The Feminists were:
Mike Zobac - drums, vocals, arrangements. He also managed our Factor grants. Mike took charge of all of the band's projects still in progress when The Feminists broke up suddenly in February 2008 including a video for 21st Century Ghost and a live DVD of 'Can't Scream Loud Enough'.

Keith Grief - songwriter, lead vocals, guitar, arrangements.  Keith did all the website design and maintenance and designed all of The Feminists album art and packaging.  He designed our t-shirts, buttons, stickers, tour posters and postcards. He also organized and designed the live DVD show.

Ferdy Belland - bass, arrangements.  Ferdy booked all of our local shows.  He planned and booked most of our tours as well. 

Alison Mara - keyboards, vocals, arrangements, blogs, bio. I formed the band, named it, and managed its business and finances.

We made a smashing record that we're all so very proud of.  Well, I can't speak for anyone else.  But I'm pretty fucking proud. We have been posting previews of each track on the new album, and you all have been very good at listening to them.  But soon you will not have to wait, anxiously wringing your hands each Monday morning as you wait for Mike to post that week's offering. Our release date is fast approaching. Tuesday February 5, 2008 is the magical day.  'Can't Scream Loud Enough' will be available at Scratch Records, and other fine local establishments such as Zulu . CSLE will also be available online at Zunior Records (www.zunior.com).  Full digital release (Canada, U.S., U.K.) is happening through Scratch Recordings & Distribution.  You can check their online store (www.scratchrecords.com) for more details. But why settle for a crappy MP3 when you can purchase the cd itself, with its trippy and wonderfully unusual packaging?  What you really should do is come down to our cd release show.  Sat. Feb. 9 at The Media Club.  We are thrilled to be sharing the stage with The Smears, Portico, and Swan Vista.  Swan Vista is some of the same people as Foster Kare, specifically local guitar god Chad McQuarrie, so they're bound to be amazing.  Come see us play our new record live at the Media Club on Feb. 9.  And buy a cd afterwards, I beg you. We're out here in the wilderness.  No record label to love us and give us money, no fancy management team.  The only manager right now is me. And that's only by default.  Nobody else seems that interested in the thankless, never-ending task of keeping all the business stuff organized.  I need help.  A lackey to meekly carry out my bidding, or a high priced,  high powered suit wearing group to rescue me from this DIY hell.  But I digress. Come down on Saturday to see a great rock band playing their catchy as hell rock songs with ferocious intensity. Bring your friends. Your cool friends.  They'll dig it too.
    
 

Another day of tapping out messages that strike a good balance between humble, hopeful, and slightly arrogant to the corporate entities out there who might be interested in helping us put out the new album. No eager responses as of yet. How awesome would it be to convince somebody with a lot of money to press a few thousand copies for us. And then book us some killer tours and local shows, get us a ton of press. You see where I'm going with this. Into my too-often visited fantasy world. That beautiful place where musicians make a living by playing music. We are playing a show tomorrow. Railway Club, Wed. Aug. 29, 11:30pm. As part of the International Pop Overthrow Festival. My favorite Vancouver bands are playing that night as well, The Parlor Steps and Pepper Sands. We are going to play a new song too. So there are ample reasons to bring yourself and all your friends to cover thyselves in the glory of rock. See you all there. I will showing off my new muscles.


    
 

Prog Rock Spectacular Tonight! Need I say more? Tonight we are playing at The Red Room, 398 Richards St. 9:15-9:45. With A Ghost To Kill Again and Karen Foster. I'm trying to decide if it would to be too uncool to wear my AGTKA t-shirt tonight. Probably yes. Tonight we are going to explode with a blast of rock and roll intensity that will overwhelm your senses and leave you spent...but completely satisfied, hmmmm? Hope to see you all there. Come for Ghost @ 8, stay and watch the rest of the prog rock unfold in all its proggy glory.

    
 

Once again our kind friend Stokely has helped us out with our visual presentations. He has started a "The Feminists" channel on YouTube.com. Already it is the biggest collection of us on film on the entire internet! (That's not as impressive as it sounds. We are, after all, a relatively obscure - but incredibly hip - indie rock band) Anyway, there's videos for Brand New Common Sense, Sudden Departure of T, our live television performance, and even some footage that somebody filmed and posted when we played in Red Deer during our last tour. Hopefully we will be able to add our videos for Me And My Army and Hello Toronto. Anyone else out there who has filmed us and would like to post it, please do so. Unless we're playing badly and/or sound like crap. Then, just send it to us. Immediately.


