October 19. Watch ARTV for Pacifika and Gadji-Gadjo blending their musical genres on Pour Un Soir Seulement. On the radio, from 7.00 pm onwards, CKAJ-FM in Quebec will broadcast 5 songs from Asunciòn during the third segment of the show “Musiques Autour du Monde”.  For those outside Quebec www.ckaj.org then click on CKAJ en Direct.

montreal to winnipeg to london. july 2009.

wednesday. we arrive ahead of the storm system.
the festival transportation crew believes we are travelling with only one guitar and brings a mini van for the guitar and our 4 bums.
whoops. we travel with 3 guitars, 1 bass, 1 cajon, 8 cymbals, 1 conga, 1 glockenspiel, 1 case of hand percussion, 1 case of guitar guitar effects & cables and electronic doohickeys, 1 sampler, 1 microphone and 4 suitcases. but the winnipeg folk festivals makes very few mistakes and we are all happily eating dinner at the hotel within the hour. it appears that green day is in the city. on my way down to the instrument lock-up with a full cart, their drummer, who seems to be quite enjoying his winnipeg visit, passes me in the lobby with a wild grin on his face and tells me to have safe travels.
 
the winnipeg folk festival., one of the crown jewels on any performer's summer touring schedule. this years line-up is ridiculous.
elvis costello. iron & wine. neko case. martha wainright. king sunny ade and his african beats. oumu sangare. burning spear. loreena mckennitt. xavier rudd. there's 10,000 campers on site and many thousand more each day for the performances.

i wake up on thursday morning to a symphony of thunder. seems the storm has arrived. i feel relief because most likely the system will blow itself out by the late afternoon. which it does. our first performance is a 40 minute mainstage set at 7pm. this is not the norm for first timers like ourselves. chris frayer (the artistic director) likes what we do and likes to give the good people of winnipeg a dose of something new every year. thank you chris. the crowd is warm and appreciative. 40 minutes flies by in 7 seconds. of course it does.

Backstage now - well actually to the side of the stage - feasting on bloody delicious bbq'd bison with elliot and with my favorite big rock traditional ale to wash it down while being entertained by the highly entertaining punch brothers who are currently doing their best to lay down some killer bluegrass while dodging monumental gusts of wind and rain. yes that's correct. good mother nature is back. immediately after our set, a prairie storm rolled in. fast. and what do these fine souls of the prairie do? smile. what else can you do? one of king sunny's dancers sits down besides us and, as tremendous flashes of forked lightning stab the sky, gives us the history of joujou and afrobeat music. with major points for style. she even challenges me to a drinking contest which she then pulls out of because our canadian beer is too weak for her. apparently nothing compares with her nigerian stout.

and then the rainbows. the sky behind us suddenly clears and instead of the wall of shifting grey organic forms we now have 2 perfectly brilliant rainbows arching gracefully over the stage. everyone is freaking out. needless to say, the crowd is now in a fever and the boys onstage can't play a bad note. awesome.

we stay to see king sunny's set - incredible - our new friend worked her booty bigtime -  and head back to hotel. it's dark so we can't really see who we are riding with or where we are going. now the woman in front of us turns around and it's the dancer. and she's had a few. for the next 45 minutes elliot and i are riddled with her bizarre analogies using machete beheadings to describe sexual promiscuity and why her husband in nigeria calls her 18 times a day while she's on tour. we step out of the van a bit dizzy.

in the lounge i rejoin silvana and toby and we are joined by the cuban rockstar himself alex cuba. alex moved to bc many years ago and now calls smithers home. from cuba to smithers. boggles the mind. pacifika has been a fan of alex for awhile now and it's really nice to hang. we talk into the wee hours about music and life and promise to stay in touch.

friday. day two. 10 am workshop jam with Pacific Curls - 3 fantastic musicians from New Zealand. can't believe all the people who show up for the early morning session! next is a global mishmash jam with musicians from trinidad and cuba (mr. alex) and mali. slammin. each song evolves into this epic groove. off to the festival music store for a signing session. catch uomu sangare on the mainstage. she is a godess. off to the food tent for dinner. the head chef has all of us (about a thousand volunteers and musicians) sing a verse of amazing grace to bless the meal. wow. hang with good friends t nile and richard brown. share some war stories. head to mainstage to watch iron and wine. never seen mr sam beam play before. worth the hype. one dude. one guitar. killer songs. mesmorized crowd. the mosquitoes appear to be quite taken as well and swarm around him the whole time. i don't even think he notices.

