Upcoming Tour Dates

July 23: Pop Montreal/Wavelength Showcase - The Garrison - Toronto, ON
August 06: Wolfe Island Festival - Waterkeepers Showcase - Kingston, ON
August 10: Summerworks Festival - Lower Ossington Theatre - Toronto, ON
August 12/13: The Town Hall - Bayfield, ON - with Ron Sexsmith

Having started out as a visual artist, Smith’s pieces were exhibited in galleries throughout Vancouver before he had even finished high school. When work began on his first complete album, Christopher retreated to his studio of choice—a bedroom. Modest in execution, the resulting recording, The Beckon Call, is a hushed and intimate affair.

“Gently Gently”, the first single from The Beckon Call, is available today with 2 b-sides via Smith’s website, thebeckoncall.com. The video, with shimmering snow globe landscapes designed by Hitoshi Okamoto, was created by the Vancouver-based collective SALAZAR. The feelings of loneliness and vulnerability that course through The Beckon Call are perfectly crystallized in this tale of a young adventurer lost in the wild.

May tour dates in New York and the Pacific Northwest will soon be announced. In the meantime Christopher Smith and his band, also The Beckon Call, will open for Lightning Dust at The Cultch in Vancouver on April 25.

Amidst several attempts at completing a full length album the band was taken off task by numerous personal upheavals, artistic miss-directs, and an appearance on Yo Gabba Gabba--clearly a confusing time. Pulled together from a number of recording sessions that took place during 2007 and 2008, Moths is a document of songwriter Scott LD Walker’s angers and frustrations, resulting in a typically Salteens-like call to arms in attempt to overcome life’s hardships.

Pre-order and stream the EP now!

Die Stadt Muzikanten was released in Canada earlier this month receiving high praise and glowing reviews from the publications such as the Toronto Star who said, “not unlike late-period Elliott Smith gone wild… This will be big,” and Exclaim! who stated, “Woodpigeon’s third album is a bold declaration of who the band are and what they hope to achieve in the future.” Die Stadt Muzikanten debuted last week on the CMJ Radio chart at #22, and Hamilton will be in New York the week of February 22nd to record new material. Hamilton is a relentless songwriter. Die Stadt Muzikanten, clocking in at 15 tracks and 78 minutes is packaged with the bonus lp, BALLADEER / to all the guys i’ve loved before, recorded this past Autumn in Banff, Alberta with Steve Albini, Howard Bilerman and Husky Huskulds. Treasury Library Canada will also be packaged with the bonus lp, Houndstooth Europa.

While this one-upmanship may suggest that Smith and Woodpigeon’s Mark Hamilton have a competitive relationship (which may well be the case) the pair of them actually get along quite well and are collaborating on not 1 but 2 EPs to be released in 2010. Christopher Smith + The Beckon Call will also open Woodpigeon’s Vancouver CD release show on January 16th at the Biltmore in support of Die Stadt Muzikanten out earlier that week.

Smith’s debut album, The Beckon Call, will be released in the Spring of 2010. The Keepsake EP is available here, or through iTunes and emusic. While “Christmas Day” isn’t on either, you can download it free below.

• Downloads

• “Christmas Day” for Christmas
• “Piece by Piece” from Keepsake

Video

A Jason C Myers production in collaboration with Jon Morris and Todd M Duym of elevater.tv.
Special thanks to Monitor Digital Solutions, William F Whites, Grip Brothers, Filmgroup, Hearing Protection Required, Jen Gordon, Alexis and Eric Hoffman.

Watch it here.

Pre-order Die Stadt Muzikanten before the end of December and you will receive the album before release date, PLUS you will be emailed with a special access code to download exclusive songs leading up to the release. The exclusives include solo acoustic performances of songs from Die Stadt Muzikanten, and each comes with a new illustration by Mark.

The first 100 copies sold will include a Die Stadt Muzikanten poster featuring the art of Jeff Kulak.

Songwriter Mark Andrew of the Hamiltons, breathes a glorious new life into Die Stadt Muzikanten, an album both inspired by an extended stay in Germany and of the comparative lives of his ancestors. Hamilton found himself fascinated by the endless inspiration as he recollected thoughts of his childhood and took in the sounds and smells of a place once inhabited by his grandparents, to whom the album is dedicated. “I started thinking in terms of couples,” explains Hamilton of his time in Berlin, “of people coming and going, of walls and windows. Images of boating across the ocean to an unknown new life, and how so many of the movements I took run in the opposite direction from theirs.” Upon his return to his small Calgary apartment, the songs revealed themselves and Die Stadt Muzikanten was born.

Recently included in the CBC Radio 2 ‘Great Canadian Song Quest’ competition, Woodpigeon is one of 5 artists from the province of Alberta who may be chosen to compose a song inspired by locations as chosen by Canadians. You can hear the first sampling off Die Stadt Muzikanten, and vote for Woodpigeon now by going to http://www.cbc.ca/radio2/songquest/.

So it seems very fitting that we post this song off Die Stadt Muzikanten recorded for a CBC Radio 2 live taping, which is coincidentally about a place in Alberta.

• Downloads

• Morningside CBC Radio 2 live recording of a song from Die Stadt Muzikanten

This Thursday afternoon Christopher Smith and his band, The Beckon Call, will board a BC Ferries vessel and will make their way to Victoria where they’ll play their first show ever outside of their hometown.  Smith will open for Final Fantasy in the Alix Goolden Performance Hall, an 800-seat theatre and former church sanctuary.  No pressure!

While Smith’s debut album (also called The Beckon Call) isn’t due out until February, we thought we should release something to commemorate Thursday’s show.  So yesterday afternoon 4 of us, Smith included, gathered ‘round to handmake 100 copies of the Keepsake EP.   This extremely short run of gocco-printed EPs will be available offstage and online through the Boompa shop. The EP will also be available digitally on November 3rd, minus the bonus cover song downloadable below.

Upcoming Shows

Sep 24: Victoria, BC - Alix Goolden Hall w. Final Fantasy, Timber Timbre
Sep 26: Vancouver, BC - Little Mountain w. Woodpigeon, Thighs

• Downloads

• “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’”
  from Keepsake

Of the blog tour, Reverie’s Marc De Pape told Spinner:

“The four or so years it took to make the record reflect the distance and time between each of us, but I feel like it also removed certain pressures that go with being in a band. Pressures we consciously chose not to worry about. The result is our debut record, not our debut as a band. In fact, we’ve never played any of the songs on the record as a band. It’s very fitting that this tour I’ve shot and recorded documents the performance of the songs, in their simplest form, rather than the band trying to replicate what was intended to be, and should remain, a recording.”

Watch “The Leisure Lost”