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Monday, November 26th, 2007
5:47 pm	Ontario Chronicles Part III: Indifference in Mount Forest This is the third part in a trilogy of blog entries I've posted today, so make sure you read all three! Day 27: Friday, November 16h, 2007 I woke up at Dash’s house at around 10:30 feeling very well rested. Usually when I sleep on couch cushions, it’s a disaster. You know, one cushion will go south, one will go north and I’ll end up somewhere in between, waking up angrily every half hour to move them back together. But somehow these cushions really stuck together. I got up and went downstairs. Armand and Craig were already up and making some rooibos tea. Brendan got up and had an apple because he had to take the antibiotics with food. It was a really beautiful morning, so I decided to go upstairs and check out the rooftop balcony. I stepped through the little window onto the balcony and looked around. The sun was shining, not a cloud was to be seen, and it was very warm. I looked out across the neighbourhood of red brick houses and trees with the last few yellow leaves hanging on. I noticed it was just a step to the railing and then one more step up to the rooftop. Why not? So, I got up on the roof and walked to the apex, being careful to follow the bulge of a large beam. I stood on the rooftop and enjoyed a full view of the street, the neighbourhood, house tops and autumn trees disappearing into the horizon. After a little while I hopped down to the balcony again, where my fellow travellers had assembled. Breakfast followed naturally as we were all feeling very hungry. Armand treated us to a very nice breakfast at one of his favourite breakfast joints. Once again, to my delight, a little side of beans came with the breakfast. I think that I shall indulge in this decadent tradition upon my return to the west. Why not? After breakfast we said farewell to Armand, and now it was time to hit the road once again, bound now for Mount Forest, a town about two and a half hours north of Toronto. We left town at about 1:00. Once again, however, the highways around Toronto proved to be a nemesis. Somehow we ended up going in the exact opposite direction away from our destination. We got turned around several times. Finally, with Brendan and Craig’s navigational skills, we determined the correct route to take. Kent was to meet up with our hostess, Brittany Brodie at 3:00 so that they could pick up a P.A. for the show together. Brittany Brodie is a young country singer who Kent met through myspace. She set up this Friday and Saturday at the Mount Forest Tavern for us. We were about 20 km away, and it was 4:45, so there was no way we were going to make the 5:00 arrival time, but I guess that was alright and the place stayed open until 6:00 or something. We pulled into Mount forest at about 5:00, and stopped at a Mac’s. Brittany Brodie met us there in her jeep and guided us to The Mounty Forest Tavern. We all loaded in. It was very very cold, and there was a light dusting of snow and a lot of ice on the ground. Kent and Brittany drove to Guelph to get the P.A. Guelph is about a 60 km (40 minute) drive. As for what the Tavern is like, think about the Ivanhoe in Vancouver, if you’ve been there. That’s my shorthand description. Here’s the longhand: It sort of doubles as a restaurant (so, technically isn’t that a pub?), the average age of the clientelle (late fifties, early sixties) is sufficient to give it more of a legion-feel. The ceiling lights are on at all times. There’s all kinds of hockey memorabilia hanging up on the walls, plaques for this and that. The whole place is carpeted with a large red rug. So get that picture in your mind. Craig, Brendan and I set up our gear in the Tavern, then April, one of the waitresses gave me a set of keys and showed me one of the band rooms. “It’s not the Hilton, but at least it’s clean.” She said. This band room had three beds all pretty close together. It would be nice to sleep in a bed all to myself for the first time since Montreal. The upstairs been decorated all Christmas-style. There was a little shrine to Christmas cats next to our room, and a little sign said “Cats love Christmas too!” Brittany would tell me later that Kent bowed down in prayer in front of this little altar many, many times that night. I thanked April and then went downstairs to join the fellows at a table. I inquired as to whether the band received any kind of deal on food. The answer was, “No, bands do not get complimentary meals. We’ve never done that.” Brendan asked, “Not even staff prices?” “There are no staff prices.” So Brendan and I ordered some soup and crackers. Craig had soup and a sandwich. After our little meal, we headed up to the room. Brendan and Craig went to sleep. Brendan waas feeling even worse today with his strep throat, and Craig was just plain tired. I decided to do some blogging, but the clickety-clacking of the keys was too noisesome for my resting comrades, so I put the computer away. Soon, Brittany and Kent came by the room. Pizza had been ordered at the Brodie household, so that’s where we headed, except for Craig who elected to stay behind and continue with his nap. We met Brittany’s mum and dad, Gina and Al, who are two of the kindest and most generous people we have met on our travels. We sat down and enjoyed some good pizza (that’s more like it. Man cannot not live by soup alone.) and chatted with Brittany and her folks about our travels so far. There was some discussion as to whether we ought to leave a slice of pizza or two for Craig, but an expert swoop-in-and-grab maneuver by Brendan put an end to any further debate on the matter. It was about 9:00 by the time we were finished dinner and we were to start playing at 9:30 at the Tavern so we headed back down. It was pretty dead in there, and now there were blacklights glowing down on the stage. It’s always interesting to see what creative sorts of lighting venues will come up with. We hung around in the bar for a little while, watched a bit of the hockey game, Brittany very kindly gave me a glass of whiskey, and then we kicked off our set. Brittany and a few of her friends watched and enjoyed the show, as did a few other tables, but mostly we were met with indifference from the crowd, most of whom seemed to be there to socialize, talk, play pool and so forth. At the break, Brendan and I went upstairs to watch a bit of Deadwood. We agreed that this was a really tough gig. Thank goodness last night’s show had given me sufficient energy to fuel my way through this soul-sucking experience. We watched some Deadwood and headed back down to the bar to play the second set. It went alright, I suppose. I think our playing was good. It is pretty hard to get fired up for a crowd that cares so little, though. Brendan played a really great solo in “Things You Say”, despite his current illness. We finished our set and headed back up to the room. I played a little guitar and we enjoyed a few more drinks. I guess the festivities continued a little more (that’s when Kent’s prayers to the altar of The Christmas Cats took place), but I punched out lying with my head at the foot of the bed. I woke up much later to find that my comrades had kindly covered me in a blanket. I got up and brushed my teeth and then went back to sleep this time in the correct orientation with my feet at the foot of the bed. (Comment on this)
5:45 pm	Ontario Chronicles Part II: My first day in Toronto (ever) Day 26: Thursday, November 15h, 2007 We woke up in that Motel 6 in Brampton at about 9:30, having had had a decent night’s rest. We got out of there pretty quickly in order to get down to CIUT, the University of Toronto’s radio station. We stopped briefly at Tim Horton’s to get some breakfast. I got a bagel with an insane amount of cream cheese on it (I had to scrape a lot of it off) and some coffee. We had a whale of a time trying to figure out the massive highways getting into Toronto. I’ve never seen highways like that before. It’s like the entire world is made out of lanes. Then the traffic. We all felt really bitter by the time we pulled into Toronto. We were just angry at everything; the stupid space needle or whatever that building is, the molasses-slow traffic, the giant highways, pretty much anything we cast eyes upon. But, well, that’s just part of the magical mood-rainbow of a touring band and it passes, fortunately. Oh, we were also kind of mad at the horrible directions to the radio station we’d received from our contact there. But Brendan phoned his friend Gordon when we were headed the wrong way down Spadina into the lake and Gordon got us turned around and straightened out. We arrived at the radio station a little bit late, but that was alright. It was for a taping rather than a live airing so timing wasn’t super-critical. We unloaded most of our gear. We didn’t need Brendan’s drum kit because they had a pretty good one in the studio, so Brendan just brought his cymbals and snare. The host of Take Five (the radio show that we were taping for) introduced himself and his engineer Ian. Ian enthusiastically set us up, commenting with curiosity and interest in my lap steels. We set up an order in which to perform our songs: 1.) The Way it Rolls 2.) Losing Always Seems to Find Me 3.) Hey, That’s No Way To Say Goodbye (by Leonard Cohen) We did a quick sound check, then Artem joined us in the studio and we were ready to roll the tape. Artem introduced the band and the song and away we went. The taping went extremely well. I think we all felt pretty relaxed and comfortable about it, and it was a good bellweather as to where we are as a band. I haven’t been taping our shows since Lethbridge, but the kind of listening I did for that first week-and-a-bit of shows was very beneficial. Kents tunes can be challenging for a lead player such as myself sometimes, because there are a lot of sections where he’ll take the lead part, and I have to really hang back and play rhythm. That is one of the big things that became apparent to me when I listened to the laptop recordings of the live show. So once again; listening to yourself perform live is invaluable. When we had performed all three songs, we went into the control room and had a listen back to what we’d played. The performances were really strong. Craig’s cel phone had rung at one point and he was concerned that it would show up on the tape, but fortunately, it did not. The quality of the recording was excellent too. My hat goes off to Ian who set up and mixed very well in a very short amount of time. He gave us a CD copy of the recording too. We said goodbye and loaded up our gear. Meanwhile a parking attendant had come over and was asking us to move the van because it was parked in a place it probably shouldn’t have been. Brendan and Craig stayed behind to move the van and Kent and I went back to the radio station armed with some CDs. The thing was, we had done a taping today which would be aired in a few weeks, but we had a show tonight, so it would be nice to get a bit of airplay today so that people would know about it. Kent and I went up to the second floor to find out where the current show was airing. There was Artem and a few other CIUT people. They directed us to the top floor. Down the hall, we could hear the host talking through the open doorway, so we quietly approached. When she put on a song, we went in and introduced ourselves. We talked for a bit and gave her a copy of the new CD and Kent wrote out a note suggesting certain songs that would be good to listen to and play. She said that they’d have to give it a listen first, which is fair enough. I don’t know if they played it, but going in and personally dropping off a CD is always a good idea. After that we headed off to find a music shop. My spidy senses told me that Toronto was the right place to get my volume pedal fixed. I really missed it, especially in the slower songs. There’s nothing like a volume swell into a steel guitar chord when you need that crying lonesome sound. And I missed that sound a lot. My spidy senses (and Ian’s recommendation) paid off when we went to Steve’s music. I went upstairs to the repair department where I met Dave, a very personable Scottish fellow who said that he could probably repair it by tomorrow at the latest for about a quarter of the price quoted to me in Calgary. Hurrah! He typed the work order into an early 1980s computer with the green text against the black background, and I left feeling happy. I would soon have my dear volume pedal back! Now we were all feeling a bit hungry, so we went to a Shawarma place. I think it was called “Shawarma King”. I had a pretty satisfying and cheap chicken shawarma. I don’t really have too much to say about that meal. I guess if I had one thing to say, it would be that we sat and ate and the counter, and the seats that were bolted to the floor were too close to the counter and I have super long legs, so I had to stick my knees out way to the side, so that I imagine that from behind, we probably looked like one of those Nelson Rockefeller paintings, or Norman Rockwell or whoever isn’t the billionaire but is a painter and painted all those gallingly campy depression-era Americana paintings for the Saturday Evening Post. “Shawarma For The Band”, this one would be called, and would make people angry, because Shawarma is not America! Anyhow, after our unpatriotic eats, we had to figure out a way to spend the afternoon. The first thing that we did very wisely was to find the venue: The Dakota Tavern. We drove by there, just so we’d know where it was, then headed back down to what I consider to be the main drag of Toronto. I can’t remember what it was though. Probably Bloor. It had kind of a Vancouver’s Broadway or actually more like West 4th feel to it. I wanted to find a doctor because my cough wasn’t getting any better, and without getting too descriptive here, there were some pretty scary colours involved. Kent found a medical clinic and Brendan and I went on in. Huh? Oh yeah, Brendan has had a sore throat pretty much since Calgary and it had been getting steadily worse since Calgary. We both went up to the counter and booked appointments. There would be about a forty minute wait, so Brendan got his iPod and listened to that. I read “On Beauty” which I have been very slowly reading throughout this tour. Craig and Kent slept in the van. Brendan went in to see the doctor first, and then shortly later I was called. The doctor was very chatty and personable. I guess Brendan had told him that we were in a band, so he talked about his experiences on a road trip out west, and how much he loved driving through the rockies. After a few minutes of chatting, he listened to my chest and checked out my throat. He said that my chest sounded clear and that my throat looked alright, but because of the cough, I think he was suggesting it was bronchitis, although he never said so. That’s just my best guess. He prescribed some antibiotics, and it was my plan to fill the prescription if the cough was still around by the end of the weekend. I went to the counter to find out how much the prescription would cost if I wanted it filled. $60. Yikes. Come on, immune system! I chatted with Brendan, and apparently the doctor had chatted his ear off for about ten minutes too, and then spent a couple of seconds looking at his throat. “Oh yeah, that’s strep throat.” he said, and wrote Brendan a prescription for some antibiotics too. The other fellows had had a nice nap in the van. Just then, I received a phone call notifying me that my volume pedal was ready. Hot dog! We quickly drove down to Steve’s Music Shop, and sure enough, there it was, all fixed up and ready to go. Man was I looking forward to having that pedal back in the game. By that time it was nearly six (at which time the Dakota opened), so we headed down there, arriving at six on the nose. We loaded in our gear and met one of the bartenders and one of the propriertors. The Dakota is a really nice place. It’s decorated up very nicely in the fashion of an old-time salloon. The stage is adorned with lights on strings, and footlights made out of paintcans along the front of the stage. We set up and then sat down at a table to order up a meal of food. I ordered some kind of fish. I can’t remember what kind it was, but it was very tasty. I also thought about ordering some coffee and some pie for dessert. After dinner, I stood up, and realized to my dismay that I’d sat down on a big wad of chewed-up spat-out green gum! Gross! This would not do at all, so I just asked Brendan to order the pie for me. “What kind?” He said. “Blueberry, if not, cherry, if not, apple.” I replied and went out to the van and changed pants. “Damn, I sure hope that gum washes out.” I thought. I noted that the weather had turned very, very cold out. I hurried back to The Dakota, where my pie was waiting. Well, that was a quick reversal of fortune; clean pants and fresh hot pie with ice cream and coffee. That pie was unbelievable apple pie. And to make matters more interesting still, it had been baked by Justin Rutledge! I know! Weird! I don’t really know who he is except that I know I’ve heard of him as some kind of indie singer guy, and according to Brendan, according to the waiter who’d served the pie Justin Rutledge was the regular pie-man at the Dakota, and at first the waiter was worrid that there wouldn’t be any pies because Justin was away on tour, but fortunately there was some apple pie. Hats off to you, Justin. You bake a mean pie. Craig and I started a game of Scrabble and we got about a quarter of our way into a game when our soundman arrived and we did our usual quick and efficient sound check. Meanwhile, Mike Celia who was to open for us that evening. Introductions were exchanged, and he joined us at our table, taking over the Scrabble game where Craig had left off. We were joined by our friend Armand Sebris at this juncture as well. We played and chatted for a little while, and at about 9:30 Mike took to the stage with his guitar and began to play his opening set. Craig and I resumed our Scrabble game, and also watched Mike. Mike was joined by a really fabulous singer named Sarah. I wish I could remember her last name. When Mike’s set was over, I was approached by a slight redheaded girl. She was smiling and walking towards me. “Are you Tim Tweedale?” She asked, smiling. I acknowledged that I was, indeed Tim Tweedale, kind of startled at having been recognized in a town so far from home. “Corbin told me to give you an enormous hug!” She said. So I said, “Well, bring it on!” So we hugged and she introduced herself as Corbin’s friend Claire. Oh yeah! I met Claire in Vancouver about a year ago. I think she came out to a show that we did at The Railway Club. Claire then introduced her friend Melanie who was hanging back a bit. Still a bit thrown but happy at being so warmly greeted by a complete stranger I gave Melanie a big hug too. Hugs all around! The three of us stood around chatting and laughing for a little while. Kent came and tapped me on the shoulder and gave me the five-minute call. Almost time to rock. So Melanie, Claire and I chatted for a few more minutes and then I walked up to the stage. A good-sized crowd had gathered. Let’s just pause for a moment and look at what the last few gigs were. Last night: Oakville - lame. Night before: no gig. Night before that no gig. Night before that: no gig. You can imagine the potential energy we had stored up. The kind of freshness we took to the stage. We exploded into action! The grooves were strong, the swing was heavy, the shuffle was driving, the melodies were sweet.. Everybody was locking in with everyone and the crowd was really digging it. I was feeling great, having one of those nights that I’ve talked about before, where every song is like a bottle of Gatorade to a thirsty hockey player, and it fills me up and makes me thirsty for the next one at the same time. So I was feeling really good, really on. Everyone in the band was really on and pushing each other forward, and the sound was great which really helps too, of course. At the break, I went outside to get some fresh air, got a glass of water with no ice and a lemon, and joined Claire and Melanie to chat some more. During the break, Sarah who had sung so beautifully with Mike during the opening set complimented me on my playing, especially my trumpet playing (much to my surprise) and asked if I would record some trumpet playing on her album. She said that I played in a particular style that was kind of unusual but was exactly what she was after. Great! So, maybe I’ll be flying out to Toronto to play on her album. We’ll