Henry and the Nightcrawlers do The Fucking

Henry Alcock-White (centre) left his role as one of the guitarists in progressive pop-rock band Bend Sinister to concentrate on his solo project, Henry and the Nightcrawlers. Jonathon Taggart

It’s important to make a good first impression on your girlfriend’s mom. Henry Alcock-White’s involved repeated use of the F word.

Alcock-White was playing with his band Henry and the Nightcrawlers in his hometown of Vancouver when they launched into The Fucking, one of the nine songs on the group’s otherwise swear-word-free debut album, 100 Blows.

Just at that moment, Alcock-White’s girlfriend’s mother walked into the venue.

“We’re in the middle of the set and we start playing that song, and I feel like my girlfriend’s mom knows that a lot of these songs are about her daughter, and she’s not the kind of woman to use a lot of swear words,” Alcock-White, 27, said by phone last week.

“So just as we start playing that song, she walks through the door and I just completely lost my composure.”

“The rest of the set was just terrible, ‘cause that was the first song she’d ever heard from my band,” he continued with a laugh. “Not only did it have the word ‘fuck’ (in it) a dozen times at least, it was about her daughter. It was terrible, just terrible.”

Winnipeggers might get to hear The Fucking when Henry and the Nightcrawlers perform at The Park Theatre on Saturday, Nov. 13.

Alcock-White and his band, which features members of We Are the City, The Zolas and Said the Whale, are touring in support of the recently-released 100 Blows.

ChippedHip.com describes the bouncy pop-rock album as “something everyone should be waiting for. It’s like someone asked Elvis Costello to write the soundtrack to a Wes Anderson movie.”

It features songs Alcock-White wrote and recorded over the past two years about his sometimes tumultuous relationship with his girlfriend, who is pictured on the cover of the disc.

“I didn’t write these songs with the intention of them all being about her, but I noticed after the fact that they all kind of, some more directly than others, had to do with her being in my life, in good ways and in some not-so-good ways,” he said.

The Fucking was written during one of the not-so-good times. Keeping the song on the record was a difficult decision, but ultimately, Alcock-White felt it was integral to the couple’s relationship.

“I thought when I wrote that song it was definitely the end,” he said with a laugh.

“But it turns out I was wrong.”

Published in Volume 65, Number 10 of The Uniter (November 4, 2010)

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