The brass barons from the Wild East are back in town – beloved local Balkan-partypunks LEMON BUCKET ORKESTRA are proud to welcome the world-famous Roma brass band FANFARE CIOCARLIA to the Opera House (735 Queen St. E.) on July 5th, in an explosive double bill that will bring the red-hot global phenomenon of Balkan music to the next level in Toronto. Doors at 8:00pm, tickets $20-$40, available online at http://LBOandFC.brownpapertickets.com and at La Palette (492 Queen W), Free Times Cafe (320 College), Rakia Bar (1402-B Queen E), Sunrise Records (336 Yonge location only).

Hailing from the remote Romanian village of Zece Prajini, the blistering-fast brass barrage of FANFARE CIOCARLIA are known to many North Americans for their raucous cover of “Born to be Wild” featured in the “Borat” soundtrack; many Torontonians first met them last September when LBO opened for them at the Hoxton as part of the 2012 Small World Music Festival. But this time, the fast-rising Lemon Bucket Orkestra will be producing the show independently; they have enlisted community sponsorships from local businesses to feed and house the Fanfare Ciocarlia musicians, and will draw on their vast base of local fans and Eastern European ex-pats to ensure a full house and a proper welcome for the legendary touring band. This show is just the latest installment in an extensive and ongoing series of landmark cultural events produced by the LBO, including two sold-out shows in as many months at Lee’s Palace, independently-produced festivals featuring the “urban folk” collective FEDORA UPSIDE-DOWN, and high-energy guerrilla concerts drawing hundreds in the streets, subways and parks of Toronto.

The July 5th show marks the kick-off of an exciting summer for the 16-piece Lemon Bucket Orkestra (a.k.a. Toronto’s “Balkan-Klezmer-Gypsy-Party-Punk Super-Band”): just three days later they will depart for their 2013 ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH TOUR to Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Ukraine, where they will travel to the villages of world-renowned folk musicians to learn their musical styles and songs directly from the source. Naturally while driving across the Eastern European countryside in between study sessions, the band will not resist the urge to go busking in the beautiful plazas of old-world city centres, but they’ve also planned a number of “normal” shows along the way including two of the biggest festivals in Eastern Europe: Pohoda in Trencin, Slovakia, and Reload in Vladicin Han, Serbia where they will share the stage with legendary Serbian trumpeters Boban and Marko Markovich.

This tour of Eastern Europe will be the band’s third; on their first trip in 2012 - en route to a three week tour of Romania - the LBO musicians broke out their instruments on a
grounded Air Canada flight and the resulting video went viral, amassing 275,000 YouTube hits and an avalanche of global coverage including CNN, Fox News, the New York Times, Jimmy Kimmel, CTV, CBC, the Globe and Mail, Huffington Post, and countless others. Since then, the growth of the band has been meteoric: they released their debut CD “Lume Lume” to wide acclaim, played many major festival stages around the GTA and Ontario, and have shared the stage with some of the greatest artists in their genre including Taraf de Haidouks, Shantel, Halid Beslic and of course Fanfare Ciocarlia; more international tours and new recording projects are in the works for late 2013.