So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodnight!

Well friends, it's been fun. It's been amazing at times and a let down at other times. When we finished our first tour across Canada in the summer of 2008, i described touring with the Painted Birds like roller coaster ride between the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. There would be a good show, and then a terrible show, and then a mediocre show, but there was always that great next show.

That same year we embarked on an even longer tour across Canada in the fall and i discovered that the lows could last even longer. I recall a 12 to 15 day stretch of around 9 shows where there were no highs. No positive points, nothing amazing to lift our spirits. We were in the desert.

Ladies and gentlemen, for the Painted Birds 2009 was a return of that desert. While i'm only now reporting our demise, some among us believe that it actually happened about a year ago. Last february, for emotional reasons perhaps, I neglected to report to you, our friends and followers, that TPB had parted ways with one of its key members; Shane Lynch. While we'd parted with drummers before, Shane had worked his way into the fabric of the painted birds. We told ourselves we could carry on but i don't think we truly believed it, and some, perhaps at times, didn't really want to.

The rest of 2009 was basically a front. for show. Like a married couple putting on the happy face to make it seem that everything is happy and ok, but behind closed doors we truly weren't happy or ok. The Peak Performance Project seemed to offer some hope. Shawn recently explained to me that to him the contest was like a window in a jail cell; the last chance for escape. Josh, had also announced his possible departure from the band long before we didn't place in the top 3. When we were included in the top 20 bands, Josh let us know that he would stick around to see if we could win it, but he hadn't found the Painted Birds creatively stimulating for quite some time. If TPB was a struggling married couple, it had just become pregnant, and the Peak Performance Project was the baby that we thought we could make it work for.

All of this is not to say that we as people don't get along anymore. On the contrary, Josh, Shawn and I are still great friends, and all wish the best for eachother in our future pursuits. We just agree that this project has run its course. We were ok with being economically broke for a while, but something is gone. The dream of standing out and making it that brought Shawn and I together 4 years ago has died and all the B.S. of this industry with its too many promoters who, too knowingly, screw over band after band just toss more dirt on the carcass.

To draw this to a close, we're done with this dream. We're grateful for everything that has happened along the way. We met so many amazing people and are thankful for everyone of you who believed in us, let us sleep on their floor, listen to our music, and came out to shows. We'll never forget that. I'm so thankful that Shawn was and still is my best friend, and i'm extremely grateful that we chose to pursue this exciting path together. It's sad to him and I that we need to now choose new paths but i'm so happy that we can keep our great friendship and share all the memories. I'm writing this into our closing agreement right now, that though we as a band have retired, we will still be forced to play songs for whoever cares to invite us over for dinner as long as there are a couple of guitars or a piano around.

I will continue to make music and will let you know soon as to where and under which name it will be posted. (I'm not sure whether Dominique Fricot is the best performer name...;)

Thanks for the ride

So long
Farewell
Auf Wiedersehen
Goodnight

How Dom Hit Rock Bottom

How did this happen? If you read my last blog entry you might come to the same conclusion that I have. The fame of this week had gotten to us, or ME i should say. I'd just heard our new single "Wash Away" for the 3rd time on the radio at Virgin's 95.3 fm and my mind started imagining the royalties pouring in. We're talking 3 or 4 digits, if of course you count the 2 digits behind the decimal point.
So i'm driving home last night at about 2:30 AM while listening to Motley Crue's 'Dr. Feelgood' on cassette. i'm feeling pretty good or rather I'm feeling REALLY good. It's the Crue's greatest album of all time and really there are no albums that consistently make me feel i should be wearing tighter pants. As i come around the last couple corners and pull into my driveway Vince Neil committing vehicular manslaughter couldn' be farther from my mind. Suddenly, the sensation of the van tilting forward as i come to a stop on our perfectly flat driveway make me realize that i've over shot the driveway.
In front of my driveway is my lawn, so I didn't do any massive damage or kill a lead singer from the 80's metal band, Hanoi Rocks but I had gotten myself and my van in a little bit of a predicament. It has been raining in Vancouver for weeks and my lawn is basically a muddy swimming pool. I attempt to back out but my attempts just dig me deeper into the mud. After 2 trials i figure that 2:30 in the morning probably isn't the best time to be squealing my tires. (sidenote: i don't know why i was comparing myself to the likes of Motley Crue, i can't even squeal my tires, so not rock'n'roll).
Walking away from the car i regain hope. Maybe if i drive forward enough on my lawn, i can then back all the way out and skip the ledge that is my driveway, the lawn will look like crap but at least i won't have the embarrassment of a van that is sinking into my lawn.
I restart the van and try.
Outcome: failure, after again squealing my tires i've now dug myself further into the dirt.
I go to sleep deciding not to think about it until the next morning. At 9 AM i wakeup look out the window and decide to go back to sleep and do something about it when i wake up later.
Eventually i call jim's towing and $55 later all is back to normal minus the massive tire holes in my lawn....I hope that doesn't come out of my damage deposit.
(Caring about damage deposit= -20 rock'n'roll points)

