Discover The Club’s new theme, new contest and next live event!

Hey,

I hope you are doing well! It’s 7 o’clock this morning in Tangier, where I came for a few days with Alex! What a wonderful thing to write down! I can’t remember how many times I dreamed of coming back here during the past 15 crazy months we’ve just gone through. Alex was so thrilled too, he spent the entire flight writing a journal about how meaningful this journey is to him.

For my part, I just came back from a long walk outside, as I couldn’t sleep anymore, feeling the call from this very unique city after waking up to the sound of the birds, the smell of the sea, and the warm North African wind coming through the large window I had left open, hoping for this magical morning. After spending a few minutes enjoying this very long-awaited moment, I decided to go out for a run which inspired me and fulfilled my spirit as I could see people walking, neighbors chatting in the streets, kids playing football on the beach (the European version of the sport, which is actually being played with feet), and had the chance to slowly watch the sun go up above the bay and its palm trees, which I had also missed a lot! This all reminded me of how inspiring and refreshing those simple things and details in life are, so much more meaningful now as opposed to how they were 24 months ago, at least for me.

This all felt so right, Shakespearean almost. And as I came back to my flat, fulfilled with blessings and gratification towards what Tangier just offered me this morning, I couldn’t help but make myself a french press coffee, put on some Mogwai, and share my feelings and thoughts with you. A lot of great stuff is in the making, and Alex was impatient for me to share those with you…! Thanks to this nice Moroccan harmony and welcome, I now feel quite inspired to share some unexpected surprises with you all, being in the city of so many artists, writers, and poets, where the past, the present, and the future have been charming people and visitors for centuries.

THE CLUB TURNS 10 YEARS OLD

It’s so incredible to realize we’re already lighting up our tenth candle on what started as a simple conversation between Alex and myself while we were both talking about how we’d like for our favorite artists to communicate and share with their faithful audience. Every time I start thinking about The Club, about everything we shared through the past decade, the same words always come back to mind! For me, it’s home, it’s caregiving, it’s alive and emancipative, it’s a new morning joy solacing our grieving endless nights and it’s you, it’s me, it’s whatever we want to make of it.

This idea that Alex had to give The Club its yearly theme, identity, vision, and colors, has always been such a huge treat each and every time we had to first discuss it, design it, and then share it with you! This year is no exception and we’re already at that specific and exciting time of the year for us! Last year’s theme and designs around “As Long as the Heart” have been quite meaningful to us all, enlightening so many great conversations throughout a year that has been like no others on so many levels, good and bad.

I hope this pandemic will bring us to value humanity in all of its godly facades where there’s no limitation whatsoever in what we can create, generate, influence and impact in order to make this world something greater than us all. There’s not a single regime, crisis, virus — even the evilest of all evils — that can separate us from greatness in all of its purest form and nature. This lives within us all, no exceptions!

2020 and parts of 2021 got us to create live events and contests around Alex’s exclusive collection of five vinyls released between 2019-2020, which we called The Vault, leading up to The Son of Hannah. I decided to share very intimate stories about how Alex’s album Windows in the Sky came to life and led to the Montreal Jazz Festival Concert in between those The Vault contests! Those stories were all exclusive to every Club member, and the ultimate goal, of course, was for us all to simply gather around music, art, soul, and a community-driven spirit of what was year 9 of the SFCC! What a year it’s been, and I can’t believe it’s already time for us to introduce what will be the theme for year 10!

LOVE MENDING HOPE

I’m very excited to share the new theme this year, the tenth year of The Club. Following such a long and strange year, I feel like this year will be quite magical and wonderful! Here, for you, the meaning behind this year’s theme, “Love Mending Hope”, written for you by Alex!

In the midst of the profound confusion and the ongoing desperation we’ve all faced in the last 18 months of our lives, I couldn’t help but fathom the reflection that, once stripped away from all the artifices we might have come to believe we needed to keep sustaining our personal self-projection or to feed our self-absorbed purposes, we have the opportunity to see the true nature of who we are, the essence of our life trajectory.

We can explore what our inner foundation is made of, what our values stand for, what is the measure of illusion and reality that lies within us. We can look at who we are, not at how we may want others to see us.

No matter how much we may appreciate or despise what we truly are, we now have the ability to start it all over again, to make peace with what we may have thought unredeemable, to heal what we may have accepted was forever broken, to be merciful for whatever or whoever we had determined to be unforgiving.

And as the new daylight slowly emerges from our own darkness, it’s incredibly liberating to know that we all have the possibility to transform everything that was there before. Because if there’s one constant empowering dimension that has prevailed through the ages, it is the fact that only love has the power to mend our hope in new emancipating dawns and to create the upcoming wonders tomorrow will bring.

There’s no absolute, no fate, only our resilience to be, imperfectly radiant, like an evolving stream that keeps on flowing, at once calm, agitated, troubled, and serene. That’s the magnificent blessing we have after such a long collective nightmare. No matter what was before, we now are. Alive. Able to be. Free from our own limited design and from everybody else’s demise... Love mending hope.

LIVE PACKAGE PRESENTATION & CONTEST

Alex and I will be live from his house in Virginia on Sunday, July 18, starting at 9:00 am (Eastern Time) for a very unique Love Mending Hope New School and Old School package presentation! We will also have a great contest, a draw, as most of you are accustomed now, for one lucky member to win this very cool and one-of-a-kind skate deck! Literally. There's no other like this one, only one has been made in the entire world!

Why has Alex chosen this? As he grew up, Alex has always been drawn to the skateboarding culture, but most importantly, the community that surrounds it and how DIY has always seemed deeply ingrained in the culture. Community and DIY are two aspects that Alex holds very dear in everything he creates. Without you, the community, sharing music (or any other projects) would never have the same impact. Alex's art has always been very free and flowing, and with you — through you — even he, the creator, finds something new.

As for DIY, we believe it isn't as much about "doing it yourself" in Alex's case, and more about "doing it the way you want to" (but DITWYWT isn't as catchy). Conventions, if there are such things, are guidelines meant to be broken and overcome, and through his art, this is what Alex aims to redefine, time after time. I’ll share more about this skateboard culture and community with you all next week!

Between you and me, this is just another way for us to gather and share a great time and to share some exclusive news with you all! There’s a lot of rumors about new music from Alex, some traveling around the world and some people even asked me to share about what kept Alex that busy for the past few months! Well… We might reveal some of those rumors as we’ll be live! Bring your questions!

More news from Tangier to come…! Stay close!

Your Host and Friend,
Jeff