Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Universal Honey: Toronto Mike'd #745

Episode Date: November 3, 2020

Mike speaks with Johnny Sinclair and Leslie Stanwyck from Universal Honey about their years in The Pursuit of Happiness, why they left the band, Universal Honey and Tucker Lane.

Welcome to episode 745 of Toronto Mic'd, a weekly podcast about anything and everything. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, a fiercely independent craft brewery who believes in supporting communities, good times, and brewing amazing beer. CDN Technologies, your outsourced IT department. Joanne Glutish, a lifetime member of the National Chairmen's Club, awarded to the top 1%

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Enjoy the taste of fresh homemade Italian pasta and entrees from Palma Pasta in Mississauga and Oakville. I'm Mike from TorontoMike.com and joining me this week is Universal Honey, Johnny Sinclair and Leslie Stanwyck. Leslie, Johnny, welcome to Toronto Mike. Hey. Hey, thanks, welcome to Toronto Mic'd. Hey. Hey, thanks for having us, Mike. Whereabouts in the world do we find you this morning? We're in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.

I once married a girl from Saskatoon. Oh. Oh, did you? Yeah, well, it didn't last, but that sort of ruins the whole story. But yeah, I know. Then I married a girl from Edmonton, so I love the Western Canadian girls. That's for sure. Awesome.

Well, that explains Saskatoon. That explains why I couldn't get you to visit my backyard. That's a heck of a drive to do a podcast. Yeah, it's a bit of a drive. came here like 10 years ago so yeah we're originally from toronto and moved here 10 years ago what neighborhood in toronto did you guys uh live in before you you moved at west it was leslieville well no it because we did a little bit oh my god we had such a crazy time before we came here. That was one of the reasons why we came here. It was just like,

I think the gods are just saying, do a change. Just do this. We need to change. So yeah, we were in Leslieville. Then we were in East York for a short stint. Yeah.

For a very short while year. And then we were up in Shepherd and Young area. Yeah. So like I'm originally from saskatoon okay i grew up here i moved to toronto had my history and career in music and less than i hooked up and um i was living at dundas and sherburne she's a born and raised toronto girl she i went to and Lee High School and another high school? Who does it? Up there. Then we shacked up at

Tecumseh. That's Dundas or Queen West. Between King and Queen. For sure, of course. But 10 years... Sorry, continue, Johnny. Right near where the heartbreak hotel used to be and uh cabbage roll place the future bakery right right right but but 10 years in

saskatoon i guess it's sticking right yeah leslie you're okay you're you're happy there i just it took um it definitely took an adjustment like I remember being here the first little while I would look outside the window at night and just be like, is anybody out there? I was just, yeah, it was a big change for sure. It took a while, but it's so warm and inviting out here. The people are amazing and warm and people will be like, Hey, how are you doing as you're walking down the street or hello or smile and it's like wow what the hell's going on here

like invasion of the body snatchers or something no one smiles at me what are you doing they're just smiling at leslie then that's okay okay so i have a couple of greetings before we dive in here but uh one greeting is from uh fotm hoxley workman hoxley workman says uh say hello to those folks for me will you i played with them uh about 25 years ago wow yeah that's right yeah uh hoxley um we did a demo with uh matt dimateo uh downtown i can't remember the name of the studio. It was a popular Toronto studio for a lot of indie bands. And we did a couple songs there

with Matt and Ryan played drums on them. So yeah, it was awesome. Yeah, no kidding. It's amazing. Huxley's in Peterborough now. Oh, wow. Okay.

Well, that's beautiful up there. Yeah, yeah. Another hello from FOTM, Neil Morrison, who, of course, most listeners here know him better as Brother Bill. But Neil just writes in, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny. So no offense, Leslie, but Johnny, you buddies with Neil? What's the code there? Just a shout out to Johnny.

Brother Bill. He's a good fun guy. A buddy of his is a guy named Mark Robinson who plays net for us on the Morning Stars hockey team. And I think Neil played hockey.

I can't even remember now. His performance must have been so memorable. But you know, he's just a great guy. We stay in touch. We've got a group so memorable. But, you know, he's just a great guy. We stay in touch with Vancouver now. We kind of communicate here and there once in a while. Yeah, he's in White Rock. Awesome. Yeah, not too far from Vancouver there here.

Okay, my friends, we're going to talk about the origin story of Universal Honey, and we're going to talk about all the great new music I've been listening to all week. But we have to start with a different band, And I'm going to play a little song and we'll pay attention to some of these background vocals. But here's a little taste of a Pursuit of Happiness song. Everyone who sees you thinks you should be smiling That girl, she's so pretty That girl, she's so big-eyed Everyone who sees you thinks you should be happy Thinks you should go go

I'm a star, I can't all stand to be one It's hard to let me know Thinks she should be happy. Thinks she should cuckoo. A star-acted old sissy. But it's hard to laugh when you know that she's been cheated. Had her hands around when she's been given in a beating. Well, it's hard to laugh when you know that she's been lying. But it's hard to laugh to prevent yourself from crying. Speaking of Edmonton, there's Moe Berg on vocals. Okay, so please tell me how you guys ended up in the pursuit of happiness. Okay.

Well, I moved to Toronto in 1984 to pursue my lifelong dream of being in a band. And I got there and I you know had enough money to live for a while started with Now Magazine I'd actually come out the year before and I auditioned for some bands and I got it I got asked to stay and play in this one band called Ministry of Love and then I I packed up went back to Saskatoon and came back the next year. Got a job out in Etobicoke with a book and record warehouse and one night I was at the Horseshoe to see Jerry Jerry and the Sons of Rhythm Orchestra and I said to Jerry after

the show, hey whatever happened to Moe Berg? He said, that's funny, you should ask that, he's moving here next week. I said wow do you know where he's staying? And he gave me Belinda Robbins phone number, which was a friend of his where he was going to be staying. And I just gave him a call out of the blue and said hey you remember me from Saskatoon, Alternative Music Society, you played there a couple times face crime and 59 I think I saw too and he said yeah I think so I don't know whether he did or not but anyway so I said let's go for a beer so I went for a beer to one of our favorite haunts the silver crown on which when he used to drink there a lot and um i said hey like you know what are you doing and i put in a good word for him at my job and i got

him a job at the book and record warehouse so every day these two guys from downtown toronto truck out to the end of the kit little line there take a bus and go to work it's like an hour trip wow anyways we did that and he was looking for a bass player and said, I said, well, why don't I audition? And he goes, well, we've become friends. And if you don't cut it, then that would be, I wouldn't want that to ruin our relationship. So I auditioned for the band and I think I got 51% on the test. I squeaked in, I just squeaked in. I squeaked in and they, and then, you know, we just started playing around Toronto. The Cabana Room, the Rivoli.

