Ontario Plates

In Windsor, Ontario somewhere in the summer months of 2010, Josh Kaiser, Bob Catford and Nick Bracewell formed Ontario Plates with bands like fago.sepia, The Bad Plus, and Do Make Say Think in mind, but these influences quickly became overshadowed by a deep and urgent collective dedication to the establishment of Ontario Plates, which was founded in a time of great self-reflection. Keyboardist Greg Smith and bassist Joey Strasburg became permanent in the mix shortly before Joey quit and was replaced by Greg's brother, Jeff, who had just finished a degree in music at Mohawk. That winter was spent in search of the Sound. Written, rewritten, forgotten, and remembered, six complete songs were recorded by Jeff in Bob's living room during a house party attended by ever friend and listener, and those six songs are February EP, which marked the originality of the Sound attributed to Ontario Plates. While keeping between two and four jam-spaces at a time, and performing with different & often borrowed equipment in a wild harmonic experiment, the Sound fluctuated, growing louder-- hungrier, so that by June of 2011, Ontario Plates had an eleven song catalog of material no member had ever considered creating. In August, prior to the band's dissolution, Forever EP was recorded by Jeff and mastered by Josh. Since August, Bob and Jeff have moved to Toronto, while Nick studies Jazz performance on scholarship at Michigan State, while Josh studies sound engineering at Fanshawe, and Greg works in Windsor. While all of Ontario Plates have grown in different and often conflicting directions, not one member has ceased in the constant pursuance of the unfaltering expression of their concepts and every discovery made by each in his pursuance is a discovery that is sure to influence the Sound that we can only call Ontario Plates.