See that guy to the left? That's Camille. Camille is a multi instrumentalist, studio engineer, and all around fun dude, and in 2018 he became a permanent fixture in Fonfur. Camille grew up in Trinidad & Tobago, and spent years playing violin in a wedding band before moving to Mississauga to attend Metalworks. He has since graduated, and now works there. After recording the EP, we took a break from live shows because we had no bassist to play shows with. There was one attempt, a Hamilton show with Oh Geronimo, but it ended up being cancelled last minute due to Oh Geronimo's singer Ciaran losing his voice. Recently, I built up a spreadsheet of every show we've played together, and there's a big gap from August 2017 up to February 2018 that perfectly illustrates this post-studio dry spell. That doesn't mean we were being lazy, though. In the fall I reached out to Chrisy Hurn of Basement Revolver to ask about artwork. She's done all of the cover art for her own band and I love the style of it, and she's someone I have the utmost respect for in the Hamilton musical community. What you see on the cover of the New Rules For Classic Games EP is all her doing; I sent her the title and a rough mix of Denim Dogs, along with a few examples of art we like, and left it very open ended. I loved it at first sight, and as a band we really couldn't be happier with how it turned out. More and more pieces of the puzzle were falling into place, and around this time is when Camille came into the picture as well. Around the beginning of November, Mike presented the idea of his housemate Camille playing bass for us, so we brought him in to see how it went. After a few practices we all agreed that Camille clicked with us really smoothly, and added a whole new realm of possibilities with his variety of instruments, so we took him on as a permanent member. His inaugural show with us was at the Rockpile on February 25th, followed closely by his second: the finally rescheduled show with Oh Geronimo on March 23. Both of them were really successful shows for us, and playing with Oh Geronimo was a huge step for me. I know most of the band from high school; they were a few years older and I've always considered them musical inspirations. I walked away from that show feeling that I'd really become a peer in the music community, and they continue to be absolutely wonderful friends of mine. The spring sort of lulled as we waited for mixes, but we toyed with new ideas and worked on re-learning the songs to incorporate Donny's production. We delved into the world of booking gigs ourselves that June, by doing a fairly successful show at the Piston. That was with Blue Mantra and Milhouse, and it was an interesting experience because we were running the show. I think if I could go back and do it differently, I would have added a 4th band to the bill to fill out the night more, but other than that I'm happy with how it went as a first attempt. By the beginning of July, we received all the final mixes for the EP, and had everything mastered by the end of the month, and we sat on it for a bit as we decided on a release date. This is when things really began to pick up. More on that next time. ~Fonfur
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