We had two girls, Tam and Tosh, with us. And at some point, we decided to move on from that. And they put an ad out. And Leslie replied, you know, you got a call. No, yeah, I got a call because I was taking vocal lessons, I think, from Mika Barnes at the time. Of course. And Mika put in a word into Mo, I guess, that I was a good singer and, you know, I was available. So they called me, Mo called me, I think it was Mo that called me, and said, would you come down for an audition and I said sure so I went down to their place on them that's the best last yeah they were out we should be

less ready to park it right right right and that was when I first met Johnny and and Dave they were playing foosball or something in the living room. And we went walking downstairs to Mo's room, I guess. I don't want to say Mo's bedroom. We went walking to Mo's bedroom, but it was Mo's room. Let's just say that. And that was the first time I met Chris, too. And that was when we first sang together.

And then I got a call, I don't know, it was probably a couple of days later, just saying we got the gig and we started rehearsing right away. Like it was like a whirlwind. Wow. OK. And it seemed like a meteoric rise for Pursuit of Happiness because you film, you know, the video for I'm an adult now. And I've had Mo on the program and he kind of tells this story in great detail

if people want to go back to the Mo Berg episode of Toronto Mike. But, of course, much music plays the shit out of this video. And next thing you know, Love Junk is being produced by Todd Rundgren. This is quite the start for Pursuit of Happiness. No kidding. like this is quite the quite the start for pursuit of happiness no kidding yeah we you know we we immediately uh we were we were all we were all hungry you know young and hungry and wanted to pursue our dream and i think when leslie got in the back i mean we've been playing around toronto

like i said the clubs and right you know i'm an adult now is even one of the songs we opened at times right so it wasn't like it, this is the big song of the night. It was just like one of our songs. Mo had a lot of great songs. Right. But, you know, as soon as Leslie got in the band, I think she auditioned in December of 87, and in January 88, we went back out across the country.

You know, being Westerners, I don't think we were really too creative driving in the winter out here. Oh, my God. Yeah, there's some harrowing trips. That's for sure. No road at all. We were making the tracks on the road. What can you share with me about working with Todd Rundgren on Love Junk?

Anything you can share there? It was fun. And he's just, yeah, it was it was awesome it was so exciting um you know just from that very first drive um down to Woodstock and then driving through the Catskills and Michelle his um wife Michelle Rundgren meeting us and um we had to follow her in and and and the roads were so so windy and she was she knew the roads well so she was just going for it like and we were trying to keep up with her of course i don't know if you or dave was driving at the time but we're like keep up with her and it was just amazing he he was um i don't know he's just a sweetheart of

a guy um yeah really really smart guy i mean i mean uh he he'd heard our he'd heard our songs uh and we were like well he's got to come see the band we really wanted to come see the band right and he was like kind of a little bit reluctant but finally he dragged his ass up here and saw us play at the diamond one night and um then after that show we went back to my uh apartment on dundas east right near soupy's tavern and um we i think we i don't think we drank and i offered him some of my aunt's borscht and then I fell asleep on his shoulder. We went down there and it was just really quick. Like we've been playing, the band was on fire when we went in to make that record. We've been playing those songs live a lot and on the road a lot.

We went in and Todd just basically, you know, pushed record and captured it and put his sound on it. And yeah, it was like three weeks, three, three and a half weeks, something like that. And lots of political discussions. That was fun. And lots of watching Saturday Night Live back at the time. He had like a big, huge, before big screen TVs, He had a projector on the wall and covered the whole wall. And we just watched Saturday Night Live. And it was fun. All right.

Overall, like how would you guys speak of your experience in the Pursuit of Happiness looking back all these years later? Like was it a positive? Some real talk. What do you think of your Pursuit of Happiness years? They were awesome. Yeah, it was the best. It was so good.

It was just, yeah. I mean, we had a blast. We had a blast. I mean, there wasn't, I don't know.

Like there, the only times that were tough, like were when it, it was, you know, the end towards the end, if you want to talk dirt, not too dirty, because honestly, we're thankful for everything. And, you know, that was just towards the end, because I was making a decision to do something different and new and everybody, everybody was afraid of that change.

like like give me the the backstage pass here like so you and johnny start talking about going out on your own like like where does this kind of idea come from and then tell me about you know quitting the pursuit of happiness well we um we became we became pretty fast friends when less joined the band and um we had a lot and then started seeing each other sort of outside the band. And I think that might have been frowned on a little bit. Well, it was like, oh, you know, there's going to be a couple in the band. And darn it, you know, that was kind of what it was like. And because, again, nobody knows what that's going to turn out like. Because again, nobody knows what that's going to turn out like.

And as well as like, I wrote songs, like had been writing songs for a long time before. Like it was another band that I had formed before Pursuit of Happiness and was writing. So, you know, that creative spark just doesn't go away. So we started writing together. Johnny was writing with me. And then it just, we started writing together Johnny was writing with me and then it just we started writing more together and I think that that probably that

wasn't really accepted not accepted it was it was frowned upon a little bit it was scary probably for the rest of the members is like oh good god you don't want to mess up anything here this is a good thing you got going it was just a natural progression you started writing songs together it wasn't um something that was you know really encouraged and then so at some point it was just too much friction that we ended up going like oh this is not good we've got to grow we've got to do our own thing and um and that wasn't something that worked in the the confined pursuit of happiness that was most most um most thing well yeah we should probably clarify that point that you know the pursuit of happiness there was never any you know uh misleading here you know this is you this is mo's band yeah like and mo mo this is the moberg you

know so so bringing you know some some leslie and johnny you almost have to depart and do your own thing in order to have your own creative expression yeah initially that initially that was kind of the plan once we started once we started realizing that hey we really enjoy you know working on music together and doing our thing um we kind of discussed that you know we really enjoy working on music together and doing our thing um we kind of discussed that you know we would do it on downtime and then there just was never any downtime we were just so busy yeah it was constant so yeah but it was it was uh you know i mean i've told this story before but we left the band and we're kind of outcast friends were like what the hell is wrong with you guys i remember going to see the sons of freedom at the opera house one night and

they were recently signed to christmas and somebody said hey christmas is upstairs there's an after party you should go up and And there was one of the radio reps from the Midwest there, and he came up to me and he was all in my face. He started calling me, you know, what kind of idiot quits a successful band? What are you doing now? And I said, oh, I'm grabbing Courier. And he goes, you're an idiot. I'm out of here, right?

