Although the three-year wait between releases was more than the band would have liked to have had lapse, Ontario pop band The Elwins happen to have a very good reason for the delay: Their 2012 release And I Thank You ended up being picked up for release by an indie label, giving the record an inadvertent second lease on life, in Europe of all places.
Not that anyone in the band – performing at Moncton’s Tide & Boar Gastropub on Thursday Dec. 10 – is complaining.
“We spent a significant amount of time touring after And I Thank You came out, but then the record got picked up for release in Germany, which gave it a whole new life and basically allowed us to tour it for an additional year through Europe,” singularly-named Elwins member Feurd explains.
“It was such an amazing experience for us to be outside of our comfort zones, touring through Europe and pulling into these cities that we had never been to. Even more humbling though, was knowing you’re halfway around the world and we had people singing along to our stuff. That was exciting for us.”
While the band’s debut may have kept them touring longer than they might have originally anticipated, Feurd says it also provided the band the opportunity to road-test some of the material that would go on to comprise their sophomore record, Play For Keeps.
“We had incorporated a number of songs from Play For Keeps into our setlist and would workshop the songs based on how the audience would react. It was something we hadn’t done up to that point in our career, but it really helped shape the songs and ultimately show us what went over well and not so well with audiences.”
At the present time, The Elwins are riding high on the success of their latest video, “Show Me How To Move,” a light-hearted vignette that highlights, in spectacular fashion, the innate ability of fathers everywhere to get down and boogie when the time is right.
The video culminates with the assembly of a dozen similarly-dressed fathers who run through a semi-choreographed routine that will serve to inspire even the least rhythmically-inclined among us.
“Originally, Travis’ [Stokl, Elwins drummer] father was going to be the lead Dad in the video, but he just had too much going on,” Feurd says. “We then settled on our friend Drew Smith, who has these really amazing dance moves and was the perfect fit for what we were looking to accomplish with the video. We are all so happy with the way it turned out. I don’t know that I will ever be able to forget seeing all those dads dancing. It was a real thing of beauty.”
What: The Elwins
When: Thursday Dec. 10, 9 p.m.
Where: The Tide & Boar Gastropub, 700 Main St., Moncton
Tickets are $12. Advance tickets are available online at tideandboar.com/music