We Hit the BIg Time

That’s right, it’s red carpet time. Time to crack out the champagne and make a toast to the end of living in a house that’s falling into the ground. No more TV Dinners or showering at public pools because we’re out of hot water. We’ve made it baby. It’s big time time. For some reason the Universe decided to make the Painted Birds ultra mega super insane-o rock stars, and all in one week.
Virgin Radio 95.3 FM Vancouver selected our new single “Wash Away” as their Best of BC song for this week (Jan 18-23). That means they’ll be playing “Wash Away” as if it were a hit for this whole week. Like 12 to 15 times. Man, I’m just imagining all the possible royalties we might collect off of this and while I write this I already have another window open booking a flight to Hawaii.
We also decided to hit the world with a mass media double WHAMMY. We’ll be performing on Urban Rush this Tuesday, January 19th. Check us out on Shaw TV at 5 PM Pacific time. It’s gonna be awesome.

Dom “probably in too silly of a mood to make this post” Fricot

The Winner of The 100.5 Reasons to Win Contest!

We're very happy to announce the winner of our Facebook Contest and share with you a video. Our friend and fan Carly posted over 15 different status updates in our final push in the Peak Performance Project. As one of her status updates mentioned "what girl wouldn't like to be serenaded by (our song) So Beautiful", we took the initiative to bring that very private serenade to her house.

Congratulations to Carly and all that took part in our contest. We sadly did not place in the Peak Performance Project but will put our heads down and continue to power through it.

Watch Shawn and Dom's very covert mission here:

100.5 Reasons To Win Contest and Video

As the Peak Performance Project winds down, and Christmas is fast upon us, The Painted Birds have decided to throw another awesome Facebook Contest!

As some of you may seen our video "The 100.5 Reasons TPB Should Win the Peak Performance Project", you may have noticed that the amount of reasons posted did not add up to 100.5 reasons. In this contest we're asking you, our friends and fans, to help us complete the list of reasons. Don't worry if we go over 100.5 all the better.

How you compete is easy, simply type the reasons you think that The Painted Birds deserve to win as your status on Facebook and make sure to tag two things in the status:
1.The Painted Birds
and
2. One of the members of TPB, i.e. Josh McNorton, Shawn Berke, or Dominique Stephane Fricot.
Tagging is super easy, all you have to do is put an "@" sign before whatever you're going to tag. i.e. @the Painted Birds or @Josh Mcnorton.

If you're having trouble tagging the band make sure you've gone to The Painted Birds profile page on Facebook and clicked "Become a Fan" at the top.

So for example, if you'd like to take part in the contest and help us promote the band you could type a reason like this as your facebook status.

Because @Josh Mcnorton and @The Painted Birds have such sweet beards, oh i just want to groom them!

or

Because @shawn berke of @the painted birds doesn't hear the bass, he feels it in his bones.

We'll keep track of reasons and the person who comes up with the best reasons as well as the person who posts the most reasons as their status on facebook will receive...drum roll....

A very special surprise holiday package from the Painted Birds! Believe me, it's gonna be sweet. Take a look at the Photo at the top of this post, yeah, how would you like to be as lucky as the girl in the photo we're each holding?? I'm sure you'd like it a lot.

Now go, post some new statuses. Contest ends this Friday December 4th at midnight.

"Wash Away" Acoustic at the Streaming Cafe

After a very long drawn out trip, we had 2 great shows in Kelowna. On Friday night we played a show at the Habitat opening for Ohbijou: a great band from Ontario that absolutely delighted the room. On Saturday night, after getting new grippier tires for our van we had our very own show at the Streaming Cafe. Thanks to all that came out and tuned in online. For those of you that don’t know, the Streaming Cafe is a new venue in Kelowna that books music acts and films and records the shows to ’stream’ them for the audiences watching live online. The venue, the staff, the audience and the whole experience marks one of the band’s favourite shows of all time and we’re very happy to have great footage of the show.

On a personal note I was very pleased to find out that two old friends of mine, Greg Sczebel and Dan Bremnes played the night before me and after me at the Streaming Cafe. In highschool I took a music composition class with both these gents and it's so cool to see that we're all still slugging it out on the road with our music. All the best to you boys!

For your viewing pleasure here is an acoustic performance of our single “Wash Away” at the Streaming Cafe.

Enjoy!

