greetings from the giant studios!

…that sounds horribly lame, like there should be a postcard or something. hi. we're in the studio, trying our best to keep things on track and we're a little over halfway through tracking, which is awesome because we got a release date: march 6th! just before we play south by southwest. so it's good. i'm excited.

i meant to write this to give you an update about three weeks ago when we were first in here but some things just slip away from you. we're taking a break right now - josh is currently making some sort of concoction in a pot that's supposed to be soupy and will evidently taste great when he's done. i don't trust him.

lucy was with us for awhile, before the little jet setter left us. she left us a lot to work with and josh and i have been transforming her rock god riffs into more whole songs in her absence, complete with drums, bass some synths (a lot of synths) and vox.

we've literally been in this studio every free waking moment that we have and it's been a really good experience for being, not only a band, but friends. we've been through so much the past couple of years, with break-ups, babies and marriages. not to mention side projects, movies and broken bones! getting to spend this time, not only with josh and luce, but with all of the people who work with us is amazing. i kind of forgot how amazing working felt after all of that time off, incubating june and marrying lame. there was honestly a point in time where i didn't think this album - another barclay album - would actually come to fruition. so i'm incredibly happy we're here and that people are excited. thank you for all those tweets and emails, by the way! i haven't answered any emails since we started recording again but we see every single one and it's so overwhelming.

i think they're ready for me now, so i better go and warm my chords up before i go in there and squeak at the microphone.

keep warm,

jayda

ps next time i swear there will be more photos then text. i lost the camera cord thingy. D:

"things i did in 2010 (and why i'm glad i did them)" or "i'm being honest to blog here"

things i did in 2010 (and why i'm glad i did them):
-> got married.
i've never spoken of this in any public forum, ever. it's personal. but let me tell you, it wasn't in the original plan for august and i to get married in february - we were waiting until september. then one day, when we were in vancouver to see my older brother play hockey in the olympics, i woke up and it was raining. i always heard it was good luck to get married in the rain, so after a talk, we decided to go for it. there wasn't anyone around. just us, and an old couple we pulled from our hotel lobby to be witnesses. best day of the year, and i had a lot of good days this year. i've, honest to god, been in love with my husband since i was nineteen years old, and thus, marrying him was the best decision i've ever made. even if he's a cranky old man in the mornings, and can't really stand it when i talk too much first thing.

-> went on tour with my best friends.
in march we decided to tour across canada, our home, the way we started out in the beginning. we loaded up the van, asked some of our best friends to come out with us, and off we went with our acoustic guitars. we played in a lot of really small bars and played a lot of new songs. we also played a beautiful church that held about 1000 people, which was my favourite show of the tour. i think if your band has a chance, then you should play in a church. the acoustics are generally pretty amazing. our fans were also amazing on this tour. ticket prices were a little bit up because the venues were small and we made a lot of donations to local food banks and thing, so i was super happy that people were willing to pay to see us play. i think every room was sold out, and we got to see so many familiar faces that we hadn't seen in awhile. it was so nice to be able to talk to a lot of our old friends that we got to see along the way, too.

-> ending, end of summer flowers.
you know. sometimes you have ideas and sometimes they don't work out. i wrote a lot of songs when i was a teenager that didn't make it onto barclay albums because they either, weren't as insightful as i liked/as our producers thought i could be, or they just didn't sound like barclay as a band. but i thought, somewhere in the midst of having a broken heart at the end of 2008, that i needed to get these songs out of my system. it felt really good at first. the record came out in 2009 and we toured it into 2010 and eventually, it just started to feel like i was so far removed from the songs. it didn't feel like me and it ended up draining me to the point that i nearly couldn't function. we played a show in st. louis (or we were supposed to) and that was when the bottle burst. i tend to bottle up my feelings and let them out in song form. i've never been good at emotions. so that was when i decided end of summer flowers was over, and that i would take a break from music. my sanity is a lot better for it, and so is my life in general.

-> learned to play the ukulele.
august, my husband, bought me a uke sometime in the summer. i've been playing ever since. music is in my blood. it runs through my veins and there will never be a time when i don't play something. i might not always play for money, or crowds, but i will always play. in a sense, i didn't pick music, music picked me. it's not something i want to do, but something i need to. the ukulele has refreshed me in that sense. it took months before i felt comfortable enough to let the world in on this secret. i'm proud of the songs i've written, and i don't plan to sell them. they're mine. they don't belong to a label (because i'm currently not signed to one, at all.) and no one has the rights to them except me. and you know what? that feels really fucking good.

-> started personally answering fan mail, etc.
barclay fans, and end of summer flowers fans, are really interesting people. i've had a lot of free time on my hands and i've started answering emails personally. i can't answer them all with lengthy messages, but i do read them all and i do answer a lot more of them than what i used to. so if you're emailing jayda@barclayband.com then i promise, i'm getting them. twitter's a bit harder since replies come in so fast but i try to answer those sometimes too. i'm kind of an internet addict. anyway, it's really inspiring to have real in-depth conversations with people as opposed to the fast ones that sometimes happen when i meet people face to face. people are less shy from behind these screens, i think.

