Mobile rolls into Fanshawe for free concert
“It's the perfect time for us to start playing and touring again,” Mat Joly said excitedly over the phone. Joly is the lead singer of Canadian rock band Mobile, and after a year of recording, he and the guys are ready to hit the road.
And that's exactly what they're doing, starting with a tour of six campuses across Canada. Sponsored by Rogers Musicstore and MTV Canada's “The Leak,” Mobile will embark on the journey next Monday and by September 24, they'll be at Fanshawe College and it's entirely free for music goers.
Fanshawe was chosen as the
only Ontario post-secondary stop
for the Rogers MusicStore Presents
MTV's The Leak Live tour and
joins Dalhousie University,
Southern Alberta Institute of
Technology, University of British
Columbia and Champlain College.
Rumour has it that one MTV personality
will also be on hand to
present the show.
Mobile are no strangers to
Fanshawe, and anyone that attended
last year's Frosh concert will
know that, but this time around they'll be playing a whole new set
of songs. Their sophomore album,
Tales From the City, is set to be
released in October, and the band
are eager to audition the new material,
like their current single, “The
Killer”, which hit the airwaves in
July.
Joly describes their new material
as a little more cohesive than their
2006 debut, Tomorrow Starts
Today.
“Tomorrow Starts Today was
more like a collection of songs that
we wrote through the years... but
with Tales, wanted to write a different
kind of record,” he
explained. “We didn't want to
rewrite the first album.”
And while the band has still
revisited old ideas for Tales From
the City, many of their personal
experiences from the last two years
have gone into the music, both
melodically and lyrically.
“We've been through a lot as a
band, and you know, personal
struggles too,” Joly told me, “I lost
a lot of members of my family, so
it made me realize a lot of things in
life, and I got to write about things
that I couldn't really do before.”
Christian Brais, or Criq for short
who plays guitar for the band, was also emotionally burdened by his mother's diagnosis of breast cancer. She has since made a full recovery, but the ordeal left a permanent mark on him.
These events turned into songs,
with the melodies written by Brais, lyrics by Joly. But while Mobile had years to amass material for
their first album, composing the same amount in a fraction of the
time was a creative challenge.
And to make matters worse,
Mobile had been touring heavily behind Tomorrow Starts Today, so
finding time to sit down and write was nearly impossible.
“It was a matter of time before
we started clicking again,” said Joly, about the initial struggle.
But where problems occurred in the writing process, solutions were found just as quickly, with the help
of producer Jeff Saltzman.
Saltzman's most notable work, The Killers' Hot Fuss album, was nominated
for five Grammy Awards.
A different producer was a big
step for the band.
“Christian and I went to New York City for a couple of weeks to
see how [we and Jeff] would work together, because you never know
how it's going to turn out with a producer,” said Joly. “The rest of the guys joined us later. [...] Jeff is
a really cool guy, and really easy to work with, and I think he was the
perfect guy for this record.”
Rogers MusicStore Presents MTV's The Leak Live tour will roll into Fanshawe on Wednesday, September 24 with an entirely selfcontained stage. The entire production will be set up in Parking Lot 8, north of the college greenhouse and starts up at 7 pm. There will be Rogers reps at the college from 11 am - 1 pm Thursday, September 18 until the show.