But that was the kind of, there was a backlash against us. Well, yeah, we lost a lot of here right that was the kind of there was a sort of there was a backlash against us and that you know well yeah we lost a lot of friends and that band was our family and they were pissed at us

everybody was pissed off at us so you know it's it's all good though I get it and we understand you know

but we left and it was like back to basics like I mean I you got a job I got a job it was like you know here. Like, I mean, you got a job, I got a job. It was like, you know, who went from being in a, you know, platinum gold band to, you know,

driving courier for a city center courier out of Mississauga. Yeah. People would say to me, like people would say, where's your limo? Like, why are you working here? And I'd be like, oh my God. Okay. Well, this is my 745th episode and i've had enough conversations now with what i would consider you know canadian rock stars to know you know having the the the day job to pay the rent uh is comes with the package

of being a canadian rock star right this is people want to see the limo, but, you know, you're lucky if you can afford a Civic, right? Yeah, totally. Totally, for sure. Okay, so, and this breakup, so hearing this, it sounds a lot like a divorce, actually. So when you guys leave Pursuit of Happiness, like, how does Mo take it?

Like, what is it? Do you sit him down and say, Mo, we're parting ways? And then does Mo kind of like like what is it you sit him down and say Mo we're we're parting ways and then does Mo kind of have that you know cuz Mo like again I always think like Bon Jovi right like Bon Jovi it's John Bon Jovi's band and he's got these kind of hired guns that that help him you know record and perform and all this stuff and this is the Mo Berg this is the Mo Berg band the Pursuit of Happiness like like how does he take it when you say you're gonna because you had a really good thing going there yeah there was there was a and this is the Moe Berg band, the Pursuit of Happiness. How does he take it when you say you're going to –

because you had a really good thing going there. Yeah, there was a lot of chemistry at that time with the band, and it was really a tight unit, and it was a lot of fun. I don't know. We just sort of were at a point where it was like push came to shove kind of in a way. And we sort of had to like make a decision kind of on the spot. I don't think I had 100% arrived at that decision yet. I was still kind of like, ooh.

But Leslie kind of pushed the door open a little bit. And yeah. Nobody was happy with us writing. And it was a weird energy in the band like it was just what were we gonna do it was we're gonna suppress that we were gonna go like okay we're not gonna write anymore and we're just gonna play in the band like what you know it's the same as in a society this is like if you're not happy and think and you're not able to grow and do what you're going to do then it's time it's just time to move on and and no no one was happy about it we weren't happy about it either because we wanted harmony and we wanted of course everybody to go

we're right behind you and we and we support whatever you do but it wasn't like that because it was tearing apart something that was working and i we can't blame them and we support whatever you do but it wasn't like that because it was tearing apart something that was working and I we can't blame them and we don't blame us it's just one of those things like it was it was a difficult breakup but this bird has to fly so here we have universal honey so the first big question of course is where does that where does that name come from universal honey uh it's a an old song um that i wrote with a friend of mine uh nadine rusanek and uh she's just a you know a my my bestie from from high school and we wrote song we wrote that's what we did we just wrote wrote tons of songs together. One of them is called Universal, honey So when we were thinking of names we were well after the after the pursuit of happiness, we started a group called loud factory

And we started playing around the city. We had a guy named Gerard Popma on guitar. He was awesome. Awesome guy and he He was in the dice for a while and And he was in the Dice for a while, I think. And John McCarthy recommended him, right? Yeah. So we had another transplanted Saskatonian named James Pollock on drums. And we had this band called Loud Factory. And we did get some demo money from Chrysalis at the time that we were on the record.

And we did some demos with Chris Wardman and Aubrey Winfield and we were called Loud Factory. And I think we played around for about a year and a half when we started getting some good gigs. We'd go to the Pikes a couple times in an Ontario place and the Danforth Music Hall and stuff like that or started to do the 401 circuit, getting a bit more popular. And just one night Gerard out of the blue was like, you know, I'm tired of being a slave to rock and roll I think that's the word you're wearing. Yeah he was so disheartened he just thought it should have happened you know something should have happened and it's like oh my god. So Gerard left the band and we carried on as a three-piece for a little bit and at that point Aubrey had come back to us and

said there's someone making a Joni Mitchell tribute album called Back to the Garden. I think Sloane wants... yeah a lot of local Toronto acts at the time too were on that and we were like I think it's time for a name change like let's start fresh with this and literally they were like phoning us going we're waiting to go to the printer what are you what's your guy's bad name right right they got to print the thing right so uh so we just said okay it's universal honey yeah that was in the mix so that's what we decided on okay so now, shout out the members of Universal Honey. I guess this is in 1992? Yes.

Okay, so obviously Leslie and Johnny, you guys are founding members and here you are today still performing music, which we'll get to shortly. Who else is in the band when Universal Honey is officially formed? When Universal Honey is officially formed. James Pollock

is still on drums and it's me and Leslie. It's the three of us. Okay. Okay. And then so then that song comes out on that compilation album and then we go off and we do an EP three songs again with Aubrey Winfield and

the three of us but who played, did you play all the guitar on it? I think I played on the EP and Robert might have played guitar on the EP. Robert Bartolucci played guitar on some of it but I think he played most of it on Mary. Yeah and then anyways Robert Bartolucci as a guy in Toronto who was an awesome guitar player. You know, he'd say, can you play that like Jeff Beck? I'd play it like Jeff Beck.

Can you play that like, you know, Jimmy Page? I'd play it like Jimmy Page. And he's a student of the guitar, and he was awesome working with him. So then that EP came out, which really kind of surprised us at how well it did. came out, which really kind of surprised us at how well it did. Because it got, just before Mary goes, it was getting played on CFNY and Q107 was playing Find Yourself. And it had the Joni Mitchell cover on it as well. So we were just like, wow, this is, we couldn't have asked for anything more than that.

Right. Yeah. And then players um then james yeah so then so then we parted ways with james we wanted to do we wanted to do our first album magic basement and um it was just the two of us then but robert robert came along and played guitar and and uh we had a guy named mike slosky play drums. Mike has played with everybody. He played with Bruce Colburn for a long time and his resume is like he's a soul kind of drummer, an R&B soul drummer and he just came in and he was a hired gun. He was a hired gun to come play

on the record in the studio and he showed up with his drums and they're like in you know inside inside the bass drum was the floor tom inside the floor tom with the rack tom and like snare under his arm and he's carrying his stuff and they're like this is the guy right and he's kind of he was older than us then but not like you know now like right but anyways he comes in and he just he just oh he just changed it it was just like wow this guy's so good right yeah so that was one of that was probably one of the best days ever we were just playing drum playing bass with mike slosky all day long okay you mentioned just before mary goes so let's hear a little bit about that and then we'll we'll dive a little deeper

into this. Sometimes She's got one foot in the grave Unkind Just playing their game All the things she's done to them She's hiding See you next time. Just before Mary goes, she comes around. Just before Mary goes, she comes around. She comes around. All right, kudos to you guys, because that's an infectious melody and hook there.

