past the museum at night, you can see all the dinoes all lit up. Okay. Well, listen, I gotta pay attention to that. Yeah.

Well, it's a very, you know, writerly observation. That'll be in the next book. But I love, so we're on the same page in that I feel Toronto's a very, it's a very,

got a rich history. I feel art is less afraid today to be Toronto. Like, I feel like we use, used to, like when they filmed stuff here, they used to pretend it was like New York or Chicago or something. But I feel like maybe, uh, since Scott Pilgrim versus the world, maybe, that unabashedly, no, this can actually, Toronto can play itself now. Yeah. You know what? Actually, it's funny. I'm

going to give another shout out to Badini because I'm reading his, as you should. I'm reading his book right now, writing Gordon Lightfoot, which actually like is not that much about Gordon Lightfoot. And he recommended it to me because he said it's his trippiest and most spiritual book. And there's a line in it. I think he's quoting someone. You know how he like he always like puts together like all these cool patchworks of quotes. And it's someone, you know, talking about Mariposa,

1972 and talking about Toronto's reputation. And it's, and the person says something like, there's something about Toronto where it's like, it's at, for North Americans, it's at once familiar and exotic at the same time. Because it's like Canada.

It's like, it's like, it's like, it's like different country. But then of course, like it can be, it can stand in for New York. So there's like,

the money's different. but like, you know, like the coffee chains are the same or whatever. That's a good observation. I just read, I'm currently reading a book about the 1926 Toronto Maple Leafs baseball team. So that's because it's the 100 year anniversary. And it's all about, and this author who's actually coming on next week to talk about it does a really good job of painting the picture of what was Toronto in the 20s. Like Toronto in the 20s, the 1920s, undergoes as great, it completely changes. The TTC arrives.

And it's, you wouldn't recognize. the city from like a decade earlier and you kind of see the rise of Toronto. But I think for a long time, mainly before my birth, but for a long time, we were like second fiddle that Montreal was the go-to city. Montreal was the cool city. They got the MLB team long before we got the Blue Jays. So they got the expo in 67. Was it 77 for the centennial, right? And then 76 was the Olympics. They got the Olympics in 76. And of course, they had the expos. Like Montreal, and I feel at some point Toronto said step aside where

were the go-to spot in this country. Mm-hmm. There you go, a little bias there. We're both Toronto guys. Sure, yeah. I mean, I also like, I mean, you got to love Montreal. It's amazing. Oh, yeah, no, I'm not even meaning to trash Montreal, except that Montreal's also a great city, uh, differently great, but I do enjoy my visits

in Montreal. I'll be there in late May. Nice. Because, uh, my daughter's convocation. Yeah. It takes place in late May from McGill. Yeah, I can't wait. So that's all the stuff. You get to look forward to paying tuition bills for your child. So be saving those. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Save those pennies, man. The shekels, yeah. If you could choose how a person listening to us right now purchases deep sea feline, like how do you want them to buy this book? Yeah, I mean, I think that I have a really good relationship with the people at Book City have been really awesome. So they have four locations around the city. I'm in the east, so I hit up the one at the Danforth and on Queen a lot.

So they, yeah, they've been really cool. And so I would say it at an independent bookstore would be, you know, number one. And if they don't have it, a really good way to help out authors and local authors is if they don't have the book, get them to do a special order and go pick it up. So, yeah, Queen Books is great in the East End too. But yeah, support independent, man. Like I feel very strongly about that. No, love to hear it. And again, your Toronto life, have you always lived east of young?

No, sir, no sir. So in the Darcy's times, actually, so I feel like there was, so I was a kid in Toronto, and that was a version of the city. And then I went away to Halifax. And when I came back, I was really lucky because I had some friends who were living in a house. It's kind of iconic. It's a blue house. It's in Kensington Market.

And it's right across from Ronnie's. And I got to live. for like, I was like 300 bucks a month or something. And I got to live, that was my first place as an adult in Toronto, was like in the heart of Kensington Market, drinking pints on the Ronnie's patio and like, and it was awesome. And so in my 20s in the, you know, the Darcy's times,

I lived there and then I lived at Bloor and Ozington for a very long time. Okay, so you got some West End experience there at Kensington Market in Blue or Austinton. Yeah, and I mean, when I left the band, like, I was so associated with the West End and being, you know, this guy who's in the Darcy's in the music scene that it was cheaper to live at Queen and Coxwell at that point. But then the other benefit was I kind of just wanted a bit of a change up and a change of scene and a little bit of a fresh start. But that's the cool thing about moving to the East End from the West End is that like you're kind of moving to a different town. The reason I ask is for a long time I didn't do much at all east of young Like for a long time I now do a lot of shit east of young

But like if you want to go see Now I know history is there now And there's always the opera house or whatever But the most music venues are in the West End All the sports venues are in the West End Yeah So like a lot of like Oh I'm going to see I don't know

I'm going to go see TFC Or I'm going to go see the Raptors I'm going to go see a concert at the dome Or I'm going to go to most in the theater I'll keep naming all the things you could do in the city. Okay, Dave, you get another hour. But almost all of these things typically would definitely be west of Young. So I, maybe I made some snarky remarks in the past of what was happening East of Young.

