I moved from Dublin to Montreal in June 2006, armed with a batch of new songs that I was just itching to try out. I'd been mainly doing the rounds acoustically up till then, though, with these new tunes I wanted a full band. The city of Montreal has such a great buzz in summertime, and I was looking forward to the prospect of hooking up with some local heads to play with, but, in the meantime, there was a more important event already underway in Germany, the FIFA WORLD CUP. So, within a week of my arrival, I got my priorities right, and headed downtown to Hurleys Irish Bar on Crescent st. to watch a couple of games on the telly. There I was, pint in hand, happy as a pig in shite, when in walked Shayne (a local lad). We got talking, the topic soon turned to music, and hey presto! the bandwagon started to roll. We arranged a rehearsal (after the world cup of course) and in no time had half a dozen songs ready, well, ready enough to try out a drummer. I'll always have a little chuckle to myself when I remember our first audition for sticks. The guy was very talented, but his main bag was prog-rock. At the end of our jam, he said that he liked the songs, but ultimately, they were too short... What can I say... I started thinking maybe I was in for a long haul trying to find a drummer, but a few weeks later, as luck would have it, next up was Nigel, who hails from Sussex, England, and he was on the nose from the off. Rehersals started proper, late November, and backing tracks were recorded in the basement of Nigels house at the beginning of March '07. So began THE HIGH KINGS... JOE O'CONNOR
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