artist Tomboyfriend

TOMBOYFRIEND - "King of the Animals" EP launch and video release with VAG HALEN and FITNESS January 20, 2012 - Doors 8pm El Macambo - Main Floor 464 Spadina Ave. On January 20th, Tomboyfriend will release a mini-EP "King of the Animals" as well as launch TBF member/filmmaker Jonathan Culp's new video for single "Hot Divorcee." Sample track Alexander McQueen. Sample track Hot Divorcee. Joining us that night are: Amazing dyke cock rock cover band VAG HALEN as well as the electro-indie-disco sounds of FITNESS to accompany your body movements. Get out your sweatbands and short shorts and help warm up January! "KING OF THE ANIMALS" presents five, fine new TBF songs "Alexander McQueen" "Hot Divorcee" "The Commons" "Margaux" and "The Heart Needs a Home (to Break in)." These anticipate new TBF full album in the works "Berlin"(about an imaginary residence in an imaginary Berlin) as well as material from songwriter Ryan Kamstra's embryonic collaboration with artist Shary Boyle, "Planet of the Dog." Originally an agit-pop conceptual art project born in Toronto garages, and in front of Toronto art galleries, Tomboyfriend mixes a poet with artists, and activists with musicians. Morphing over the years into a consistently exhilarating stage show, energetic, theatrical sets alternating between dancey stompers and literate torch songs, and a purveyor of sleeper, pocket anthems, Tomboyfriend is a queer-mixed glee wonderland, drawing on Toronto's many diverse creative communities. Known for flattening musical genres, Broadway musicals, post/disco punk, tin pan alley, garage pop and Tori-Amos-gone-Gaga all twist around a solid core o f expressive minimalism, and the distinctive poly-vocals of Ryan Kamstra, Marlena Zuber, Sholem Krishtalka as well as down-at-the-heels chorale arrangements of back-up troupe The Glory Hogs. Tomboyfriend has been called "a performance-art whirlwind" (Sarah Liss 2008), ‎"some of the most emotionally relevant, lyrically poignant music you’ll find this side of just about anywhere," (This Magazine 2011) and ""One charming motherfucker. But a motherfucker nonetheless," (Said the Gramophone 2006). In June 2011, This Magazine recognized Tomboyfriend as one of the 45 best (cultural outfits) in all of Canada. Their efforts also have been recognized by the likes of Spin Magazine, Slate Magazine, and New York Times magazine. Their debut full-lengther "Don't Go to School" was released on Blocks Recording in late 2010.

In anticipation for our EP "King of the Animals" to be released in January 2012 - we hope you enjoy our new track "Alexander McQueen". Simply visit our R3 page and click the link in the player to listen right away. More goodness can aways be found at http://tomboyfriend.com Have great day and thanks for listening!

TOMBOYFRIEND WITH JOSH MARTINEZ, OPOPO, KOVAK, FIREXFIRE ADMISSION: one-day wristband $25, festival wristband $50 WHERE: El Mocambo, room: Upstairs, 464 Spadina, Toronto,M5T 2G8, 416-777-1777, nxne.com WHEN: Jun 16 12pm Hi everyone! We'll be in NXNE in a week (Toronto). Also, our national broadcaster (CBC3) just let us know Don't Go to School has been added to their rotation. We think Almost/Always would make a good sleeper hit for summer 2011! Here's how we understand it works. We have a CBC3 page. If you go there and *thumbs up" your favorite Tomboyfriend song (You can pick between Almost/Always, original End of Poverty, Hotel Supermart and Goldfinch Gluespoo), if there are enough "thumbs up," CBC3 will play us. We thank you! http://radio3.cbc.ca/play/band/Tomboyfriend/ Look for new singles from us soon! Luke Champion - This magazine’s top 45 in Canada, June 2011 “You’d be forgiven if Tomboyfriend slipped under your radar the past year. With only one album (2010’s Don’t Go to School) and virtually no touring, the band can still be considered undiscovered territory. Tomboyfriend is a collective led by Ryan Kamstra who just happen to make some of the most emotionally relevant, lyrically poignant music you’ll find this side of just about anywhere—and that’s rare. It’s unusual to find a band so fully formed, so direct and developed in their songwriting and so absolutely heartbreaking in their delivery. Think of them as a bittersweet Venn diagram where joy, despair and hope all connect under an umbrella of sinister punk-rock fairytales—part Jim Carroll and part Patti Smith, part island of Misfit Toys. Stand out tracks like “Almost Always” and Lovesickness have this desperate urgency that enters through the ears and just swells in your chest until you find yourself clutching your heart for no reason at all. They’re songs that make you grin uncontrollably because despite all the despair they are ultimately songs of hope and humanity that bring us increasingly closer to that point of holiness. It’s precious, brave and beautiful and seriously worth the listen.”

