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Not to disparage Red Deer, but usually the only thing you can gauge from the city on how far you’ve come is by it being the halfway point betwixt ourselves and the provincial capital.
But Mike Small is actually using it to estimate how far his T.O. act The Meligrove Band has come in the grand scheme of things.
During this recent tour, which brings them to Broken City tonight, the quartet drew 80 kids out to an RD gig, all of them up at the front singing along.
Not bad. But pretty phenomenal when you put it in the proper context.
“The last time we were here there were seven people and it was triple-booked for six bands who all thought they were playing,” says Small.
“So we volunteered to play first and got the hell out.
“Last night was the complete opposite — it was awesome.”
But it’s not just in the number of bobbing heads in the audience you can see the upslope of The Meligrove Band, it’s also in the music on their latest release, Planets Conspire.
The album, is a gloriously out-there, retro-sounding, psychedelic-tinged pop rock wonderfest.
It’s an incredible album, especially considering it was recorded live-off-the-floor by Jose Contreras from Canadian band By Divine Right.
Even more so when you take into account it was surreptitiously recorded in Contreras dad’s living room while senior Contreras was on vacation.
“We took photos of where all the furniture was in the living room and we moved it all out …,” says Small of how they managed to load all of the gear into the room without leaving any signs of their doings. “So we put everything back exactly the way it was.
“But on the last day Darcy (Rego, the band’s drummer) fell and broke a table — he broke the leg off, so we just glued it back on thinking ‘Well, it’s the last day, your dad’s getting back tomorrow, we don’t have time, and he’ll probably break it himself and think that he did it.’
“So it was perfect.
“But then we left the photos on the kitchen counter.”
Luckily, the story has a happy ending — they realized their error, turned the van around on the highway and manage to nab the photos before pa returned and he is (or was) none the wiser.
As for the album itself, it has an even happier ending — one the strength of Planets Conspire, The Meligrove Band was signed to V2 Records, home to such notables as The White Stripes and Mercury Rev.
“We were kind of thinking of this record as something no one would want to put out,” says Small.
“Jose would even laugh sometimes as he was mixing it and go, ‘I can’t believe there’s a whistling solo followed by drum solo followed by a bass solo.’
“Everyone’s going to either laugh, hate it or somehow really love it.”
Well, now you can gauge for yourself.