And once it's in the head, it doesn't really leave. So, excellent. All right, so you mentioned CFNY, so of course that's your, I guess what we call it, a modern rock, but I guess alternative rock, whatever you're calling it in the early 90s.

But what was it like when you're hearing Universal Honey? We mentioned Brother Bill earlier, who was at the station through most of the 90s. But what's it like when you're getting airplay on 102.1? Oh, my God. I mean, I loved CFNY back then.

It was like it was the pulse of Toronto. And it was like all the concerts and all the local bands. They were so great at local music, the local scene. They created part of the scene. Oh, yeah, absolutely. There was a pulse happening. There was something happening back then. Yeah, so I mean it was a big time to go when that song was getting played and going to both stations to do on-air music. Wow. This is great. Very exciting. Then we started just getting more gigs better gigs

and we went on to record we won a CASB award as best new group Canadian artists selected by you that's right formerly no one has the you knows oh yeah

David Marsden started those up in the 80s but yeah that's cool yeah and okay so I know that Johnny you mentioned you were a big fan of CFNY back then do you still remember some of the personalities

that would have been part of the station back then you still remember them? Fred and Humble and Fred Humble and Fred. Do you know I produce their show now? Oh wow.

Oh my gosh. Actually, that's tough for you. I was going to say the time change will make it tough but if you ever want to get up really early one weekday morning, I would happily put you on Humble and Fred to do a catch up. Uh, yeah.

So you're what you're an hour. What time is it? Right. Because it was 1142 AM. As I said, it's an hour back. Okay. So,

you know, we could probably have it like seven 30 AM your time one day. If you, I'm happy to book that with you. We'll do that offline, but it would be great to, to hear you guys on the humble and Fred, because they are still on the radio in this market, and

it's a station out of Hamilton, but mainly it's a podcast, which is so it's also a podcast. But yeah, Humble and Fred, you mentioned May Potts, who's still on the air here at Boom. I'm trying to think of these names here.

Oh, Chris Shepard. Chris Shepard on a Friday trying to think of uh these names here oh um oh uh oh chris shepherd chris shepherd chris shepherd on a friday night yeah he used to he used to he used to dj at the silver crown where uh pursuit of happiness used to go drink all the time and it was like my god it was so much fun um may potts um and then there's the the historian guy alan cross he's from winnipeg so he's from he's also from out west yeah the historian guy. Alan Cross. Alan Cross. He's from Winnipeg, so he's also from out west. Yeah.

I guess now you're talking live in Toronto with Kim Hughes. Kim, yeah. That's right. I had her on last summer. She came over to catch up. She's a sharp one, I'm telling you. She was too smart for that station. She's awesome.

And Bookie, Bookie was there, but that was after we sort of were there too, right? Yeah. What a loss, right? For the,

especially for the Toronto indie music scene, the loss of Dave Bookman. Here's another new jam from Universal Honey. This song is called Going On Around Me, and it's on the new EP, the recently released EP, Extended Play 2020. Sounds great. Speaking of great,

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And last but not least, this year's Holiday and Hope Candlelight Service of Remembrance will be a live online event. You're invited to join the good people at Ridley Funeral Home to receive comforting messages, enjoy live music, and reflect on your loved one's life and legacy. It's Wednesday, December 2nd at 7 p.m. If you want to attend, contact us at

RidleyFuneralHome.com to RSVP or you can call the good people at Ridley Funeral Home. 416-259-3705. Okay, cool. So we've got, okay, so there's a, now you've got your bonafide new rock hit. You've got Magic Basement, which, you know know i guess came out officially in 1993 uh i'm gonna play like a only a few seconds but this is a band uh one of the bands you open for and i just want to talk

about this kind of this heyday here so here straight out of out of buffalo Here we go. Do you wake up on your own? I wonder where you are You live with all your faults I wanna wake up where you are I won't say anything at all So why don't you smile? Yeah, we're gonna let it slide I was gonna play only a few seconds. Now I realize I need him to get to that chorus part, but we'll get there, we'll get there. Okay, so I know that I could have played Duran Duran, of course,

a little-known little band out of England or whatever, but you guys, you're opening for some big-time rock bands. Like, just give me a feel for, like, what it's like for you guys in the early to mid nineties, Universal Honey kind of hitting their stride. Well, so like I said, the, uh, the single for, um, just before Mary goes was getting a lot of play and CFNY was really popular in Buffalo. Yes. Uh, it's, and it spawned another station out of that area called the river from Niagara Falls,

right, which also became popular in Buffalo. They love the Canadian border, border town, love the Canadian bands. Anyway, so we got offered a gig to go down there and play at a bar called Nietzsche's, which is in Allentown. And so we arrived and, of course, you know, getting out of Toronto on a Friday to go to Buffalo, if you don't leave at a certain time, you know, you're like an hour and a half trip is going to take you three and a half hours.

Right. So I think we were a little late getting there and we show up at the bar and it's crammed, stuffed. And we're like, what's going on? Are we opening it up for somebody what is this i said no guys get up on stage you get your gear up there and get your sound check done and it's like wow what we're like so kind of perplexed but they just they were like there's a yeah it was amazing it was a such a great gig and it was like a couple guys from buffalo who would later

turn out to be our uh our management were there as well and we started talking to them and it was like a couple guys from Buffalo who would later turn out to be our management were there as well and we started talking to them and it was Doug Dombrowski and Bruce Moser who had a company called Could Be Wild on a Buffalo music promotion company and we just started talking and I think we hung out and the next day we went out and saw them some more and talked some more but We hung out and the next day we went out and saw them some more and talked some more, but that's where we first met our, our, our would be management was that our first Buffalo game. So yeah. So, so, so Johnny Resnick, John Resnick worked in their office. That could be wild. So

Doug, I think talked to John and said, look, you know, why don't you get Universal Honeydome for a couple of gigs for you? So we played a couple of places with the Goo Goo Dolls in Buffalo. And I remember there was this one beach bar, but the planes were coming in really low. And we went with the Goo Goo Dolls in Buffalo a couple of times. Yeah, I got to know the guys and got along pretty well. And then when their Boy Named Goo album was coming out,

I think Doug spoke to John again and got us on the tour's opening act. That was a tour that they blew up. Yeah, that was one of the best. So that was a lot of fun, just seeing their dreams kind of become a reality, because they're a band that already slugged it out for a few years right well yeah then i if my memory serves correctly because they were kind of you know you'd hear them on cf and y because they're a buffalo band and you mentioned that cross border thing i mean i have lowest of the low on this show all the time in fact i close every episode of

a song from shakespeare my butt and they can go play not in covid times i guess but when when they could do such things again, they can play Buffalo till the cows come home because Buffalo loves Lowest of the Low because they heard him on 102.1. But it's a song, the song I remember of Goo Goo Dolls anyways, and I don't know if my timelines are right here, but Iris,

which I guess, I don't know if that's on, boy, I think that might be on like the City of Angels soundtrack or maybe it was also on a Goo Goo Dolls. I can't remember. It's on the next album. On the next album. Okay.