see! I’d sure like to. Oh, also, Dustin Bentall showed up with his band. It’s always great to see him. Then came the second set. At a good show at a bar, pub or tavern, the way the first set and second set break down is this: during the first set people will cheer very enthusiastically as they consume their first few drinks of the evening and settle into a state of comfort with their place in time and space. In the second set, after the break during which they have consumed their mid-game beverages and they are already settled in their place, the crowd thinks, “What could make possibly make this better? Wait! I know! Shakin’ my booty!” That’s right! And this show was no exception, people started dancing and having a great time. I later found out that according to someone (I know; great source-giving there, “accorddancing to someone” ha ha.) it is very unusal for Toronto audiences to cut loose and start dancing. Well, I can say that as a performer, it is one of my great joys to share music with a dancing audience. We were playing “Things You Say” in which we all take solos. Brendan was in the midst of his drum solo so I wasn’t doing too much (we’ll often leave the stage during this extended solo) and during the solo, Melanie and Claire came up to me and said they had to hit the road. We hugged goodbye and I was happy to have met a couple of very fine people from Toronto. Dustin got up and played “300 Miles”, which was written by a Torontonian, I believe. It’s a really good song, anyhow. We played our last song “Leavin’ Town” and got a really hearty encore, and another encore after that too. The show felt great. Afterwards we chatted with all sorts of interesting people. I met some folks from Newfoundland who implored us to come out there. The guy offered to put us up and give us a show out there. I guess the lady had some special connection to Blundstone Boots, because she noticed that I was wearing them. Well, actually I wasn’t. These boots are sort of ripoff Blundstones, but I like them fine. She didn’t believe me, I guess, because she lifted my foot up to check them out. We hung around til closing time and loaded out our gear. We had loaded out about three quarters of our gear when we learned that we could actually leave our stuff there and pick it up the next day. Well, no point in doing that now. We finished loading up the gear and said goodbye to the good people at The Dakota Tavern, a great venue that we will definitely come back to. We all piled into the van and headed to Dash’s house. Dash is a music school friend of Kent and Mino’s and she had very kindly offered us her house to crash at. It was conveniently only a few blocks from the venue too, but when we got to Dash’s house, Brendan realized that his antibiotics were missing. We had a frantic search through the van, but they were nowhere to be found, and he had them in his pocket as we left The Dakota, so Brendan and I drove back. Sure enough, lying there in the gutter was the white paper bag with the medication inside. Phew! Also, a little ways ahead of that lay my grey toque! Very relieved, we drove back to Dash’s hosue. It was about 3:30 AM. I brushed my teeth and then, in a nice orange sleeping bag on some couch cushions, I fell fast asleep. (Comment on this)
5:44 pm	The Toronto Chronicles Part I: Lex Luthor of Oakville Day 25: Wednesday, November 14h, 2007 Okay! Lots of days to catch up on here, but the task is not beyond me, so here goes. It was about ten o’clock in the morning when we awoke. Jeremy came by with some breakfast from Tim Hortons; breakfast bagels, extra large coffees and Timbits. We ate breakfast, cleaned up the place a bit and packed up our gear. We bid a fond farewell to Jeremy thanking him greatly for giving us a place to stay, feeding us and showing us around the city. We pulled the van around to the door and began loading up the gear and generally cleaning out the van too. I don’t know if I’ve told you this yet, but we are travelling in a Ford Windstar minivan. If you can picture in your mind the space in the back of a windstar and think to yourself, “Okay, we’ve got to fit an entire drum kit in there plus two guitar amps, a bass cabinet, an electric guitar, two acoustic guitars, two lap steels, two pedal boards, a trumpet, merch (CDs and T-shirts) and four suitcases.” you willl realize that it is not an easy feat. Then imagine all the stuff that we have in the main passenger area of the van. All the loose stuff that we want to keep on hand over the course of a long day of driving. That’s stuff like coats, hats, sweaters, gloves, blankets water bottles, toilet cases, snacks, books, maps, cigarettes, iPods. Plus, for some reason, Kent has about a hundred shirts that he likes to keep on hand for reasons I will never know. So, picture all that stuff. It’s a lot! And that’s just the stuff that we need to keep on hand! That’s to say nothing of all the garbage; all the empty water bottles, wrappers, bags, used tissue, receipts and loose paper that amasses. What chaos! So every morning it’s a battle of order versus chaos. All the blankets have to be folded just so, coats arranged such-wise and so on and so forth, so that even though the appearance is being very full to the point of bursting at the seams, at least everything is neat and in its place. And of course there’s the ceremonious 3-D tetris game that is arranging the gear so that not one square inch of space is wasted, for that is the only way all the gear will fit. We had to get rid of some stuff this morning, because I think the cramped space was really getting to us. I really wanted to get rid of about fifty of Kent’s shirts that were just floating about the back seat, but I restrained myself somehow. Brendan threw out one of the plastic floor-mats that was crumpled and bent beyond recognition (good riddance), and also threw away those two souvenir-bricks that sentimental Kent had picked up last night. We also threw out a lamp that was in theory for use at the merch table, but was in fact just always falling apart and underfoot in the van. It was a relief to be rid of that stuff. The van in reasonable order, we set out. Our first stop was Frenco, that naturopathy store where I wanted to get some oil of Oregeno. It was just a short drive over to St. Laurent. Oh, I should mention that the pad was around Rene Levesque and Bleurry. Anyhow, the fellows waited while I went in. I inquired about the desired product. Man. It’s expensive. They just had a larger-sized bottle of it for $33, which I could not afford. There was a smaller bottle for $10, but it said that it was for external use only, and that was no good. So, I left feeling a bit dejected and imploring my immune system to do its best on its own. I tried to strike a deal: I would promise to stay away from smoky people and places and would get the right vitamins and get rest and drink lots of fluids if my immune system would do its darndest to buck up and make me better. We shook on it, I got back into the car and off we flew from that beautiful city, sad to say goodbye. I will be back soon because I love it there. Off we sped, and it wasn’t long before we crossed the Quebec-Ontario border and it was farewell to that whole lovely province. So long, Quebec. I will miss you. On we drove and made a good mile. We listened to a Popular Mechanics Podcast that Stephen had tipped me off to. Its raison d’être was to debunk some of the 9/11 myths presented in Loose Change and other 9/11 documentaries. It was alright, and I thought they made some good points for about the first half, but the second half of it was just immature jokes about ad hominem attacks on conspiracy theorists. Not too impressive. They successfuly addressed maybe 20 per cent of the points raised in Loose Change. In the mid-afternoon, we stopped in Kingston. We were feeling pretty hungry, but once again, it looked like all that wasteland of gas stations, fast food and convenience stores had to offer us was, well, gas stations, fast food and convenience stores. My heart leapt when I saw a store called DF or something like that. Great! Deluxe Food, I mentally invented. But when we got there it turned out to be Designer Fashions. I felt a bit chagrinned, but right next door was a Mr. Sub. Alright. Better than Subway anyhow. I am growing increasingly mistrustful of Subway, with it’s weird puke-like stench that sticks to your clothes even after you leave. The Mr. Sub subs were decent enough. I had a tuna melt. Then it was once again back into the car and pressing on to Oakville, Ontario, home of my friend Rebecca Quigley. We pulled up to The Moonshine Café in Oakville sometime after dark, probably about 6:30 or so. Kent went in to meet the proprietor. This was another one of those gigs where the promoter had really done nothing; he had not returned calls or emails or even bothered to put posters up in the place. The reception from the owner was a bit frosty too, for some reason. We loaded our gear in there, cleared the stage off and set up. This was another situation where, due to the small stage, letting Brendan set up first was necessary. Once we were all set up we sat down to enjoy a few beverages. It was then that a looming figure came over to our table and asked if he could join us. He introduced himself as Bruce. He was an older fellow, maybe in his early sixties, tall and big-bellied with a perfectly bald. Over his black turtleneck he wore a houndtooth jacket, and an impressive silver watch adorned his wrist. I could not help but be reminded of Superman’s nemesis, Lex Luthor; the likeness was eerie. All that was missing was a big old cigar. He chatted with us for a few minutes about bands and the music business, and then we needed to soundcheck. Just from the brief chat, it was already apparent that he had a very aggressive personality, and perhaps delusions of grandeur too, informing us that he would be listening to our music and that this could be our big chance to be promoted by House of Blues for whom he worked. We did our usual soundcheck. “The Way It Rolls” just for general levels of everything then “Losing Always Seems to Find Me” for acoustic levels, then the chorus of “Shaboom” for vocal harmonies. We’ve really streamlined this soundcheck so that it takes between about five and seven minutes. John, the owner was doing the sound, and when we were done the sound check, his frostiness really warmed up. I think he liked the music. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Bruce, who immediately tore into us upon our rejoining him at the table. First was his criticism for me, “You really got to be more aggressive with that pedal steel. Pick hard!” (I wasn’t playing a pedal steel, but that didn’t stop him). Next was Brendan, “You gotta hit that fucking snare!” To Craig, “The bass isn’t a sliding instrument, so why are you playing it like one?” But the guy he really savaged was Kent. “Who the fuck are you?” he demanded. “What kind of music are you playing? You have to decide! Are you a blues band? A rock band? What do you stand for? What the fuck do you stand for?” For some reason, we bothered to give him the time of day, I guess because he was sitting at our table, but I don’t think that any of us the illusion that what he said was true and that his presence at our show at the little cafe could be our big break, even though he kept trying to impress us of his importance as a major player in the music business. We ordered some lasagna as we were all extremely hungry, and while we ate, Bruce left us alone for a little while. After dinner, the first of the three acts for the night went up. His name was Jeremy Legere. I thought he was alright. I don’t remember too much about his performance; I remember that he looked a lot like Ron Sexsmith and wore a pink shirt, but that’s about it. Next up was The James Davis Institute, which was one guy, James, who sang a lot of very sad songs about broken relationships, jail and lonliness. During his set, Bruce rejoined Kent and I at the table directly in front of the stage. Brendan and Craig were elsewhere. Now Bruce began speaking impatiently to Kent. First he implored Kent to get the Iron Choir to get up on stage and back James up. Kent politely declined because it would be fair to neither James nor us (not knowing each others’ music at at all). Then Bruce became petulant and impatient. “What if this guy keeps playing for the next ten thousand years?” he asked loudly. “Well, I don’t think that’s going to happen.” replied Kent. This seemed to satisfy Bruce for ten seconds or so, but then he got impatient again, so he said louder, “This guy’s going to keep playing for ten thousand years!” James was mid-song, but it was a quiet part, and it was obvious that he and the whole audience could hear Bruce’s crazy and rude ravings. He looked a little shaken, but he kept going. When James’ song was finished, Bruce carried on with his “ten thousand year” tirade, and that was it. “Bruce, that’s enough!” said John firmly, and proceeded to kick Bruce out of The Moonshine Cafe. Good riddance! James played a few more songs and then it was time for the Iron Choir to get up and play. There wasn’t much of a crowd there, but then it wasn’t that big a space. A few people sitting at the bar, a few at a table in the back, a few at the tables to the right of the stage, James and James’ girlfriend. But, naturally we gave it the good old college try and played very well. We played a bit quieter than usual as it seemed appropriate to the smaller café-style venue. The audience loved it. It was another one of those shows where, when we were done, we were really showered in praise. I talked with the bartender who played some bottleneck slide guitar, and another really nice fellow at the bar who gave me a really nice compliment, saying he liked how I incorporated a lot of different styles into my playing, not necessarily playing in one style. John also really enjoyed our playing and was very complimentary. We chatted for a little while with the patrons of The Moonshine and then, as it was closing time (around midnight), we packed up and loaded out. Once again we received John’s profuse thanks and the promise that next time we’d play on a weekend and get a good crowd. Now it was time to find a hotel. We had a radio appearance in Toronto tomorrow morning, so our thought was to drive towards Toronto and see what we could find. We stopped at Tim Horton’s to get some sandwiches, and Brendan loudly bemoaned the fact that Tim Horton’s do not accept interac as a method of payment. Then we got back on the highway. We wound up in Brampton, a town that I have always wanted to visit, if for no other reason than its horrible sounding name. We drove around for a while and eventually found a Motel 6. We were pretty tired from the long day of driving and a pretty mediocre gig, and there was that morning radio gig coming up, so we all went to bed, and were sawing logs and mumbling in our sleep in no time. (Comment on this)
Saturday, November 24th, 2007
3:33 am	The Montreal Chronicles Part III: this intense need to tell someone the story. Day 24: Tuesday, November 13th, 2007 The Montreal Chronicles Part III: this intense need to tell someone the story. Here is the tale of my very first blog entry. You’ll be surprised to know it happened even before we had a computer, before the internet was even invented. What’s that you say? That makes no sense, because blog is a portmanteau of web and log and without the web part there can be no blog, only a “log” at the most. Well, to that I say, quiet. Listen: I was six years old and my parents were out for the evening at either a movie, a dinner or bible study which wasn’t happening at our house that particular week, which was too bad because the sound of Susan (whose kids I ended up babysitting in turn) and her loon-like laughter wafting up from the living room always made me happy. Which rasises the question, what was there to laugh about so much at bible study? Anyhow, the folks were out and that meant we had to have a babysitter of course. It was nearly always one of the kids from across the street, Brenda, Gordie or Doug. It was Gordie. Among the few things I remember about Gordie is that he had red hair and he watched Battlestar Galactica, the old Battlestar Galactica, which apparently had a Mormon subtext. I remember watching a bit of one episode. I still remember those cylons. Anyhow, Gordie was babysitting us, and he’d put us to bed. I was lying in bed trying to get to sleep, but something was bothering me. We had had a book read to us that morning in class. It must have been around easter time, because the story was about eggs and chicks. I kept thinking about the story and how neat it was and here is the pivotal part: I had to tell someone about it. I just felt this intense need to tell someone the story. So I got up out of bed and went downstairs to where Gordie was doing homework at the kitchen table. “I can’t sleep.” I said. “Can you write a note for my mum?” “Sure.” said Gordie, so he got out a fresh sheet of paper and I began to dictate. “There were these painted eggs at easter time, and then they hatched and there were painted chicks!” I can still see those cute little chicks emerging (surprise!) from those decorated eggs painted with zig-zagging stripes bright red against their yellow down. I went back to bed feeling satisfied that I’d told my story, and fell asleep. Well, again, true to Iron-Choir-in-Montreal form, we woke up well after noon. The haunting sound of phrygian church bells playing us into the land of conscious awareness. Vampire-Tim got up and once again prepared breakfast for the brood. This time it was bacon and eggs, cheese and toast. The Bison Vampire McCaul made coffee, and the brood feasted. Today there was a lot of deliberating on what to do. The early afternoon unfolded at a leisurely pace. I was still sick and feeling pretty low on energy. Laundry was done in the basement. More Wii was played. Emails were sent and received. By 3:00 PM, Craig was eager to get going because the sun was going down and it was our last day in Montreal, so we might as well get out. About an hour or so later, we finally got our act together and headed out, our destination: Al Tayib – a Lebanese eatery. Brendan had told us the legend of the hallowed “half-and-half” that they served there. He and Savannah had frequented Al Tayib and enjoyed that delicious treat during their time in Montreal. I was eager to try this delicious sounding treat, as were the other members of the band, so we ordered a round of half-and-halfs and brought them upstairs to eat them. Oh man. They are so good! I’ll tell you what they are, and if you can keep from drooling, then you’re doing better than I am right now. Okay, first of all, you start with a really fresh cooked delicious flat bread. The half and half part is that on one side of the moon-shaped piece of bread there is sprinkled some cheese, then on the other half copious amounts of fantastic-tasting herbs. So those are the halves, then inside, also goes your choice of ingredients. I had pickled turnip, lettuce and tomatoes. Then they fire it up in the oven. Oh man, was it ever great! Just an overwhelmingly pleasurable gustatory experience all around. Now, I had arranged to meet up with Tyler sometime around 6 PM and then head down to a bluegrass kitchen jam in St. Henri (a neighbourhood far away from The Plateau. Don’t ask me in what direction.) It was getting near 6:00, but Brendan really wanted to show us The Obervatory on the top of Mont Royal. We went to get a coffee and then drove on up the mountain, through a very rich neighbourhood, then up to the top. We had some trouble finding the lookout post, and in fact, we had to drive into an “authorized vehicles only” area. We parked the van and walked up to the observatory. It was a vast church sized hall inside with large royal blue lamps on the ceiling. It kind of looked like a building that you’d see in one of the “Myst” games; all futuristic, but very regal, refined and somehow Victorian in its elegance and decor. Really neat building. Then we walked up to the edge of the rampart on the edge of the cliff. The view was absolutely breathtaking. A full 180 degree panoramic view of the city and night opened up far below and beyond, a landscape of light stretching across the large downtown, across the St. Lawrence and beyond. A couple of large searchlights from Club 747 on the top of one of the downtown buildings swung around. A nearly full moon shone above. We stood there and watched the city for some time, read the plaque about how Jacques Cartier climbed this hill and surveyed the land and named the city and the mountain and