In April 2012, the garage rock and roll band released a four-song EP that they recorded in Nashville. Fresh off the release high of their first music video for Tease, a fun, quirky and upbeat song that easily compliments a playlist of party tunes, the group is amped to tour.
Bootleg Glory plays at De’d Dog Jan. 24 at 9 p.m. and there’s no cover. They’ll play three sets, both of originals and covers, said Burns. The show might be “more balls in than balls out” he jokes, due to their lengthy time on stage. There will be a mix between high energy and mellower tunes.
The group looks forward to meeting the Rocky Mountains and being in Jasper for the first time.
“Everyone’s said how beautiful it is, we can’t wait to experience it ourselves.”
As mentioned, the journey to Alberta was packed with tribulations. According to their “bit of a beater” van, as Burns describes, the trip was going to be memorable, for better or worse.
Before leaving, the band brought the newly-purchased van to a mechanic who told them “there’s a whole bunch of work that needs to be done.” If you believe in foreshadowing, or even Murphy’s Law, the following might not be such a surprise.
“We got it back and then within 100 metres of driving out of the mechanic’s shop, it died,” laughs Burns. After a day’s delay for more repairs, the van broke down en route to Sudbury, and was fixed yet again.
It gets better. The van wouldn’t start after being refuelled at a Sudbury gas station. After a boost, Bootleg Glory hit the open road once again, but due to a blinding snow storm, they couldn’t see how open the road was.
Their van, now appropriately and affectionately named Van Wilder, turtled down the Trans Canada Highway at the mach speed of 40 kilometres. Adding insult to injury, the heat stopped working.
“Around 6 a.m., every time I put on the brakes our lights would start dimming; our battery was literally dying in front of us,” said Burns.
After receiving six boosts along the way, Van Wilder finally rolled into Winnipeg. There wasn’t time to wait for a mechanic to inspect it, so the vehicle soldiered on.
“It was a beautiful drive through Saskatchewan and Alberta because it was pretty flat and wasn’t as hard on our vehicle and wasn’t as cold.”
On the drive to Edmonton, however, Van Wilder embraced her final voyage and began to spew smoke. “We run out of this vehicle expecting it to catch on fire and it’s making this awful sound like a jet engine.” Due to Van Wilder’s broken motor, the band is searching for a replacement vehicle.
Bootleg Glory remained light-hearted throughout the ordeal and are happy to now focus more on their music.
Bootleg Glory’s name is a marriage between Oasis’ What’s the Story Morning Glory and Bootleg Saint by Sam Roberts.
Thomas and Burns have known each other since grade school and Blodgett and Meraw have been acquainted just as long. The four formed a band in high school with a different drummer, recruited Greaves later on and have been playing together for five years.
