Baby Eagle on tour... I think Steve took this photo so he isn't in it.

Important info first: Baby Eagle’s “Bone Soldiers” is streaming in full on Exclaim.ca right now.

If you wanna buy this record, you can pre-order for a discount right from You’ve Changed. It’s out everywhere next week. March 6!

Baby Eagle, Bone Soldiers

Okay, let me lay it out for you here. Straight up:

The lineup on “Bone Soldiers” is basically a supergroup of rock and roll hotties. Best, nicest dudes. Some of the most charming and hilarious people to have ever slept on my couch. I regularly wish that they’d all just up & move to Peterborough so we can hang out until last call every weekend. The afterparty’s at my house.

For real. Everything they do is magic. You probably remember Steve Lambke & Will Kidman from the Constantines. But also, Spencer Burton’s project, Grey Kingdom, is fucking killer. Ian Kehoe’s band, Marine Dreams, is totally badass. Oh and then there’s the hottest bass player I’ve ever boned – Nick Ferrio (and his feelings). Uh, the feelings are Nick’s bandmates, and I have not boned any of them, though they are also nice dudes. Anyway…

Spencer trying on clothes at Sympathy for the Rebel

Way back in the mid-2000s, I took my mom to see Julie Doiron at the Drake. I had just seen her play in Peterborough and her set was  really lovely, &  quiet & full of lots of anecdotes about how she loved her kids. I figured that moms love mom-musicians, right? This time, Julie was so nervous & talked about how she wanted to quit drinking and quit music and go back to school. It was…uncomfortable.  My mom wasn’t so into it.

But! Baby Eagle opened the show, and we both loved that. She had a massive mom-crush on Steve Lambke. At the time he played a bunch of stuff that would be on “No Blues”. It was awesome.

& now years later, my partner-in-crime, who has been in so many bands, is playing in my favourite band. This summer when Nick was away for many months, Steve would email Nick some rough demos of these songs, & Nick would email them to me (secret’s out!) like the best long-distance gift.

In my opinion, every record that Steve puts out is better than the last, which means that this is the absolute best Baby Eagle record (just like all the other ones!) I might at some point be embarrassed to have said this on the internet because I will definitely run into these dudes soon. I try to play it cool in front of the famous music-types that Nick knows, but I’m gonna say it anyway:

Steve Lambke is I think the smartest, best, most poetic lyricist making music in Canada right now.  You know how John K. Samson wrote all those lovely, narrative-heavy,  thoughtful and poetic songs for The Weakerthans and now there’s going to be a book? Hopefully there will one day be a Steve Lambke book. I thought about quoting some lyrics here for you but then thought better of it because when you buy the record they’re typed right on the back, and you should buy the record.

There was lots of band practice happening in my living room during the Baby Eagle October tour and I spent a lot of time making vats of mediocre soup & reading surly feminist Can-lit and secretly feeling very, very, very excited. I think I saw 3 or 4 shows on that tour & every time I caught myself thinking about how I should buy a record and then remembering that it didn’t exist (hadn’t even begun to be recorded yet!)  I’ve been looking forward to sharing these songs with allllll my friends for so long now.

As well, touring generally seems like a long draining trek involving sleeping on floors, balancing many strong personalities, spending hours in the car, eating shitty food, and wearing the same underwear for many days in a row. Part of my band girlfriend duties involve sympathetically listening to reports home about all these things. However, in my second-hand observation, touring with Baby Eagle is  a really supportive, fun time involving lots of record shopping & games of pool. You should see them if you can! If you live in Ptbo, Baby Eagle is playing March 28 at the Garnet and I’ll see you there.

Before that though, if you live in Ptbo you can see Grey Kingdom with Nick Ferrio and his Feelings this Sunday at the Spill. The show is $5, or $15 including a chicken dinner. I can’t make that shit up. Here’s the fbook event page.