we took some pictures. We headed down the mountain and over to the plateau to Tyler’s house. He lives pretty close to that poutine place Banquise, the lucky dog! The fellows dropped me off and sped away, but oh no! I’d forgotten my Weissenborn in the van and I’d need that to jam! I hastily called Brendan, and a few minutes later they circled back and dropped it off. Phew! Then I headed in to meet up with Tyler. He lives in a really old house, hardwood floors, big patio. We hung out there for a little while. He showed me his lovely new dulcimer and played me some fiddle. Tyler’s really been getting into old-time fiddle lately and he’s gotten pretty good! We jammed on a few songs and talked for a while. He also gave me some oil of oregeno for my cold which was very nice. Jonas from Headwater swears by the stuff and I thought that he’d be excited to know that I’d used it to remedy my ailments. Then began our epic journey to the jam out in St. Henri. It began with about a half-hour walk to James’ house. James is quite new to Montreal too, he moved there from Toronto about a month ago, and is seeking his fortune as a musician in Montreal. James joined our walking party and we proceeded on for another fifteen minutes to the Métro station. Awesome! I was about to ride the Montreal Métro whose doors had famously been mentioned in The Cozy Thugs’ song “Poussez Tirez”. I was pretty excited, but I tried to play it down and act cool. It seems to be quite a good transit system. James commented on how he liked the rubber tires of the train rather than the deafeningly loud squeakiness of metal wheels on metal rails. We rode for about eight or nine stops and got off in St. Henri. It was about another five or ten minute walk to Dara’s house. Next door Tyler pointed out a building which he claimed was formerly a voodoo temple. Then we knocked on the door and hurray! Our journey was finally at an end. Alex (pronounced “a-LEX”) a Quebecois mandolin player and our hostess Dara were already jamming. They greeted us warmly, introductions were exchanged and we were offered beer, other assorted beverages and pretzels. I opted for some lemon ginger tea. We sat down and set up our instruments. James took out his fiddle, I my Weissenborn and Tyler his banjo. I believe the first song that was called was “Big Sciota” a lovely old fiddle tune. One of the things I love best about a bluegrass jam is finding the unique groove and feel that emerges from a group of strangers who’ve never met one another. The first thing that I noticed was that James has a really great heavy swing feel, probably heavier than anyone else there, but it was so strong that I think we all gravitated towards it and struck a balance. He also had a really great chop that I told him reminded me of John Showman from The Creaking Tree String Quartet. He knew them and thanked me for the compliment. We played lots of good songs. Dara really impressed me with her dry, direct and powerful clear voice. Her voice kind of reminded me of Gillian Welch or Patti Griffin (both of whom she really likes). All throughout the jam, Alex was making us laugh with pithy sayings, and Dara was checking the score between The Leafs and The Canadiens who were playing a game in that great famous rivalry. The Habs were winning and she was trying to playfully jibe James about it, but James doesn’t care about hockey, so it didn’t really work. We finished off the night with Blackberry Blossom. It was about 11:30. Originally we had thought that we’d have to end the jam at 9:30 because of the neighbours, but they didn’t ever call to ask us to stop, and we weren’t playing very loudly, so we just kept going. We all exchanged email addresses and Facebook accounts. James promised to let me know about some cool events in Toronto (where we were soon headed), Dara promised to email me the location of a good naturopathy store (Frenco) on St. Laurent where I could find some Oil of Oregeno and Alex assured me of work here in Montreal if I should decide to move here and if I could play really fast showy stuff on the C6 neck (two very big ifs, but nice nonetheless). Dara gave us all a ride home in her Subaru, which was very nice of her. She pointed out a house down the street where Oscar Peterson had grown up and another building in the neighbourhood where Leonard Cohen lives when he’s in town. Meanwhile, I had received a number of very drunken and perverse text messages from all the fellows. Then I received a very drunken call from Kent. I ascertained that they were all fairly drunk and needed Theside to come and bail them out and drive them safely home. They were at L’Absynthe. So Dara dropped off Alex, James and Tyler and then drove me down to L’Absynthe where I bid farewell to Dara and was greeted by a freshly-shorn Kent. Yes, that’s right; apparently the fellows had all gotten haircuts tonight. I walked into L’Absynthe and joined Brendan, Craig, Kent, Jenny, Chris and Simon (another friend from this group) at a table near the bar. Brendan and Simon were discussing some of the points raised in Zeitgeist, the movie we’d seen the night before, but then he had to go. The poster, mounted on some kind of posterboard behind my head kept falling down and hitting me on the head. Then one of Jenny’s friends came by and introduced herself to me and I to her. “My name is Tim.” I said. “Hello, Steam,” said she. There was much mirth and she blushed ten shades of red. It was very cute. We hung out for a while longer, and Brendan decided to stay, but Kent, The Bison and I decided to head home and have some lasagna. It was about 12:30. We walked to the van and Kent, in his innebriated state of romantic sentimentalism decided he wanted a souvenir of Montreal, so he picked up two bricks from a construction site and brought them to the van. I drove the van back to the pad and parked it in the underground. We walked up to the door and guess what? No key! Oh man, we must have left the key with Brendan back at the club. Damn it! More attempts, incantations, jiggling of keys, searching and prayer yielded nothing. Oh well. Resigned, I went back into the underground and retrieved the van, but when I drove out of there and up to the front door, The Bison and Kent were waving their hands in victory; I guess the key was tucked away in someone’s pocket. I re-parked the van and joined my fellow band members back at the pad. I fired up the oven, then fired up some Deadwood episodes, then fired the Lasagna in the oven. Two hours and two episodes of Deadwood later we switched from merely watching Deadwood to eating lasagna and watching Deadwood. I think this is the point at which we became addicted to the show. Then Brendan stumbled in the door and joined us. We watched one more episode before offering up our minds to sweet, gentle Morpheus. Night night. (Comment on this)
3:32 am	The Montreal Chronicles Part II: Phrygian Bells The Montreal Chronicles Part II: Phrygian Bells Day 23: Monday, November 12h, 2007 Ahhhhhh.... what happened on Monday. This is ten days ago. Man. I think this is one day that we did absolutely nothing at all. Being full of poutine, and having gone to bed at, like, 4:00 I believe we woke up very late and groggy and set about the day slowly. Here is one notable thing about the day that I can recall though. I woke up several times to the sound of church bells playing the first four notes (or “lower tetrachord”) of a phrygian scale. If I ever need to remember what it was like to wake up in Montreal, I just need to wander over to a piano, hit the sustain pedal and start playing, oh, let’s say E phrygian in a low register, which would be like this: E, F, G, A, then switching up the order a bit like church bells are wont to do. The first four notes of a phrygian scale are beautiful resonating against each other. The E to F – minor second – has a particularly special resonance. Activity: you go play that and see how it sounds! Try a few different phrygian scales. 1.) G# phyrgian: G#, A, B, C# 2.) B phrygian: B, C, D, E 3.) C phyrgian: C, Db, Eb, F Don’t forget to switch up the note-order, and leave that sustain pedal down. I made the band omelettes with cheese and meat sauce from the previous night’s spaghetti. It was a good breakfast, and I’ve never had that before, but I think I will try it in the future. Unfortunately, at this juncture I began to feel myself coming down with yet another illness. Curse this weak immune system of mine! My stomach was back to being all good, but now I had a headache, chills and a sore throat. Well, fortunately, I was in the right place. It sucks being sick. It sucks even more being sick on the road, but at least when you’re sick on the road, you might as well be sick on one of your days off and you’re staying in a sweet pad. Jer came by for a bit and played Wii with Kent. The Wii was definitely in full swing now. Even I got into it a bit. Frankly, I’m not a huge fan though. I found that the novelty of swinging your arms around translating to the guy on the screen swinging his arms around wears off really quickly and just leaves you feeling hollow and empty inside, perhaps in need of religion. While we were leaving Toronto yetserday, I asked Brendan what happened on Monday and he said, “A lot happened; I mastered 9-ball on the Wii.” Brendan also went out while Kent, Craig and I hung out at the pad. He went to see Sam Davidson, a great clarinetist who recently moved to Montreal from Vancouver (as so many have). I remember seeing Sam at Rime. His band opened for Blue Island Trio and he absolutely blew my mind. I also remember going over to Sam’s house to pick up Brendan and Brendan’s drum kit one day. Sam’s dad was visiting from Victoria, and he showed me some of his visual art. He specializes in super-intricate celtic knot patterns. They are quite amazing. So as I say we were mostly just recharging our weary batteries, and convalescing like a brood of vampires. At last when it got dark, we yawned and stretched and got out of our coffins. Okay, we had to do something out in the world today in one of Earth’s great cities. Hm. We were feeling hungry. I know! Schwartz’s Deli! Perfect. So Kent, Craig, Jer and I all hopped in Jer’s car and drove down to Boulevard St. Laurent, a great street, but it’s under construction right now, so it’s pretty bumpy. We parked on a side street and walked through a Pharma-Prix to Schwartz’s. It’s a pretty small place, but man is it ever crowded! We sat at a table. The menus proudly trumpeted the names of some celebrities who had been to Schwartz’s. Here are the ones I can remember: 1.) Celine Dion (of course) 2.) Leonard Cohen 3.) Guy Lafleur Behind the counter you can purchase a short book (about 1 cm thick) that tells the story of Schwartz’s deli. There’s also a DVD. I wondered what the DVD would be about, and Jer theorized it was probably just there so you could have the obligatory, “I saw the movie and read the book and the book is way better than the movie.” discussion. That’s always a great discussion. Craig had been singing the praises of the coleslaw at Schwartz’s, so I ordered that with my classic smoked meat sandwich. Actually, I first asked if I could get half fries and half coleslaw, but he said “no”, so I just went with coleslaw. The other fellows ordered the same, except Jer who got fries, plus the three other fellows ordered a pickle each. I was pretty impressed when those sandwiches arrived. Again, Mitch Hedberg sums up exactly what those sandwiches were like in his bit about New York Delis: “It’s like a cow with a cracker on either side. ‘Would you like anything else with your sandwich?’ ‘Yeah, a loaf of bread and some more people!’” That’s exactly what it was like, two tiny pieces of bread housing practically an entire roast of smoked beef. It took me forever to eat it! But man, was it ever good! Plus the coleslaw was fantastic. Kent texted us all a message that said, “Robert De Niro. Over there.” We all turned and looked, and holy smokes! There he was! His back was to me when I noticed him, but apparently he had the mole and everything. Kent said that it wasn’t actually Robert De Niro because he stared at him for a really long time and said that it wasn’t him, but that he looked really similar. A brush with someone who looked like someone famous! Our Schwartz’s experience was now complete, so we headed back through the Pharma-Prix. I picked up some eggs for the next morning as we’d gone through all our eggs already. Back at the pad, we had a bit of a youtube party. Jer showed us video footage of that old Jetpack invention, plus some really hilarious segway accidents. Also Stephen Colbert roasting Bush. Gold! And Colbert Vs. The O’Reilly Factor. Also very good. Then we watched a few conspiracy-theory movies: Loose Change and Zeitgeist. They were pretty interesting but a lot of stuff in both those movies is inaccurate and needs to be taken with a pretty large grain of salt. Still, good entertainment. Brendan came home while we were watching Zeigtgeist and caught the last little bit of that show with us. After that, we watched some Deadwood, the first season of which I had downloaded at Kent’s recommendation. Great show! Exhausted from that day of doing virtually nothing, we went to bed at around 2:00. (Comment on this)
3:24 am	The Montreal Chronicles Part I: Segway Riders vs. Attack of the Bluegrass-Dogma-Nazi-Robot! The Montreal Chronicles Part I: Segway Riders vs. Attack of the Bluegrass-Dogma-Nazi-Robot! Day 22: Sunday, November 11th, 2007 I woke up, then I went back to sleep, the woke up again, and went back to sleep again. I think that Homer Simpson sums it up best in the episode where he renounces Christianity. He’s lying in bed and he says, “I’m just a big toasty cinnamon bun, and nothing’s going to get me out of bed.” That’s what I felt like. So when about 1:30 in the afternoon finally rolled around, I lazily got out of bed. Finally! A good sleep. I hopped in the shower and by the time I was out of there, Jer was around. He wanted to know what we wanted to do today. Jer owns a segway tour company that operates mostly during the summer months, but it being his company and all, he can take those segways out whenever he pleases. We all sat about eating cereal and drinking coffee deliberating on what to do. Jer had very kindly gone shopping the previous night and picked us up some groceries. Some members of the band were worried about the “dork quotient” attached to riding segways. But when it comes to riding on some awesome machine that operates on the basis of imitating your inner-ear’s balancing system, I don’t care how much of a loser I look like. Put me on that futuristic pogo-stick-on-wheels, sir! Post haste! Brendan opted out because he has friends in Montreal that he wanted to hang out with. I believe that was Isaac Dumont, a school chum from VCC days, and they wanted to go check out the drum festival. I should mention unbelievably, Dave Spidel was in Montreal last night mere blocks away, yet we somehow managed to not meet up! C’est la vie. So Kent, Craig and I got in the car and rode down to The Port where Jer’s segways are kept. Unfortunately, Kent didn’t make it very far; he started coming down with a brutal migraine, so he had to go back to the place. It was too bad, but a wise choice. So then it was just Craig, Jer and I. We arrived down at the port at about 3:00 and walked into the warehouse where Jer keeps the segways. He took three segways out of the holding compartment the holding compartment (if you can answer what Star Trek episode the previous six words are from, you win a prize). One was the off-road version and two were the standard issue type. They are large and sturdy machines. They were also the original kind instead of the newer kind. You steer the newer kind by leaning, but the kind we were riding, you steer by twisting the left handle forward or backwards (so, slightly less intuitive). First of all, let me just say that riding the segway is amazing. The rumours are true; it literally does feel like you’re “thinking” it forward. The way that Jer descrbed it is like this: there’s two steps to walking: the first is a fall; you literally fall forward, then stick a foot out to save yourself. To carry through the analogy, the fall is exactly the same, but instead of sticking out a foot to save yourself, the segway races forward. All the control is down really low; pretty much in the balls of your feet and your heels. You shift your balance the slightest bit to the balls of your feet and you move forward. Think about shifting your balance to your ankles and you slow down or reverse. The thing can turn on a dime too. So we did a brief training session with Jer. Probably the strangest thing is resisting the urge to lean against a turn. If you do that you’ll get thrown off. It’s more like skiing, in that you need to lean into the turn. We slalomed around the warehouse and then headed out onto the port. It was a beautiful clear and sunny afternoon. Very cold too. Fortunately, I was wearing all my heaviest winter gear, so I stayed pretty warm. We segwayed along the St. Lawrence looking across the river to the ’67 expo site and a big bridge. Then we zoomed around the port checking out the old structures there, then on up into the cobblestone streets of the old city. There were lots of amazing old stone buildings and churches. We had to go to L’Absynthe for 4:30 to get out stuff off the stage so we after a bit more of a cruise around, we headed back down to the port and put the segways away. Good times! I highly recommend it as a form of transportation. Frankly, I’m quite sad it never caught on. Most of the stares we got were not disdainful so much as curious. We headed back to L’Absynthe in the gathering dusk while Jer regaled us with tales of what the inventor of the segway is up to now. Plus he told us about this crazy jetpack invention that they developed in the 50s for military purposes but for some reason that never caught on either. People! Come on! Back at L’Abysnthe, Craig and I packed up the gear. We were presently joined by Brendan who was coming back from the drum festival event he had been attending with Isaac. The three of us then headed back to the pad. When we got back, Craig and Kent made some spaghetti for dinner while I caught up on some emailing action. After dinner, I talked with Tyler about a jam that was taking place down at a place called “Bar Fly”. It was to be a bluegrass jam, and here I made a stupid misjudgment. I thought, well, we can pull off a decent impression of a bluegrass band with Kent. And while that would be okay in most cases (like, if the host of the jam wasn’t a dogmatic bluegrass nazi), you will soon see that it was definitely NOT okay tonight! After a few more hours of lounging about at the pad, we headed down to Bar Fly. The lady at the door noticed that Brendan was carrying a snare drum and she was like, “Whoah, whoah, this is a bluegrass jam. No drums.” I thought, “whatever; she’s just some busy-body who’s having a bad day. Again, not so. I went up and talked to the host of the jam. I forget his name, but he was very tall, had long red hair and a red cowboy shirt on. I explained that I was travelling with a band from out of town and that I’d like to do some songs with that band, then some of my songs (Viper Central stuff that I’d play just Tyler and me) and then some of Tyler’s songs (again, more Viper Central material). He said sure. Then the hitch: he asked about the instrumentation. I told him Craig would play stand-up bass, I’d play steel, Kent would play acoustic guitar and Brendan would play a snare drum. He got right up in my grill and was like, “We generally try to shy away from drums here. This is a bluegrass jam.” And I tried to explain that Brendan was part of the band, he’d just be playing light brushes and so forth, and the guy just repeated himself, “We try to shy away from drums.” So obviously he wasn’t engaging. He was like a bluegrass-dogma-nazi-robot. I hate that. When you try to explain someone and the person just repeats themselves. Plus he was getting all up in my grill, so I went back and told Kent and the fellows the situation. Needless to say they were all angry, and didn’t want to play if Brendan couldn’t play with us. Let me vent for a sec. It’s people like that guy who give bluegrass a bad name. I understand where he’s coming from trying to keep the genre with a traditional instrumentation, but come on. You’re playing a little jam at some little bar and an out-of-town band is here to play on a few songs in an acoustic setting. Sure it’s his right to stick to his guns and keep it fiercely rooted in the tradition, but that kind of unwillingness to make any exception sort of makes him an asshole too. I have run up against this kind of thing so many times in bluegrass and it just wears me out. The same kind of people become insensed when the idea of plugging instruments in is mentioned. Or playing unorthodox instruments (like when Billy Cardine played a Mohan Vina – Scandal!) These are the kind of wet-blanket people who booed Dylan for going electric – “Judas!”