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smaller venues like Myron’s or the Barn so much. I asked Earl about that, and he agreed; “Yeah. Places where it makes sense for us to move up. On this tour, in the bigger cities like - Calgary, Vancouver, and Toronto, we were able to bump the size of venue up anotch, which is a good thing. With Charlottetown, when we play here, it’s... I mean, I liked playing Myron’s, but I wanted to get away from there, because there was a whole crowd that wouldn’t go there to see us play, or wouldn’t even hear about it. We’re happy as long as we have venues where it’s as open as possible for anyone to come.”

One thing which! didn’t talk about last time was their view of themselves. Earl’s perspective seems to be one of frustration and also of extreme optimism, all in one; “It’s been very frustrating to see, because weall (family, management, themselves) believe in us so much, that people are shocked that we’re not further ahead than we are right now. It kind of looks out of place when you see a video of ours or hear a song of ours on the radio. But I think that’s a positive thing for us... we want to sound like us. Right now it seems different. But believe that if we just keep making the music that we do, the musicindustry will shift towards us. I’m glad

things are building up slowly. We’ re still more of a word-of-mouth underground thing. But I like that... the slower the better. To really succeed, you have to be a popular band inall facets of the industry. Your image, your sound, and your appeal to lots of different kinds of people. That’s why I think we might have a chance at that (the “big time’’), because I know a lot of people can get into what wedo.I’veseenit | happen. I’ve seen the dads and their daughters, mixed races, and mixed ages at our shows. That might be a more powerful thing than we think right now. The only reason I point it out is because of what people say to me... that it’s a different feeling they get when they come to one of our shows.” That is very true. WMM have a feel, sound and style all their own. They have a hard edge the guys can get into, they have great grooves that the gals and boogie-ers can dig... there’sa little something for everyone: newstuff, plus their homages to their great influences. I’ve seen them cover everyone from Joe Cocker to Jimi Hendrix. With their first album, they had a bluesier-rock sound. With their latest album, they’ve departed from that, going for different sounds, partly because Shaun felt he had something to prove to other guitar players; that he could be more interesting on guitar than just doing g reat solos.

And he’s definitely done that. He tries some more acoustic, some slide, recording and playing back guitar lines he just played (up to two minutes worth), plus using some gadget on his strings I’ve never seen before. For the next album, which he can already visualize, Earl said that he hopes they can move on from their latest album; “Hopefully we ve got that out of our system. We’ ve tried something completely different, and we'd like to progress back to our strengths again. For our next record, what I can see, is that we focus inon the sounds that make us unique, and focus most of the record on that, instead of taking too many left turns one after another like the Beatles would do. When we do that, that’s when the mass or majority of people will actually get it”

Music lovers, I say start “getting it” now. I know I’m sounding over the top and biased, but I knowl’ mright. I can’t put my finger on what they do, but that’s a good thing. It’s unique. At the last show, I met aman who saw Hendrix live several times, and he said Shaun is just about the best guitar player he’s seen since, and that the two had similarities. I mean, how much ofacompliment is that? Jump on the bandwagon now before the wagon gets full, and enjoy the ride.

The average wait for a Big Brother is 2 years. And that’s too long.

Oe

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