M FOR MONTREAL SHOWCASES MONTREALS BLOSSOMING MUSIC SCENE

For the first time M for Montreal showcased up and coming talent from the Montreal area in their first ever debut tour of the US. Developed by Avalanche Productions in collaboration with Martin Elbourne, best known for putting on The Glastonbury Festival and The Great Escape, M for Montreal put on a night at the infamous South By Southwest in Austin Texas and featured Patrick Watson, Les Breastfeeders, Plaster, and DJ James DiSalvio for one night in Los Angeles as well. After a much talked about set at the worlds premiere industry gathering, SXSW, M for Montreal certainly didn’t disappoint the LA crowd that packed the El Rey Theater as well.

We caught up with Patrick Watson and Robbie Kuster of Patrick Watson to discuss the bands thoughts on Montreal blossoming music scene.

“The Montreal music scene, probably since like Godspeed opened up this club called Casa del Popolo, it kind of planted the seed where the music scene really started boiling because just because it had this really nice venue to kind of develop in. I think there’s a lot of good bands in Montreal and I think when we travel we realize it more and more because the cities we go to we see lots of bands and the bands from Montreal are really top notch and we can compare internationally in terms of quality. So, it’s definitely a blossoming scene and lots of great musicians. It’s small enough that we all sort of know each other and are able to collaborate in some circumstances and just be friends and share a lot of our experiences and our music together. It’s not competitive at all, it’s actually quite the contrary. We’re all very supportive of each other and that way, it’s really cool.”

We also talked with Patrick and Robbie about the very strong possibility of being a part of the tour again and perhaps making M for Montreal an annual event.

“I’m sure at one point we’ll have to have a Montreal Festival it’d be too much fun and there’s too many crazy bands. We should just get a couple of tour busses together and get crazy. That would be really fun actually. There’s a bunch right now touring the States, The Besnard Lakes, The Land of Talk, ourselves, Karkwa and that would be really awesome actually if we could get a couple of tour busses and all travel together and get crazy. Yeah, I think we should do that. That would be really fun. OK done!”

We also caught up with Les Breastfeeders to find out there thoughts on touring with M for Montreal and turning heads both in Austin and in Los Angeles and Montreal being a city with a strong musical vibe.

“Yeah, we’ve been to the East coast and The Great Lakes and the middle West but never on the West Coast and we were in Austin last week and it was cool to got to new places. It’s fun too to play with very good bands from Montreal, it’s a funny thing. There’s so many bands in Montreal, everybody is in a band. So it’s a really musical city now.”

Although no definitive plans have been announced for another run of M for Montreal, you can bet the tour will look to grow in the coming months. Patrick Watson is currently touring in support of his latest release ‘Close to Paradise’ and he is up for a Juno Award, which is the equivalent of the Canadian Grammy Awards, for best new artists. Les Breastfeeders are also gearing up to head to France as the band has dates booked running from April 25th until May 19th. Check the website MforMontreal.com for further updates on upcoming tours.