Goo Goo Dolls aside, and you opened for Duran Duran, is that right? Yeah, we did all through the States. And that was amazing. That was January of 88, I think, that tour started with Duran Duran. We did just over 21 shows or something with them and we kind of went down the East Coast, up and down a bit and then across and up the West Coast. Yeah, that was amazing because we were playing like arenas, right?

Yeah, well we'd go from playing playing the Fox Theater in Atlanta, Georgia, which is a 4,000, 5,000 seat place. It's an old Civil War theater, historical place. Then we go the next night and play someplace like Nassau Coliseum on Long Island. Wow. Amazing.

It was our first bus tour, too, so it was also super exciting, too. Amazing. Alright, it was awesome. Amazing, amazing. All right, now I do want to get you to current day where there's so much going on today, like just an immense amount of stuff coming out of the factory, if you will, which, by the way, has a name, right? Is it Honey Music?

Remind me, Honey Song? What is the name of your company? Honey Tunes. Honey Tunes. Honey Tunes. I should have known that. I'm going to fire my crack research staff. They let me down there. But I was thinking of what jam to play next,

just to bridge us to today. But I was going to play Upfront with you, but actually I'm going to play Any Road Back, because Any Road Back is off of the next album. So you mentioned Magic Basement, and then this is from Earth Moon Transit. So let me play a little bit of Any Road Back, and then we'll talk about that.

And then before you know it, we'll be in the current day here. So just a little of this. What's the occasion? Keeps away holiday What an arrangement Don't you know anything? I'm not leaving You can't know everything I'm not leaving Any road back

Yeah, it's a long road back Yeah, any road back Yeah, it's a long road back Yeah Any robot Yeah It's a long robot Yeah I knew him as a champion I knew him as a loser Alright, my first tough question here

and I ask this of all the great Canadian rock stars I have on the program but how important was it to you to crack the US market? I don't know. I don't think we, you know, we didn't think about it much. Yeah, it just happened. But I think that it's very important.

Like you say, Canadians driving the Honda Civic, rock, cane, rock, surf, out of Honda Civics. I mean, that's a huge place to go play. I mean, you know, from Toronto to Pittsburgh is like about six hours or something like that. And if you drove north to Toronto for six hours, you'd be, you know, lost in the wilderness, right? Right. So a lot of tight city, close together, a lot of, you could cover a lot of ground in a lot less time.

Our management was American, and they had a, just sort of, could get us to play down there. We just thought, you know, we can go across Canada and come back across Canada, and that'll last like three weeks. Or we can go for months and just get lost in America. Right. Go from city to city. Just a numbers game, right? I mean, there's more people in California than there are in America. Right. Go from city to city. Just a numbers game, right? I mean, there's more people in California than there are in this entire country. Yeah, so we just loved the place,

so we just kept going down and playing. That was our tour route, really. It was going down through the States rather than, like Donnie said, going across Canada, and that really helped a lot to build momentum. And any road back, which we're still faintly in the background here, this got MTV play, right? Like, how did this, because, you know,

I'm speaking from a guy who was born and raised in Toronto. So all I know is, you know, what I see on Much Music and hear on 102.1. But this had some American spins, as they say, right? Yeah, it had college spins. Yeah, it was college radio, MTV, 120 Minutes had it in rotation. And I think it was like our manager, Doug, was relentless. He was really relentless and our biggest champion. And he wouldn't let up until someone said, yeah, okay, sure.

So he worked really hard. And because of that, I think we got noticed by MTV. Plus being on tour with the Goo Goo Dolls a lot. Because our tour overlapped from Magic Basement to Earthman Transit. We toured Magic Basement and then went on toured Earthman Transit, we could move it off some more. It was a good time for us. It was a team effort, for sure.

Before we get too distant from the CASB award, do you still have that award? Is it a physical plaque or something? I need to know. Where is it? It's dangerous. I'm going to go look for it. What you can totally do is you could uh i was gonna say you could tweet me i know you're uh honey universal on twitter uh but you could tweet me a picture of

this thing if you can ever dig it up there i just wondered if it was on display in the bathroom or something like where do you put your cash no literally it's it's uh it's a it's a beautiful post-modern kind of industrial thing. And it weighs, I don't know, it's got bolts and heavy metal and sharp edges. And it's tall and it doesn't really stand up very well by itself. But if someone ever tried to break in, it'd be the kind of thing that you could. See, that's unlikely to happen probably in Saskatoon, right? I figured that was more of a Toronto fear, like somebody. It'd be like that game where Johnny did it in the kitchen.

Oh, clue. Right. Okay. I have a listener who's also a big fan of Universal Honey, and his name is Sid V. I don't know if it stands for vicious or not. I didn't ask. But Sid V. writes,

looking forward to the Universal Honey episode. I don't have any questions for them, but remember catching them at South by Southwest in Austin. He thinks that might've been around 93. And then he sat next to Leslie and Johnny, that's you guys, on the flight back to Toronto. Man, I miss the club circuit throughout Southern Ontario, where you could see great bands like Universal Honey, Crash Vegas, The Pursuit of Happiness, etc. pretty much any night of the week. Like pre-COVID, now everything has to have this caveat now.

So we'll say pre-COVID, I was talking to artists who kind of were lucky enough to play that circuit in the 90s and they say it's not the same anymore. Like, is that does this have any is this partly why you're in saskatoon right now like is it that the the toronto scene that you enjoyed in the 90s simply uh isn't the same or am i am i yeah we had a discussion um with somebody else and there was a weird thing that happened in in the 90s for sure there was an amazing scene that was happening in Toronto I you know in other cities as well I think there

was a boom of music that seemed to peter off like um at the end of the 90s and I think I can't remember if we thought it was because of I don't know if you I can't remember the connection with online happening at that time in Napster I can't remember what it was that or if it was an age group too where it's almost like we talked about how you live in a neighborhood where there's a lot of kids and they're playing in the streets and everything and they grow older. And then all of a sudden it's a really quiet neighborhood. And that's kind of what it was like. It was that certain age group where it was like that neighborhood.

