Everyone knows there's no place like home for the holidays.
But what if you're one of the hundreds of thousands of Canadians who don't have a home? No family to reconnect with, no presents to unwrap and definitely no turkey dinner to stuff your face? Christmas doesn't sound like such a holly, jolly deal anymore, does it?
That's where the alt-rockers behind the Jingle Bell Rock tour come in.
Starting tomorrow in Toronto, the hipster heroes of Metric, Tokyo Police Club, The Dears, Sebastien Grainger & The Mountains and Mike Relm are making their way west, raising money for charities that keep youth off the streets -- Covenant House, Youth Emergency Shelter Society, The Back Door, MacDonald Youth Services and Big Brothers/Big Sisters -- through a series of benefit gigs.
"Covenant House works with underprivileged kids, or kids who've run away from home, or kids with drug and alcohol problems, or who are in need in general," explains Metric frontlady Emily Haines. "They provide a variety of resources besides the obvious things -- they look after the emotional side as well as the material side.
"Ours is a young audience, and the last thing we want is a bunch of kids who didn't have the help they need to get through their problems.God knows we've all had our share."
Anyone who's caught a Metric show before knows Haines can bring the party. But that said, she's usually not one to surrender to the more material aspects of the holiday season.
"The hysterical shopping makes my skin crawl," she quips during a rehearsal break in Toronto. "But Dec. 25th is the one day when no one I know ever has a show. So it's a chance for me to see my friends and my family at the same time, which is a rare treat."
Haines and her bandmates -- guitarist James Shaw, bassist Josh Winstead and drummer Joules Scott-Key -- will have plenty of time to hang with their musical friends on this tour, which winds up Dec. 21 in Vancouver.
"It'll be like a big indoor festival," says Haines. "And who knows -- a few days into the tour, people get a little friendly, anything can happen. I could end up being another keyboard player in The Dears or something.
"It's so much about what I value most about being a musician -- you can develop these friendships with bands you're a fan of."
Of course, Haines -- a Broken Social Scene alum who released a solo album in 2006 -- doesn't collaborate only with musicians. Last year, she aligned with Winnipeg filmmaker (and Guy Maddin acolyte) Deco Dawson, who was tasked with producing Metric's Live at Metropolis DVD.
"It's difficult with concert films; so much of what happens with music as a non-visual medium is impossible to capture on camera," says Haines, a longtime Maddin fan who recently caught an outdoor screening of The Saddest Music in the World in Buenos Aires. "What we were afraid of was the DVD would be a clinical documentation of the concert, when anyone who's been to the show knows it's always epic in some way. We felt (Dawson) could express the intangible aspect of being at a Metric show."
Unfortunately, the DVD and the Jingle Bell show will have to hold fans over until their big gift from the band arrives early next year. That's when the long-awaited followup to Metric's 2005 disc Live It Out is due in stores.
Luckily, Haines and co. have been workshopping the album's track list onstage for almost as long.
"We've been playing the music and developing the music over the last three years of touring and travelling and living and being humans," she says. "So a lot of our fans are right there with us. They've seen us develop the songs and write them on the road, so they know what they're getting into. And it's definitely our favourite record so far."