sat. pack up for london. we head into the town for some breakfast. i see this older dude in front of me wearing lime green popeye pants. he goes into the cafe we are going into. i tell the boys "just look at him. that's don cherry."  nobody has a camera so i don't bother mr. coach's corner. thought he would be bigger. i could take him. yeah i know he's 80. that's why i could take him. head to winnipeg airport. sitting in the gate i tell the boys "just look at him. that's scotty bowman." nobody still has no camera so i don't bother mr. i have more stanley cup rings than i have digits. sitting on the plane trying to get this freakin pc to work. elliot has his mac on his lap. scotty bowman is standing beside our seats waiting to get by. he looks down at us and says" hey look. there's a mac and a pc. which one is working boys? he looks at my scowl and asks "using vista huh?" i'd like to tell him that i have 2 macs at home in the studio and we were given this free pc laptop as part of a dell promotion at bumbershoot last summer and it crashes every second day but he's scotty bowman so i just laugh.

ok, this blog is getting way to long so i'll conclude by saying london sunfest is the shit. alfredo the main dude has put together a first class free admission world music festival. in london ontario. it's truly amazing seeing pretty much every ethnicity on the planet partying in one city park. silvana and myself weren't so pleased with the size of the plane that shuttled us back and forth from toronto to london and the way a little turbulance felt like king king was swattiing the aircraft... but sunfest was beautiful.

a

wed july 8 2009.
checked the weather forecast for winnipeg this morning.
thunderstorms mixed with sunshine.
should make for an interesting flight.

still buzzing from another visit to montreal. this time it was the jazzfest gods who were in the giving mood.
we arrive sunday night into a city transformed. streets usually reserved for endless streams of conjested automobiles are now carfree and unified as one outdoor summer concert utopia. patrick watson on our right. jazz fusion on our left. stevie wonder's sweat still in the air. bleachers of people  waiting for another show to begin. dinner at our beloved cafe du nouveau monde on rue st. cathreine. must get my tartare de boeuf fix. toby gets his bread-made-with love-lathered-with-tasty-butter fix. we are joined by dear friends jungle, julie and shawn and soon get lost in the world of storytelling.
back at the hotel. elliot and myself decide to be geeks and stay up until the wee hours programming a backup system on his laptop for all the samples i trigger onstage because my trusty old mpc2000 is starting to get grumpy.
monday. club soda. what a sexy room. load in gear. soundcheck. simon from godin arrives with some new axes to play. it's very tough job i have. yves the house front of house enginneer is a pro. we are in good hands. green room has a fridge of cold beer. nice.
set one. not so bad. my fingers invent some new chords in unveiled. always a treat when that happens. silvana's voice is in excellent spirits.
set 2. estrellas always seems to ground us. mas y mas always seems to transport the audience. they ask for more. vida llena brings the tears. night highlight - after the show we meet a mexican family who has just moved to montreal and who had asuncion living in their cd player after the dad had discovered us in new york last year. upon seeing an ad for the show he immediately bought tickets for his whole family (wife and 2 sons). then they wait to speak to all of us after.
so cool.
fred and the crew from godin tell us they left jeff beck to make our show and are glad they did. and they leave a shiny new spectrum in my good care.
a good show.

montreal gazette

tues. after a day of advancing the other tour dates, i meet elliot for dinner at  the main. normally, we wait in line at schwartz's like the rest of the town for a smoked meat sandwich. but not today. today we cross the street to the half empty competition.
and wow, the main's better. no lie.
truthfully, elliot's been pontificating for awhile now about crossing the street. maybe i should start listening to him more often.
but he's a drummer.

wed. and the thunderstorm forecast for winnipeg.

thunder would be nice...

a



   

Watch Studio 12 (guests of Corneille) on Radio-Canada.
Click for airtimes

Watch Pacifika on M Pour Musique!
Click for airtimes

As 2008 comes to a close we'd like to thank all of you for an amazing 2008 and to wish you all the best in 2009!

We've begun work on a new record and are excited to continue touring Asunción all over the world.

We'd also like to share with you some of the gifts we've recently been blessed with...

Révélations Radio-Canada Musique 2008
iTunes Latino Best of 2008 - New Artists
NPR's Best CD's of 2008
Amazon's Editor's Pick's Best Songs of 2008

....

