Napalmpom Mini-Doc & Archival Album
“He was moving to England, the land of tea and crumpets, to follow his dream of paying four times the amount of rent for half the space.”
Notorious Calgary shredders, Napalmpom are using their time in isolation to look at their past. Yesterday, a mini documentary emerged from the hidden Pom Pom vault which, if you believe the short film, is found at the top of Mount Columbia. The mini-doc details how the act started as a Tricky Woo cover band and emerged as the mythical beast now known as Napalmpom. It also explains the departure of Ian Thomas Day, the bands original singer.
The short film (actually Directed by Ian Thomas Day) is being used as a promotion tool to highlight the release of a seven song effort arriving today called The Climb To Heaven Has Too Many Stairs (The Lost Tapes). This new release is actually very old. It was recorded quickly with the help of Lorrie Matheson before Day left the band and the country to settle in England.
Cups N Cakes reached out to Napalmpom guitarist Shawn Petsche and former singer Ian Thomas Day.
Cups N Cakes: Where did the mini-doc idea come from?
Ian Thomas Day: The idea came from a twitter DM exchange. It wasn't even my idea... I think PJ had jokingly suggested a Ken Burns style mockumentary about the 'Lost recording'. I knew I had footage from that recording session on my old laptop and figured what the heck, I'll try to tell the origin story of the band.
Shawn Petsche: It was the perfect mix of fun idea and punching above of our weight, which is kind of how I'd describe our band in general. One of the things I take pride in as a band is trying to pay attention to the details, even if no one else is. Growing up, I always loved when the bands I loved went the extra mile with album design/packaging, liner notes, videos merch, etc. And there's something funny to me about a small band from Calgary self-mythologizing in this way. I hope people understand that we made the video mostly for our own amusement, heh.
CnC: Ian, you actually directed the mini doc… are you making a play to de-throne PJ?
ITD: Not making a play to De-Throne the mighty PJ. Thats why I indicated very clearly in the script & VO at the end that I believe him to be better at the job than myself. He just is. I'm funnier though. Probably.
SP: Only a game of Quiplash on Jackbox will be able to decide that...in my experience, even if two people tell the same joke, Peej gets more laughs/likes. It's his gift...his curse.
CnC: Why release these songs now?
ITD: Why release these now? Well... why not really? They've just been sitting there for 7 years. I am used to performing once a week with The Free Association improv theatre here in London. That's not going to happen for a while & Napalmpom will likely not be able to do any shows for a while. The prospect of that is really awful... so this is doing 'something' in the midst of a worldwide drought of creative expression. That sounds bleak. Forget all that stuff I said, we released these now to make money now.
SP: It made a lot of sense for me in a few ways. First, our 6th member, Lorrie Matheson, who records/produces everything we do and was the first person to really make it feel like anyone cared about what we were doing, was on my mind. As a producer and professional musician, he saw months of income just vanish in an instant, and getting him to mix and master this was a way we could help him out.
Second, before the pandemic, our band had some good momentum going for LP3. We've got a mountain of music to work with and were just starting to "finish" songs, put them in our set, etc. Honestly, harder for me than the prospect of not playing live anytime soon, is just not being able to hunker down as a band and carry that momentum into something new. So, releasing something like this, that reminds me how fun it is to be in a band and brainstorm dumb things like documentaries and t-shirt ideas, was a form of self-preservation - a little boost that keeps the depression away.
And lastly, I think enough time had passed that releasing the songs now, particularly when accompanied by the mini doc, wouldn't be confusing to anyone about the nautre of the album. It's a time capsule of where we were as a band, a sketch of what we were becoming, and that's clear...but as the years passed, I think more than anything, it's nowlike looking back at an old photo and smiling instead of mocking your dumb sideburns. Instead of hearing the flubbed notes, or incompete melody idea, or whatever, now it just makes me think of all of the good times I had with my best friends, then and now.
Watch the mini-documentary below and check out The Climb To Heaven Has Too Many Stairs (The Lost Tapes) here.