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Autumn in spring at Hideaway

New band makes a stop in Salmon Arm.
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Canadian tour: The Autumn Portrait is on a coast-to-coast tour and will make a stop at the Hideaway Saturday April 11.

One band, three friends, eight provinces, 35 gigs, 13,337 kilometres… and zero record labels.

Ambitious doesn’t seem like a big enough word to describe the monumental, uphill challenge ahead of Vancouver indie-rock trio, The Autumn Portrait.

Yet these three entrepreneurial musicians seem undaunted by their bold excursion. With confident smiles, Freddie Mojallal, Sean Lavoy and Patrick Jacobson appear to be ready to take on the whole nation.

So, who are these guys anyway?

If you haven’t heard of The Autumn Portrait yet, it’s not because you haven’t had your ear to the ground.

A year ago, this band didn’t exist. Frontman, Freddie Mojallal met drummer Sean Lavoy through a Craigslist ad and they immediately set their sights on getting a full-length CD recorded.

With the help of producer Tom Dobrzanski (Said the Whale, We Are The City, The Zolas), by October 2010 this first goal was successfully realized. Shortly thereafter, Mojallal and Lavoy met bassist Patrick Jacobson, through Facebook.

Now, with two western Canadian tours already completed, these three resourceful musicians are embarking on a massive two-month, national tour from the Pacific to the Atlantic and back.

“In this business, you’re nobody until you have at least a few hundred shows outside your hometown under your belt,” says Mojallal. Jacobson contributes, “We know how competitive the music industry has become. With fewer labels taking chances on new artists, we have to take initiative and make things happen ourselves if we expect to make an impression.”

TAP has made enough of an impression to land a showcase at El Mocumbo during Canadian Music Week in Toronto. Mojallal explains, “We basically booked the tour around CMW. We had booked a couple shows, got accepted into CMW, and the rest just fell into place.”

As if a national tour wasn’t enough to keep their hands full, just one week before setting out, The Autumn Portrait was making a music video for their new single, Awake. It was on the same day they were performing at an all-day music festival in Vancouver.  “We didn’t want to let any opportunities slip through our fingers,” said Jacobson. “When we were approached to perform at the Day & Night Festival, we knew we had a music video to shoot that day.

“However, we were confident we could handle both, and we did.”

The Autumn Portrait tour makes a stop in Salmon Arm at the Hideaway Pub on Monday, April 11.