    
 

On May 29, 2007 in the late afternoon, a small team of determined musicians, producers, mixers and masterers pushed a new rock and roll record out into the world. As yet unnamed, this little beauty contains ten new Feminist anthems of epic proportions. The next step is to somehow get the music out to you, the people. As of now, there are only a small handful of copies in existence.  Speaking only for myself,  I am thrilled to have had the chance to work with three fantastic professionals who really made this album sound great. Mike Southworth, Doug Fury, and Jamie Sitar. You guys are ridiculously skilled, have ears of steel, incredible musicality, intelligence, and a ferocious work ethic. It was an honor for me to work with all of you. It was easy and fun to work with all of you. I am very grateful to each of you for the hours and hours and hours you guys sunk into this project. After my last session, I realized that the happiest hours of my life ever were spent in the studio these past few months recording my keyboard parts with our producer/engineer Mike Southworth. I didn't expect this level of bliss and satisfaction during the recording process. All I know is, I want to do it again. That is the job for me. Get up, go to the studio, write and record keyboard parts all day and all night.

A couple of weeks ago we played at The Cobalt, 'Vancouver's Hardcore Bar'. We were generously received. Every so often we play for a receptive crowd whose mouths open in slack jawed amazement as our set progresses. To my great satisfaction, this happened at The Cobalt. The people seemed to be reserving their judgment somewhat as we began to play. Oh sure, they pointed their faces towards the stage but there was a coolness in the response as they evaluated our rock ability. I think the turning point was provided by Mike during his drum solo on Kohotek, during which I screamed uncontrollably in admiration. After that, all the hardcore kids embraced us with fist pumping, howls of approval and much arm waving. We finished and started tearing down, but they demanded an encore. At the Cobalt. Go figure. It's not that surprising, though. Punks and hardcore people are usually quite open-minded, and those are the best kind of people for us to play for.  After the show, there was a nice dose of glory. Sometimes we get that, when lots of people come up afterwards and express their gratefulness to us for having rocked them utterly and blown their minds to pieces. Kind of makes all the horrifically awful shows with terrible bands in empty rooms after an 1100km drive seem less painful. I signed my first autograph. I mean, I've signed cd's before, but this was a bus transfer. I was embarrassed. Was he serious? Was he making fun of me? Ah, the glamorous life of a rock star. So, tomorrow we are going to play another good show at The Media Club, with The Parlour Steps for their cd release show. I do love the Steps. They are pretty much my favorite Vancouver band these days.

We're recording. New record is coming along very well. Instrumental parts are done, and this month we will do vocals, mixing, and mastering. It sounds good. This week we will all have access to rough mixes of the songs with all the parts for the first time, and I for one am pretty stoked. So far, only our fabulous producer Mike Southworth and myself have heard the songs with all the parts. I'm excited that the guys are finally going to hear all the new keyboard stuff. Their parts sound great, of course. For the first time, we have made an album that we will not be able to play live. I mean, we can play the songs fine and have been doing so for the last year or so. But there are so many parts on this new record. It sounds so lush and thick even without being mixed or adding the vocals.  The song-paintings on the record will be an entirely different experience compared to the live performances. Neat. This time around I was able to play my parts on real instruments. So my piano parts are on a real piano, with all of those lovely overtones and sympathetic vibrations that can only come from wood, metal, natural materials. My rhodes parts are with a real rhodes, my wurly parts are with a real wurly. And best of all, my organ parts were played with a real leslie. I got to play draw-bars. I got to put exactly the right amount of spin on the leslie. I'm getting warm and fuzzy just remembering it. My synth parts were augmented by Southworth's enormous banks of synth sounds. Instead of merely hundreds of sounds to choose from, I had thousands. Overall, I'm thrilled. I practiced my ass off during the whole recording process. Who knows if we're ever going to make another record, especially one with a $20,000 budget. I wanted to enjoy this opportunity to the fullest and capture the maximum best effort that I could put forward. The album is really taking shape. I can hardly wait to hear how the vocal parts turn out. Also we've got some good shows coming up here in Vancouver. This Friday we're at the Cobalt. Come on down. I'm looking forward to showing off the band again. It feels like it's been a long time since we've assembled ourselves to play some rock for the people. In fact, we haven't been playing or rehearsing much since we started the recording process. So it will be good to get back into the performance saddle again.

