St Paul – Battle of the Bands – St. Paul, Alberta – May 13th 2006

A couple weeks since our last gig and all the guys in the band are pretty pumped to be playing our first Battle of the Bands. Organized by our buddy Brit in St. Paul (from Cheat2Win), the show is taking place at the St. Paul Recreation Centre. There is around 7 bands playing, and Judges include a Recording Studio Owner, people from The Goat (Llyodminister radio station), and people from the local news paper.

We left Saturday afternoon to head out to gig not knowing when we would be playing (you usually don’t find out your time slot until you get to the Battle of the Bands). After arriving, the band got together and met up with Brit to see if there was anything he needed help with, he was good to go so I grabbed a table and put out Living Illusion CDs and other Promo material for people to take.

Sean (our drummer) pulled straws and we got a pretty good time slot, around 9:30PM. All the bands competing were Grassdorf, Se7en Sided, Three Seeds, Hasik, Methodical Breed, Grey Matter, Living Illusion and Acclaimed Candid (We’ll at least that’s whom was on the poster). The show started and bands started playing. The Venue was massive, and it was a concrete room, the sound quality I must admit was not very good, for any of the bands.

One of the DJ’s from The Goat did all of the introductions and there was a DJ playing house music between each band. The switch from band to band took about 5 – 10 minutes. We started getting our stuff ready in the green room as our time to hit the stage was soon to be upon us. Se7en Sided (the band before us) finished off there set and we started loading in as they teared down.

The Goat DJ introduced us and we started our set. The sound in the room was border line horrible even though we were very performing well to the giant room. At some point of the night one of the girls on the floor started stroking Jason’s Mic stand, gotta love small towns. The crowd was good, we had a bunch of people that saw us at The Loft last time we were in St. Paul and they came out a second time for another dose. We played are last song hard and heavy said thank you and had to rush off the stage for the next band.

After that we all met up in the green room and chilled as we had to wait a couple hours until the winner was announced. We killed time via drinking and bullshiting with other bands. We also found out that the singer from Methodical Breed, one of the competing bands, used to be in a group with our drummer Sean Kaminski.

So after what seemed like forever Cheat2Win (the headliners who weren’t competing) were about to take the stage, but before they went on The Goat DJ announced the winners of the Battle of the Bands, 2nd Place: Se7en Sided, 1st Place: Living Illusion. Needless to say we were all pretty stoked about winning and ran out to the floor to rock out to some Cheat2Win tunes.

After the gig we headed over to Brits (as we were crashing there) and chatted with him about the event and what not. Needless to say he also agreed that the sound at the Recreation Centre was horrible. It wasn’t long after that that we all crashed and went to bed.

The next morning we got up, hit up Smittys for breakfast and headed home. Another show well done.

Happy and Fulfilled,
Shane Lamotte