. It’s short-sighted and moronic. Music is all about creativity and blending elements and trying out new ideas; where do you think bluegrass came from in the first place? Those are all the things I wished I had said, but I always think of what to say after the fact, so, oh well. Plus, he made me mad when he looked at my pac-seat (in which I store my gear) and said, “Oh no! Is that an amp, and feigned giving it a swift kick of the foot. I just got such a bad vibe from him that I was happy to just get the hell out of there. So we went to a bar just down the street called “The Reservoir”. I highly recommend this place to anyone in Montreal. It was a very relaxed place with a great ambience. We met up with Jenny, Paul Chris and Chris’s girlfriend Catherine. Soon we had a rollicking table of laughter, beer and photographs. I was still feeling kind of blue about the situation back at Bar Fly because Tyler was going to be jamming there and I’d gotten such a bad vibe that I didn’t want to play there anymore, so I went back to talk to Tyler and explain the situation. He was disappointed but he understood, and soon came to join us at The Reservoir. We had a really good time and because Tyler had his banjo with him and I had been thinking a lot about his song “Shotgun Wedding”, plus I’ve just been singing it all over the place, so I said something to the effect of, hey, let’s play that song! So Tyler pulled out the banjo and started clawhammering away and I started belting it out that great song that got Viper Central labelled “mysogynistic and sophomoric” in the Pacific Bluegrass and Heritage Society bulletin. The bartender quietly went over to the stereo and turned off the house music so that we wouldn’t be clashing. He knew what was going on! It was really fun. We hung out for a while longer, then that famous late night desire that all montreal residents are familiar with set in. You know the one I’m talking about. Poutine! So we hastily formed a plan to go to “Banquise”, which, according to at least two independent sources, serves the finest poutine in all Montreal. It was a long walk, but the night had warmed up just a little bit. And it was a good walk too, through that neighbourhood that I believe is known as The Plateau. We arrived at Banquise and placed our orders. I had never had poutine. Such a series of firsts! So I ordered the original. Kent ordered “The T-Rex”, because he is really letting himself go on this tour, as I’ve said. That is one huge plate of poutine with a lot of beef on top. I think Tyler may have had the “Elvis” poutine. I don’t know what’s on that. Maybe bananas and peanut butter? Anyhow, the rollicking goodtimes went on long into the night. We made friends with some Quebequois girls who sat at the table beside us and admonished me sternly when I asked for the ketchup. But I put it on anyhow. Man, cheese curds are good! I wanted to order some water there, and I had been taught by Leon, when we were at L’Absynthe, to say “Je vais un ver de l’eau.” And I was talking with Catherine about this, but she said that that was kind of a demanding way to ask for a glass of water, like “Give me water!” or “I want water!” So she taught me how to say, “Est-ce que je peut un ver de l’eau?” I kept saying “peur” which meant that I was afraid of the water and which she found funny, and which I found amazing that she could hear that little silent “r” that I put on the end of the “puh” sound I was making. I’ve probably botched these words by now, but I was enjoying trying. Parts of the language were starting to come back to me from learning it in high school. Man, I really wish that I had been in French immersion. As for now, the challenge and the beauty, the structure and the opportunities borne from learning French really make me want to learn French! Well, it was about 3:00 or so in the morning by the time we left. The walk back to the van was filled with hijinks. Kent accidentally tackled The Bison (Craig McCaul is now known as The Bison due to his huge beard and bisonly ways) to the pavement. It was hilarious. And I placed the perfect body-check on Brendan, sending him flying over a pylon out onto the street. It was also hilarious. You kind of had to be there, but you also kind of didn’t, because people falling over or getting pushed over is always funny, no matter what. We got back to the pad and crashed at around 4:00. Goodnight moon! (Comment on this)
Thursday, November 22nd, 2007
11:33 am	Day 21: Saturday, November 10th, 2007 I kind of like adding these prologues, so here's this one today. Today is actually November 22nd (only 32 shopping days til Christmas! Don't forget that I want "Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman" by Haruki Murakami and also that CD "Heroes and Horses".) I am in Toronto and it has just started snowing. I am sitting in a coffee shop watching the snow swirl about outside. A woman with very bright yellow boots just walked by. I really enjoyed Toronto a lot and I'd like to come back here soon. Today we're heading for Sault Ste. Marie, which is a great place too. Here's your fix. Day 21: Saturday, November 10th, 2007 I woke up at 8:30, for that was the pre-appointed hour. The four hours of sleep had been short, but refreshing enough. I was looking forward to going to Montreal for my first time. Danny suggested that we go to “What’ll it be?” because his housemate Corey’s girlfriend Billie works there and would give us a free breakfast. That sounded good. Brendan headed downstairs to start loading gear. “Where’s Kent?” He thought. Then he spotted Kent. He was sleeping wrapped up in Brendan’s drum carpet, which Kent would later describe as “A new low.” Kent had thought he was being very clever sneaking away from the party to sleep downstairs, but we sorted out the beds only a few minutes after he’d snuck off and curled up in that rug. We loaded up the van. The stairs were extremely treacherous that icy morning, but we were very careful and fortunately there were no accidents. We followed Danny and Cory down to “What’ll it be?” It is a nice restaurant, and I would recommend it to anyone in search of breakfast in Kirkland Lake. Danny told his story a few more times and reaffirmed his status as a wizard who can knock off a man’s eyebrows in a single punch. We ate some good breakfast. I was surprised to see that each breakfast was served with a tiny side of beans. Weird! I guess this is one of those east/west things that I’ve never heard about. I have been eating breakfasts in the west for thirty years and never have I been served beans with my eggs. Here I was in my first week in the east and I was being served a side of beans with my breakfast as a matter of course. It’s things like this that really excite me about travelling. Filled with a good breakfast, it was time to hit the road to Montreal. We said goodbye to Corey and the wizard Danny, then they showed us the best way to go. There are two ways to get to Montreal from Ontario. One is the high road that goes through a lot of Quebec. The other way is the low road that goes through Ontario most of the way. We took the high road. So we crossed the border into Quebec about half an hour later. I was excited to be in a province that was brand new to me. It was a beautiful day too. The sky was blue and the sun was shining. We listened to music and enjoyed the scenery. It was one of the most beautiful drives we have had yet. There is about a two hour drive through a beautiful area called “Reserve Nationale de la Faun”. (?) Lots of little lakes reflecting the sun to either side and beautiful forest too. Kent was at the wheel, and I was trying to stay awake to make sure that he stayed awake, but I clocked out pretty soon. I woke up when he pulled over. Apparently, he had hallucinated a little leprechaun crawling up the side of the van, and when that happens, it’s time to switch drivers. So Brendan took over. I was riding shotgun and the other two were sleeping in the back. Brendan put on a really good album by a drummer named “Will Calhoun”. The album is called “Native Lands.” It features a lot of really amazing percussion sounds, great drumming and some beautiful harmon-muted trumpet playing. It was a perfect soundtrack to the drive through the reserve. Then, in honour of our surroundings put on some music. I chose a lot of things by Quebecois artists like Daniel Lanois, and all the French songs I have on my iPod. Then it was Little Feat. We stopped at about 4:00 for lunch at a Tim Horton’s in a little town. I didn’t really know if I should order in English or French or what the protocol was there, so I just said, “Je voudrais un croissant.” It was the first item that I could immediately identify on the menu. “Un croissant au beurre?” came the reply. “Oui.” I said and I was elated to receive the first piece of food I’d ordered in French since I went to that French restaurant with my grade 9 French class. I can see the yellow awning with the picture of the daffodil on it now. What was that place called? I ate my croissant feeling proud and patriotic. We got into the car with our various snacks and pushed on to Montreal. We arrived at L’absynthe at about 6:30 where Flavie (the headlining act for the night) was soundchecking. Meanwhile we loaded in our gear. We introduced ourselves to each other then they cleared off the stage and we set up and did a brief soundcheck. By now we were all very hungry, and that is when Kent’s old friend Jeremy showed up. Kent and Jeremy were pals back in highschool and Jer lives and works in Montreal now, and has for the past five years. Jer’s brother, Hamnet had an apartment that would very comfortably house four fellows for the next four days. Jer is a very personable fellow and we felt right at ease with him immediately. We drove with him back to the apartment. To say that it could comfortably house the four of us is a massive understatement. That place was massive. From one end to the other must have been half the length of a Canadian football field (50 yds.) The ceiling was about twenty-five feet high. The whole thing was one massive room. I think Jer said that it used to be the main floor of a printing press or something. Now it was hardwood floors underfoot and nice big beams doing whatever beams do (hold the ceiling up, I suppose). The lighting was mainly those massive, extremely bright footlights used for the purposes of lighting construction sites. The place had just undergone a massive garage sale, but there was still tons of stuff about. Notably, couches and chairs, a lot of tables, a monitor, a Nintendo Wii, a phone, a modem, a wireless router, a refrigerator, laundry, plus tons of assorted clothes and electronic odds and ends lying about. A few days later Kent would say that he felt like we were a coven(?) brood(?) [help, Christine!] of Vampires hanging out there, all of us living in that big warehouse kinda space, and waiting until dark before we went out to haunt the streets of Montreal. Also, I have to talk about the bathroom in this place. Absolutely massive. Again, to use the Canadian football field analogy, the bathroom would have stretched from about the forty yard line to about the fifteen. That is to say it was a bout twenty five yards long by about fifteen wide. Massive! Jer ordered several pizzas and we devoured them voraciously along with some Moosehead beer. We also enjoyed the use of the awesome shower in the massive bathroom. Feeling like a million bucks once again, we headed back out to L’absynthe. The place was packed! My good pal Tyler Dean Rudolph, or Fang Shui (as he is known in Viper tongue), was there. It was great to see him, as I have missed him a lot. He’s studying the migratory patterns of the Caribou for his masters thesis, and tonight he would be playing a couple of songs with us. Special guest! I talked with him for a bit, then went towards the stage, where we would soon play. “Tim!” I heard some baritone voice say. Then again, “Tim!” Why, who should it be, but Leon Schuller and him ma, Bridgette! It was very nice to see them and briefly catch up. Then it was time to get up and play our set. We played about a forty minute set and it went great. We were very warmly received by the Montreal audience; they really seemed to dig our music. Tyler sounded really good too, taking awesome solos on “Old Bandolier” and “Things You Say”. After our set, we watched Flavie play. They really captivated the audience. I also hung out with Tyler and caught up with him, chatted more with Bridgette and Leon. Brendan’s friends Jenny and Chris were there too. We were all totally exhausted from the last few days’ activities. Kent was so tired that he went home early and we followed shortly thereafter. I had a shower, then fell into my bed (the first bed I’d slept in in several days) and fell fast asleep. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 21st, 2007
3:45 pm	Day 20: Friday, November 9th, 2007 Special Prologue!: Hi everyone! Whoahhhhh I'm behind on the blogging. But that probably just means I'm having a really good time and, y'know, living in the "now" as they say. Anyhow, this next blog here is about the lowest point on the whole tour so far. Actually, my stomach virus was the worst part, but this next bit was just, well, weird and demoralizing. Anyhow, maybe you'll find the blog amusing enough. Talk to you real soon. As for where I am now, I'm sitting in an internet cafe in Kensington Market in Toronto, a nice part of town, sort of analagous to Vancouver's Commercial Drive. I just asked and apparently there's even a little Italy. "The old little Italy", the patron to my right informs me. It's really just a cafe; the internet part happened here by accident according to Jesse, the guy who's making the coffee. It just picks up free wireless, which is okay with me. I'm downloading season 3 of deadwood and getting out of the rain. It's turning mighty cold outside, but it's warm enough in here and it smells really good. Like cofee. ______________ Day 20: Friday, November 9th, 2007 I woke up at about 8:30, feeling very confused. There were two sounds in my ears. One sound was the loud, insistent bleeping of an irritating alarm clock, the other was of a loud and angry beating on the door. Then the voice on the other side of the door yelled “Hello!” Bang! Bang Bang! “Hello!” And I said “Yes?” And the voice on the other side o the door yelled, “Is Randy there!” “I don’t know!” I answered just as angrily. Then from the bedroom next door I heard the alarm shut off and a a string of expletives. And the explanation of what had happened leapt into full bas relief. Randy had obviously set his alarm for work, but had slept through it, due to the rowdy Youtube party the previous night and now his boss or co-worker was angrily a-knocking at his door. Randy jumped out of bed and ran to the door, apologized profusely and hastily made ready to go, while I tried to keep dozing. The two of them left, and I suspect it was not a very good day at work for old Randy today. I fell back asleep. I woke up again at a more reasonable hour and went downstairs. Brendan, Kent and Craig were all waking up at around this point too. I left a copy of Blue Island Trio’s first CD, Resonance, with a note for Pelly as a thank you present. We bid a fond farewell to Pelly and drove the short distance down to The Velvet Elvis. Liisa was there with several of her lovely cats. She thanked us again for the show, and we in turn thanked her too. She had made another pot of that amazing coffee, and we talked a bit about coffee too. She recommended a kind called “Blue Mountain”, which is apparently really good. I’ll have to check that out. She also made us some toast, and brought out some lingenberry jam. Her family is from Norway (?) and every Christmas, Liisa say that they have this lingenberry wine that she has never really liked. But I guess they have lingenberry jam too. Anyhow, this is all to say that I really enjoyed the lingenberry jam, and I can’t say that I’ve ever seen it anywhere else, so thanks for that too, Liisa. We loaded up the van and bid a fond farewell to Liisa and the lovely cats too. And we hit the road and began the journey to Kirkland Lake. It was a pretty long day of driving to Kirkland Lake. I believe I did a lot of blogging that day on the drive there. We’d been driving for about four hours, and the crew was getting very restless and bored. To give you an example, I was riding shotgun with Craig at the wheel, and suddenly I felt a poke in the back of my arm. Brendan had begun the psychologically torturous van-game known as “poke”. The game there is to place an object (in Brendan’s case, this was a drumstick) in the shotgun-rider’s proximity such that if he moves, he will get poked by that object. Also, if he doesn’t move, the poker can just randomly poke him. Then when the shotgun-rider turns around, the goal is to act like you weren’t doing anything. Does this sound childish to you? The real torture kicks in when the shotgun rider turns back around to face front and is mentally tortured by the idea that he can be poked at any time. Then Kent joined in with the game “smells”. Kent invented this game a couple of years ago. It’s a lot like “poke” but in this game, the goal is to dip an object (Kent will often use a pen) in some very odiferous product. Some examples would be: toothpaste, gum and Vick’s vapo-rub. Then it is surreptitiously placed near the shotgun-rider’s face so that he experiences a sudden curious odour. Then, when he turns around, he realizes he is the test subject in some weirdo’s sick game. Laughter ensues from the instigator and the shotgun-rider’s irritation grows. This continued for about fifteen minutes, then, mercifully, we reached a little town called “Huntsville”. We were hungry and Brendan and Kent were clearly experiencing some intense infantile regression coupled with stir-craziness, so we stopped in that little town. Huntsville looked to be a nice, sleepy little rural town. There were lots of trees, lots of green lawns, and the town was on a little lake. The first place we stopped for lunch was closed, so we drove down near the lake and found a restaurant on a pier, which I think might have been called “Restaurant on the Pier”. We walked on in. I had a strange feeling about the place as soon as I set foot in it. The reason was that I was sure that I had been there in a dream. Shaking off this funny feeling, we grabbed a booth on the far wall. A boisterous and rowdy couple at a nearby table invited us to start drinking with them. We politely declined, took our seats at the booth and ordered a round of waters. The man at the table yelled across to us something about drinking water and how odd that was. Then he came over and stood by our table, speaking more about the strangeness of ordering water and inquiring about this strange and unfamiliar beverage. Next he wanted to know “Who owns the lake?” He waved a hand, gesturing towards the lake just outside the big windows. We all weighed in on this impoderable. He introduced himself as “Brandon”. Later, Brendan would say, “I had to restrain the urge to tell him ‘Dude, I hate your name.’” The conversation with Brandon wandered from what we were doing here, back to water (the lake kind and the drinking kind) and what it meant to be in a band. He talked a lot with his hands; about crescendos, music and reading each others’ minds. Then his girlfriend, came up to our table and introduced herself as Leslie-Ann. She talked about being a tutor and how much she enjoyed that. She said that her family has lived in Oakville for five generations. Our food came and Leslie Ann began to talk about what it means to be in a band and what we’d have to do if we wanteed to “make it”. “You have to be like this,” she said, extending her right thumb and index finger and slowly bringing them closer together like the “I’m crushing your head” guy, until her thumb and finger made the “OK” sign. Brendan went outside for a cigarette and Brandon joined him. Whilst they were talking on the patio outside, Brandon unzipped his pants and peed on the ground. Meanwhile, while the three of us were in the bar getting advice on how to “make it” from Leslie Ann, the phone in the bar was ringing off the hook. People’s bosses were calling from work. I guess the workers of Hunstville