Get the new Once Just EP for FREE!! NO STRINGS!

You read right, for a limited time the newest Once Just EP is 100% free to download, the direct link is http://justrocks.net/ep.cfm or as always, just head on over to www.oncejust.com Pass the link on...

Meet J.P.

Once Just has a new band member!!! Check out his profile HERE and read his blog about our Three Hills show HERE he's playing both bass and guitar, it's awesome, so come check out a show soon, kay??Lis...

Seriously? Another cop story?

I know, I know, as you read these stories there is one thing that seems to tie them all together....Corrupt cops...here's another, I wish it wasn't true but indeed it is: Coming home from our show in Bonnyville last month, we got pulled over in TWO HILLS Alberta for no reason, we were not speeding, not driving recklessly, our lights were all on, we we're driving just under 100km/h in a 100 ZONE. A RCMP Cruiser passes us coming from the opposite direction, then does a U-Turn, flips on it's sirens, and pulls us over. Two armed men surround our vehicle and approach both the driver and front passenger windows with one hand each on their loaded death machines, and the other holding big flashlights to blind us with. They immediately put their flashlights inches from mine and Mikes face and ask us how we like driving a "hybrid" Mike replies it's nice to drive and we save a lot of money on gas going from show to show...They quickly realize we are a band, and then the questions start turning into "Do you have open liquor?" "Do you have anything illegal with you?" of course we would never travel with open liquor or anything illegal, so we tell them that we don't. I ask them why they pulled us over, and they don't respond except to say something about a random search. They herd us out of the vehicle while informing us of our rights (to remain silent, the right to a lawyer etc) with no jackets in a Cold Northern Alberta October at 2AM. They start with Caleb (because he has dreads do doubt) they make him empty his pockets onto the hood of the car, and the pat him down and put their own hands in all of his pockets, then proceed to check his shoes. They find nothing, and then move on to Mike, find nothing, and then move onto me, find nothing, and then move onto our car. They spend about 30 minutes ripping apart my brand new Honda Civic Hybrid, their GUNS leave scratches all over my car. About halfway through, I start getting really pissed off that for no reason whatsoever they are tearing my car apart, I tell them that I would like a lawyer now, and they look at me with contempt and tell me I can't have one, and they will let me have a lawyer when they arrest me for possession of drugs, and that only somebody guilty would need a lawyer. I then ask if they have an extra jacket I can wear, as I was getting cold standing outside in a t-shirt in October at 2am, they laugh at me and make jokes, but offer no jacket. Another 15 minutes pass, they've searched high and low, going through our personal bags of clothes and whatnot, going through our guitars, breaking our merch boxes, and of course their is nothing illegal to be found. They FINALLY ask for our ID's, they run our IDs hoping of course that they will still get to arrest one of us for something....but again, since we are all upstanding individuals that are able to contribute to society without needing to carry numerous weapons (like the guys that pulled us over) they finally have to let us go. One officer tells us his buddies up the road may do the same thing, and then gets in his car, pulls yet another ILLEGAL U-TURN and races off to harass some other law-abiding citizen. Official Complaint form - click to enlarge

Getting Naked at the Border!

I'm gunna keep this one short: One time, while returning from a photo shoot in the good ole USA, one of us got to take our clothes of at Canda Customs/Immigration for two middle aged men with mustaches. They had themselves a good time....us, not so much. An hour later, they let us go......when 3 guys as good looking as us cross the border, you just know they are gunna wanna see at least one of us naked, I guess they have some sort of dog that decides who gets to be the one to strip down.....Good Deal  SUPPORT INDIE MUSIC BUY A CD

Bang Bang

fiddy cent ain't the only one to get shot at y'all. let me tell you about a little place know as Rocky Mountain House Alberta: It's a colorful little town about 1.5 hours north-west of Calgary, it has a few of what some may refer to as "red-necks", not that there is anything wrong with being a "red-neck", ya know, as long as ya keep your guns pointed away from my band ;).... So there we were, mid-afternoon on a Saturday in Rocky Mountain House, waiting for evening to come so we could rock out, Caleb, Dave (an old member of the band) and I were eating lunch at an oh so faboulous Chinese joint...I started feeling a little woozy....nothing to do with the food I'm sure, and decided I should head back to the "hoe-tel"....halfway to the door, I pass out and smack the ground....Caleb and Dave see this, and decide perhaps they should help me back to the hoe-tel. We pay for the meal, and slowly leave the restaurant for the two block hike back to our wonderful accoms. I'm really not feeling good as this point, and pretty much out of it, as I had just passed out, so what happened next was somewhat surreal. A slow moving pickup truck with subs a blaring rolled down its passenger side window, and out popped the barrel of what looked to be some sort of rifle...I thought it my confusion that I was imagining things....but the next thing I know, it starts shooting, at the three of us, in rapid succesion....and suddenly, I felt a stinging on my bare arm....thankfully, we quickly realized we had just been the victims of a pellet gun drive by shooting...it may have been because we were caught off guard, but those little pellets freakin hurt.....anyways, we decided against going to the cops, being as how they were pellets, and the cops probably woulda popped us in a cell overnight for one reason or another...but we were pretty happy that there is some decent gun control in Canada, and that we only got shot with a pellet gun and not a real gun.....and now we can tell people we got shot at in a drive-by, real gangsta like..haha

