WHO: Town Pants
WHERE: GLC and Longhorn
WHEN: St. Patrick’s Day, Apres and Evening
If you didn’t manage to get a ticket to the already sold out Spirit of the West St. Patrick’s Day show, head slopeside for what is bound to be an equally rousing, foot-stomping, Guinness-swilling good time. Town Pants make their return to the Longhorn March 17.
"The shows we did in Whistler last year were insane," says Pants’ tin whistle/mandolin player Aaron Chapman. "In the early running, we used to play at Merlin’s all the time and people would end up on tables dancing and wrecking stuff."
Town Pants has some new ammo for their green day attack with the recent release of their second album, a 15 song compilation of "upbeat romps, mutiny anthems, coal miner rants and sad laments." Piston Baroque was produced by Celtic colleague Hugh McMillan of Spirit of the West.
"He heard a demo tape of some stuff we were doing and expressed some interest. We were gonna go into the studios a year ago. We found out about him being interested about a week and a half before we were scheduled to go in, so we stopped the presses on production. He couldn’t do it until they returned from their European tour, but we figured it was worth while to wait."
Town Pants embarked on a European tour of their own earlier this winter, and were greeted by a more than enthusiastic crowd.
"I don’t think they get a lot of Canadian bands over there. They don’t really know what to make of us. When they think of Canadian music, they’ve only really heard of Celine Dion and Bryan Adams… everywhere we would go, they would ask us, ‘You’re Canadian, but you’re playing Irish music?’ But it was really well received because anywhere you go there’s always an Irish pub – Helsinki in particular was great. We sold out five nights in one pub."
The Pants are now turning their focus to the Canadian market, including several dates this week opening for their Spirit pals at the Commodore in Vancouver. They’ll be following Spirit up hangover Highway 99 to Whistler this Saturday, hooking up with local fiddler Kyla Uyede (of Leanne and Kyla notoriety).
"We’ve actually got plans (for the Commodore) to do a song with the Spirit guys, a silly little medley. But I guess in Whistler we’re playing a little too far down the road (to do that). But you can bet we’ll all be meeting up later for a St. Patrick’s night whiskey!"
