Label Woes Can't Tame Lions In The Street
Friday September 21, 2007 @ 05:30 PM
By: ChartAttack.com Staff

Lions In The Street

The last time ChartAttack caught up with Lions In The Street, the Vancouver foursome had just unleashed their debut EP, Cat Got Your Tongue. Even though the music was a throwback to the days when tunes only came delivered on vinyl, they released it for free via their website. Since then, the boys have been spending their time on the road, playing shows in their hometown and writing more songs than they know what to do with.

"We're always sitting on way more stuff than we can release," says singer/guitarist Chris Kinnon. "We put some songs — the Neil Young cover and the demo — up on the website.

"We're just going to release little bits and pieces here and there until we get the record done."

While the band still haven't even begun recording what they'll consider their full-length debut, we might see an album credited to Lions In The Street sooner than we think. The album in question was shelved when the band, who were then known as The Years, were unceremoniously dropped by their label. Kinnon and his bandmates picked themselves up and regrouped as Lions In The Street, mistakenly thinking that the record was lost in music industry limbo forever.

"We were on 604 and Universal in Canada, and they've gone out of their way to make life difficult for us lately," says Kinnon of lingering problems from the deal that the band signed as The Years. "They're planning now to release the record that we made for them two years ago."

According to Kinnon, 604 intends to release the Years record under the Lions In The Street name on Oct. 30.

The band spent much of last year hitting the road and building up a fan base the old-fashioned way — one show at a time. But if those fans pick up the "new" release that may be forthcoming, they might be in for a surprise.

"We never play those songs live," says Kinnon. "We never played them as Lions In The Street.

"We're not embarrassed by the record. It's just not us. It's not Lions In The Street. It's The Years. And it's a great record. When we made it we were really proud, and it broke our hearts when they wouldn't release it. They wouldn't even let us finish it."

You'd think that their current woes would be enough to crush their spirits, but Kinnon and company aren't letting their legal troubles get in the way of rock 'n' roll.

"It's gotten to the point where we're ready to make a proper record, and we're ready to put it out on our own instead of waiting for some sort of resolution that won't come," he says. "That's pretty liberating.

"We can't be everything to everybody. But we do what we do, and we're going to keep doing that. Whether or not we can make a living from music or not doesn't really matter. This is something we can stand behind, and we don't need to worry about who likes it and who doesn't like it, because we're proud of it. I think we just need to get stuff out there and it'll take care of itself."

—Quinn Omori