Hey everyone..
Well it’s a new year, and THE SHAFTMEN are very excited.
Thanks to everyone for their 2006 support. We took about a 7 week hiatus, and we are back rehearsing in our an easy going hobby mode.
In 2007 we are planning to book more festival dates, and less hotel gigs. It’s a natural fit. We have a strong album of original songs, and some dandy hard rockin’ covers we make into our own. The one hour set in a festival format is perfect, because we just nail it each time out.
Speaking of new songs we are currently tackling about 7 new ones. High Times is a mid tempo minor chord stunner that is quite a different groove. Take A Good Look Around currently Gil’s fave is a hard punching rocker in the tradition of early Free with an Elvis Costello lyric snarl. Do You Get The Message is a jazz/blues inflected workout that features John Savard playing like you never heard him before. Northern Rock & Roll Scene a 50’s style blues rocker pays homage to everything Timmins, South Porcupine, Matheson, Cochrane Iroquois Falls and things Northern Ontario in it’s lyrics. Lastly we may start work on Paycheck Blues, a ripping Stones type rocker, and we also may adapt 2 old Smuggler songs titled City Boogie and Fooled You both two fisted rockers. In addition we have played Gold Mine one of my solo album tracks in an electric mode and it received a huge audience reaction.
I have a lot of other songs scattered around my basement on cassette, so as you can see we have easily enough to fill a new album. We also are currently working a small acoustic set for a Micky J’s gig, which could come in handy at other venues as well.
We have also submitted our album to Sirius and XM Satellite Radio, and are working on getting airplay on CBC’S SATURDAY NIGHT Blues show, and looking to feature columns for SOCAN’s words and music magazine , Maple Blues Magazine, and lo and behold maybe a record company to distribute our album……JOHN EMMS-jan-2006