had collectively decided to call it a day at noon and the bosses were none too pleased. We paid up, said goodbye to Leslie Ann and walked back to the van. Brandon was following us and clearly wanted to join us for the trip. Alas! There was no room. Back on the road, we continued our journey towards Kirkland Lake. They say that Kirkland lake is in North Ontario. This confused me, because Ontario is a gigantic province, and if you actually wanted to get to the northern part of it, it would take quite a long time. When I finally looked at a map, I saw that what people refer to as “north Ontario” is actually in the south; it’s just north in terms of the part of the province that’s populated, which is about the lower ten per cent of the province that runs like a strip along the southern border. We passed "Swastika" on the way, which, thanks Stephen Tweedale for helping me figure out what that was all about via wikipedia. But the article still doesn't answer why, in 1908, they chose that name for the town. Well, it's centennial is coming up next year, so maybe we'll learn more then. So we made it to Kirkland Lake in north Ontario by nightfall. It was cold and snowing. We stopped by a pizza joint. The pizza was awful; very cardboardy with almost no cheese, but we needed something to stave off the hunger in case there was no food at the house party we were going to play tonight. Meanwhile, Kent called our host, Danny, and got directions to his house. It was a short drive through the snowy streets of Kirkland Lake, and we arrived at Danny’s little red house. Danny greeted us and we began loading the gear into the basement where we were to play that night. He introduced us to his friends Joanna and Craig and we sat down and had a round of ale. I still wasn’t drinking quite yet, so I just had water. Unfortunately, everyone there was smoking and the whole house was filled with cigarette smoke. We hung around and chatted for a bit while more people arrived, then went down to the basement to set up our gear. Our opening act was a fellow named Chad. I wish I could remember what his last name was. If I told you, you could listen to him on Radio 3 because his song about suicide and the afterlife was featured as a song of the day. The graphic on that Podcast is of Celine Dion holding her baby, but instead of her baby’s head, it’s Chad’s head on there. Chad was really nervous. He’d get about one and a half verses into a song, then forget the rest of it, and quickly abandon the entire thing. He talked at great length about how he’d recently had his left testicle removed and how that was the testicle responsible for helping him remember his song lyrics. There were a lot of awkward silences. After abandoning the third or fourth consecutive song, he became philosophical: “I only have one testicle. What does it matter whether I fuck up these songs or not?” Chad closed his set by forgetting his last song, then suddenly remembering that he had a great idea for a grand finale, but it involved his iPod. But where was his iPod? Out in the car! So he dashed up the stairs and out to his car, triumphantly returning with the iPod. Now he had to find a cord that would connect the iPod to the P.A. He hunted around for five or so minutes, but couldn’t find it anywhere, so he decided to drive back home and get it. What a finale! He returned with the cord about ten minutes later, connected up the iPod which provided a drum breat and began to rap along, but unfortunately, once again his missing testicle prevented him from remembering the lyrics, thus concluding the Chad portion of the evening. Next we endured the horror of “Beer”, a friend of Danny’s, getting up and attempting to freestyle. It was an awkward and terrible, but mercifully short effort. Finally it was time for us to get up and play. Danny had anticipated thirty people at the party. There were about ten. I don’t know what happened there. we still gave it our all and put on a good show. After the show, Brendan said to me, “We should play some Blue Island songs. “No time like the present.” I replied, and we sat down and played about a half-hour set for the remaining five or six people in the basement, but also mostly for ourselves. We started with: 1.) Sharktown. Then it was 2.) Solarium 3.) Rose & Thorn Entwinement Suite 4.) Anchor (?), a really awesome long jammed-out version of 5.) Gold Road, and we closed with 6.) Dragonboat – for which I tuned my low ‘D’ down to a super low ‘G’ (equivalent to the 3rd fret on the low ‘E’ string of a Bass. We both felt great after playing that set. It was a lot of fun, we played really well, and it was really cool to visit a musical space that we hadn’t been to in a while. After that, Danny entreated us to head down to The Federal (the bar in town which he books). We went down there, and there wasn’t really anything going on. I drank some water and chatted with some folks while the other fellows drank some beers. We headed out after about half an hour there. There was some good-natured horseplay in the parking lot, which the local police took note of, so it wasn’t really any surprise that, when I got in the van and started it up, the police car pulled up beside me and the officer asked to see my license and invited me to take a breathalyser. No problem. I’d had about half a beer about four hours ago. I gladly got into the back of the police car and listened while the officer read me the disclaimer. I blew 0.0. Meanwhile, Danny stood outside and took a picture of me in the back of the car with Brendan’s palm pilot. Unfortunately, he ended up erasing it, because he didn’t know how to save photos. Oh well. I got back into the van and off we went, bound for Tim Horton’s. When we got to the Tim Horton’s and pulled up to the drive-through speaker we ordered sandwiches and with great aplomb, as our last cardboard meal had been quite unsatisfactory. Unfortunately, they were out of sandwiches and donuts, somehow. It was like that Mitch Hedberg bit: “Prices and participation may vary. I want to open a MacDonalds and not participate in shit. ‘Do you have Cheeseburgers?’ ‘Nope! We got spaghetti. And blankets.’” So it was plan B: Subway. ("I did not realize this; ducks eat for free at Subway" -MH) Great. Time to face the demon. It was the last food place I’d been before I got sick. I have this theory that the body forms a natural aversion to the kind of food it last ingested just before getting sick. That seems like a practical adaptation. We got to the Subway and I elected to wait in the car, but after a few minutes I was bored, so I thought, “What the Hell.” and walked inside. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. There was a huge lineup though; I guess this is THE spot in Kirkland Lake to hang out late at night (it was about 3:00). That was when Danny told us his wizardly tale. Danny had been bragging all night about some altercation with a bar owner, and bits of rumours of it had been flying around the party all night too, so standing in line at that Subway, I wanted to finally get the whole story. I asked Chad and this is what Chad told me: Danny’s band, The Old Youth, had just played a gig at this venue. It was packed and everyone was having a great time. After the show, the band wanted to go upstairs, but the upstairs area was closed and the owner didn’t want them to go up there. Danny insisted, things escalated, and finally the bar owner got angry, grabbed Danny and threw him down across a table. Then Danny got up and punched the bar owner in the face so hard, his eyebrows fell off. “I must be a wizard!” said Danny. “I can punch someone so hard that their eyebrows fall off.” So that was the story. I guess the owner had fake eyebrows or something and Danny had caused them to come unglued, but it was sure to become a legend in Kirkland Lake – the fight in which Danny punched a guy so hard his eyebrows just flew right off his face. We ate our sandwiches and headed back home. Back at the place, we packed up our gear so we’d be ready to leave early the next morning. There were some people jamming in the basement, and they really wanted to jam with us but we were really tired and had a long drive ahead of us. We finished packing and headed upstairs, but then one of Danny’s friends showed up at the house and wanted to keep talking, hanging out, smoking and drinking. Well, it was about 4:00 by this time and I’d had enough. I was tired, bored and sick of being in that god-awful smoky house. “We really need to get some sleep.” I said, and generally insisted on moving things towards ending the gathering and getting some sleeping arrangements set up. I went to brush my teeth, then came back to the living room, wrapped myself up in a blanket on a fold out couch and fell asleep. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, November 18th, 2007
8:24 pm	Day 19: Thursday, November 8th, 2007 Day 19: Thursday, November 8th, 2007 We woke up in that little hotel room in Parry Sound. The fellows (especially Kent) were feeling a little the worse for wear, having enjoyed copious amounts of vodka at Don Cherry’s sports bar just down the way. We packed up and got out of there pretty quickly. Joey, our friendly hostess was happy to recommend a good breakfast place. Well, two actually; one was called Lill’s, and she highly recommended that place, and the other was The Mad Hatter’s, just across the street from Lill’s. Brendan and I went to Lill’s and Craig and Kent went to the Mad Hatter’s. Lill’s breakfast was alright; nothing to write home about. I had two fried eggs and dry toast. I don’t remember what Brendan had, except to say that he said, “Are you using this glass?” indicating the empty glass that came with my orange juice. I said no, and so he filled it with about a quarter inch of salt, then went to the bathroom to fill it with warm water and gargle the salty brine; an ancient remedy for the sore throat that the poor fellow was suffering from. Over breakfast we discussed the first tapes that we ever got. Mine in consecutive order (because I stored them this way) were: 1.) Bryan Adams: Reckless 2.) The Bangles: Different Light 3.) The Eurythmics – Revenge 4.) Glass Tiger – Thin Red Line 5.) Run DMC – Raising Hell – this was the first one that I actually bought Brendan’s first ever Tape was Pearl Jam: Ten I just asked Kent what his first tapes were, and the answer came back: Van Halen: 1984 and ZZ Top: Eliminator. Over breakfast, Brendan and I had also discussed good natural remedies for things, and he mentioned that fennel tea was good for an upset stomach. Well, I was feeling 99 per cent better, but why not go that extra one per cent? I crossed the street to The Mad Hatter’s and ordered some fennel tea. The lady there said that they didn’t really carry any, but that she might have some in her private stash, so she went to the back and re-emerged with the fennel tea. Success! By the way, I really love fennel. I like that candy-coated fennel you can get in Indian stores, I like those fennel candies that they have in Greek restaurants, I like the smell of fennel, and you can bet I like the taste. So, gift ideas, family, friends, I hope you’re taking notes here. I got the tea to go, and pretty soon we were on the road, leaving that sleepy little town of Parry Sound, bound for Oshawa. This drive was especially beautiful. It wasn’t too long, either. But it took us through beautiful rural Ontario. It was a cool, overcast day, and being the end of Autumn, the trees had given up their most vibrant colours, but a trace of brilliant gold still clung to the branches. We passed by lots of farms and green fields and lots of pretty groves of deciduous trees shedding the last of their leaves. It wasn’t too long of a drive to Oshawa; maybe two or three hours, and it was, as I say, quite pleasant. We arrived at The Velvet Elvis around 1:30 or 2:00 PM. It was quite cold, and starting to snow. Kent placed a telephone call to Pelly, our friend who set up the gig, was hosting us at his house and was to open for us as well. Pelly plays in a band called “The Stables” (formerly “The Kent Boys” (incidentally, that is how he and Kent met (they formed a “Kent army” together))) and has a side project called “Poor Pelly”. The Elvis, a lovely old house, the living room of which has been converted into a bar / venue was closed at the moment, but a lovely white cat was there to greet us. He was perfectly white except for a black goatee, a Béla Lugosi-style patch of black hair on his head and a long black tail. I don’t think I have to tell you he was about as cute as all get out! Across the street was a restaurant that Pelly had recommended called “Papa A’s Grill”. We were all feeling hungry, so we went over there to rassle up some lunch. I had a reuben sandwich. It was quite good. I must remember to get sauerkraut when I get back home, for I love it dearly, and I understand it is quite healthy too. Pelly joined us in medias rees. I believe he ordered some sort of Greek wrap. I think that Papa A specializes in Greek cuisine. Anyhow, it was very good to meet Pelly and we all got along really well right away. We discussed some gig horror stories, sharing our experiences with The Apollo in Thunder Bay. After lunch, Pelly rode with us back to his house, which was not too far from the Velvet Elvis. This was only my second time in Toronto, and I was happy to see those beautiful red-brick and white-brick houses. There is something very satisfying about a house made out of brick. Way better than the houses we have on the westcoast made out of straw. Plus, wolf-proof. By the way, Wolf-proof is a great name for an indie band, and I just came up with it there in that sentence. It’s good because there have been so many Wolf-named indie bands lately, and I think this is a step ahead of the curve, because of the “Proof” part. You can have that. It’s yours for free from me, but just promise me you’ll play good music in your new band Wolf-proof. Cheers. At Pelly’s, we were greeted by two very lovely animals. One was a nice cat named “Soda Pop” and then there was “Phoenix”, who was a big friendly German Shepherd. Man, Phoenix was so sweet, and chilled out and he had this grey bandana around his neck. He mostly just lay around and got pets on the head from his new friends (us). Pelly got us some beers. I had some water, because I still wasn’t feeling up to drinking quite yet. We chilled for a while. Then we retired from the main living room to a little ante-room where Pelly stores his records (78s and 45s) and CDs. I checked the internet for a while. Then my curiosity got the better of me and I checked out his CD collection. Man was I ever not disappointed! Check it: Pelly has a ton of amazing folk, roots, blues, country, bluegrass, you know, all that kind of music that I’m heavily into, and furthermore, he said, “Feel free to copy anything you like.” Well, I had my laptop right there. And looking directly into my eyes were the following: 1.) A Woody Guthrie anthology 2.) A Townes Van Zandt anthology 3.) A 3 CD collection of Bob Dylan bootlegs 4.) A Gram Parsons anthology 5.) The Louvin Brothers’ album “Satan is Real” 6.) more So I spent about the next hour or two ripping that stuff onto my laptop. I am very excited to listen to all that great music. Thanks, Pelly! He also gave us copies of his album, and we gave him our album. All the while, we were listening to great music on Pelly’s computer. We were also talking about various places and people we’d met along the way. He had an incredibly hilarious story involving a very mischievous Romi Mayes. By the way, check out this motto for Romi Mayes that a member of some band came up with. “Mommy Raised Me but Romi Mayesd me.” I enjoy that kind of cleverness. Apparently Romi may feature that motto on her next t-shirt. I would buy one for sure. Wouldn’t you? After putting those great anthologies on my computer, it was time to head down to The Velvet Elvis to rock that place. We loaded in and met Liisa, the very friendly proprietor. I don’t know if I mentioned it, but it’s basically just like a nice big living room with a stage in the front window. It was a bit tight for space, but The Iron Choir is used to being space-efficient. Here’s a tip for you, if you ever need to be space efficient: Let the drummer set up first; the drummer has the most hardware (probably) and needs the most space for actual set-up. Your drummer will thank you for your courtesy. So we set up, then, as we were really hungry, we tucked into some big bowls of chili with bread and cheese too. It was really good. Oh, and I must mention too, that The Velvet Elvis served the best coffee we’ve had on this tour so far. Brendan is sitting across from me here in the Moonshine Café in Oakville, ON (6 days later). I just read the previous few sentences to him and he agrees with me that the coffee was indeed the best we’ve had on tour so far. It was just drip coffee, but it was strong and rich. Fantastic! Kent also ordered up a big old plate of nachos, so we enjoyed that. Pretty soon the Stables took to the stage. They had a washtub bass, a suitcase kick drum (with bongos for toms), and of course, Pelly, leading the band with his dynamite vocals and agressive guitar strumming. I enjoyed the stables a lot. Their songs were up-tempo and loosely in a bluegrass style. I especially liked Pelly’s song “Breadcrumbs”, which he later told me he wrote while staying in a cabin with a little mouse scritching around in the walls, so he wrote it about that mouse, but it’s also about love. Shortly after the Stables stunning finale, Kent and The Choir took to the stage. I guess I proceeded to scar my lap steels with my intensity (according to that awesome review in Scene & Heard by Will McGuirk. I’ll post that link, because I don’t think I did on Livejournal anyhow, just Facebook). Anyhow, the audience was small, but man, did they ever make up for it in enthusiasm. By the way, a fellow, Alex, whom I jammed with the night before last in Montreal said that “enthusiasm” comes from the Greek word meaning “The God within”, to which he added, “So follow your enthusiasm and you can’t go wrong. Good advice! After our show, Brendan said that he felt that the audience was almost too appreciative! We played several encores, and indeed after the show, I was showered in the praises of the Oshawanians. A good old praise-showering always feels pretty good. And I felt really good about how we played too. So, good show everyone! We hung out for a bit more at the Elvis, then headed back to Pelly’s place. When we got back there, the sound man (I forgot his name) was in one of the upstairs rooms which functions as a studio. The Stables were all huddled around the computer listening to some music. I could only stand it in there for about ten seconds because everyone was smoking in that room and I can’t stand smoky rooms, so I got out of there. I was also feeling pretty tired, so I went and brushed my teeth and bedded down on a couch in the upstairs living room. I started to fall asleep, but in the studio just down the hall, more folks had gathered around the computer and were now having in a Youtube party. This is where a bunch of people huddle around a computer watching their favourite amazing and often funny YouTube videos. It’s really fun when you’re a participant, but if you’re trying to fall asleep on a couch just down the hall and hyena-like shrieks of laughter keep meeting your sleepy ears, it’s extremely frustrating. They were still at it at around 3:30, and I think I finally fell asleep around 4:00 or so. (Comment on this)
Saturday, November 17th, 2007