We were all playing in the streets. We're having a blast. And then we grew older and that wave kind of went away. So, and I don't know what happened to the next wave it was too far like the next generation of musicians was i don't know but when we were playing in the clubs which we continued to do you know even up until the early 2000s the scene was totally different it was a bummer we went out and played clubs in toronto we had a band we got a band together

and we were playing as universal honey and um it was um five bands on a bill the club didn't give a crap about the band um you know the the ones that we played anyways and there's some clubs that were always amazing like the horseshoe is just always in you know what i mean there's some clubs that are just real the old clubs that know how things are run properly with the band and have a relationship with the band but these other clubs we played it was just a bummer yeah i think i don't know if it was in toronto in the 90s i think like um i think cfny kind of tastes and music sort of changed a bit and they became they weren weren't CFNY anymore. I think that's when they changed to the edge and it was more aggressive and it

was like that. All the, all the bands that were loud. Oh, like Linkin Park or, or, or maybe a Limp Bizkit. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So a lot of, a lot of the Toronto bands, that very vibrant scene that happened in the 80s there on Queen West, kind of was gone. Like I said, everybody had grown up and moved on and done stuff. Right. We're busy.

Like, we were busy. We used to play Toronto a lot, and then we were away all the time. And we'd come back and we'd go, you know, do something. And it was like, that was good. Yeah, because our circuit really wasn't Toronto a lot. It was, like you said, we went down to the States. So there was many years

we were away from Toronto and we didn't know what the heck was going on there. And then when we came back, it was different. Do you think any of it has, because, you know, we talk,

I'll talk to some, for example, I don't know who will I pick on today, but Kim Mitchell or something. And he'll be talking about how like Max Webster was, like they were all living in this place in Toronto where I think he said I don't know who will I pick on today, but Kim Mitchell or something. And he'll be talking about how like Max Webster was like, they were all living in this place in Toronto where I think he said it would cost them each like a hundred bucks a month or something to live there.

So like there was this huge scene where you could afford to live in the city and make what artists, especially like artists without hits, like what they typically make, you could afford to live here and create your art and then improve on your art and everything and then or maybe something happens in the 2000s where you simply can't afford to live like you can't afford to eat and pay rent like maybe there's something to that we priced out the artists yeah for sure absolutely for sure queen west was you know built on the back of musicians and artists

that uh lived in the area and made it such a vibrant scene and then you know like all of a sudden there's a mcdonald's at the corner of queen and spadina and people are like oh my god the corporations are coming yeah and the gap and it's like oh god yeah well it's funny that that parking lot where you filmed i'm an adult now it's a mountain equipment co-op now uh i think that's the new location for mech like so the the that anyway it's just funny when that happened it was like a noteworthy okay it's like there goes the uh i'm an adult now parking lot so yeah save the parking lots okay all right now i'm all depressed because again i i'm like one of those people you described where like as we enter the 2000s now i'm having kids and you

know working my ass off to pay the mortgage and it's sort of like the the 90s were like that was my decade where i could kind of in in you know have that carefree enjoyment of uh you know rock and roll so it's sort of like it's sort of like, yeah, maybe I was there for the heyday. But anyway, I digress. I do want to talk about the current stuff because there's not just Universal Honey. There's also Tucker Lane. I have so many questions. But to bridge us, actually, I think the best way to bridge is here we are in November. This is actually election day. And I won't ask you for a prediction because that might age very, very badly because a lot of people will hear this after what happens tonight.

But this is a big day in United States politics. But we're not that far from Christmas. So I'm just going to play a little bit of a Universal Honey Christmas song, talk about the Christmas stuff, and then get you to the current day. So here's some, so Merry Christmas, everybody. What do you say? I'm sorry, it's too early, too early. But, you know, there's a station in Toronto that went all Christmas yesterday.

Yeah, right. CHFI is, they used to wait. Forever, the code, there was like an unwritten code. They would wait till Remembrance Day passed. And then they would sort of go all Christmas with the Toronto Santa Claus parade, which is a big deal, except for this year. And now it's like, eff it, like the day after Halloween, they basically said we're

going on Christmas. So maybe it's not too early. But tell me please, tell me like, what am I listening to right now? Because it sounds great and I hope CFNY I hope CHFI plays it, but tell me about the Christmas album.

I love this Christmas album. It's so awesome. It really is. And we had so much fun making it, and there's so many great guest appearances on it. And, you know, you always tell the story, well, of Doug, our manager, getting us to do a Christmas song. Yeah, so he asked us, he said, getting us to do a Christmas song. Yeah, so he asked us, he said, you guys should do a Christmas song. And we were like, I don't really want to do a Christmas song.

But why don't you write one? And we were like. Oh, okay, we're up for the challenge. So we wrote this one song called, Glad It's Christmas Time. And he put it out to radio, and a bunch of stations played it actually. And he came back after Christmas and was like, you know,

you gotta do a full Christmas album for next year. And we were like, ahh. It's like, holy crap! Really? Yeah, really? And we kicked it around for a while and we thought, well, let's do it. So we did it. We wrote like all original Christmas albums

except for one song. And when we put it out, it got played across the country, around the world. It got really great reviews. Yeah, it's rocking. It's a rocking Christmas. And also, I mean, you said around the world,

which is fantastic. But if you're in Canada and you have a CanCon requirement and it's Christmas time, this even improves your chances of percolating to the top. This is 11 original Christmas songs on a 2003

release. That song I played, Best Christmas Ever, that's been covered by Ronnie Spector. Is that what i uh was reading like for her 2010 holiday record yeah she called she called her uh 2010 holiday record best christmas ever which is a song of ours that she did on the record amazing and um yeah i just i was kind of a thrill because she's in the rock and roll hall of fame so she's one degree of

separation from keith rich, who is my favorite. So yeah, that's real. And I think the manager's smart because I think, I think you can't go wrong with a good original Christmas song that, you know, it's sure it doesn't get much play, you know,

from January to October, but then all of a sudden, right. It starts to get. It's the gift that keeps giving year after year. And that jam I just played it. It's going on my Christmas playlist. So absolutely great stuff.

All right. We're now in 2020 here. So welcome to 2020. It's a shit storm out there. Hope you enjoyed the ride. So we talked about honey tunes is in his honey tunes. Like tell, just describe exactly what is honey tunes.