How to Paint A Dying Bird Back to Life

So we've made it to Kelowna. Twas a long long trip to get here from vancouver, but we made it. Josh and Shawn are currently making a trip to Kal-Tire, while I sit at an old friends house writing this blog to you.

You may be wondering how getting to Kelowna from Vancouver is a long trip when really it should only take a bit over 4 hours, and you'd be even more surprised to find out that it took us around 8 hours to make the trip. Well wonder no further for i will tell you how such a trip could take so long.

I'd woken up with premonitions about our journey on Thursday night as the last time we'd driven the Coquihalla we'd hit snow, fishtailed, put on our cables and then had them break about 20 minutes later. We still didn't have new tires, and now that i think of it we hadn't purchased new tires since we'd purchased our van in the spring of 2008. Since then we've taken our van on 4 tours, 2 all the way across canada. We've put about 45,000 clicks on our van since we purchased it and the tires weren't even new then. So tires, not fit for the journey, but we had purchased new chains.

Around 1 PM we saw somewhat of an omen. On a curb just of Main Street and Terminal a pigeon was lying on the sidewalk, flapping one wing and looking like it needed to be put out of it's misery. After our roommate Jarred, who decided to make the trip with us, declared it to be a bad omen, I said the we should probably knock on wood. Shawn was quick to correct me saying that it was kind of difficult to knock on wood in our van, where there was no wood. Save for the guitars that were in their cases, and us being far too lazy to open up the cases etc, etc. Plus we're really not that superstitious.

I made an off color joke, no pun intended, about the only way we could undo this omen is if we could somehow paint the bird back to life. I think acrylic and oil paint would be a bit heavy, much more suited for putting the bird out of it's misery. We'd probably have to use a light water color or the spray cans. But we needed to be in Kelowna by 6 and like I said, we're really not that superstitious...

We head for the highway and it's Friday so of course we hit bad traffic for an hour or so. After getting some gas and being relieved from the driver's seat by Shawn I hit the back seat for some sweet sweet nap time. I awake as the van is fishtailing up the Coquihalla. We immediately pull over and start to put chains on the tires. On the side of the road we quickly realize that our headlights have both burnt out. Our high beams still work but not one, but both headlights are burnt out. Looks like we're driving the whole way with our high beams on.

The next thing we notice is that it's cold. It's snowing, and it's really not as temperate as vancouver. Josh quickly jumps back in the driver seat announcing that he'll back us over the chains when we tell him to. We lay the chains out, josh backs over them, and we then proceed to struggle to get the chains hooked on the the tires.
Now two things make this difficult, or three, three things make this difficult. 1. It's dark and you can't see behind the wheel very well to hook up the chains, 2. your hands are freezing, cuz you're a city boy who couldn't have possibly thought about how cold it is in the interior and 3. you have to get that chain as tight as possible which is tougher than ever with painfully numb fingers. If you don't you'll hear a rickety tickety clackety clackety in your wheel well as you drive.

After much cursing and struggling with the cold josh opens the door and asks us if we want to borrow the gloves he's wearing. More cursing ensues as the hilarity of the gloves being on the guy who's keeping himself warm in the van. We finally get the chains on and depart. Moments later the rickety tickety starts up in the left wheel well. We stop tighten them a bit, continue on. Rickety tickety continues. We then proceed to stop and tighten the chains every couple minutes because we just cant get the chains tight enough. At some point we even improvise and use other metal clips to connect the chains and use a pair of wire snips to tighten the metal clips around the chain. Drive, stop, tighten, curse, drive, clickety clackety, stop, curse, tighten. This goes on for 2 hours.

It's now 630 and we're still on the Coquihalla, and we were supposed to be in Kelowna at 6. We text the owner of the Habitat, who thankfully gives us no stress and tells us to just get there safe. We love Quinn, he's the Best. Finally, after tightening the chain for the 9th time, we figure we've got it now, nipped it in the bud.

Wrong. We drive away and in moments we hear the loudest clickety clackety yet. We inspect to see that the chain has now broken. It's at this time that i must advise you, or perhaps you can deduce this yourself.
Don't buy chains. Or do, but if you can, just get winter tires. It's so much easier. Yes it costs a lot of money, but isn't hassle an expense??

In the end we just slugged it out with our old crappy tires. We arrived in Kelowna at 9, a half hour after we were supposed to go on, but Quinn the Habitat's proprietor, who really is the BEST, let us play a full set, and it was tonnes of fun. Ohbijou the headliner rocked as well, check them out.

So how do you paint a dying bird back to life??? I don't think you do it with paint. Unless it's that spray paint that jerry o'connell used to make himself fly in My Secret Identity. Great show. Wish it was still on TV.