C'mon Feel The Noise With Ian Blurton
Wednesday September 19, 2007 @ 05:00 PM
By: ChartAttack.com Staff

C'mon

You'd be hard-pressed to find a better flag bearer for rock 'n' roll than Ian Blurton. For some 25 years, he's soldiered bravely through dive bars, flighty bandmates and big label bullshit, only to come out the other side with ethos intact and a nifty looking beard to boot.

In recent years, Blurton has become the producer of choice for a wide range of disparate talent — including the Weakerthans, Amy Millan and Cursed, to name but a few. But the fact remains that it's on stage and in your face where Blurton really excels as the frontman for the snarky hard rock three-piece, C'mon.

The outfit recently released their third full-length, Bottled Lightning Of An All Time High, and are prepping to hit the road like the ditch pigs they are. The 400-series highways are like a second home to Blurton's crew, and he comments that some of C'mon's finest moments have occurred far, far away from the band's hometown of Toronto.

"Toronto really isn't one of our best markets, considering it's our hometown. Saskatoon has always been incredible for us. Calgary is always great. And Newfoundland might be the best of the bunch. This tour will be our fourth time visiting out east, which is pretty amazing considering that most touring bands don't even make the effort once. For a band like us, it's totally worth it. The crowds are phenomenal. People get naked onstage. Newfoundland is just a bizarre, amazing place to play."

C'mon are most definitely a band best experienced (and understood) in concert, but if you insist on wussing out and going the pre-recorded route, your best bet is picking up Bottled Lightning on vinyl. The band will offer the album in a hand-crafted silver vinyl version at their gigs, and Blurton says that this hard rocking retro format is truly the best means of experiencing his band in the raw.

"Most of our records are pretty analogue, so playing them on vinyl makes them sound just perfect. It's a more natural way to listen to music overall. I read this study recently where they did some listening tests with monkeys between CDs and vinyl. Of course, the monkeys got a whole lot more agitated when listening to the CDs. I think that explains a lot. With vinyl, you're transposing a needle into a groove and transforming it into something, whereas with digital, the sound basically just appears."

Blurton is spending more and more time these days in New Orleans, where he lives part of the year with his girlfriend (and C'mon bassist) Katie Lynn Campbell. The statuesque slinger might now be an honourary Canadian after shacking up with one of our nation's finest, but Blurton contends that the admiration is mutual, as he's slowly ensconcing himself in the fertile musical bedrock of his adopted hometown.

"There is just such an amazing history of all kinds of music in New Orleans, and not just the blues and jazz stuff it's known for. The hard rock scene in the city is really stellar. A band like Eyehategod alone are incredible. There's the really heavy stuff like Crowbar and, for me, being such a huge ZZ Top fan, I love being able to visit the place where they recorded Fandango. Overall, New Orleans is really the place to be if you're really into the music. It just oozes out of the sidewalks down there."

Catch the members of C'mon oozing their way across central and eastern Canada to these shows:

• Sept. 21 Toronto, ON @ Horseshoe Tavern
• Sept. 26 Peterborough, ON @ The Montreal House w/The Jill Stavely Project
• Sept. 27 Lindsay, ON @ The York Tavern
• Sept. 28 Ottawa, ON @ The Dominion Tavern w/Bionic
• Oct. 2 Charlottetown, PEI @ Hunter's Ale House
• Oct. 3 Sackville, NB @ Tantramarsh Club
• Oct. 4 Sydney, NS @ The Steelworkers Hall
• Oct. 5 Corner Brook, NF @ The Backlot
• Oct. 6 St. John's, NF @ The Ship
• Oct. 9 Sydney, NS @ The French Club
• Oct. 10 Fredericton, NB @ Vixen's w/Barracuda Sunrise
• Oct. 11 Saint John, NB @ Elwood's
• Oct. 12 Moncton, NB @ The Paramount Complex w/Cuban Assassins
• Oct. 13 Halifax, NS @ Gus's Pub w/Cuban Assassins
• Oct. 18 Guelph, ON @ Ebar w/Hot Kid
• Oct. 19 Windsor, ON @ The Avalon Front
• Oct. 20 London, ON @ Call The Office

—Cameron Gordon