When you’re a touring musician, you need to make the best of your time on the road. Go where the audiences are—be they domestic or foreign—and the work will follow. It is essentially the opposite of the Field of Dreams business model: if someone else has built it, you must go, as it has been ordained by the Universe and Kevin Costner, the only exceptions being Celine Dion and Cher who get to stay in Vegas. It’s a life of great inconvenience, requiring great sacrifice and necessitating fitting in what you can, where you can. As Mauno have yet to earn their Vegas residencies, they are currently touring the UK and Europe, which is exactly where we find them in their new video: ‘Helah’.
Directed by Tom Chick, or rather by the necessities of touring, Halifax four-piece Mauno take us on an excursion. It’s not like they’ve invited us along with them—not literally, and barely metaphorically. But instead, we’re given a glimpse alongside their own experiences, like engaged voyeurs. It’s like being on vacation with your family, and you keep hitting up all the same spots as other vacationing families, encountering them again and again until they become familiar faces. You’re not vacationing together in the strictest of terms, but you may as well be.
Filmed in the Welsh town of Harlech, the scenery blurs together with their side trip adventures. It’s all moments between moments, like visiting Disneyland in the 90s: you don’t have photos of yourself on the rides (except the flume logs, of course), just you and your parents standing around beside a fountain, waiting while their stomachs settled. Those photographs become the anchors for our memories while all the excitement of the rollercoasters becomes a literal and metaphorical blur. Nostalgia is just what we choose to remember.
Mauno’s new album Tuning is out October 13th via Tin Angel/Idee Fixe. In the meantime, the band will be touring Europe this fall with fellow Canadian Chad VanGaalen.
Tour Dates
9/23 Hamburg (DE) – Reeperbahn Festival
9/24 Berlin (DE) – Monarch
9/26 Amsterdam (NL) – Sugar Factory
9/27 Brussels (BE) – Atelier 210
9/30 Paris (FR) – Espace B
10/04 London (UK) – The Islington (tickets)
10/05 Coventry (UK) – Inspire
10/15 Utrecht (NL) – EKKO *
10/16 Rotterdam (NL) – Rotown *
10/18 Leeds (UK) – Brudenell Social Club *
10/21 Copenhagen (DK) – Stengade *
10/24 Düdingen (CH) – Bad Bonn *
10/25 Lyon (FR) – Le Sonic *
10/26 Amiens (FR) – La Lune des Pirates *
10/29 Tourcoing (FR) – Le Grand Mix *
10/30 Luxembourg (LU) – Rotondes *
10/31 Gent (BE) – BIB *
* w/ Chad VanGaalen