We added CW to the WL281 bill (Sept. 18, 2005) with New Buffalo and Ca Va Mal after the Ear To The Ground Festival imploded, leaving him screwed out of a bill after coming in from Edmonton (his first time in Toronto). Not long afterward he was on the cover of Exclaim! and Eye Weekly, he started getting nominated for a bunch of awards including the Polaris Prize, and now he's just landed a U.S. record deal with Epitaph. They'll be releasing his album Breaking Kayfabe in March to coincide with his SXSW show. "Honestly we weren't exactly looking for something down there," says Upperclass label guy Gareth Jones (also in The Cansecos). "We had plans to release the record ourselves in the USA but it was really random, or a little bit random, in that Cadence's booking agent just happened to play it for this cat Andy who happened to be the president of Epitaph who happened to go ape shit over it. We met all the Epitaph people and they're all really nice and smart and actually love music and love Cadence, and it made a lot of sense to pair up." CW's next album is going to come out in fall, in both Canada and the U.S. Think he'll be playing the ACC by then?

Photo by Kevin Parnell