2019 Year in Review
We kept the good times rolling into 2019 and picked up right where 2018 ended! In follow up to 2018's "Thursday Night Special" we dropped a new single, new EP, 2 official music videos and 2 live off the floor videos! Thank you again to everyone that listened to a tune, came to a show, bought a shirt and showed their pal a band called SHAG! Here is our year in review for 2019!
January/February 2019
We kept the recording process going into early 2019. As 2018 came to a close, we had recorded parts of 3 songs for a new EP and also decided to bring back an old SHAG tune (from Reinvents Music) and re-record it. In the recording process though it was determined that this old tune wouldn't fit with the other songs we were writing and recording for the new EP so the plan was to record and release it separately from the EP. This bumped up our projected tunes for 2019 to 6 bangers, which everyone was excited about because SHAG loves Arnel and being at Royal Studio!
Our first show of 2019 was on February 21st, supporting our pals The Spanish Flies for their new single release at 9910. You can check out their new single "Mr. Evil" on Spotify right here. We also got to play with one of the most fantastic guitar players we have ever seen: David Jay, The Spaniard. Seriously, do yourself a favor and go check these videos out, he is unbelievably talented and he also pulled in an Edmonton Music Award this year!
March/April/May 2019
March kicked off with a show at Arcadia Bar with some cool YEG bands Keylation and Lauriers as well as Alex Bent from Saskatoon. We also gathered up a bunch of our pals to help us shoot our first ever legit music video. Winning a music video contest via YEG Music, we got the chance to hook up with Gabriel LN at Cut Thru Media and worked on the "Bang a Drum" music video. It has always been one of our band goals to have a real music video, so big thanks to Chris and Michelle over at YEG Music for funding the video and also letting us shoot most of the video in their house ha ha. Thanks to AK Performance for the other shooting location and to the dozen or so friends that showed up to appear in the video. It was cold, but the shoot was awesome and we couldn't wait to see the finished result!
During all these shenanigans recording of the new EP out at Royal was coming to a close and we put the final touches on an upcoming single. "Megalodon" became the re-recorded tune and the plan was to release it as a single to coincide with Shark Week 2019. Jess also came up with the name of the new album: "All Supply, No Demand". This has been us since day 1 pretty much, with the single and 5 song EP, we were going to be releasing 17 SHAG songs in about 15 months. Nobody asked for this, but we delivered it anyway!
We also met a new pal in Alex Trivellin. He had recorded and released some live off the floor videos of our boys in Fear the Mammoth earlier in the year and after watching them we decided we had to see if he'd be interested in shooting some vids with SHAG. He did and he is an awesome dude. Alex started All-Time Music in late 2018/early 2019 and put out great content right off the start and we were super excited to record a live session with him. We ended up recording 3 tracks with him at the SHAG jam space to be released later in the year. Alex also asked us if we'd be interested in doing a music video with him, which in the theme of all supply and no demand we said "Yes!" So the planning of another new music video for our upcoming single "Megalodon" began.
June/July/August 2019
The beginning of June saw your boys shooting the "Megalodon" music video with Alex at Pigeon Lake and in our jam space then heading over to Giovanni Caboto Park in downtown Edmonton to play in the 2019 Heart of the City Festival! This festival featured a ton of great local Edmonton musicians and we were pumped up to be a part of the 2019 lineup.
We also finally announced "Megalodon" to the world and got some sick album artwork done by Tenille at The Design Umbrella. This also translated into new Megalodon merch that included new t-shirts, tank tops and pins. "Megalodon' was released to the world on August 2nd, 2019! Links to streaming services can be found here!
The summer closed with a couple more music festival appearances. On August 23rd we returned to Bro-Tel Backyard Festival for the 2nd straight year where we played along great bands like Hewson Grey, Paul Woida and Altameda. The next night we rolled down the highway to Lloydminster to play in the inaugural LloydFest! It was nice to finish off the summer with a couple shows close to home so we could visit with friends and family and show them the new tunes we were working on.
September 2019
On September 6, 2019 the "Bang a Drum" official music video was released to the wild. If you haven't seen it, or just want to watch the ridiculousness again, check out the video below now!
The video turned out better than we could ever imagine and so many thanks again to all our friends that "tried out" for the band and to Andy for teaching Gooch how to be better! The new EP "All Supply, No Demand" also was completed early in September and a release date of October 17, 2019 was announced.
October 2019
All supply baby! On October 1, 2019 the official music video for "Megalodon" was dropped. Check out this video here as well. Fun fact about the video: we worked out together as a band for 8 months to get in shape for this video. This video also turned out better than we could have ever imagined and Alex did a great job bringing our vision to life!
On October 17th we released our new EP "All Supply, No Demand" and you can check out the full thing wherever you stream your tunes. Links found here. Thanks to Mitchell for being our cover model for this album. To celebrate the release, we played another release show at The Rec Room South Common on October 18 with our old pals Guests: The Band and new pals the Beach Towels. It was another killer show and thanks to everyone that came out and sang along with us! We are super proud of this EP and this is our first attempt at a concept album. If you haven't figured out what that concept is, just ask one of your local SHAG members!
Shortly after the release show, a very exciting email hit the SHAGExpress inbox. SHAG was finally going to hit the stage at the Starlite Room! This was also on our list of band goals, and we were extremely excited for a Halloween date with BC rockers Current Swell and Carmanah! The show was fantastic and we opened the show in front of a packed house! This may be the pinnacle of SHAG's career and we could not be happier about it. We have seen so many of our favourite bands grace the Starlite Room stage and now we had the chance to play that same stage. What a rad experience!
November/December 2019
Even after all the excitement of the last couple months we still had a little bit left in the tank for 2019. In November and December, All-Time Music released 2 of the 3 live off the floor videos that we completed earlier in the year. We decided to do 2 tunes of Thursday Night Special and 1 off of All Supply, No Demand. "Me and Mine" was released in November and "Look Out" in December. You can see those videos on Facebook at the links below:
The 3rd All-Time Music video (what song will it be???) will be released early in 2020.
2019 was another killer year for us and we can't thank our friends, families and fans enough for all the support this past year! It's so cool to see people we've never met before coming out to shows or messaging us to chat about our music. It's wild to look at our streaming stats and see people all around the world have listened to one of our tunes. We hope to keep this momentum rolling into 2020 and make it the best year yet! See ya around!
Love,
Trevor, Travis, Zack and Jess