We were trapped in Ontario for three days due to a winter storm of historic proportions. I'm way behind on my writing, that's why there haven't been any posts for awhile...we've been sleeping outdoors in the snow. More on that later.

So here we were at The Horseshoe Tavern, one of the most famous clubs in Canada for sure, where hundreds of famous bands have played memorably amazing sold out shows. Yay team. There was no one here yet, but it was early. We had promptly arrived for load in and there was a highly serious sound guy there who quickly and decisively organized the sets, gear, and band order. It's a relief to work with a sound guy who takes control of stage managing the show. All I have to do is relax, let him worry about everything, and do whatever he says. I was slightly intimidated by the Horseshoe, and the sound tech's level of professionalism. Fortunately, this band functions as a well-oiled machine. We can set up in about 8 minutes onstage. We can tear down and have all of our gear offstage in about 3 minutes. Most of the time all of our brilliant efficiency is wasted. We stand around and wait for other bands to slowly set up their gear in between getting beers. I watch in agony as bands take one piece of drum hardware at a time off the stage while stopping to congratulate each other and get another beer. Why do bands do this? Why do they shorten their own time onstage and everybody elses's as well? Don't they like playing music? I want to get up there and play loud fast songs real bad. It boggles my mind why a so-called musician would want to avoid that. Suddenly it was our turn to play. At the stroke of 10:20, exactly when we were supposed to start our set, we were ready to go. 'Everything set?' the sound guy asked us. 'Yes, sir', I said. 'Right on. Points for punctuation', he replied. My ears turned pink with pleasure, as they always do when I receive a meaningful compliment. Here we were at one of the most famous clubs in Canada and we had impressed the sound guy before playing a single note. There were about 70 people waiting expectantly at our feet for us to blow their minds. Is there any limit to what we can do all by our little selves? We had carefully designed a set of our finest offerings. We had friends in the audience. I were dying to show this enormous self-important city what we sounded like, to see heads swivel towards the stage helpless in our thrall. Song, song, song. No talking except 'Hi we're The Feminists' and 'thanks a lot' in between songs. It sounded amazing onstage. Crisp, clear, balanced, not too loud. It was so easy to sing in tune, comp for the guitar and bass solos, and hear myself over the band during my solos. I could see people continually streaming into the room where we were playing, stop, watch, and then move closer to the stage. Keith and I were drenched in sweat by the beginning of the second song. Ferdy was stomping from the waist it seemed, taking huge Viking strides all around the stage, his bass raised high as he marched to and fro. I felt like I was in the middle of a tropical hurricane. It was hot, humid, and there were big cymbal crashes and distorted guitar screams flying everywhere. There were hot blinding lights that flashed at random intervals. After every song, there was a half breath of silence, then applause, whistling, cheering. It's good to hear that half breath of silence. It means people were listening intently and were taken by surprise by the song ending. Considering that these people had never heard our songs before, that's pretty good. We played for exactly 30 minutes and had cleared our gear from the stage 5 minutes later. Our friends gathered round to express how much they enjoyed the show. I found the sound guy and thanked him for making it so easy for us to play well. He said we were good. My ears turned pink again. We sold a whack of merch, there were actually people waiting for us at our table when we got offstage to buy cd's. There was a gal from Nanaimo who had seen us there and was happy to see us again. Dave Ulrich, who kindly peddles our wares at his online record store, came to see us and said good encouraging stuff to me. Keith was deep in conversation with a woman who was interviewing him, it turned out. We got an e-mail from her a couple of days later with a link to her article. We stuck around to hear the other bands. I couldn't help but notice (because I'm sort of a competitive jerk) that the crowd response was bigger for us than any of the other bands. We came, we saw, we kicked ass. Take that, Toronto. You're not so intimidating after all. I like it that our band can play a fantastic show in Canada's biggest city to a sizeable, appreciative audience. Tomorrow we play our second Toronto show, at The Boat. We are staying at Keith Hamilton's house. Keith is an awesome promoter/musician who we stayed with last year as well. Tomorrow's show is one of his, so there's nothing to worry about.