The New Deal benefited from a combination of vision and good fortune, resulting in a body of work that is unquestionably cool. Having paid their dues through several years of long tours and countless hours in vans, buses, airplanes and hotels, the band scaled back its commitments in 2006 when Kurtz moved to London to work with Dragonette. After sprinkling the past five years with sporadic headlining shows and festival appearances, the decision to call it quits was made last winter.

JS: The bottom line was that everyone’s lives kind of travel in the same direction for a very long time and then they travel on a separate direction long enough that – it didn’t seem worth it or fair to the band to try and keep something going that obviously requires a fair amount of effort and a fair number of shows to keep the band healthy and alive and sounding good and viable. It isn’t fair to the fans to think the band is still together if the band is only going to play seven shows a year, and it isn’t fair to us to have to spend all of this work in keeping the band afloat and running if all we’re doing is play that handful of shows.

It would have become a distraction and that’s not what we wanted to have happened with the band. We wanted it to be like – “Okay, that was a phase of our lives and we loved it and it’s awesome and we’ll miss it but it’s going to stop and now we will move on to other things.” Other things come around like family, other projects, things that take up parts of your life. If you want to be able to do those and you’re already committed to something that takes up a lot of your energy – which The New Deal does to this point – and it can’t survive on low energy, then you have to cut the cord.

With Kurtz remaining across the pond indefinitely and Shearer planning a move to Los Angeles, Shields will continue to play SuperDad in Toronto, where he also runs a successful business scoring music for film and television. Be it on a stage in front of 10,000 people, or sitting alone in his home studio, he finds the creative process to remain somewhat familiar.

JS: Initially, when I’m writing music for television, the first thing I do is just start playing. I’ll be watching whatever I need to watch and then I’ll just start playing it. I’ll just start playing what I feel is an emotional response to the scene that I’m watching. When The New Deal would play, like I talked about with that emotional reaction or emotional attachment – that conversation between the band and the audience – we are definitely feeding off what the audience is giving us. I’m playing based on my emotional dynamic between the band and the crowd. Definitely doing the same thing when I’m watching, when I’m doing stuff for work. And as it moves along I have to hone it, shift it, change it, cut it, make it fit. Then it all becomes completely cerebral and the opposite of what I do on stage. But to start, it definitely is similar.

As bittersweet as the end of an era is for a band and its fans, there is an overpowering sense of gratitude surrounding The New Deal. Friendly smiles and appreciative exchanges have abounded over the course of this final touring year, as Shields and his two life-long pals have enjoyed an extended goodbye with their dedicated circle of listeners. After all is said and done, there is plenty to recall with fondness.

JS: There’s a million memories from our career, but important things that happened for us in the band stick out – stuff like playing Red Rocks in Colorado a couple times. We’ve done that, I think three or four times. That’s a special thing. Not a lot of bands get to do that and it’s a beautiful natural venue, one of the most beautiful in the world. Those kinds of thing stick out.

Going to tour in Japan, where the shows were all sold out and everybody knew us. I was lost in Osaka and somebody recognized me and directed me to the venue, and I’m from an instrumental/improvisational trio. Those two things stick out in my mind but there’s a lot – gigs that weren’t even that important or weren’t that big or weren’t even that quote/unquote “special” from an outside perspective.

I remember playing a gig in Syracuse, NY in the first six months of our existence and there was something like six people there and we didn’t tape it. We record every single one of our shows and we released a bunch of them as live records, but we didn’t record that night. I mean, this was in 2000 and I remember it as being such a special night of music to about eight people. Since we didn’t record it, those eight people got an incredibly special show. Those kinds of things I remember a lot of.

There is one more collection of memories still to be made, as what very well could be the final chapter in the saga of The New Deal begins on Saturday in Toronto. As uninvolved as the band has historically been in its hometown, Shields, Kurtz, and Shearer will bid Canada a parting adieu before hitting their biggest American markets and eventually sailing off into the sunset.

JS: New York, Philly, Baltimore – those have always been special spots for us. Only because they have the most history with us because that’s where we started playing earliest on. So a lot of people have a very strong connection to the band from its earliest days. We didn’t start getting out to California or to the South until much later. We have somewhat emotional shows there, our fans are somewhat volatile – perhaps a little more volatile than in some of the other places in the country. I can imagine that it will be a somewhat emotional time for them when we come out in the end of December.

The decision to end with Jam Cruise was from a personal standpoint where we wanted to spend some time with our crew and with our bandmates together. Kind of have a last little vacation as a unit. You go on the road and you kind of scatter every night or every day – “I’m gonna go here, you’re gonna go there, I’ll see ya later”. But this is a way of being able to spend a little time together and just enjoy each other for a last time.

Will you ever see The New Deal again? You might, you might not. We were gonna say – “We’re going on hiatus” – but it kind of leaves stuff up in the air, which we just don’t like to do. Maybe yes, maybe no. There will be side projects that Darren and I do. There’s The Join and there’s The Omega Moos and we’ll probably do those in Toronto because they’re somewhat popular across the States.

In ending, we’re all friends. What we ran the danger of happening was of us not being friends anymore because there would be this animosity towards somebody not being able to do a show and all this pressure and all this nonsense. It’s like – “You know what? Okay, let’s just cool it and let’s see what happens after that”. I’m not ruling anything out but, for the time being, we’re ruling everything out.

The New Deal’s Final Run:
December 17 – Opera House – Toronto, ON
December 28 – TLA – Philadelphia, PA
December 29 – Soundstage – Baltimore, MD
December 30 – Highline Ballroom – New York, NY
December 31 – B.B. King’s – New York, NY
January 9-14 – Jam Cruise – Caribbean

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