-> quit caffiene.
i think i still get it hidden in places like chocolate but for the most part, i've kicked it. no more energy drinks, coffee, or pop. it was not easy, let me tell you. i literally had to ween myself off of the stuff. bad morning headaches, be gone!

-> switched servers.
after the shattering of azeroth (actually, after the huge patch that changed everything, the one before the shattering!) i stopped logging into world of warcraft and felt a lot like curling up in a ball in the corner of the room. initially, i made a lot of gold porting people from dalaran to org (what up, mageports!) but after that, i was kind of tired of my server. i didn't feel like levelling from 80 to 85 so i rerolled an undead hunter on a different server and world of warcraft has never been more fun. that said, look for an undead hunter called vyllain (like villian, sorta, get it? i'm lame. jayda lame.) and you may have just found me.

things i want to do in 2011:
-> play small shows in coffee shops.
-> spend a day busking for charity.
-> learn to cook.
-> learn how to knit in circles better.
-> paint a space mural on one of the walls in the spare bedroom.
-> learn how to stretch my own canvas, since that's what august got me for christmas.
-> redo the bathroom the way i've always wanted to, like you've walked in to go pee or poo in a comic book.
-> keep in better touch with all of the people that i love, since i'm kind of bad at that as it is.

happy new year, my loves. please be safe. don't get too wasted; take care of those livers!

happy christmas :)

i love christmas more than any other holiday in the world. my closest friends and family have referred to me as a robo-elf of some sort when the season comes around. i'm extra excited this year because it's august and my first real christmas together in our condo. last year we had christmas back home in australia (which was a trip) and this year we're home in canada. this year, we spent the months before the holiday preparing for our wedding in australia, so we decided that christmas in canada would be a good idea.

we'd been married since february but when we first got married we didn't have anyone with us. it was perfect, because if i'm going to be honest, we've always done everything by ourselves, just me and august. we're very private people. and it was a perfect ceremony but there's a point when things don't quite feel right unless you get to celebrate with your family and friends, and all of the people who are closest to you. so that was what we did. in my favourite season of the year (christmas!), in his favourite season and place (summer, and australia!), we got married again. and it somehow, was even more perfect than the first time around.

now that the wedding's come and gone (we're still waiting for photos to come back and all of that. maybe we'll show you some when they do.) we've made our way to our northern hemisphere home and we're just hanging out. we put up the tree and my brothers have been hanging around, and we've gone to my parents just to be with people we love. i don't remember the last time i was filled with so much joy that wasn't musically fueled.

i want nothing more than for every single person reading this to feel as happy right now as i do. in honour of the holidays and spreading cheer, i've recorded a christmas song with a cousin of mine. she's pretty awesome.

CHRISTMAS SONG SONG. <-- click there to listen to it!

please be safe this season! don't burn your houses down. remember to wrap your turkeys in bacon because i hear that makes it moist? i can't cook, so i wouldn't know but my brother ryan tells me so.

xoxo

jayda lynn laine.

the mo song.

I don't know what time it is anywhere else but right here its about noon and I'm still groggy. I've spent the past few hours relaxing and writing. About two months ago, for my husbands birthday I posted a song on my tumblr (which is quite convenient for music!) called The Beard Song. I've got a thing for facial hair. I meant, at the beginning of the month, to write and post this new song, but I'm a little bit late.

At the beginning of the month, my husband started growing a moustache for Movember, a month dedicated to promoting men's health. We're down under for the moment and the Movember movement started down here. I clearly can't grow a moustache myself so I wrote a song about one instead. For two dollars you can download it. The preview is here. There's no middle man. We'll put the money toward August's Movember page (since mens health doesn't disappear when the month is over!) and maybe I've thrown in something extra in the file package. You'll have to get it and see!

Other than that, life is great. Australia is wonderful and I'm enjoying my in-laws very much. We'll be back in Canada on time for Christmas and I cannot wait for that.

I hope your holiday goes well!
Love,
Bean. xo.

i have no idea when this is coming to dvd.

But I had the pleasure of playing a show with some great friends sometime last year and this, ultimately, was the result. It's in theatres super limited up in Canada, but take a look at the trailer here and see it when you can. I'm proud, so proud, to be a part of this.

More later. I'm on a date with Phoebe Hollingsworth.

Wherein I address some things.

My husband is amazing and said a lot for me when all of this (what is this exactly?) started to go down and I'm grateful for that but I thought you all would like to hear things from me. I'm no secret to letting my fans in on the things that are going on in my life. I'm also no secret to guarding my privacy, because it needs to be protected. That, maybe, is an oxymoron. The truth of all of this is that I simply need a break. I'm not pregnant (I've heard that/been asked too many times the past couple of weeks) nor are August and I planning on having children anytime in the immediate future. We just got married. I'm only 22. I've traveled the world and made successful records. I've been in movies and worked with some amazing people. And I'm only 22.

