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Skrillex, Grimes, and Diplo Remix the ‘Train Tour Across Canada’ Idea

Full Flex Express 2012 Tour poster

When we put Skrillex on SPIN’s 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time, we didn’t realize he’d take it so seriously. Today he’s gathered up his EDM friends — Grimes, Diplo, Pretty Lights, Tokimonsta, and KOAN Sounds — and announced a remix of the iconic 1970 Canadian train tour taken by Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, and the Band, among others (we don’t, however, expect any collaborative “Friend of the Devil” remixes… or do we?). By the looks of the soon-to-be-

The six-date Full Flex Express tour is a little over a week long and falls almost 42 years to the date after the aforementioned classic lineup forged their way across Canada for their “Transcontinental Pop Festival,” which was documented in the 2003 film Festival Express. No ticketing info on Full Flex has been released yet, but its official website has got some pretty suggestive countdown action going on that will probably shed some light on that soon.

Though it might be easy to assume the new crew would like us to forget that Mumford and Sons, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, and Old Crow Medicine Show just pulled off the American nü-folk version of this tour last April, Skrillex is fully transparent about how they got the idea (at least the idea to revamp the original 1970 tour, anyway) in the announcement. “We were really inspired when … those guys did a train tour,” he admitted flatly. “We wanted to do it as well, and share this music with people across Canada. Just to do it and have fun.” (That would be fun exclusively for Skrill and the gang, just in case you thought you could buy tickets for the ride — the party train itself is fully private.)

Though Skrillex is marked as the definitive headliner, it’s worth noting that the only artist on the tour who’s actually Canadian is the Vancouver-native Grimes, who will miss one stop on the tour to hit up Pitchfork Festival July 14 (Diplo, Skrillex, Pretty Lights, and Tokimonsta are all American, while KOAN Sounds is British). Then again, the White Stripes weren’t Canadian, either.

Full Flex Express Train Tour 2012
July 13 – Toronto @ Fort York
July 14 – Ottawa @ Ottawa Blues Fest*
July 15 – Montreal @ Parc Jean Drapeau
July 18 – Winnipeg @ Shaw Park
July 20 – Edmonton @ Kinsmen Park
July 22 – Vancouver @ PNE Coliseum

* no Grimes 🙁