3:15 pm	Day 18: Wednesday, November 7th, 2007 Day 18: Wednesday, November 7th, 2007 I woke up in Sault Ste. Marie feeling like a million bucks. I was in an awesome town, the band’s luck had just turned around again for the better, and I was back in tip-top shape. Brendan had gotten up extra early to go for a whirlpool. The rest of us had slept in, which was good too. We didn’t really have anywhere we had to be today so we weren’t in a great hurry. Make it to Peterborough for a gig on Thursday; that was the plan. We took our time getting up and making ready to go. At around noon, we brought our suitcases down. We’d also brought our guitars in the night before, because it had gotten very cold at night and stringed instruments – especially acoustic stringed instruments – are very susceptible to damage with the cold. So we brought our instruments down to the van too, loaded up and took off in search of breakfast. We went to a place called “The Presto”, which I believe came recommended by Craig McCaul. It was good, but it had a very strange ambience. Like “The Fun” from last night, it was also dead silent. Maybe there is some kind of rule about playing music in eating establishments Sault Ste. Marie, and the rule is “NEVER DO THIS.” (?) The quality of sound was very odd too. It was somehow very boomy due to its strange corners, but also very dead due to the low ceiling and very carpeted floor. It was also very floral-themed; the carpets, the patterns on the walls, the tablecloth, the curtains. Anyhow, we didn’t pay too much mind to this (well, actually, you can probably tell that I did, sort of). We felt a bit discouraged when the waitress brought us lunch/dinner menus, but then we asked if they had an all-day breakfast menu and our waitress said “yes.” Phew! I ordered two poached eggs and dry toast. Brendan and Craig ordered the Hungry Man Breakfast. Kent ordered a waffle. Everything seemed to be going okay, but then the waitress returned with an apologetic smile and the menu. Apparently the waffle iron would take a half hour to heat up, so no dice, Kent! Instead, Kent ordered an omelette, though he is getting kind of sick of eggs, he says. When my breakfast eventually came, it came with hash browns and very crispy bacon, even though I’d just asked for eggs and toast. Wow! Two out of two meals in Sault Ste. Marie yielded free add-ons for me. I am drawing some crazy conclusions about this town like “No music allowed.” And “All customers must have add-ons, even unrequested at no additional charge.” After breakfast, we hit the Steamy Bean for one final internet check-up, mapquesting and some coffee for those who wanted it. I still didn’t feel quite ready to subject my innards to coffee yet, so I held off. Fair enough. Leaving the Steamy Bean, I noted that out of maybe ten customers, four had Macintosh laptops. We climbed back in the van, and this is where I’m glad that I do some leaping around from present tense to past tense and all things in between in my blog, because I can go back to “What is this blog?” and see the following bit of writing: We’re passing the gigantic mushroom-shaped water tower in Sault-Ste. Marie (a town which we love, by the way) and we are leaving town. We’re bound for Peterborough where we’re playing tomorrow night. Alright. Left turn to a sign that says “SUDBURY”. Oh yeah! That is a really weird-shaped water tower. At this point, we hit the highway, and you know what was going on after that. I blogged and blogged and blogged! We must have made a few stops but mostly it was just a lot of blogging. Oh yeah, I don’t think I mentioned in “What is this blog?” that we stopped and I did a bit of grocery shopping. I am SUPER-proud of this little road tip to offer musicians and other travellers: I bought a box of Nature Valley almond granola bars – I think that this is the best kind, except the peanut kind, which may be better for energy, but as far as sheer flavour is concerned, it’s almond all the way, baby. So, I put the box in my suitcase and every morning, one granola bar goes in my laptop-carrying case. This does three things for me: 1.) It stops me from going into stores and looking about for a granola bar which a.) might not be there and b.) is more expensive when bought one by one c.) makes you wind up with a pocket full of irritating loose change 2.) It is a good quick snack, which: a.) keeps you healthy b.) helps keep your energy up during the course of the day, and c.) prevents you spending tonnes of money on lunch which is probably going to be unhealthy anyway. 3.) It instills a sense of pride. So at some point that day, I ate a granola bar and looked up from my computer, I made sure to be drinking lots of water to restore my precious bodily fluids. But mostly I did nothing but write “What is this blog?” Which suited me just fine. I was having a good time in my little land. I might have done some work on Day 13 – the Regina to Winnipeg Day too, but mostly it was “What is this blog?” I had a good time writing it, I’m happy to say. Plus, it just felt really good to relive that triumphant day of the turn-around of the band’s luck. Plus it just felt really good to be back in the blog saddle again. Six hours later, we stopped in the south end of a town called Parry Sound. There was a friendly, homey looking restaurant with a sign out front that said “Trapper’s Delight”. The graphic on the sign was of a crazed man waving an axe. That would be where we’d stop for dinner. It was a very nice little place. Our waitress was the most surprisingly un-bitter waitress I think I’ve ever encountered. She seemed to take great joy in every step of the meal. She did not seem guarded, nor did she seem falsely friendly; she just seemed to be a genuinely friendly and forthright person. It was astounding! I don’t know how long that can really last though. I had spaghetti, Brendan had lasagna, Craig had a burger and Kent had a souvlaki wrap. The food was very good, and we decided to stay the night here after finding out it was still quite a ways to Peterborough. Craig and I had coffees and I really enjoyed my first coffee in four days. There was an inn out back... man, I gotta find out the origin of the name of the town of “Swastika” in Ontario. And find out why they didn’t change it after the war. ...There was an inn out back, and it too sported the sign of the crazy axe-wielding woodsnman, but it didn’t have wireless, so that was out. We drove through Parry sound. The fellows were trying to find a beer store and a motel. I didn’t much care either way. My stomach wasn’t really feeling the beer vibe at this stage in my recovery. They had no luck finding beer anyhow. The workers at the bar didn’t even know what Kent meant when he asked about “off-sales”. We had better success finding a motel. It was a cheap, but well-kept little motel on the north side of the town. It was run by a very friendly woman named Joey. We were pretty weary from a day of driving, and were happy to bring in our suitcases and lie down on a bed. We relaxed for a little while, making phone calls, checking the internet, and watching television. Kent was checking his email and I heard an exclamation of displeasure. What was up? Tomorrow’s gig had been canceled. I turned off the TV and the three of us sat in stunned silence (Craig was texting in the next room). Kent had received an email from Pelly from The Stables (the band with whom we were to share the bill at the Montreal House). Apparently, when their former booking agent had left in a huff, there was some chaos with the paperwork for bookings, and our booking got lost in that shuffle. Man, this stuff is painful to write. We spend literally hundreds of hours to get out here to play music for next-to-no-money, and due to negligence on the part of some bar owner, it’s all for nothing. It leaves you feeling a mixture of anger, frustration and powerlessness. It makes me ask myself, “Why do I bother?”. I play music because I love it so much, but I got to the point where I felt like ulitmately people just don’t seem to care, or quite literally forget you even exist. “Oh, sorry, we forgot about you.” Dark times for the Iron Choir. Pelly’s email said that we could play the Velvet Elvis, though. Great; that was tonight, and we were three hours from Oshawa. We talked it over and Kent tried to reach Pelly by phone. We talked for a whiile longer, then Kent got through to Pelly. Things weren’t quite so bad as they seemed; We had the Velvet Elvis for Thursday, not tonight. Okay. The sting of being forgotten about yet again still lingered, but at least it was mostly overpowered by the relief of actually having a gig tomorrow night. Brendan, Kent and Craig went out in search of a bar and I stayed in the room. It wasn’t long before both my folks called me up on Skype, so the three of us had a chat. Then Jon called, so we figured out how to link all of our computers for a video conference. It was pretty neat. Then Mum left so Jon and I chatted for a while longer. I appreciated his lawyerly perspective and advice regarding what to do and how to protect onesself against getting screwed over and forgotten by so many veunues. I was still video-chatting with Jon when the fellows stumbled back in. Kent greeted me with a big sloppy kiss on the cheek. I don’t think Jon quite knew what to make of this. Then, Kent set about making one of those arts-and-crafts ghosts that you make as a kid using a ball of toilet paper wrapped in more toilet paper, and he floated it in front of the camera on the computer making ghostly “ooohh...” sounds. That was Jon’s first impression of Kent; kissing his brother and pulling ghostly shennanigans. Then Jon wanted to chat with Brendan for a little while about drum things. So they chatted for a bit, then I signed off with Jon. Kent watched some Deadwood, while I posted “What is this blog?” Then The Sopranos came on, so I watched that for a little while, then turned off the TV, put my head down and fell fast asleep. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, November 11th, 2007
6:10 pm	The Darkness Chronicles Part III: Escape from Planet Darkness? Day 16: Monday, November 5th, 2007 The Darkness Chronicles Part III: Escape from Planet Darkness? I woke up. Where was I? Thunder Bay. What the hell was going on? Well, I had been pretty sick the previous more-than-24 hours, but I was actually feeling pretty good this morning. Thank goodness; the worst of it was over, and I was pretty ravenously hungry because the last meal I’d managed to keep down was back on Friday night at The Times Change(d). As you may recall from our further woes yesterday, finding an all-day breakfast place in Thunder Bay had proven to be beyond the reach of The Iron Choir. Could we do it today? At least we were leaving closer to actual breakfast time, as we intended to make it to Sault Ste. Marie today. We loaded our suitcases into the van, thanking the Super 8 for being a Super place for me to rest and recuperate. We cruised through town, searching hither and yon for a breakfast place. Even a Denny’s or a Humpty’s would have been acceptable at this point, and we were about to head to the area of town where, Brendan informed us, he had been seen such places on his travels with Savannah. Fortunately, there was no need, because we discovered The Thunder Bay Restaurant. This place gets my highest recommendation, and was my favourite breakfast place so far on this tour. It won hands-down on every front. As soon as we got in there a voice from the kitchen barked “Grab yourselves some menus!” And pretty soon Denise, the sole owner, operator, cook and server graced us with her presence. Within seconds, she was heaping the abuse on us (mainly me). The boys ordered and when it came to me, I took some time, because I was sick and I wanted to order just the right thing. “He’s going to be a difficult one isn’t he?” Observed Denise. Well, yes Denise, truth be told, I am a terrible food orderer, just like every Tweedale I know. I wanted to have the basic breakfast, but instead of meat and hashbrowns (extra grease and fat) I wanted some crepes, because she’d said those were really good. She said, “Oh, you’re a vegetarian?” I said, “No...” kind of slowly, and thought for a second, and Denise used that second perfectly by wittily answering for me, “Oh, you’re just a bastard!” She was off and running, swearing like a sailor for the rest of the meal. And of course we loved her with all our hearts. “We got the best food the best prices and worst service, and I’m proud of all three.” She said. And she was proud, and it was a really really good breakfast. I ended up having a “hungry man breakfast”. She was unbelievable. She made some people come up and get their own food, while serving others. She related a story to us about a girl who came through and told her that the place reminded her of The Elbow Room in Vancouver (a place with intentionally bad service). “I love this place!” the young woman from Vancouver had gushed. “Thanks, Bitch!” Was Denise’s reply. We thanked Denise and told her that we would sing her praises throughout the land (which I am doing right now). I am telling you all: go to The Thunder Bay Restaurant in Thunder Bay. You will love it. Was our luck finally starting to turn around? It seemed so, and it seemed that our awful luck in this town was finally changing. At least we were leaving the town on a sweet note. The breakfast settled in my belly as we hit the highway again, now bound for Sault Ste. Marie. My memory of the next few hours was very limited, because pretty much as soon as we were on the road, I fell fast asleep. I would wake up for a few moments, look out the window and fall back asleep again. I think my body was pretty exhausted and was trying to reset itself and get completely better. I kept sleeping until I got hungry and needed to eat something. And this is when I became more frustrated than I’ve ever been with food on the road. It was a barren wasteland of food. We stopped at a gas station eventually, but there was nothing remotely appetizing there. A few hundred meters down the road was an A&W. I was really hungry and needed to put something in my belly, so I sucked up my courage and ordered a chicken burger. I made it through about a half of that before I was cured of my appetite. I put it down, sipped some water and watched the road. I think that it was starting to snow, and we had made it to Wawa by evening. As we travelled through town, we noticed a police cruiser parked across the center of the highway. There was also a big orange sign announcing “Highway Closure”. Craig drove up to the police officer and asked what was going on. Apparently one or two large trailer-trucks had jack-knifed in the snow at the top of Montreal hill (about a hundred kilometers down the road). He said he didn’t know when the highway would be opened again, so we decided to just find a place and bed down in Wawa. We drove through town and decided upon The Beaver Motel. It was cheap as dirt, so hey, can’t complain. Plus it had wireless internet. We brought our suitcases in. While we were loading in, I dropped my iPod face down on the pavement in front of the motel and was very worried that it wouldn’t work, but it was alright. Near miss, good buddy, near miss. No sooner had we settled into our room, than my gastronomical fireworks began with renewed vigor. Great. The fellows watched television while I made frequent trips from my bed to the bathroom and back. At some point Kent went to get some pizza and beer and he picked me up some soup which seemed to make me feel better for a while. I mostly lay in bed and watched Jurassic Park which had come on the television. I remember how much I loved that movie when it came out. I saw it in the theatre with my brothers and my cousin, Chris. I remember being super-excited that the people in the lab on the dinosaur island used Macintosh computers. Speaking of Macintosh computers, my brother Jon, very kindly called me on Skype to see if I was doing okay. Thank you Jon, your caring is very much appreciated. My mum called to check up on me too, and so did my old pal, Jen. Thanks folks. Love to all of you. We also watched The Big Lebowski. Meanwhile, I had downloaded the Robot Chicken Star Wars episode so we all watched that too. It was extremely clever and funny. Man, we sure watched a lot of TV in that hotel in Wawa. That probably doesn’t make for a very interesting read, but neither does an intestinal virus make for exciting activities. At least we had escaped the bad-luck vortex of Thunder Bay, and hopefully (maybe) I was on the mend. After Robot Chicken, we turned out the lights and went to bed. It was 1:30. (Comment on this)
6:09 pm	The Darkness Chronicles Part II: Within the belly of the heart of darkness Day 15: Sunday, November, 4th, 2007 The Darkness Chronicles Part II: Within the belly of the heart of darkness We woke up in hell. I had already woken up a lot of times in hell over the course of the night, but it still came as a nasty shock with the noontime light pouring in from outside. Brendan had befriended a colourful rat named “George” who had been sleeping next to him, and Kent was cuddling with an empty bottle of rum. The first news of the day was good news. Jaclyn had called and left a message with Kent saying that she had set up another gig for us in Thunder Bay at a place called “Kilroy’s”. The next order of business was to pack up and get the hell out. I was still feeling really rough and kind of dizzy and cold, but I wanted to help out. It was probably stupid, but I just wanted to speed up the process of getting the hell out of there. We ferried the gear back down the three flights of harshly-lit blood-encrusted stairs. Kent expertly loaded the van as he does each morning (hats off to him for it). I took in my surroundings for a moment. There was a lake just down the hill. “What lake is that?” I asked Craig McCaul. “Lake Superior.” He replied. Awesome! My first ever view of Lake Superior. Once the van was loaded, we pulled away from the curb and away from that accursed place. Things must get better from here, right? We set about looking for a breakfast place, but there was nothing. By this time, it was around 1:30 or so in the afternoon. The streets were totally empty, parking lots of places were totally empty and there was not a soul to be seen walking the streets. The town was completely devoid of all living things. I felt like Charlton Heston in the 1970s science fiction movie “Omega Man”. It’s one of those last-man-on-earth stories. It’s also a zombie movie. You should check it out. Truth be told, I actually felt way more like one of the zombies from “Omega Man”. We kept driving around, in increasing desperation. Was Thunder Bay ever going to throw us a bone? We tried a few places, but they were all closed or shut down, or for sale or lease. Finally we settled on Kelsey’s by the side of the highway. They did not have an all-day breakfast, but there must be some kind of comfort food to settle my angry stomach. We sat down at a booth looking like three defeated, dissheveled road-weary guys plus one defeated, dissheveled road-weary zombie. I ordered a bowl of chicken noodle soup with toast, some orange juice and ginger ale. Perfect; a fine assortment of comfort foods that I could get into slowly. I think my mistake was going at them all at the same time. Or maybe there was no mistake and I just had a damn stubborn stomach virus. Either explanation I picked, the result was the same. “You threw up your lunch? Man, what a waste of money.” My brother Jon would say on the phone as we chatted later that day. He’ll be happy to know that Kent footed the bill. Feeling green as ever, I walked back to the van and we drove through town in search of a hotel or motel. We settled on a Motel 8. Like every other place in Thunder Bay, it had a very empty parking lot. Kent paid for the room and we brought in our bags and settled in. Sick as I was, man, did it ever feel good to lie on a real bed for the first time in four nights. The fellows watched “Red Dawn” while I rested and did a bit of internetting. We were to head down to Kilroy’s at about 8:00, and when 6:30 rolled around, the fellows asked if I would be able to make this gig tonight. Though it made me sad to say it, my answer had to be “No.” I really needed to rest up and get better, plus, the potential for an embarassing stage mishap was at an all-time high, and that was a chance I didn’t want to take. So at about 7:30, the fellows took off with the promise to bring me back some crackers, water and Pepto-bismol. Alone in the hotel, I checked emails and Facebook, and relaxed. The band then returned bearing gifts of water, crackers and stomach medicine. I felt like a little stomach-virus-infected baby Jesus, and they were my three wise men. Thanks, everyone. They hung out for a bit and then headed back to Kilroy’s. Jon gave me a call on Skype and we set up a video phone conversation. It was really neat, and we were both clearly pretty excited about the technology. You could tell because the entire discussion was about the fact that we were having a video conference. We tried to devise some proper video-chat etiquitte. So far, the one rule we’ve come up with is this one. We came up with it because when you’re both chatting and looking at the screen, you’re never looking each other in the eye; it looks more like you’re looking at a spot just below the person’s chin, like their neck. So here’s the rule: When you are talking, look into the camera. Then, to signify you are done talking, you can look down at the screen. Now the other person should look into the camera and speak. This means that you can’t monitor someone’s facial expressions for reaction to what you’re saying, which is probably pretty important in real conversations, actually. I also had a video chat with Jen, but she doesn’t have a video camera, so she could see me, but I couldn’t see her. Hilariously, even though she doesn’t have a video camera on her computer, she expressed some concern that I could see her, somehow. I munched on my crackers and drank a bit of water. I was keeping track of the amount of crackers I’d had. Six! Hoorah! The band came home at around 1:30 AM. Apparently there were about five bands on that night. Even still, it was a pretty modest house. But they made a good impression and Kilroy’s wants to have us back there, so there we go. The day starts and ends with a glimmer of hope for Thunder Bay. We had salvaged something from the wreckage there. We turned out the lights and before we went to sleep, Kent made us all laugh a lot by describing how well they were able to manage without me. Heaving a huge sigh of relief, I congratulated myself on having somehow weathered a day in the dark belly of the heart of the beast of darkness. Tomorrow we would discover if we could escape that beast’s deadly clutches. Tomorrow, tomorrow we will see, I thought as I drifted off to sleep. (Comment on this)