And then we're going to play some new Universal Honey and we're going to play some Tucker Lane and talk about what the heck Tucker Lane is. So remind me, what's Honeytoons? Well, Honeytoons was the name we used for our publishing. And then when we just started putting out more stuff. putting out more stuff. Well, actually, 2020 was great for us because we got back all of our catalog of Universal Honey into our control. Oh, wow. Yeah, so we started, so then we thought,

okay, well, let's make Honeytoons the label, and where we record is the Honeytoons production house or recording studio or whatever. It's like a hub for all our stuff, because we also have an electronica album that we wrote and produced as well so it's like okay we gotta come up with some kind of hub for all yeah like an umbrella for it all right yeah like google did with alphabet right like it's like okay alphabet's the parent and now okay but yes that's a nerdy a nerdy uh

you're not on me there but i apologize so you got so so just to be clear for everyone listening that's a nerdy, a nerdy, uh, I apologize. So you got, so, so just to be clear for everyone listening who, uh, you know, loved you in the nineties, uh,

there's lots of new content coming from you guys. Like for, I mean, I listened to the EP. I'm going to just, I'm going to play a little bit of, uh, known me forever,

uh, forever. Of course, numerical four. I feel like that's a Prince thing, right? Isn't that what Prince used to do? Yeah. So let me get... Yeah, we're bringing it back.

We're bringing it back. Well, good. No, right. And good for you. I'm going to just play a bit of this, and then I want to talk about the new Universal Honey, and then finally find out where Tucker Lane comes in. Here we go so Come down quietly right there

Wait for the dream to take hold Off the roof jump and I'm floating Into your arms I feel like you've known me forever. I feel like you've known me forever. I feel like you've known me forever. But I know you've never left me before. Well, hot damn, you still sound great. We've never met before we're not we're gonna ever do anything as we basically ever did and um when we got the uh sort of catalog back um we we found um some tracks that we'd had from from a while back

that had never really been finished so we set about to uh finish them and that is the result of what you know goes there so and what's the uh the name of the ep this is available now right people can uh can it's just extended play 2020 so we just uh it was really sort of an ep so like giving it sort of its own like name it was kind of i don't know i didn't think it was really going to be we could have named it after one of the tracks, but then that was just like, this is just a six-song EP. It's extended play. And 2020 has some sort of... something about it.

So people go, oh, I remember 2020. That was the year that Universal Honey EP came out. The history books, when the history is written, they'll say 2020, that was the year of we got some new universal honey. And who chose, I have to ask this question, who chose the,

what do you call it, typography for the artwork associated with this EP? Yeah, that was me, guilty. I just thought it was kind of fun, you know, when you put the, when you start working on it, it was like U-H-E-P.

It was like, oh, how do you write? Oh, hey, look at that. And then unless he goes, that's too, I don't know. I think people are going to be wondering what the heck are they doing. Okay, what if I put them all on a straight line? It wasn't originally in the straight line. I think it's well I mean clearly it was intentionally reminiscent

of another bands of four initials yeah well I think it's kind of it's nice it's an appreciation of and it's something like that we it's almost like it's almost

like we just kind of didn't we're at the point now where we embrace all of our past and everything and i think we went through a long time where like johnny said where we were kind of outcast so we kind of didn't we didn't claim anything we didn't claim that part of our history or our lives and kind of just okay we'll move forward move forward and now it's just kind of like no that was we were part of that that was an amazing time and so it's kind of this beautiful coming back to like no it's all part of who we are and that's what that yeah kind of knew that some people would be going like, what are these assholes doing? Bastards.

And then some people would find it funny or that's kind of it. It's just, as for us, it's a symbolic acceptance of everything and, and also paying homage to and, and. So you haven't received most lawyers haven't contacted you yet. Not yet. Wait till he hears this episode and he says,

what should I be looking at here? Okay. But I dug it. I dug it. And, and you know, like you said, it's an homage and accepting,

you know, yeah, you were a key part of the best years of the band and yeah. Why not own it? Right. Lean in there. Okay. Million dollar question.

Tell me, what is the difference between tucker lane and universal honey i think that would be tucker lane is a little it's more rootsier like it's um you know when we we're kind of embracing now of course just, just the Western, you know, when we, when we first moved to, there's, there's, there's a vibe to the prairies, right? There's a total vibe to the prairies. And, and I try to say, I listened to a lot of, I did listen to a lot of country music growing up that was strictly rock and roll, you know, pop rock. I've gone to

jazz because my dad's a well-known jazz musician. I've done classical because I've trained classical, but country was not something that I really went to. But when we moved out here, there were so many country artists that I was introduced to, especially I love Lucinda Lucinda Williams before so you know and obviously the stones who I love him big fan of embrace country music and I always loved the birds and stuff like that but there's so I started to kind of and both Johnny and I kind of Johnny's always listened to his seats from Saskatchewan so he grew up with country music but I did so I love listening now to like Steve Earl like there's rock and roll in Steve Earl he's a rock and roll guy like it's just there's no

difference yeah so that's what we started to embrace in our music is that side of it okay it started out innocent it started out innocently enough where we we got here and we were looking to just just keep playing because it was something we do so we started playing as an acoustic duo and then I joined a hockey team and one of the guys on my hockey team said could you put a band together and play our Christmas party so we put this little group together and we called ourselves undercover pirates and we just played covers right right and just to play as much as just to just to just to keep playing and and and out here uh before covid pre-covid you know uh the bars in the city would

pay cover bands and so we could actually go and get paid to play and have a nice night out and as i would say to people it's like you know we're older now so the kids are either out of the house or or the they're out looking for their next wife right so the audience was like a little bit older and it was a good it's a good audience and they will come out they love to have a good time yeah and they're broken free let's go nuts so we uh so i may often get requests for do you guys play any country do you play this time we go yeah i know i'm sure we don't and so we just thought let's learn so we learned something like speedball yeah so it's kind of more leaning into that whole more kind more um exile on main street you know

uh stones the kind of rootsy tom petty where compared a lot to you know tom petty and the heartbreakers with Chrissy Hines singing the lead vocals. So it's more roots here. Okay, now did you consider just releasing that style of music as Universal Honey or did this become like a marketing thing where you needed to brand it? I think we were still at the point where Universal Honey had been sort of laid to rest. I don't think we had no notion that we would ever get our catalog in our control. Oh, I got you.

This predates that. Okay, so in the timeline, you have, so Tucker Lane is because you want to, you know, it's like a rebirth with like a country-esque. Well, I'm going to play a bit of Paper Wings in a moment here, actually, just to let people know what Tucker Lane sounds like compared compared to universal honey and then i guess the whole so so how did you get your catalog back like like is there a story there like is this a surprise to you what happened here um well doug and in buffalo our manager who we did um like uh earthen transit the self-titled album every album after that uh was that was with his company, 41 Records. And he was like, yeah, yeah, just do whatever you want.

Just take it and do whatever you want. Just take it and do whatever you want. And we kind of just were like, well, how do you just take it and do whatever you want? So ultimately, we got all of the ones down that were up on streaming. We got them down and we started to release them chronologically. But we negotiated a licensing deal with Aubrey Winfield, who did the first album with us. So, yeah, that was just like, that just sort of happened at the end of 2019. And then we were like, well, we'll just keep putting out an album and get it up on streaming.