But the more time I spend East of Young, I'm like, it's different, but it's also great. Like there's East of Young is great. West of Young is great. Different grates, but different vibes. Yeah. And you're digging the East of Young vibe. I love it. I mean, for me now, like I'm a much mellower person than I used to be.

like if there's fun stuff going on in the West, like I can only really get out like, you know, once a week, once every couple of weeks. Oh, Geary Street, our crawl, that's in the West. I'm going to name all these things.

So yeah, for me, like in the summer, too, like riding my bike across the city and doing something fun in the West. Right. The East End is, it's,

it's more family friendly. Like, it's kind of like a, you know, I have a big dog. I don't know. It feels like there's more space. I don't know about that.

Okay. Okay. Yeah. I mean, it feels like there's a lot. lot of a lot more green maybe there's more green space

I don't know we got high park we got high park that's true high park's great high park I think it's the second biggest park in the city

I don't know maybe maybe what I mean is I do find it generally the energy is a bit mellower you know what I think I think we can agree right now

east of young west of young both great both important vital cogs in this wonderful wheel we call Toronto The Wheel of Toronto

The Wheel of Toronto And your book And again, I hope I was clear I loved how it took place in Toronto And I could read about the AGO And Queen Street And Glen Gould Lounge and Trinity Bellwoods And TZ

Like I loved it But I love the book And I urge all listeners To get a copy of deep sea feline By Dave Hurlo Don't you dare miss it Dave how was your Toronto? Mike debut.

I had honestly a lovely time. Don't act so surprised. It's been, it's been great. Don't leave without your lasagna and your beer, okay, buddy. We're going to take a picture by Toronto Tree. And, yeah, you're now an FOTM, friend of Toronto Mike. So we will see each other again. And I can't wait to find out when I took a note on the name, so I wouldn't forget it.

Nocturnal glowing jungle fungus. I can't wait for its release. Invite me to the launch. I will. I will. Thanks, man. It's been a real pleasure. Thanks for doing this. Always great to do a deep dive into the Darcy's. You know, the Darcy's were better when you were in the band. Can I say that or is that mean? I mean, I think it's objectively true. Everybody knows it.

I don't know what the others are saying, but that's how I feel. And that brings us to the end of our 1,875. 1875. Wow. Go to Toronto. Mike.com for all your Toronto mic needs. And at the top of Toronto Mike.com, there is a link that says, Elmo gig. Click that link and buy multiple tickets to see me on May 21st at the Elma combo. Also in the West End, Dave.

I'm going to shed out all the West End stuff going on here. Buy a ticket or two. Rob Pruss from Spoons and Honeymoon Suite. He'll be on stage with me. Heck, maybe Dave will be on stage with me. Who knows? We're going to broker that deal later. Come on out.

My one-man show. Don't you dare miss it. Much love to all who made this possible. That is Great Lakes Brewery. Dave's got his beer. Love GLB. Palma pasta. Dave's got his lasagna.

Love palma pasta. Nick Aini's. Love that guy. Great friend, great client. Great event on Thursday. Last Thursday. Recycle Myelectronics.com.ca. I know you wrote that down.

You'll be going there tonight. and Redley Funeral Home, you've got your measuring tape. We got a new episode of Life's Undertaking recording tomorrow. Can't wait to see Brad Jones. My next guest, I'm in real time, Dave. You're witnessing how this cake gets baked. I'm going to my Google Calendar. This is real time happening right now because it's a busy week.

I want to shout it out before rush hits. Oh, there's Rush right now. My goodness, I'm late. Okay, tomorrow morning at 11 a.m. on the live stream. Jeremy Hopkins, we have a special guest. It's about the history of burlesque in Toronto. Jeremy and a special guest will be in the basement for his quarterly. And then at 2 p.m. Ed Keenan from the Toronto Star drops by,

so it's a double header tomorrow. And then this is exciting. On Thursday at 2 p.m., Dr. Brian Goldman comes over. We're going to find out how realistic is the pit. Is that what it's like when? Brian Goldman is working in our emergency rooms here in Toronto. We'll find out 2 p.m. Thursday. See you all.

Then.