6:07 pm	The Darkness Chronicles Part I: Journey to the heart of darkness A tale of innermost woes in three parts. The Darkness Chronicles Part I: Journey to the heart of darkness Day 14: Saturday, November 3rd, 2007 I woke up and it was still completely dark, save for a window-shaped outline of sunlight coming through a boarded-up window in the bomb-shelteresque basement at Romi Mayes’ house, feeling awake, positive and optimistic. Little did I know that today would begin my JOURNEY TO THE HEART OF DARKNESS. An ominous sounding chord from an organ echoed for a second in my head, but I shook it away with a smile as I sauntered up the stairs to greet the day. I saw a beautiful Gibson guitar sitting in the living room so I I picked it up and plunked out some notes on there. Pretty soon Craig McCaul got up. I handed him the guitar and he played some pretty stuff and identified it as a Gibson Hummingbird. Very, very nice sounding instrument. Then he went out for a smoke. I picked up a different guitar and sat in a chair and started playing, just kind of free associating melodies, chords, harmonies, rhythms, seeing what came to me in a similar way to the way I was drawing last night. I looked around the living room too. Romi has a really nice house. It has a 1920s (maybe?) or 30s look to it with those wood panels on the wall and hardwood floors. I am pretty much just a sucker for wood in a house. Nice colours too. Some deep greens and reds in there. And stained glass windows. And a nice big porch. Ooh yeah. Steep carpeted stairs... Really nice old house with lots of character. Wood stove too. So eventually my fooling around on the guitar led me to “Priests And Paramedics” – a Pedro the Lion song that I have really been into playing and listening to lately. I love Pedro the Lion. Incidentally the choruses (or closest-things-there-are-to-choruses) in that song are: “Am I gonna die? Am I gonna die?” as they strap his arms down to his sides. At times like these they’ve been taught to lie, “Buddy, Just calm down you’ll be alright.” (That’s the dialogue between the stabbing victim and the paramedics.) “We’re gonna die. We’re all gonna die; could be twenty years, could be tonight. Lately I have been wondering why we go to so much trouble to postpone the unavoidable and prolong the pain of being alive.” (That’s the priest’s eulogy at the guy’s funeral.) Great stuff. You should listen to it. In a Pedro interview Pedro talks about how his parents kind of worried about him when he’d write lyrics like that. No kidding! At some stage of the game, Kent woke up and the band assembled in the living room. I proposed that it wouldn’t take too long for those that wanted showers to shower, and it would be infinitely worth it on the long drive, but because it was noon and we had a nine hour drive ahead of us, I was out-voted, so hit the road it was. I won’t lie to you. The entire band was in pretty rough shape. But for some reason we opted not to stop for breakfast, but at least stop for the necessary strong coffee. Starbucks it was. Craig got a quadruple iced Americano. I know that in the technical language of Starbucks you are supposed to say “iced” first, so that they know to grab the plastic cup (max. efficiency), but this is not Starbucks, it’s my blog. I got a small strong latte. Brendan got a dark roast. Good to go. That was a bad idea. I really need food in my belly first thing in the morning. I will not make that mistake again. And in my mind I felt alright, but my body was probably freaking out going, “Okay... we’re up... where’s the food?” Chapter Love: Love Off we went. Craig was at the wheel. I was shotgun. I was selecting tunes. I was feeling a lot of love in my heart today, so I wanted to see how long I could go only playing love songs. There are a lot of different shades of love songs too. If I was Greek I’d know the names of all these kinds of love. We need more words for love in English too. Also, as Corbin Murdoch once wrote, “Please give us a stronger word for love.” I know for a fact that songs have been written about them: 1.) Lusty lustful love 2.) Love for your friends (I think I know the Greek name for this. It’s “Platonic”, right?) 3.) Romantic love 4.) The kind of love that old people still have for each other after a super amount of time. 5.) The kind of love you have for your pets 6.) The love that a dog feels towards you. 7.) The love a farmer has for his tractor. 8.) Love for all of humanity! (philanthropos?) 9.) The kind of love you feel for God. 10.) The way you love a good song. Okay. Some people would argue: No, they’re all the same. But that’s incredibly dumb, because you don’t want to get it on with God... Or do you? One of the greatest things about being a human being and not a robot is that we are able to experience those loves. I should mention that a band I love, The Magnetic Fields released a triple album called “69 Love Songs” which is kind of like their meditation on some different loves. Sadly, I somehow accidentally erased it from my computer and iPod, so I couldn’t play that, but here’s a list of some of the songs I did play on that afternoon as we sped towards the centerpoint of Canada, the country I love. 1.) If I Needed You – Townes Van Zandt 2.) Return of the Grievous Angel – Gram Parsons 3.) Hey Baby Hey – Greg Brown 4.) Take Me For Longing – Alison Krauss & Union Station 5.) I Love You So Much It Hurts – Patsy Cline 6.) I Send My Love To You – Bonnie “Prince” Billy 7.) Goodbye – Steve Earle & Emmylou Harris 8.) 1952 Vincent Black Lightning – Del McCoury 9.) Laudate Dominum – Emma Kirkby 10.) All You Need is Love – The Beatles 11.) I Married Her Just Because She Looks Like You – Lyle Lovett 12.) Memory Replacer – Kent McAlister 13.) With – Leo Kottke & Mike Gordon 14.) All Shook Up – Ry Cooder (This is the song that was playing as we crossed over the halfway point) 15.) All The Places That Were Ours – Corbin Murdoch & The Nautical Miles 16.) Jake The Sailor – Kim Barlow 17.) Get in the Car – Kim Barlow 18.) All The Best – John Prine 19.) Creation Song – Corbin Murdoch & The Nautical Miles I listened to these songs reflected on my friends and family and all the people I love in my life, thought about all the people I am far away from and how much I value them. I believe it was Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” that was playing when an OPP car sped around a bend towards us. It did a quick 180 and began to follow us. We’d been going at around 110 km/h or so, but the speed limit was 90 on that road. The car tailed us for two or three minutes, then turned on the lights and pulled us over. He talked to Craig, then went back to his car for a good long while to write up a ticket, then he came back. “You have three options!” he exclaimed. “Option one, you can mail in the cheque to this address within fourteen days. Option two, you can plead innocent and option three, you can plead guitly with an explanation.” That all sounded well and good, but we were all trying our best to keep from cracking up, because he sounded exactly like the police officer from southpark, and plus, the “Option 1, 2 and 3 thing seemed kind of over-the-top. Anyhow, that bit of unpleasantness was over and done with, and we hit the road again. Brendan pointed out that the change in Landscape was pretty much instantaneous. One moment we were in the prairies, and now boom, straight into Canadian Shield – another first for me. We kept on, but by about 3:30, we were all pretty hungry, so we stopped by a roadside restaurant. These are very VERY scarce in this drive between Winnipeg and Thunder Bay. However, when we went up to the door, the place appeared closed. It was by a little lake, and there were a bunch of cabins around. I talked to a guy there who looked exactly like Red Green. Apparently this place was a hunting / fishing lodge and the owner of the restaurant had just taken off and would be back at some point. Rather than wait, we pressed on, and about twenty minutes later, we arrived at a roadside barbequeue house. Bingo. In we strode. It looked like a good place, based on the fact that they were proudly displaying all sorts of awards and trophies for their steak sauces. At any rate, we were all extremely hungry. I ordered a giant cheeseburger, Craig had a hot roastbeef sandwich smothered in gravy, Brendan had a chicken wrap (best choice of the lot) and Kent had an enormous rib platter. Holy cats! We dug in. I was really really hungry (in case I haven’t mentioned that yet), but it was probably an ill-advised choice to have a massive amount of ground beef on an empty and hung-over stomach. Lesson learned! Satisfied with our breakfast/lunch/dinner (this was also dumb; you really need to eat at least two meal s in a day) we got back into the van. On we drove through Canadian Shield, past the evergreens and little lakes as afternoon turned to dusk and then dusk turned to blue and the blue faded to darkness. It was around 6:30 when we pulled into a gas station. I don’t know where we were, but we were still a ways from Thunder Bay. There was a Subway adjoining the gas station, and I was already feeling hungry again since lunch, so I went in and bought myself three cookies: one macadamia nut, one chocolate chip one an oatmeal raisin. I ate the first one back in the van (I think the macadamia nut one) while Kent tried to make a telephone call to The Apollo where we were to play that night. I started to feel pretty shaky from the sugar, I guess, and the general lack of nutrients I’d had that day. Plus, I think I’d had next to no water that day. Kent returned to the car. He needed to access the internet to get the phone number he needed. I had asked about where we could get a wireless signal in the Subway, and they had told me that about half a kilometer down the road, there was a place called “The Northwood Motel”, and we’d be able to pick up a signal there. Sure enough, the little bars indicating a wireless signal went from grey to black as we entered the Northwood parking lot. Kent retrieved the phone number and went to make the call. I read and sent off a couple of quick emails. Kent climbed back into the van. “Well, apparently, they forgot about us,” he said. We were all stunned. What was going on? Kent had called The Apollo to let them know we’d be a little late getting there, so we’d probably just be soundchecking and going on. However, Sheila, the bar owner/manager said, “Oh, that won’t work; we forgot about you.” Kent had set this gig up in September; we’d be opening for Andrew Jr. Boy Jones, a blues man with a blues band from down Texas way. But if Sheila is to be believed, she forgot that she had booked us as an opener, then you might think she’d apologize and see if we could still play; no big deal – the mistake had clearly been on her part. Why would she say, “That won’t work” right away? Well, we were all various shades of frustrated and angry, as we started out again, heading towards Thunder Bay. The weird thing was, that as we drove on, there was this strange illusion that Thunder Bay kept getting further and further away, as if it was being dragged on a string ahead of us, or dangled like a carrot in front of our noses. “Thunder Bay: 128 km”, one sign would say. Then about an hour later, “Thunder Bay: 114”. Like rowing upstream, or against strong wind and current. Eventually, we overpowered the strange vortex that was pushing us away from Thunder Bay, and into that dark town we drove. By this time, we were so perplexed by this vortex-like effect of the town that I put on Angelo Badalamenti’s Theme from Twin Peaks as we drove. The streets were dark and empty, enhancing the effect. My stomach lurched painfully. Man, I must be hungry, I thought. We wove our way to The Apollo and climbed out of the van. It was about 10:30 PM. What a gruelling day of driving it had been. It should have taken us about 7 or 8 hours. Instead, it had ben about 10 gruelling hours on the road plus a demoralizing ticket and the bad news of the gig cancellation. We talked to Sheila. She agreed to let us stay upstairs. We also went in to check out the band. They were awful. I mean, to be fair, I really dislike blues bands in general, and don’t understand the appeal of watching the same song happen over and over again for hours on end at different tempos and keys, but on top of that, this wasn’t a very good blues band. We walked in right in the middle of a really awful, overly slappy bass solo. Craig, Kent and I sat down glumly to watch while Brendan talked with Savannah on the phone outside. But the three of us could not stomach it for much longer, so we got the keys from Sheila and set about formulating plans to bed down for the evening. First order of business was checking out the room(s). We opened the beat up metal door to the upstairs of the Apollo and noticed to our dismay that nearly all the steps were caked with footprints of dried blood. Doing our best to ignore the possible implications this had, we carried on to the second floor. The layout of the place was really random. Maybe I’ll draw a rough floorplan. Just imagine designing a floor with a lot of unused open space and rooms in confusing and random places. 0 out of 10 on the feng shui scale. Plus, it looked very lived in. You know, clothes, dishes, personal decorations (garrish though they were) abounded. Then we came to a closed door. I knocked and a guy answered it. Well, that explained that. It was someone’s apartment. He told us that we wanted to go up one more floor (two more flights of stairs) to the third floor. The third floor was even more randomly arranged than the second floor. There were bedrooms everywhere and living rooms everywhere too. There were two bathrooms, but one was out of order and the other one had someone’s personal effects in it. There was garbage, laundry and empty bottlees everywhere, but those could have just been there from other bands. It was filthy and chaotic, and it was our free home for the night. Next order of business was to go downstairs and start hauling up gear. Hauling gear up the three flights of stairs to our floor was made more demoralizing than it needed to be as it necessitated staring at the bloody footprints each time we trudged up and down the stairs. Plus there was a feeling of unease and nausea growing in my belly, and the occassional intense pang. Things were not looking good. We unloaded the van morosely and flopped down, exhausted into couches and chairs in one of the living rooms with a TV. The TV would blink on and off in approximately 5-second intervals, but eventually that went away. Brendan found a hockey game. Vancouver and Colorado were playing. I copied photos from his iPod onto my computer, to crescendoing intestinal discomfort. Pretty soon it was time for bed (Vancouver had won). We all bedded down in the same room with our gear and with the door shut and locked. There was one bed and three mattresses roughly strewn about on the floor, and blankets piled in a corner. We made our peace with our sleeping arrangements and turned out the lights. We weren’t tired, though, and the dreadful blues band, which had taken an hour long break had mercilessly started up again, and the bass was loudly audible through the floor and walls until about 2:30 AM. We stayed up talking, making each other laugh to make ourselves feel a bit better, and in essence, warming our bitten fingers over the warm fires of last night’s sweet memories. And that’s when the vomiting started. Luckily I had memorized the confusing maze-like path to the bathroom for that exact reason, and made it there in time. I will spare you the exciting details of my gastronomical fireworks. I got to sleep at some point, and woke up again, and retraced my steps through the maze and back many, many times that night. It was a dark night for me, and indeed for the Iron Choir, for we had truly entered the heart of darkness. (Comment on this)
Thursday, November 8th, 2007
6:18 pm	Day 13: Friday, November 2nd, 2007 Day 13: Friday, November 2nd, 2007 Woke up at about 8:15 on Aaron’s couch. Kind of stiff and sore, but not as bad off as Brendan who was presently waking up on a loveseat. Apparently the cat had enjoyed sitting on his face throughout the night too. Pretty soon Kent and Craig, who had stayed over at Sam’s place, came by and picked us up. We yelled goodbye to our host Aaron, and hit the road. Where would we go for breakfast? We cruised down the main drag in Regina looking around. Finally we found a decent looking restaurant called “Melrose Place”. Doug and Nancy McCaul joined us and treated the band to breakfasast which was very nice. Unfortunately, we were scheduled to pick up our gear right at 10:00, so Kent and Brendan had to run off to the venue, while Craig and I hung out with Doug and Nancy. It was good to get a chance to talk with them about their new home and farming life in northern Saskatchewan. After quite a while, Kent and Brendan arrived back at Melrose place and it was time to hit the road to Winnipeg. I’m going to be honest with you here. I can’t remember the shenanigans that fueled our drive to Winnipeg. I think I must have probably blogged part of the way and probably played a lot of fantastic music, but it’s been day after day of eight hour and ten hour drives now, and they’re all kind of blending into one homogenous mass. We made it to Winnipeg at around six o’clock. Did we stop for lunch along the way on Friday? You know, I... oh yes. We did. We stopped at a Subway. But as you will find out in a few blogs, that name alone makes me feel ill. It has been a real problem finding decent food along the way. That’s probably my only complaint about touring, besides getting screwed over by club owners. It just makes me feel so sad in a way, to drive for hundreds of kilometers and the only restaurants you see are fast food places which serve some concoction of sugar, salt and fat. In some stretches of road, you literally cannot find healthy food no matter how hard you try. Perhaps it would be good to knock on the door of a local in some small town and ask “Hey, where do you go grocery shopping?” And pack three or four coleman stoves with you and do all your cooking on board. That would make me feel a lot better than a belly full of garbage every day. So there’s my little tirade about crappy road food today. Stay tuned for updates on this subject, because I think it’s a serious problem that really needs addressing. Man, if there were like, one or two good restaurants somewhere along the trans-Canada, I think they would do really really well, because guess what? You’d be the first ones on it. I was riding shotgun and Kent was at the wheel when I noticed we were listing slightly to the right and onto the shoulder. “Dude! Dude!” I exclaimed. And Kent woke up and steered us back onto the road. To be honest with you, we can laugh about it now, but it is a really serious thing and hundreds of people get killed every year falling asleep at the wheel. So when you’re driving and you feel tired, for God’s sake, pull over so you don’t kill yourself and everyone else whose lives are in your hands. Also, keeping at least one awake passenger is a very good idea. Our first stop in Winnipeg took us by a radio station where initially, there was to be an interview, but for some reason that wasn’t happening. Sue Serl had sent a couple of boxes of CDs there for us to pick up though, so we went by and picked those up. Our next stop took us by an interesting little bar called Baritalia, I think. (The