Once Just another run in with the Cops

So it happens a lot and its not gunna stop a large portion of the cops in this country (not all of them) are pretty narrow minded (especially when they see ppl with dreadlocks) and jump to a lot of assumptions so this one time we had a show in Calgary at the Stetson the Show went well, and the time came for us to pack up so we pulled our van into the loading area brought our gear out of the venue and started loading moments later a cop was sitting behind our van with his lights on Caleb goes to see whats up he says he thinks we are stealing gear from the bar we inform him that he is incorrect, and in fact we just played a show in the bar and have to load up our gear. Well that isn't enough for mister big policeman, so he decides he will pull into the parking lot next to us and watch us. And watch us he did, it took us about 30 minutes to load up....when the time came to leave I (Chris) took the wheel of the big van, and had Caleb direct me out of the loading area. All goes well, and I pull out of the parking lot.........when suddenly..........who woulda guessed it.....the cop comes charging after me with lights and sirens on. I quickly pull over to the right, and roll down my window...He approaches with hand on gun, and tells me he "just saw me run into that vehicle". Now the thing is......I didn't hit a vehicle, I had Caleb standing behind the vehicle as I backed up to ensure such a thing would not happen. I tell the officer that I didn't hit anything, he tells me I did...and "am I calling him a liar?".....he calls his buddies over to block in the van.....while he goes to look for the "evidence"....about 5 minutes later, another cop approaches the van, and tells me that due to unsatisfactory evidence they will let me go. Now ya see, thats all fine and dandy....but I was a little pissed, that we had just had 2 run ins with cops.....and we had done nothing....so I suggested to the second cop that I would like an apology, from the original cop that falsely accused me of running into a vehicle.........well I guess you don't ask for an apology from judges....er I mean police.......cus the next thing you know, his face was inches from mine, and he was telling me I should be glad they didn't pull me out of the vehicle and beat me. So the moral of the story is, I AM GLAD I DIDN'T GET BEAT BY CALGARY COPS after finally letting us go, they continued to follow us for 15 minutes.

Why is our trailer in front of us?

So  one night,  after a show in Edmunston N.B. Mike and myself were hungry, and thought we'd take a little trip over to Timmy Ho's, now, we were driving a rental, cus our van was fucked, and the rental agency had done us the favour of attaching our trailer for us. It's about 3 or 4 in the morning, so there is no traffic on the road, Timmy Ho's was only about a block  away, when suddenly we feel a lurch, look behind us, and the trailer is gone!....it went screaming right by us, sheared off a fire hydrant, completly, crashed into a brick wall, and then bounced back onto the road, directly in front of our vehicle. Turns out they had the wrong sized ball on the hitch. Anyways, we pull the trailer into the nearest parking lot, when suddenly, a cop decided to check us out...we thought we was gunna get in trouble...but he just circled us a couple times, and then took off....he didn't notice that the fire hydrant was missing. The next day, we got the right sized ball on the trailer and some duct tape to fix the new found holes in the thing. Now we check the hitch ourselves to make sure its not gunna come flying off. If you ever see our trailer, you will see its battle scars. We were very happy that the trailer didn't come filying off earlier in the day when we were on a highway going through the "mountains" (they call them mountains out there, but they ain't....and neither, for the record is Mount Rushmore) we can load anything ;) no guarantee it'll still work when we unload it though.

