Self-releasing a cassette, the band went on their first tour with Victoria’s Freak Heat Waves. All four members ended up living together in a Toyota Echo for six weeks as they zig-zagged their way around North America, packed like sardines. 

Just as Preoccupations are telling their first tour story, a Toyota Echo drives over a speed bump outside of the park.

“Speak the devil’s name and he shall appear,” Munro says. The band erupts in laughter. 

“That tour was legendary,” Christiansen remembers.

“Legendarily bad,” Flegel interjects. “We had all our gear in the Freak Heat Waves van. “It was fun, but a lot of nights were just playing for the bartender. We were all broke too.”

“But we were selling cassette tapes and half of them were completely blank,” Munro laughs. “They didn’t dub properly so I had a folder on a computer of the WAV files and whenever someone emailed me about the missing music, I just sent them a link to the Dropbox and said ‘Hey, just dub them yourself. It’ll sound better.’”

“It was a low rent tour and by the end we were pretty good at playing together,” Flegel says. “We didn’t kill each other either. And under those circumstances, if you’re still standing, then you’re a band.”

There’s another tour story Preoccupations reminisce about; a story that will stay burned in the back of their minds for the rest of their lives—the time they almost indirectly committed manslaughter in New Orleans.

“So we’re parallel parking in this spot, and I hear this,” Wallace says, pausing to smack his hands together to mimic a quick impact. “A shiver runs up my spine. Matt’s on the wheel and I jump out of the window and see this guy’s head, maybe a foot and a half from the van’s wheel. I yell ‘STOP,’ and I remember the fear in the guy’s face. Turns out he slipped in horseshit and landed on the road just as we were pulling in.”

“That was an eventful night, but I remember it really bringing us closer together,” Christiansen says. “There’s always something that happens on tour.”

Preoccupations are in good spirits now, but they know the inevitable question about the Viet Cong name change is going to arise. Flegel senses it after Wallace says the band is “banned” in Halifax. “I think we’d probably be fine to book there now,” Flegel says. “It’s been quite a while and we did the thing that we had to do and I think we’re better humans because of it. I mean, I know a lot of history about the Vietnam war now.”

To say there wasn’t much thought put into the band’s original moniker would be an understatement, and in 2015 it caused public outrage—especially in the Vietnamese community—which led to protests outside of their shows and canceled tour dates. The band was just starting to gain momentum after releasing their first, self-titled full-length album on Flemish Eye in Canada and Jagjaguwar in the US, but they had to make a move if they were going to continue on. “At the time, I’ll admit I was pretty ignorant to the whole situation and didn’t understand that it was offensive. So we tried to talk with [the protesters] a few times, but mostly, people just wanted to yell at us,” Flegel says. 

“Which is fine,” Munro adds. “But we were in the middle of a long tour and it’s hard to change your band name and everything associated with it in the middle.”

The controversy became the aspect everyone associated with the band, so all that momentum kind of fizzled out. It was stressful for the four members to say the least. Perhaps this is why a song like “Anxiety,” on their 2016 Preoccupations album, punches so hard—the band truly lived it.

And as they considered new names, another problem arose. The band was now on a label, which meant they legally needed a fresh name that no one had ever used before. “We had hundreds of names rejected because of that, and then you have all these people screaming at us, which again, was a warranted reaction I think,” Flegel says, “But we honestly did the best we could.”

“I think people thought that we were jerks, or thought it was a political statement,” Wallace adds. 

“Yeah, but we’re past it now and a little wiser I guess,” Munro concludes as the others nod. 

A few hours before the photo shoot, Preoccupations were figuring out how to play some of the Arrangements songs live before their North American tour. Each member agrees that recording the album is one thing, but learning the songs in a live setting is a different beast. 

“Like I said, I kind of went crazy with the guitar and layering a bit,” Munro says. “Danny’s guitar is in a weird tuning and we have some walls of sound we need to recreate on stage.”

“It seems like loud guitar music is kind of more of a thing now, and maybe better than the last time we put out a record,” Flegel chimes in. 

“So yeah, it’s not going well,” Wallace laughs. “I wish we could say we got it nailed down in a day, but that’s just not reality.”

But Preoccupations will nail it, because under all the jokes and wild tour stories, they’re a professional band of musicians with over a decade’s worth of chemistry. And when they’re feeling frustrated, maybe due to the wrong guitar tone in a song, or a part coming in too late or early, they will persevere. 

“Or Danny, our court jester, will tell some wild story after a few beers and we’ll all laugh and be like ‘OK. Again,” Flegel laughs.

“That’s kind of what it’s all about, right?” Christiansen says. “Having fun. Without that, we’re just four dudes who happen to play instruments kind of good.”

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