Album Notes

Biography

MINTO is a five piece rock band with shout out harmonies at a toe tapping pace. The story so far is not a simple one so lets start from the beginning. Kalvin, Evret, and Ryan began jamming while they were attending Vancouver Film School in 2002. Their first live performance was a Belle and Sebastian cover song, which they totally ruined. The boys decided to start writing their own material and late one night wrote Her Eyes, a song they still play today. They also called themselves "the Smokes". After a full year of jamming, the Smokes finally nailed down a semi-solid line up of friends and began gigging around Vancouver to some success.

In 2006, the Smokes released “Fields and Factory Floors”, which was voted one of the best local albums of the year by Nerve Magazine. In 2007, long time friend and Smokes bass player Graham Myrfield decided to leave the band to focus more on his own band, The Stumblers Inn. In 2008, wonder woman Suzy Easton joined the band on bass guitar and in 2009, long time friend and ex-bandmate Jimi Cuell jumped back behind the drums. The band soon decided to change their name to Minto Chipman, named after two small towns in New Brunswick. They changed their name due to many factors, one being that there are a million bands called the Smokes. Unfortunately, the new name name was a mouthful for some - gig posters had the wrong spelling and the name was mispronounced often. After a long debate, while recording at Steve Albini’s Electrical Audio studio in Chicago, the band decided to drop Chipman, and go by the name MINTO.

So, out of the ashes of the Smokes, came MINTO, a band with the same song writing mentality of the Smokes, but more Rock and Roll then Alt. Country. Concentrating on writing songs from the heart, then performing them from the heart, MINTO just loves to play for you. Their new album, which was recorded with Albini this February, is titled “Lay it On Me”, and was released on July 9th, 2009 to a crowd of 196 people at the Biltmore Cabaret in Vancouver. Not bad for a thursday night. Look out for MINTO as they are touring this fall across Canada in support of Lay It On Me.