Caleb gets it on with a Senior Citizen

this story comes to us from a little shithole in New Brunswick, I'm sure the name of the town will come to me later, and I'll let ya know. So, about 70 shows into a long ass tour with many many interesting stories (i'll get to them all eventually), we end up in said shithole in N.B., it's a monday night, we are getting paid a WHOPPING $100, but we are so broke we can't turn down anything right now, show up to the venue to find out its on the 2nd floor....this isn't a big deal if you are coming to see us play, but when you get to load an entire P.A., guitar amps, a bass amp, and a drumkit, up an icy staircase it's a bit more of a pain in the ass, but hey, we had a $100 coming to us...haha. set up our gear, soundcheck, pull out our contract and notice we get free meals...wowsers, $100 and free meals...could it get any better?? Possibly, just possibly, so Caleb, as per usual, takes it into his hands to ask the bartender if "meals" included drinks...she said it did, and that we could all have a couple beer...so we did, a bit later we took the stage and played for all 20 people there, most of them were from a Canadian group thingy called katimavit, or something like that....they were the only cool people in town, but they weren't from town, they were just visiting. Finish our show, drive to our hotel 30 mins away, even though there were 3 closer hotels...we were being doubled agented our East, so if we made a $1000, our agent out west would take his 20% agent out east would take his 20%, and then we would be left with $600...the agent out east was also responsible for our lodgings, so he put us up in the cheapest hotel in the province, and we had to drive to every gig from that hotel, and back again, even if the gig was in a different city a couple hours away, but hey, he made a couple extra bucks off it...........anyways back to the story at hand: next morning, we wake up, drive 30 mins back to the venue to pack up our gear, start loading our gear down the icy stairs, getting close to being done, when suddenly, the owner shows up...he wasnt there the night before....and he says "you boys owe me money for your bar tab last night"...hmm......so caleb very politely tells him that the bartender last night had said they were included with our meals......apparently not the case........the owner of the bar was a grumpy old man, and had never given anyone a free drink in his life, nor had he ever been laid. He starts yelling and screaming, but we tell him, if we really owed him for the drinks, his staff should have deducted it from the $100 we got paid before they paid us. The night before it was very clear that the drinks were free we tell him, and we didn't even have many drinks, there were 4 of us, and the tab was $50. anyways, cranky owner gets even more cranky, goes away for a minute, comes back and says the cops said to take a piece of your gear if we didn't pay.....so he grabs Calebs $2000 guitar.......and runs....and caleb runs after him......and they meet on the staircase......where Caleb tries to grab his guitar, and a struggle ensues at the top of the staircase......the rest of us didn't really know what to do....caleb vs a 70 year old man....at the top of a staircase......coulda been dangerous.....but, it was the only guitar he had....so it was an issue...we had many more shows to play on the tour........finally, caleb lets go, so as not have a 70 year old man go flying down the stairs. i decide, the best way to get the guitar back, is to call the cops, and see if they really told him to take something of ours.......they didn't....but cops being cops, don't much care for rock bands (more cop stories to come, they really dont like us), and the cop that showed up decided she's do things her way.....which meant siding with a crazy old man that had just stolen a $2000 guitar......we ended up having to pay the $50, and then we got the guitar back..so, we made $100 - 40 commisions - 50 in drinks = $10.......oh yeah....and it was my birthday. the moral of the story?? pack up after the show....not the next day

shady

ok so playing little dive bars across the country, we've come to meet many shadier types on the road. We've met drug kingpins that later went on to get themselves arrested by the DEA, we've played strip clubs that import their "talent" from overseas and then have them live in a "room" in a basement while paying them $27 a day minus rent and dj fees, I'll get into more detail on these another day, but today, the story is going to come directly as a City of Calgary Press Release: CITYBEAT - CITY OF CALGARY PRESS RELEASE ----------------------------------------------------------------- The Calgary Police Service has charged three Calgary residents with possession of stolen property over $5,000 and fraud over $5,000 following a 10 month investigation originating with the Ontario Provincial Police Auto Theft Team. With the assistance of the Insurance Bureau of Canada and the RCMP, 14 high-end, stolen, renumbered vehicles valued at $726,263 were recovered from third party purchasers. Police suspect a number of other vehicles are yet to be recovered. The majority of the vehicles were sport utility vehicles manufactured by Lexus, Infiniti, Lincoln, Mercedez Benz and Toyota. The following charges were laid: - April 18, 2006, Christine Teschl, 39, three counts of fraud over $5,000 and four counts of possession of stolen property over $5,000, - April 27, 2006, Ravi Alex Massey, 41, nine counts of possession of stolen property over $5,000 and six counts of fraud over $5,000, and - May 24, 2006, Servejit Massey, 38, one count of possession of stolen property. The investigation is continuing and further charges are pending. Anyone who thinks they may have purchased a vehicle from one of these individuals, should contact Detective Brent Stuart, Calgary Police Service Auto Theft Team 206-8768 or Crime Stoppers 1-800-222-TIPS (8477). RELEASED BY THE PUBLIC AFFAIRS/MEDIA RELATIONS UNIT FOR DETECTIVE BRENT STUART.  What does this have to do with Once Just you ask?? Well, one of the three people charged in the above press release used to be a manager for Once Just!!! Can you guess who?? is it: Christine Teschl, Ravi Alex Massey, or Servejit Massey? leave your guess as a comment below ;)

aight, we had a Bio here for awhile...but Bios are always lame, so I figured we'd fill this area with Once Just stories...we'll update it here and there with stories from the road and whatnot....sound good?