Hello love,
This is an exciting day, more than two years in the making. Some dear pals have made a remarkable film about me and we're going to share it with the world on Saturday, October 30th. It's a documentary. I'd say that it is a "concert doc", but what they've crafted travels beyond that limited description. To be honest, I've never seen a film quite like this. It's somewhat akin to Waking Life meets Stop Making Sense.
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ALL TOGETHER NOW - A Dan Mangan Film by Amazing Factory
Worldwide Premiere Online Screening
Saturday, Oct. 30 @ 12pm PT / 3pm ET / 8pm GT
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About the screening:
I'll be in the chat with you all while the doc airs.
Immediately after, all audience members will be given a Zoom link and we'll have a good ol' fashioned face-to-face audience Q&A with myself and Andy, Josh and Cayne from Amazing Factory. Maybe I'll even play a couple tunes. There'll be room for the first 1000 folks who smash the link.
If you are unavailable on Oct 30th, you can watch it on demand whenever is more convenient. Unlimited replay of the entire event (screening + Q&A) will be available for all ticketholders until the end of 2021.
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Watch ALL TOGETHER NOW trailer
What/who is Amazing Factory? As a film production house, they've made some beautiful feature films, but I first came to know several members of the collective through their work in the band We Are The City. More recently, they've got a "hyper-pop" project called Big Kill that is objectively bonkers.
They've always found a way to present their musical efforts in conjunction with stunning and groundbreaking visuals. Everything they do is bursting with vibrant creativity.
I asked them to document our homecoming Vancouver show at The Vogue Theatre in Feb of 2019. This was the end of our "More or Less" tour. Now, with a dose of pandemic hindsight, the magnitude of this evening is even more glorious to me. I'd been down some, but I rallied, and returning to that iconic stage after several years of artistic existential crisis was like being baptized anew by the city that first gave me wings.
Under Andy Huculiak's direction, they didn't just capture a concert - they went beyond. They solicited voicemail recordings from dozens (hundreds?) of attendees. They captured songs unconventionally from within the crowd and throughout the venue, at times obscured by the shoulders of taller audience members in front of them. And then, to juxtapose the densely populated theatre ("More"), they spent days out in nature finding moments of perfectly peaceful solace in nature ("or Less").
We were all thrilled with the footage, but everybody was busy and we just didn't get around to moving the project forward. Then comes the pandemic. We re-watched what they'd captured, and it all seemed so vivid, but also like a distant memory. A dream of a dream.
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And so they approached the film like a dream. Interviews, music and nature come and go like surreal fragments. I cannot commend Andy, Josh, Cayne and the rest of their team enough for what they've put together. As the press release says, "We don’t witness an evening from the past so much as feel its gravity... Songs seemingly don’t truly begin or end, but wander in and out of reflective vignettes about the importance of human connection - as well as our lack of it, from within the lens of a pandemic."
We'd like to extend a special thanks to MRG Live and The Vogue Theatre for their unparalleled care, generosity and support in the production of this documentary.
I hope you will join us on the 30th, or watch the doc on your own time thereafter.
REAL SHOWS
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ONTARIO
Nov 22. Toronto, ON @ Danforth Music Hall | TICKETS
Nov 23. Kitchener, ON @ Centre in the Square | TICKETS
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I should also mention that I'm in the latter stages of putting a new album together... It's been a long process. I've been working long distance with Drew Brown for nearly two years. It is an intensely collaborative project. I don't want to spoil anything, but it really is something.
As always, thanks for your ears and your eyes.
Much love,
x
Dan