Pull The Sky Down//With Violet

Part One: It Came From Outer Space

There's no shortage of Newfoundland and Labrador stories connected to outer space. There are Martian craters named for Gander, Nain and Nutak, local airports were alternate space shuttle landing sites for NASA, and there are plenty of unidentified flying object reports in the province including the much discussed 'Gander Incident' and the Random Island sighting that inspired a stamp from Canada Post.

My favourite Newfoundland space-ish story isn’t any of these.

It happened in October of 1936; a major meteor shower was seen on the southern and eastern portions of the island and it terrified people.

On the podcast we explore it in a story called “The Day The Sky Fell.”

Part Two: With Violet

With Violet is an alt-pop band from St. John’s, NL.

They are winning fans with catchy hooks, nuanced songwriting and an energy has to be heard to be believed.

In 2021 they released their debut album, Long Story Short, which included the popular track “With Money.’ They followed that up with two Christmas singles — ‘December Parade (Bow on Top)‘ and ‘Countdown (New Year’s Song)’— which, if you follow Product of Newfoundland playlists, you’ve definitely heard.

This year, they expanded their canon with two new EPs — Saturday Nights In and Your Sunday Best, the former of which gave us the track ‘Gravity’ and its dancing-astronaut filled video.

Band members Pete and Spencer FitzGerald are my guests on this episode. We chatted about Your Sunday Best and the ‘Gravity’ music video.

We also talked abut Addictions Anonymous (a book of poetry written by Pete and Spencer), and Pete’s solo music including his Halloween track ‘The Ghost Goes Boo’ (which you can hear right now on my Songs for a Spooky Season playlist).

With Violet Links

• With Violet (withvioletband.com)

  • With Violet on Apple Music

  • With Violet on Spotify

  • With Violet on YouTube

• Addictions Anonymous book by Spencer Crawford FitzGerald and P.A. MacDonald

• Pete’s solo music (peteymacd.com)

• Trummp the Musical (CBC article)

Part Three: Monstrous Things

In the third instalment of ‘Monstrous Things’ we look at a hungry sea monster reported in Bonne Bay in 1943.

Was it a 'real' monster or a known creature? You decide!

Check out Product of Newfoundland and the episode page here.