Edit Don't Go to School Toronto Release Oct.14th, Co-Release w Sheila Heti + Margaux Williamson Sheila Heti’s third book, HOW SHOULD A PERSON BE? Tomboyfriend (led by Ryan Kamstra)’s first album, DON’T GO TO SCHOOL; and Margaux Williamson’s feature-length movie, TEENAGER HAMLET ~ Margaux, Ryan and Sheila feel pretty lucky to have been born into a time when artists don't need to leave home in order to try to make good art. They took advantage of their contemporary luck, and used each other as teachers and subjects. They effectively created their own MFA program right in their neighbourhood, learning only what each other, the internet, and Toronto could teach them. Sheila’s tape recorded conversations with her friends ended up forming the structure of How Should a Person Be?, an enjoyable, funny and experimental novel that pulls fiction and truth out of life. The poppy, magesterial album Don’t Go To School is the result of Ryan’s using non-professional musicians around him to form his band, Tomboyfriend, composing songs based around the band members’ talents. Margaux left her painting studio to see what meaningful thing existed at the heart of her community, and found Teenager Hamlet, a surprising and critical take on the difference between being an actor and taking action. Many of the same people appear in these these works -- as performers and characters -- people drawn from a loose community of Toronto-based artists and writers, such as the painter Sholem Krishtalka, the music critic Carl Wilson, and the illustrator Marlena Zuber. Sheila, Margaux and Ryan are characters in How Should a Person Be? and all three “acted” in Teenager Hamlet. Tomboyfriend contributed songs to the movie and Margaux made a video for the band that The New York Times praised as “one of the best things to see on a screen in 2008.” The album, book and movie together create a vivid picture of art, love and democracy, and explore the exalted limitations of living your own life, in your own neighbourhood, among the people you find there. ~ A joint launch party will be held in Toronto on Oct. 14 at Stone’s Place at 8 pm. It is open to the public. Sheila Heti will read from her book, Tomboyfriend will play a set, and a clip from Teenager Hamlet will be screened. For review copies of the album or the movie, or for interview requests or more information, email Chris at: mfa@theproductionfront.com For review copies of the book, please contact Laura Repas at House of Anansi Press: laura@anansi.ca Read more: http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=111227784&blogId=539190698#ixzz10EFIk9KV

In case anyone were curious, this is Ryan's statement in full from the June 7th Town Hall on Pride and Free Speech at the 519. Characteristically, it was hard to keep within the two minute limit. Tomboyfriend, as a matter of consensus and conscience, withdrew from Pride TO's Alterna-Queer stage on May 26th, specifically citing solidarity with Queers United against Israeli Apartheid on the matter of censorship as the reason for this decision. We are a large and diverse group, the fact we could discuss this openly and arrive at consensus while being internally not totally in agreement in specifics related to the bureaucracy of Pride Toronto, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, neo-colonization, even what constitutes censorship, I found this step we took together distinctly heartening. Speaking only for myself, the band organizer, this is specifically the space that I recognize has been lost in Pride TO's board decision to ban the participation of one group, sacrificing not only Pride as a political space, but a space where politics can be discussed, enacted, where people can be informed and change and form alliances among one another, even sometimes with compromise or shouting, and hopefully move together, as awkwardly and violently and painfully as these things often go, but towards change. Broadly, what I believe Pride TO has conceded is that Pride TO is no longer a community, not in the sense I just invoked. That to me is too large a sacrifice. Under the current administrative environment of Pride TO, again speaking only for myself and not on behalf of the band, some of whom will march with QuAIA during Pride, some of whom may act under other banners, some of whom may even stay home, I could see no meaningful way in which an act like ourselves, who make specific references to politics and the global climate and the nuances of class and queerness and exclusion and oppression . . . but also sometimes really, really don't . . . a band that tries to make for itself and its audience a free space, a community space within our own immediate community but always pushing the limits of our community, a space where radical politics have entered into the discussion, a space even in which to have fun, I don't see how we could mount a performance in any meaningful way, without just adding to the noise or else being drowned out by it. I respect deeply those artists who have remained in the official program of Pride TO while expressing solidarity for Queers United against Israeli Apartheid, either on the matter of censorship or because of a deep alliance with QuAIA's specific campaign, but also felt strongly the environment was already closed to artists to participate in any way that resembled free speech. Already there seemed an imposition upon everyone that they needed to shout to be heard. Or else just keep their head in the sand. In this, I sense, if not a dead end, at least an impasse. To be clear, I rest the weight of onus on creating that environment solely with PrideTO's decision to create a precedent by censoring one group, because it was optic and convenient for it do so in a given climate. This year, and I would add with deeply ambivalent feelings, we are trying an experiment, our band. We are going to mark the season around Pride by organizing or taking part in events that respond to our politics and our community at hand, but are not part of the register of official PrideTO events. In that, and again I speak only for myself, I am hoping to re-enact the ideals and identification I once held out for Pride specifically, but in a more basic, grassroots way. I am eager to extend the olive branch, particularly to artist-entertainers like ourselves who might feel similarly: there is something we are commemorating here, the spontaneous alliance and enactment of our politics and our culture, which is always shifting and evolving, but I am not certain that space currently resides within the fixed "parade route" of Pride TO. In this I have not written off Pride, but I certainly don't see any place in it for a mouthy party band like us, especially one with deeply held, diverse and thoughtful politics and external alliances amongst our members. I do hope this is only temporary, this apparent collapse of leadership and vision within Pride TO. I thank you for giving me some time to voice our position and concerns.

With regrets, Tomboyfriend has decided to withdraw and not perform at Pride this year due to Pride Toronto's decision to censor QuAIA.