54-40 Continue Their Far Flung Adventures

Groupies of ubiquitous rock radio favourites 54-40 may find themselves faced with a small roadblock if they plan to follow the band on their current tour. It seems in between the usual stops of Ottawa (for the I Am Rock birthday fest) and Montreal, Neil Osbourne and the boys have penciled in another date that may be too much of a commute for most of their fans: the Cayman Islands.

ChartAttack certainly can't fault the band for choosing to perform at the Kalbo Yacht Club on the main island (about 300 kilometres northwest of Jamaica). After all, playing for diehard fans in Calgary and St. Catharines is nice, but strutting your stuff in the middle of the British Caribbean sin't bad, either. As if guitarist Brad Merritt doesn't want to spend some time lounging on the beach looking for his very own ocean pearl.

We're not certain how many of Cayman's 300,000 citizens are Canadian expatriates, but perhaps the gig will herald some sort of Canuck Invasion of the Caymans — a parallel to what the Brits did in the U.S. a few decades back, perhaps. Failing that, the band may want to look into some lucrative online gambling or money laundering opportunities while they're down there.

Of course, the boys won't have to resort to criminal acts in the sun if their next couple of projects take off. The band will be releasing two new albums this summer... well, sort of. The first new-but-not-really album will be an American release of the Casual Viewin' record for the Nettwerk America label. The other CD is the eponymous indie release for the band's side project, Paloma, featuring 54-40 playing back-up to singer Coco Love Alcorn. The latter album can be purchased at the annoyingly case-sensitive paloma.ca.

The first single, "Cancion de la Paloma" has already received a VideoFact grant for the creation of a video. For those keeping score, Paloma have actually opened for 54-40 several times over the last tour, unleashing their mellow-trippiness on unsuspecting "I Go Blind" fans who have no idea that it's their heroes secretly on stage incognito.

Hmmm, with 54-40 being such experts at disguise, maybe they should look into some sort of money laundering operations, after all...

54-40 Tour Dates:
June 27 Kingston, ON @ AJ's Hangar
June 28 Guelph, ON @ Club Denim
June 29 Windsor, ON @ Teutonic Club
July 1 Ottawa, ON @ On Tap (with David Usher, Kardinal Offishall, Serial Joe and Baby Blue Soundcrew)
July 2 Cayman Islands @ BWI Kalbo Yacht Club
July 5 Montreal, QC @ Clyde's
July 6 Hamilton, ON @ Hamilton Street Festival
July 7 Toronto. ON @ Celebrate Toronto Street Festival
July 10 St. Catharines, ON @ Arizona's
July 12 Calgary, AB @ Calgary Stampede
July 13 Craven, SK @ Kinsmen Rock'n'the Valley
July 14 Camrose, AB @ Stage 13
Sept. 2 Walkerton, ON @ Watershed II (with The Guess Who, Joe Cocker, Staggered Crossing and others)