New video blogs are being added every week to our YouTube channel. Watch "On The Road With Pacifika" (http://www.youtube.com/pacifika)

Listen to CBC Concerts On Demand for Pacifika recorded live in Studio One in Vancouver: CBC 2

BIENVENUE À MONTRÉAL! oct 18th 2008. if you've ever been to montreal, you don't need to be told how cool it is.
art (in all it’s forms) is inescapable. musicians are relevant. politics, food, fashion, sex, hockey, architecture and religion are living breathing cultural creatures. of course you can say the same for many cities… but if you’ve ever spent a few days here, you know what the hell I’m talking about.  
so why are we here? the Radio Canada gods have smiled upon us. and what gifts they bring!
to english speaking canadians, the public television and radio entity is the CBC. to french speaking canadiens it is Radio-Canada. and since montreal is the metropolis of french canada and since french canada gives beaucoup de merde about culture and the arts, Radio-Canada has 5000 people working in a massive, multi-media studio complex in the heart of the city. walking into the entrance hall of this circa 1972 designed - but 2008 state of the art - building (surprisingly good 1972 by the way) is akin to dorothy and the gang walking into the emerald city. there is a jazz band playing to your right, there are giant tv screens enclosed in giant glass frames showing opera concerts and soccer matches hanging from the heights, there are merry security guards hustling people through magical glass rectangles and there are people, so many people wearing very nice clothes, going in every direction. and some of these nice folks have chosen Pacifika as one of 6 artists to be showcased in a new Radio-Canada Musique initiative - Révélations 2008.
day one. over the last year, we've managed to get our gear onto airplanes without too much trouble. the one wildcard has been my classical guitar - uncle jed. uncle jed likes to stay away from the artic conditions of the belly of the plane and therefore is much happier  in the overhead compartments. 99.9% of the time, the airline attendants smile and wave me and uncle jed onto the plane. not so much this time. let's just say that myself and 3 air canada employees had a nice chat for 30 minutes about their baggage policies. when it was clear that they wouldn't throw me a bone and uncle jed had to travel east the hard way,  i was then faced  with a sprint to the gate where they were holding the plane. and the only reason i'm sharing this at all is because upon landing in montreal, we are told that the guitar and toby's bass are still in vancouver. hmmmmm... what was waiting for us was our lovely liaison for the week, catherine, standing with a large ESPACE MUSIQUE sign. this is not an insignificant moment as espace musique happens to be the soundtrack to many of silvana's days. we head to hotel and then straight out onto rue st. catherines for dinner. (we stumble upon a wicked bistro a block from the hotel with exceptional hospitality from fernado the flamboyant columbian).
day two. will our instruments make it? we check out local music shops to suss out rentals just in case. toby is also on the hunt for an f-bass and myself a godin multiac jazz (both made in canada). our tardy guitars finally arrive at the hotel at 4pm. rehearse. meet with our manager paolo (flew in from amsterdam) & project heads (jean-richard & noemie) and other artists over dinner. warm, intelligent, beautiful people. head to mix 96 fm for interview. head back to hotel where we all attempt to sleep but have managed to summon the  insomnia spirits.
day three. get the party started. 9am. catherine greets us at radio-canada (aka the emerald city) and we are lead through a maze of hallways and elevators to the tv studio where the press launch is being filmed. soundcheck chiquita. hang with fellow revelations artist Chantale Gagné (jazz pianist currently living in new york). catherine educates us on the history of quebec and how close they came to forming their own nation. heavy shit. lights, camera, action. all major montreal music media is present. live performance of chiquita. we are then whisked away to a radio studio where silvana discovers that she is actually pretty damn good at the french language. live performance of cuatro hijas. (listen: http://www.radio-canada.ca/radio/emissions/document·asp?docnumero=66424&numero=1354).
head back to tv studio for another crack at chiquita for all the radio canada family. we pass on the after party and head back to hotel to try and get some rest. sleep remained elusive so elliot and i head to swartz's for some classic montreal kosher grub.
day four. rise and shine. hotel brunch. back to radio-canada for a day of internet/radio performances and interviews. highlights include elliot bringing out his retro glockenspiel for las olas and silvana doubling her french vocabulary every hour. seriously, the dj's had no idea that there was an ocean of nerves rolling back & forth inside her whenever they asked her questions on air. she rocked it. back to hotel where we finally meet the shadow. we've been waiting patiently to meet paolo's better half for 2 years and now the lovely clelia is in montreal with him on holiday and we take them to fernado and the bistro for an amazing evening of stories, laughter, neil young and food. god bless tartare de boeuf.
day five. too tired to make it to breakfast. back to oz's fun palace for another action packed day highlighted by more interviews and radio performances, noemie la magnifique returning to her radio-canada roots and taking us on a tour of the entire complex (carpentry shops/espace musique offices/an 800 seat capacity tv studio/news rooms), silvana being enchanted by her favorite dj chantal jolis (who had a 'what would neil young do?' poster on her wall that paolo wanted to steal) and a farewell lunch with jean-richard and the team. toby has learned that the musée d'art contemporain de montréal is free on wed nights so the 3 of us decide to check out their sympathy for the devil exhibit - a look at rock n roll since 1967 with a heavy dose of popart/warhol. 2 things. one of the pieces is a stack of 'what would neil young do?' posters. toby takes one for paolo of course. the coolest room contained a large plexi-glass cage with a punk band rocking out inside it. silently. meaning that they were all plugged into a mixing board (electronic drum kit) and the only way to hear them was via headphones hanging from the sides of the cage. to the non-headphoned ears, the muffled sounds of their shouting and scuffling and punking was surreal without the army of noise that they were making. hop in a cab up st. laurent to find grub. decide on a good vibes pizza joint. paolo calls with news. our album is on the shortlist for a grammy nomination in the latin/altrenative category. dumbfounded.
smiles.
day six. time to go home. we have a few hours before we take off so we all go our separate ways. elliot has de-briefed me on the metro system so i manage to find the really good tintin store so i can spoil my son. i also find some sortielege so i can spoil myself. head home to play 2 shows at the montmartre cafe and shoot a tv/radio special for cbc. we are starting to feel like people are hearing us... hope.