People keep telling me to imagine what more I could do, because I'm only 22 and I keep telling people to imagine how tired I am, despite all the amazing things that I've been blessed with. I've been reminded more than I've wanted to be in the past year or so that I'm not Superwoman. This comes as a shock to me because that's what I like to tell myself in the mirror in the mornings when I've got a busy, seeemingly endless day ahead of me. "Jayda, you can do this, you're superwoman." It's effective, paired with removing yourself from the situation and pretending you're someone you're not. From then, I watch myself from the outside and hop back into my body when the cameras and interviewers are gone. For a long time, the only place I've been me is on that stage. It's been my safe place, which I guess would explain the outburst that I had that night in St. Louis.

The point of all of this is that I need a break from being stressed. My body still isn't quite the same from all the travelling and it's not ever quite sure that 3am is actually 3am, or is it the afternoon? That probably doesn't make sense. It's been nice to stay in one place and spend time with my family. The other day August and I went out and bought new kitchen plates and a new duvet cover for our bed. It was so shockingly normal that I wanted to cry with happiness. I wish I were exaggerating but I'm not. This is my point. My life has become something so... far removed from real life that I just need a chance to get back. I don't want to write bad records about being on the road, or about being in a band that's falling apart. I want to write about real life and to do that, I need to experience it first.

And now I bring you, the Jayda Laine clean-up crew:

August. This is old, before we were even a couple but it's one of my favourites. I look so fucking young.


Best big brother in the world.


This is my dad. You have no idea how much he means to me. He takes me to Niagara Falls. He sips beers at my shows (and at McG's shows) and he taught me how to play roulette in Minnesota when I was 18. My face is essentially his.


Have you ever had a soulmate? I have two. She's one of them.


Elrawn. He's been an essential part of my life since we met on Warped when we were young and discovered that we were both WoW heads. We're on Rivendare. Come find us. It's the midsummer fire festival and he just became a flamekeeper.

holy blogman.

So waking up at 4:30 this morning was probably not the best idea that I've ever had in my life. Alas, my body was more convinced that it was after seven and I couldn't fall back to sleep. Life, in a single word, has been absolutely crazy as of late. I can deal with crazyness when it's planned. I'm pretty good at that, I kind of have to be. But when it's unexpected, it's a little different. Last week was really weird. If you didn't already hear, my grandpa passed away just a little over a week ago. I found out the morning of the last day of the acoustic tour, so I really needed the last show to be amazing. And it was (thanks Vancouver!) but going home the day after was weird. The entire week was. I haven't ever lost someone that close to me and even still, I'm not sure how I'm supposed to be reacting to it all. I feel a little bad for... maybe not feeling as bad as I should. I'm not sure if that makes and lick of sense but, you know, sometimes I don't.

Anyway, it was like I blinked and last week - my three or four little days at home - were gone and I was right back on a plane to Los Angeles, cursing it the way I always do like nothing had changed. It still feels that way. Perhaps it hasn't hit me properly yet. However, moving on. We're getting a little too heavy for my liking, especially at 9:37am.

I was looking at youtubes of the acoustic tour and deciding which ones were my favourites. I don't think I'll post them here, right now, but rather in a mass email of sorts so that Barclay fans who didn't get a chance to get to the tour can get a taste of what we're up to, too. If you don't want to wait though, take a quick youtube search! Send me your favourites - maybe we like all the same ones. We played a lot of covers. That was fun. We played a lot of new songs too, and a good few old ones. I'm pretty sure we're going to go back into the studio over the summer and lay it all down slowly. We haven't thought of producers yet. We're really still in the preproduction stages of it all but trust me guys, it's coming. And when it does, it's going to be good. I think we're doing a song for the Scott Pilgrim soundtrack, too. Do you guys know about that movie? Josh is in it. I hear it's supposed to be off the wall and I'm stoked to see what happens. I've read the graphic novels so I'm extra excited about the movie. I want to check out the set while they were filming but I was hanging on the set of Whip It! the entire time.

Speaking of Whip It! I think we're pushing around some of the last few dates of the US End of Summer Flowers tour to accomodate the Whip It! premiere. I'm stoked about it, and you should be too, cause it's going to rule and we're going to play some kick ass shows either way. The Rock and Roller Derby is soon, too, dudes! If you're in LA and haven't got tickets, you should look that ish up. I know it's going to be a good show. I'm so ready to strap my skates back on. I miss them. And it's for a good cause, you can't really go wrong with that!

And enough of the PR stuff, I suppose. How are you guys? Send me emails - I'm gonna need something to do on my long ass flight to Finland. I'm really anxious to get back on the road and super nervous for the Euro shows because they are SO MASSIVE. What the hell, when did that happen? It blows my mind, really. Cannot believe this tour is actually going down. I cannot wait to see all the pretty faces and hear all the interesting accents!

Alas, there is a monster in my belly, growling pretty loud. It needs to be fed. I'mma go do that now. Love you guys!
Jayda "Lois" Laine. (I'm lame... pun intended.)