And it'll be kind of a fun project to do. They were never up on streaming. They were digital, some of them. Yeah. Not really on the streaming. Full-blown streaming platform that we used to do it. Okay. Let's hear a bit of, because we've talked a lot about Tucker Lane

and people are like, let me hear the difference between Universal Honey and Tucker Lane. So here's a bit of paper. You can tell. Let's hear it. Let's hear it. Oh, yeah. And hearts collide and you think that fate is on your side when things are perfect and brand new. When you do it for the thrill of the chase and you have to be in first place and you think every dream has come true

Love's an unpredictable thing You fly next to the sun on paper wings next to the sun on paper wings And you never know what that fire will bring Love's a non-predictable thing All right, here's my review. You still have the melodies, you still have the hooks, but without a doubt, there's like a twang to it. This is, yeah, this is different.

Similar but different, but it sounds great. Yeah, cool, thank you. All right, good stuff. And then this kind of, this is great marketing. I don't put on my marketing hat, I just think it's really smart. You could continue with the, uh, the, the spirit of the,

uh, nineties, all rock scene that many of us are still clamoring for it with, you know, universe, but modernize that new universal honey song. That's, that's got it.

It's, it sounds of it's of this time. It's, it's doesn't sound like it was recorded in 1993. And then meanwhile, Tucker Lane really quickly, uh, where does the name tucker lane

come from well we were uh again you know trying to name the band um so a guitar player in the band is an old friend of mine i've known since grade six and he uh he's like well why don't we name it after where we live oh we're like what like toronto like sask, why don't we name it after where we live? And we're like, what? Like Toronto? Like Saskatoon? You know, we're going to call it that. What about, you know, what about our streets? And we live on Tucker Crescent, and he lived on Swan Lane. So it became Tucker Lane.

And it sounds like it's kind of like ambiguous. It's like Max Webster. Is it a person? Is there somebody named Tucker Lane? And there actually is. There's a wrestler named Tucker Lane. Oh, I had no idea. Fantastic.

Tell us, I know, again, the aforementioned pandemic that we're all battling. I hope it's not as bad in Saskatoon. I suspect it's not as bad in Saskatoon as it is here in Toronto. But what is the future for you two? You know, you're kind of still uh your your creative output is it sounds like the pandemic has been very very good for you now what is next for you with regards to your your music at tucker lane and uh universal honey

well we uh there's always lots to do we we played that we actually played our last our last live gig in the city here in the first week of March. And then I think the lockdown came the next week. And we socially distanced. We didn't see the band. We didn't see the guys in Tucker Lane for three months. And we were isolating and just laying low. And then when they said, okay okay you can increase your social bubble

uh we included the band and that's when we did uh we did we did one of those lockdown videos for a pretender song called don't get me wrong uh where we all love that song sure we recorded it everybody recorded their bed at home and we sort of assembled it and all filmed our own our own video and we put that out so that was fun and then we um when we got together we did uh we did another tucker lane song right yeah we did that's what we did and then we did um a campfire sessions we um played in the backyard we had a few socially distant people back there and we recorded a bunch of songs for Tucker Lane and for Universal Honey yeah we call the campfire so we did two nights one night in July and one night in August and

like I said it's a small crowd I think the first night we had 20 people and it's a big backyard here and that was Tucker Lane and the second night we did was Universal Honey and probably 25 because you're allowed 30 in the backyard. And there's like three cameras. It's very well shot. We have someone here that's a good friend of ours. And so they're well shot.

It sounds great. They're called the Campfire Sessions. They're on our YouTube channels, both, you know, Universal Honey and Tucker Lane's

YouTube channels. So we have those we've been releasing. We're doing some live streaming concerts coming up as well. We've got to give a shout out to Kevin Sick,

KSick Productions here, who's been helping us a lot with this. So, yeah, we recorded the night. We've been putting out the songs one at a time, but we have, you know, we're going to be doing more video with him and we are, we have a

live streaming event. It's going to be called Virtual Club Tour, where we're going to go to a different club every month in Saskatoon and do a live streaming event there without an audience. So we have that coming up. We're going to be doing that as well as we have Tucker Lane. It has a new single coming out on November 13th called Love or Hatred. And then we have our full album that's going to be released January 15th.

And it's called Random Fireworks on a Beach Obscured by Trees. That's the name of the album. The title should be a little longer, I think. Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, as Neil Morrison would say, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny. Leslie, what a pleasure.

Thanks so much for catching up with us. And I wish you much success. And when this COVID's gone and you find yourself in Toronto, it'd be my pleasure to have you in my backyard sessions. That would be awesome. Thanks so much for this. Thank you so much for having us. This has been awesome. You're amazing. Thank you. And that brings us to the end of our 745th

show. You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike. Universal Honey, they're at Honey Universal. Our friends at Great Lakes Brewery are at Great Lakes Beer. Palma Pasta is at Palma Pasta.

Sticker U is at Sticker U. CDN Technologies are at CDN Technologies. Joanne Glutish is at J Glutish. That's J G L U D I S H.

And Ridley Funeral Home are at Ridley F H. See you all next week. Cause my UI check has just come in Ah, where you been? Because everything is kind of rosy and green Yeah, the wind is cold But the snow, snow

Wants me to dance And your smile is fine And it's just like mine And it won't go away Cause everything is rosy and green Well you've been under my skin for more than eight years It's been eight years of laughter and eight years of tears And I don't know what the future can hold

Or do for me and you But I'm a much better man for having known you Oh, you know that's true because Everything is coming up Rosy and green Yeah, the wind is cold But the smell of snow Wants me today ¶¶ Well, I've been told that there's a sucker born every day But I wonder who, yeah, I wonder who

Maybe the one who doesn't realize there's a thousand shades of grey Cause I know that's true, yes I do I know it's true, yeah I know it's true, yeah. I know it's true. How about you? I'm picking up trash and then putting down ropes. They're broken in stocks, the class struggle explodes. And I'll play this guitar just the best that I can. And I'll play this guitar just the best that I can Maybe I'm not and maybe I am

But who gives a damn Because everything is coming up Rosy and gray Yeah, the wind is cold But the smell of snow Warms me today And your smile is fine This podcast has been produced by TMDS and accelerated by Roam Phone. Roam Phone brings you the most reliable virtual phone service to run your business

and protect your home number from unwanted calls. Visit RoamPhone.ca to get started. Because everything is coming up rosy and gray Yeah, the wind is cold but the smell of snow warms us today And your smile is fine and it's just like mine and it won't go away Because everything is rosy now Everything is rosy, yeah Everything is rosy now everything is rosy and everything is rosy and great