WL 367 - Sunday, June 10 – 11pm
Purveyors of: Twilight trance

Space. You don't get much of it anymore. It's too crowded to get lost nowadays – except in a Huckleberry Friends song . Thanks to the Friends’ minimalist ethos you have room to stretch your legs and take a wrong turn into nowhere for awhile. In those cavernous tunes, there's seldom more than spare keys in, guitar and percussion, accompanied by cryptic ruminations If this all sounds frustratingly vague, read on, and the Friends will explain further…

Huckleberry Friends, we don't know much about you. Let us remedy this. Who are you? Where are you from? What's your favourite food? When did you first learn to tie your shoelaces? What is your patented method of getting to sleep if you are having trouble doing so?

We are Amanda Jane Crist, Hilary Crist, and Siena DeCampo. We're from Toronto. Favourite foods: Amanda Jane - jambalaya, Hilary - ice cream, Siena – polenta. Learned to tie our shoe laces when we were five. Patented method of sleep: lying there.

In honour of your fine ditty "Chimney Sweeps", which you have duly posted on your myspace site, could you list your favourite chimney sweeps (in literature, theatre, song, or otherwise).

Burt from Mary Poppins.

Why would one go to a Huckleberry Friends show?

Hilary - To have a religious experience. Siena - My favourite genres are fantasy and game. Amanda Jane - Free medallions...while they last.

When did you start playing together? Is this something you plan on continuing for a while?

We've been playing together since August 2004 (we first got together to write a song for our friend Slim Twig's birthday) and then played quite a few shows at the Bain Community Center with Slim Twig and Tropics. We would like to play forever.

Describe the birthing of a Huckleberry Friends song.

Sometimes one of us will bring in some parts or a structure and sometimes we'll just jam for a while and come up with something that way. The music is almost always made before the lyrics. We all contribute equally to each song; we've been told that we're very democratic.

The musical influences question is by now entirely predictable, so what are some of your non musical inspirations?

History, Tretchikoff, the circle of life, the deep south, fantasy and sci-fi, sports (boxing, soccer, basketball), justice, legends of our time.

So I hear you just finished recording an EP? How was that whole process? Will we be able to get our grubby little hands on a copy at Wavelength? What do you guys think of it – are you satisfied with it?

We recorded and mixed our EP over two days in October at the Gas Station with Dale Morningstar. We really love that studio because Dale has really great equipment; so many different keyboards, and amps, and percussion instruments. He is also the greatest person and the Gas Station is on Toronto Island which is real nice too. We are happy with the way that it sounds and we're thrilled with the packaging. It's designed by our friend Dona Arbabzadeh and she really did make something so beautiful for it. We are going to record some more this summer and we're really excited about that.

By Pras Rajagopalan