Artist of the Day | BLACKED OUT
ARTIST OF THE DAY
03.07.2020
BLACKED OUT
LOCATION
Vancouver, BC
GENRE
Punk
CURRENT MEMBERS
Morgan - Vocals & Guitar
Lee - Vocals & Guitar
Wade - Bass & Vocals
Ryan - Drums
With the current pandemic, the state of the music and touring industry has dramatically changed. Where were you when everything was brought to a halt?
Luckily we were home in Vancouver, so we didn't get stranded with no shows a couple thousand clicks from home or anything.
How has that affected your plans for the coming months? Did you have a tour planned, upcoming album release?
Oh yeah. We felt a pretty good smackdown from the pandemic. Our new record "Wasted Breath" was released on March 27, so pretty much right when everything shut down. We were supposed to be in Calgary that night to kick-off a BC/Alberta tour, most of which was supposed to be with Belvedere, so it was a huge bummer. Our band started in Banff, and it's been a few years since we were back in Alberta, so we were really looking forward to it. We also had a Quebec/Ontario run planned for later in the summer, and we had just started working on a European tour for the fall. Haha so now we're just sitting on boxes and boxes of merch here in Vancouver, waiting for the industry to fire up again. Sigh.
What have you been doing to fill/make the most of your new-found free time at home?
Writing. Lots and lots of writing.
Favourite quarantine meal?
Pizza. Turns out homemade pizza dough can be quite the art.
Favourite Starlite Room Moment?
Blacked Out only played there once, back in 2006, so here's a story from that night. We played with an Edmonton band called Dudley Dawson, and our bass players had a little wrestling match backstage. Their bass player Merko is a couple inches taller than Morgan, but all muscle instead of beer gut. He's a giant man. Our bass player Wade is, well, not quite that. Like, Wade's in shape, but Merko has 12 inches and probably 100 pounds on him. So, after an entertaining stint of jackassery, Wade goes down pretty hard and hurts his thumb. It was super swollen, but it was also all loose and flopped around in a pretty disconcerting-yet-cartoonish kind of way. We were all young and pretty dumb back then so of course we don't take him to a hospital or anything. We just laughed and laughed about how funny it looked and made jokes about how his slap-bass skills are really gonna level up because of the floppiness. It was like that for months after, and never really healed properly. The real joke, however, is that he's still a mediocre slap player. At best.
Do you have a message for everyone at home reading this?
If you love live music, please support the artists and venues that make it happen. Go to shows (once shows happen again). Buy records directly from bands instead of streaming. Buy tickets instead of bugging everyone for a spot on the list. Buy drinks from venues and don't sneak in booze. Buy merch. Share posts from bands you appreciate. It really, REALLY helps keep independent music alive.
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