a

Hello Everyone! We've just started posting webisodes of our life on the road. The first 3 are up and we'll be posting many more regularly. To watch click here.

hollywood. sunday. july 20th 2008. who wouldn't want to wake up knowing that this is the day you are playing the iconic hollywood bowl. with feist and sharon jones & the dap kings to boot. and who wouldn't want to go to sleep when that day is over with a large smile because it was even better than you had ever imagined. the hollywood bowl is 17,000 seats built into the side of the hollywood hills with a spectacular art-deco-esque giant bandshell and a state of the art sound and lighting rig. billed as one the world largest natural fixed amphitheaters. we drive up to the entrance and our eyeballs leap out of their sockets as we see PACIFIKA on the large circular marquee with the headliner's names. we decide to create a traffic jam to take pictures. the crew greet us like family and we enjoy the break from unloading the van ourselves. the stage itself is a massive turntable which enables us to preset our gear in front of the dap kings on the backstage half while feist soundchecks on the opposite side. meet kathy the house lighting designer who is soon heading up to our next of the woods for holidays on gabriola island on break from a tap-dancing tour. cool. we have some time to chill while the others finish their checks so we all branch off and soak up as much of this experience as we can. elliot finds his family who have flown in for the show. toby discusses gear with bob (feist's stage tech), silvana hangs with leslie (feist) and pete & i head to the top of the bowl to enjoy the view. genuinely awesome. the hollywood sign and griffiths observatory appear as watchful sisters on the gentle folds of the hills. back on stage to soundcheck. this place is so on top of it there's an electronic timer on the foot of the stage counting down the 60 minutes you have to tweak your sounds. i smuggle our video camera on stage and manage to get a few moments of silvana warming up the seats before the lovely camera nazi pulls the plug. in the backlot now, hanging with jay (feist's bassist/superchill dude) we discover that the drummer and keyboardist/horn/wacked out sounds stud are his brothers. i ask if they all share a room. he smiles and says yah with bunkbeds. over dinner discover bob the guitar tech is bob kemmis who is good friends with our dear friend sheena from vancouver. dressing rooms. get ready for show. boys put on their best duds while silvana outdoes herself with an incredible black betsy johnson dress over an equally bitchin pink tutu. 5 minutes until showtime. looking at the info they have for our intro. notice we are now from toronto. fix. meet nick harcourt from KCRW. respect. gratitude. time. we are doing it. surreal. my normally still right foot has decided to audition for an automated paint can mixer. toby and elliot are steady as ancient rock fortresses. focus on the nosebleed seats. so far away. 25 minutes are over in a breath. an child's heartbeat. meet pete in dressing room and he surprises us with his comment that it was a perfect show. pete normally just shrugs and says it was alright. sharon jones and the DK's hit the stage and rock the crowd. the sun finally says good night as feist begins. i head back to the top of the bowl for a bird's eye view. wow. she is really really really good. sublime. post show cocktails on the terrace. silvana's family welcomes us with love. say thanks to production and crew who are all tremendous souls. find late-night grub to decompress. hotel. sleep. smiles.

a