Well that was a flurry of a day for many reasons, but our new record is finally out!
Huge thanks to Scott and Sherise at Halo are in order, as well as to Chad at NoRules, and of course, to all of you who watched, liked, and shared the new video, pre-ordered, and ordered vinyl on day one!
We’re getting support from awesome radio stations like CKCU, CKMS, CFUV, met Radio CJTM, CFBR (the Bear), WITR, KOWS, and a bunch more. Its super appreciated.
I have yet to deliver records to any mom & pop shops in Vancouver, but I promise I’ll get to Red Cat and Matterhorn soon. If you’re in Toronto, I hear Rotate This is your best bet. If you’re elsewhere in Canada or the US, you can have your favourite record store order stock from Cobraside Distribution in Glendale.
Of course I’m always happy to fill orders through our Bandcamp too!
I definitely got my heart rate up yesterday, carrying all nine boxes of records upstairs! Once again, amazing service from Pirates Press (and I suppose Fed Ex) despite crazy sub-zero weather in Memphis the other day.
I busted one box open and checked out one of the records and wow, the orange crush vinyl colour is SO rad. Here’s the back cover:
Another couple of boxes got delivered to Cobraside in Glendale, CA so if you’re inclined to pick up a copy of any of our records from your local mom and pop record store, you can tell them to order stock there.
Otherwise, you can pre-order from us here or come grab one at the merch table from Wayne on the 6th or 7th.
For those of you looking to stream stuff, the official release date for DSPs is February 20th. We have chosen to continue our boycott of Spotify, but you’ll be able to stream on Qobuz, Apple Music, and most of the other platforms by about 9pm pacific on that day.
Oh, and before I forget, for those of you awaiting physical copies for review, those will start going out this week.
So the release date for our new record is getting closer! To celebrate, we are throwing a couple of parties and have invited a few Büddies to join us. The first one is in Victoria at Lucky Bar:
Advance tickets are available here. It’s an early show, so you can check out the out of town bands and be home on the couch in no time!
The second one is in Vancouver the very next night at one of our favourite spots:
We just approved the test pressings of our sophomore 12″ EP, “Overtime”. There’s still a ton of work to do, but we should have vinyl awfully soon in the new year. The Official Release Date is currently set for February 23, 2026, so expect to hear more soon in the usual places, along with announces of a couple shows we’re working on.
I’ll be setting up a pre-order on our bandcamp for you special keeners ASAP!
Some of you may have noticed that there are no longer any Slips songs on Spotify, so I figured a little clarification might be in order.
Back in August, I logged in to our Spotify For Artists to find that “Graystone” had been unceremoniously removed. When I reached out to our digital distributor, I was told (after waiting six weeks for a reply) that the song had “had a spike in streaming activity for a brief period that did not follow organic streaming patterns” and consequently, had been “taken down”.
Now, the “spike in streaming activity” they were alluding to, was caused by a scam playlist that had randomly added our song about six months prior. There are a number of these lists (this particular one was based in Finland) that prey on unsuspecting artists by adding their song, then botting a thousand streams in one day, with the aim of luring the unsuspecting artist into paying for more (botted) streams.
I’ve never been in favour of paying for streams, despite the fact that it is disturbingly common nowadays, and I’m incredibly proud (and grateful) that Graystone was listened to about 8000 times by actual humans. My response to the bot scam incident was to report the playlist, using the Spotify For Artists Tools. Spotify removed the playlist from our profile, the number of streams was adjusted, and everything was apparently fine, until the song was removed months later.
Our distributor was adamant that the song could not be reinstated, but suggested we could “re-release the content as a new submission, which will require new UPC and ISRC codes”. After I explained that the song had already been released to college radio in the US and Canada and that assigning a new ISRC code was out of the question, I was told “We apologize but there are no other options at this time if you wish to reinstate the music.”
They did at that point offer a coupon code to waive the cost of re-submitting the song.
After talking things over with the rest of the band, we decided to not pay to resubmit “Graystone”, and further, to cancel digital distribution for ALL of our remaining catalogue on Spotify, as well as all Brock Pytel solo releases.
As of this writing, the SLIP~ons catalogue is still available on other streaming platforms such as Apple Music and Tidal, but unfortunately, Tidal has also recently changed their terms of service to include sweeping concessions of artist rights, so we will probably be removing our catalogue from there as well.
We will continue to release vinyl recordings (more on the new one soon) and play live shows, and for the moment, our bandcamp remains the best way to support us. We are also exploring a new cooperative artist owned distribution service called Subvert and will let y’all know when there is a Slips page active there.
Well, Büddies Fest was a pretty epic weekend, not going to lie. I got to sing 2541 with Greg & Jon & Dave, which was honestly pretty emotional for me. Grant Hart was kind of a hero to 20 year old Brock, so to sing a song of Grant’s posthumously, with his long time bandmate, was definitely pulling my heartstrings.
I joined in on the end of New Day Rising, and pretty much blew my voice out for the rest of the weekend, screaming the Bob parts, but I guess the opportunity to do that doesn’t come around every day, so I’d say it was worth it! I think it made Greg laugh too, so there’s that.
There’s a good account of the goings on from Jeremy Porter‘s perspective on the Pencil Storm blog and Max Laisina shot quite a lot of video which is posted on his vimeo page.
Tons of amazing performances, and great vibes were had, and true to the name, many new and old büddies were celebrated. Huge Kudos and appreciation to Jon Snodgrass, Ben Andress and Blacktop Records for making the whole thing happen.
With that in mind, Greg Norton & Büddies (Snodgrass/Jarnstrom) are doing a bunch more dates, including September 20th in Vancouver. Scott Reynolds is also on that bill, along with us. You can get advance tickets up until 4pm on the day of show, and for those of you local punks that want to sing a Hüsker tune or two with the band, feel free to reach out and claim your song picks!
We’ve been invited to join the slew of rad bands playing Buddies Fest this year, and are super stoked. We’ll be on the mainstage same day as ALL , so this will be the first time I’ve played a show with them since the Monsters of Food Tour! Our set time is 4:45pm.
Saturday night headliner will be ALL with Scott Reynolds singing!.
I’m feeling a bit under the weather tonight so I’m taking a pass on DeeDee Starr’s birthday show at Green Auto.
Nothing like good friends to get you through the tough times, like all my film crew pals in this shot from our last show there. You guys know who you are…
Not gonna lie, I’m pretty excited about this one. Chad is playing a handful of dates in the Pacific Northwest, and we’ve gotta pretty cool lineup to support him and his new outfit on April 9th at Lanalou’s.
Thanks to John Burwood for the fab drawing of Trump in a hockey sweater.
This one was a really great time. My hat is off to those stalwarts who managed to pull off double duty and catch sets at the Dead End Drive In show at Green Auto and still make it to Lana’s in time for Dead Bars!