Times Change(d), where we were to play later on didn’t open until 8:30). It may have been weird, but it was perfect for what we wanted. I really wanted to get some sort of espresso-based beverage and Kent really wanted a beer, and it had both. We set up the computer and did some internet-checking, some facebook-scrabble-playing and stuff, sat around drinking our drinks, then Brendan and I decided to go play some Foosball, and, not surprsingly, Brendan schooled me again. I think 9 to 1, then, maybe like 7 to 3. Anyhow, it was awful. Then this guy, Avi came along and challenged us to a match, so Brendan was up. After a couple of initial mistakes, Avi turned up the heat, and pretty soon, Avi was schooling Brendan as badly as Brendan had schooled me. Avi’s slapshot was particularly vicious. After a couple of games I got a few tips from Avi. It was almost hypnotic to watch how he could effortlessly pass the ball between his two lines of defence and then unleash a rocket. Interestingly, he didn’t wind up very far, so that was pretty instructive. After the Foosball, Brendan and I joined Craig and Kent back at the table. Interjection: Hi. It’s well-Theside interupting sick-Theside here, though our job is the same: coverage of Theside from Friday, through that handy little one-letter personal pronoun that unites us all. It’s the first word of the next sentence. I think I was trying to blog while I was sick and that’s how far I got before I either had to run to the bathroom a lot of times in a row or decided that blogging while sick was just something I couldn’t manage. I don’t know, though, when I was in the hospital for that hour while my precious bodily fluids were being pumped back into me, I kind of had a nagging wish to have my laptop there not only so that I could use the time for blogging, but so I could blog FROM that experience. I think that there is something to be said for blogging from your place in the present wherever that may be and whatever state you may be in, rather than waiting until you’re well to put your spin on the details then. Yeah, I think I believe that. So maybe I’ll make more of an effort on that next time. Anyhow, back to Friday. Incidentally, “Now” is Wednesday at 5:30, The sun has set and it is almost completely dark. Our van lumbers on into the night. We have just taken the bypass that takes us past Sudbury, which, as George tells us “is like the moon”, so no big deal that we missed it. I just finished the epic “Tuesday” blog. So that’s now. Now back to Friday at Baritalia. Various people were checking internet things, such as email and FaceBook. I can’t remember how we got onto it, but I showed everyone the “photobooth” function that this computer has, and after that, it was, as Bill Paxton’s character Hudson, from Aliens famously said, “Game over, man, Game over.” The thing that is so fun about it is that you can do weird stuff like you do in photoshop (like pinching, putting bulges in the photo, that sort of thing), but you can do them in real time. So you can sort of play off whatever the effect is doing to your face. We had some good fun with that, and perhaps I will post some of the results in a photo album, if I can obtain permission from my bandmates. We settled up our tab and left. Next stop, The Times Change(d) High and Lonesome Club. We arrived at around 8:30 and were greeted by our old friend Jen who works there. She was sporting a blue-and-red dressing gown, or if you like, smoking jacket, or if you like, housecoat. I should find out what the difference is, but no internet here right now, and by the time I post this, I will have forgotten to check. Say, Christine, you got on that oatmeal-porridge debate right away; care to tackle this fine bit of semantics? Be that as it may, I must now explain something about The Times Change(d). When you get to The Times Change(d) and are greeted by dressing gown-clad Jen, you don’t say “Why are you wearing a dressing gown?” you say, “Damn! Why am I not wearing a dressing gown?” Damn, but I love this place. So far it is my favourite bar in Canada. Loplops, which the me I’m describing doesn’t even know about yet, is at least a close second. We got our gear in there, and were greeted by John. I love John too. He was wearing his cowboy hat like he always does, and he was wearing a silky dressing gown too, though I’d be inclined to describe it as more of a robe, kind of like a wizard wears. It was patterned in the sort of black and white style that reminded me of the floor-tiles of the room where Agent Dale Cooper from Twin Peaks went in his dreams. John was beaming his cherubic smile. I guess you could say he sort of reminded me of a cowboy wizard angel. I greeted John warmly too and told him how glad we were to be back here, and how much I’d enjoyed “Heroes and Horses: Songs of the Mexican Border”, which was a CD he was playing last time were there, and asked if he could play it this time too. Right now, we were listening to a Flaco Jiminez recording, which was also great. I know Flaco’s playing from his work with Ry Cooder. As we set up, Jackson (I think that’s his name) and Matt came in. They were two thirds of the opening band for the evening. Matt Allen and his band opened for us last time we were in Winnipeg, and we had a very memorable night hanging out with him. More about why I love The Times Change(d): in a nutshell, it has that same vibe of respect that Loplops has, in that, it is a space that you need to respect, and the owner and people there have a real respect for the musicians who come through there. That’s pretty much all there is to it. But instead of like Loplops, where there are thousand-dollar paintings on the walls, instead there are little handwritten signs, or newspaper clippings or lyrics to a favourite song. What is stopping someone from just tearing that down and taking it with them? Respect. So we got set up, then sat down and ordered some food, which was good, because we were all really hungry by this point in time. We all ordered variations on the Mexican-themed cuisine there. In fact, I think that’s all that they offer there. They had poutine at one point; I’m not sure if they still do. I think we all ordered Fort Gary beers too. It is a good beer, quite dark and powerful and has some family significance too; my grandfather was from Winnipeg and his regiment was called The Fort Gary Horse. He commanded a tank in World War II. I believe my great grandfather was a member of the Fort Gary Horse too. I should ask my father about that. But cheers, grandfather Tweedale and great grandfather Tweedale. While we waited for our food to arrive, I was feeling squirrely, so I made a paper crane out of a section of the menu. Then I made that into a chicken instead, by giving it two legs instead of a long tail, changing the angles of its head and wings, and giving it a different attitude towards existence. After I had killed that minute, I was still feeling squirrely, so I started to draw, and just sort of, you know, free associate. It is kind of like how I blog. It started bad, and with no ideas, but then things started coming to me. It ended up being a bit of an exploration of all the first things I ever learned how to draw. Here they are: 1.) A mouse, no! A vole! That’s right. When my brother Jon was in Ms. Edwards class in grade 3, he had an assignment to “do a project” on some sort of animal. I think each person got one for each letter of the alphabet. So Jon got “V” for “vole”, which looks pretty much exactly like a mouse, to me. I still don’t know what the difference is, and you’d think that 24 years would be ample time to figure that out, but I guess not. Anyhow, Jon was a real hero to me then (as he still is now), so I had to learn how to draw a vole too. 2.) 3D Car. I also learned this one from Jon. In the case of this car, I made it into a ’55 Chevy, which, Craig commented, his dad used to have. 3.) Bottle o’ moonshine. 4.) Cartoon guy. I used to draw tons of cartoons throughout highschool, and for a while there, I anticipated a carreer as a cartoon artist. Our food came and it was really good, and somehow, quite light too. Feta cheese, which I’ve never had before with Mexican food, but good idea, Times! We ordered another round of Fort Garys, and John came on the P.A., but there is no actual P.A. there, so John just stands at the bar with an electric bullhorn and shouts into it. After welcoming us all to the Times Change(d) first thing he said was “Remember, you’re all good people.” I love you, John. John introduced Jackson, the crowd applauded and Jackson began. Here was the deal: he was a sleazy lounge singer, and he pulled it off pretty well with the cheap suit, tiny moustache and fedora, sitting at a piano and crooning into the mic. His songs were really bitter and sad songs about lost love and death. He also had one really good song that had something to do with new immigrants having to pay five dollars for some kind of grave. I wish I could remember more about it. Maybe I’ll write and ask him. We were greeted warmly by Romi Mayes, a good friend and recent recipient of the Western Canadian Music Award for Best Artist and Best Album in the Roots category. It was really good to see her. She is a super amount of fun, an amazing person and a huge talent to boot. Anyhow, Jackson played a real good set. Meanwhile I was chatting with a girl named Myra, I think. We were talking about apples, for some reason, and then she quoted a Martin Luther King quote about apples. At this point, I realized that there was a lot of cool stuff being said that night, and I wanted to remember it, so I flipped over the menu I’d been drawing on and got her to write out the quote. That menu would become my notebook for the night. Then I brought the menu up to the merch table (the piano) because it was about time for The Iron Choir to unleash the mania. And I don’t know what it was, but we were just on fire. From the moment we started playing I knew it was going to be a great show. It’s hard to describe the sensation but here’s one way I can put it: I just had such a strong desire for each note before I played it, and playing each note was a very satisfying experience. On top of that, there was a good crowd and they were all right on board with us all the way. Plus, Romi got us a round of shots after Old Bandolier. In the break I spoke with Joel, a pedal steel player from town, and we got to talking about the Steel Guitar Forum and all the madness there, and just, you know, unashamedly nerding out about steel guitar in all its glory, as only two steel guitarists can, when they get together. I think I spoke with some more people about steel guitar too, but none more memorable than Ike. Ike is a trucker, and when I came up to him and talked to him during the break he said, “Are you a trucker?” and I said, “No, I’m not. Why do you ask?” and he said, “Oh, you just seem to have that ‘trucker logic’.” Now that’s what I call a compliment! In the second set, Romi joined us for “Play ‘em Right”, and she took the second verse: “You picked up all the pieces that had fallen on the floor you glued us back together but I threw them out the door/” Hey, I just remembered I did something neat coming back into the last verse of this song last night involving a I7 chord with the 7th in the middle, then the top voice. Anyhow, that’s just to remind myself about that. Right now, we’re inPerry’s Sound, birthplace of Bobby Orr. Yeah! And we’re stopping at a place called Trapper’s Choice for supper. Right. Now it’s the next day (the 8th of November) and we’ve made it to Oshawa, where we are to play tonight at “The Velvet Elvis.” I’m in Pelly’s house. His band is called the Stables, and they’re playing with us tonight. Those are the barebones details. Now back into Friday. Alright! So Romi came up and did that song with us, which was spectacular of course, and Romi was spectacular. We played “Things You Say”, and for my solo, I threw down the Weissenborn and picked up my lap steel and ripped through a blistering version of Gold Road, by my band, Blue Island Trio. Woo! Brendan already knows it of course, because I’ve been playing that little doozy with him for the last four years. Craig actually knows it pretty well too, because a couple of Kent tours ago where they were getting us to play super-long sets, Kent was like, hey, Tim, why don’t you open with some of your songs? So I taught a few BIT songs to Shawn and Craig. So now people in Fort Qu’Apelle have heard music that came from my imagination (but that gig is another story for another time). I believe we finished off the night with “Leavin’ Town” (but not before Romi brought us another round) and we received a rousing encore, so we played a few more songs. Ring of Fire was in there somewheres, but things were starting to get a little hazy at this point. Luckily, because cool things were still happening, I still had my menu that I was writing stuff in, like the name of a poet who came up to me after the show. He wanted to learn how to play the dobro because it had that sort of sound like, and then he stopped and sort of made a physical motion. I kind of understand what he means. Sometimes it’s harder to describe things in words, and easier to explain them in interpretive dance. I do that all the time and it has always worked extremely well for me. So I wrote down his name. I got him to write his name down so I could check out his poetry (apparently he lives in BC, too), and also so I could give him some dobro tips, if he ever ended up picking one up. After that, I got in a great chat with an awesome girl named Ashley. She had really pretty red shoes. We talked about placees where we’d lived and places we’d been. She told me about Guatamala and how they had these showerrs that would give you electric shocks. Sounds awful! Then we had a few games of rock paper scissors. This was my chance to win back my honour at this ancient game of the wits. But I must begrudgingly admit that Ashley defeated me in both our first and second best-two-of-three match. She also defeated Brendan. I would like to talk with Ashley again and perhaps get some tips on how she got so good at rock paper scissors and how I might get so good. Now, everytime I talk to Romi I have to thank her for introducing me to Gillian Welch, because it was at her house late one night (around 4AM) when she really needed this song in a way that I know I’ve needed songs before. The song she needed was “Elvis Presley Blues” by Gillian Welch. And so she looked it up on the internet and printed it out and we sang it. And listening to her singing that song made me want to learn more about Gillian Welch, so I did, and I am so glad that I have. But that night of jamming over at Romi’s house was a real critical moment for me in terms of getting into songs for their lyrical content and not just the musical content. So I went up to the bar and told her so, because I place such a high value on people helping people discover neat things in life, and we must thank people when they do so. The rest of the night at The Times Change(d) unfolded in a rollicking dang mix of whiskey, beer, laughter, music (I remember pausing at one time and being delighted at realizing that John Prine was singing to us loudly over the P.A. Joel and I joined in.), conversation, and a good old fashioned Chicken-toss. Oh yes. I forgot to explain that this is one more thing that makes The Times Change(d) such a rad place; chicken tosses at the end of every night. (This also explains why I made a paper chicken instead of a paper crane.) It’s a rubber chicken, so don’t worry. Live chickens are infinitely harder to toss and frozen chickens are infinitely heavier, so rubber it is. They announce the name of whoever is to throw the chicken over the P.A. (too lazy to correct the “throw the chicken over the P.A.” awkwardness there). And the person steps up behind the line at the back and tries to land the chicken in a bucket placed some ten paces away. Who actually managed to sink the chicken? Boy. I think it might have been the mandolin-playing member of Jackson’s band. It is always very good sport, and the whole bar gets involved in cheering, booing and offering loud suggestions on strategy, trajectory and all that jazz. By the time the chicken toss wound down, it was about 5 in the morning, and it was time to head back to Romi’s place. Sadly, my menu of memories slipped away into the night, never to be found. Ah well. We bid very fond farewells to our friends, old and new, and headed off, making a brief stop at the Tim Horton’s to buy sandwiches (and a cinnamon bun for me), and then headed back to Romi’s. Romi offered beers, but the sky was growing light, and I was feeling pretty tuckered out. Plus there was that drive to Thunder Bay to worry about tomorrow, so I headed downstairs where she’d set up beds for the whole band. I got out my toilet case and went up to the top floor to brush my teeth, then headed back down to the basement, lighting my way with a cigarette lighter. I crawled under the sleeping bag and fell asleep in complete darkness. (Comment on this)
1:06 am	What is this Blog? Parts I and II, Day 18: Wednesday, November 7th, 2007 What is this blog? PART I. Ye cats. Well, as Jim Anchower from The Onion likes to say, It’s been a while since I rapped at ya. But have a pretty valid excuse, if not explanation. And here, goes, I’m going to dig my way out of this, what, four or five day deficit. Right now Kent is telling us about a dream he had about being a camp counsellor for kids in Iraq. It’s kind of interesting, and frankly, I’ve never understood why some people don’t find it interesting to hear about other people’s dreams. I find it very interesting. Anyhow, back to my story. How to put this. I’ve spent the last few days getting to know the contents and pain threshold of my intestines extremely well. We’re back to being friends again, but it was pretty awful there for a while. On Saturday, while we were driving from Winnipeg to Thunder Bay, I either ate something weird or got a bad virus that turned me inside out from Saturday night through Tuesday morning. Now it is Wednesday and I’m back in the pink and feeling my oats again and full of beans (damn I wish I could find some oats and beans along this junkfood-caked highway), which is good. I would say I am at about 95%. That is to say, the thought of eating ribs like I did just before I got sick makes me turn a little bit green, but I can put away a chicken burger no problem (as I demonstrated last night at “The Fun”, a bar across the street from Loplops in Sault Ste. Marie, where we somehow got a gig opening for Cuff The Duke, which was good and rather serindipitous (a word which I hate (much like Ricky Gervais (actually the word Ricky Gervais hates is “serendipity”)which is, incidentally, apparently Britain’s most favourite word)))) but which I will use anyhow, because it is fitting) because, hey, we were there in The Sault (which we now love), and we were dropping off posters there and they just had a four piece band cancel on them, so we said, “hey, y’know, we’re a four-piece band, and, well, hmm.... I mean, heh, y’know,” and Steve, the owner said “Alright!” Huh. That was a bit of a run-on-sentence there. Am I a bit rusty here, or am I in tip-top form? I am walking that line, I suppose. I just feel the overflow of everything that’s happened the last few days. There has really been no in between on this tour. Remember, dear friend, when I told you about that gig that went from god-awful to hell-awesome in just 9 steps? That was like a microcosm of this tour so far. It has either been really great or just awful and the last few days were just awful until about eleven o’clock yesterday (Tuesday) morning when I was lying down in the hospital getting all those fluids I’d lost pumped back into me. It was still kind of a crappy time when I was driving to the hospital doubled over in pain at about 9:30. And it was still a bad time when the medical student kept missing my vein when he was trying to put in the IV drip, and the nurse was like, “Pull his skin taunt, so the vein doesn’t slip around.” Yes, she used the word “taunt” which didn’t really inspire great confidence in me. But then the bloodwork nurse came in, and took some blood from my right arm, and she looked me in the eyes with a look of comfort and healing, and she patted me on the arm and squeezed my shoulder, and that is when everything started getting better. So here I am. I’m breaking my blog dogma rule, or “blogma” rule (yes, here it comes, another pattented Theside portmanteau (but, hey, blog is a portmanteau too) (by the by, a portmanteau is a merging of two words like web+log = blog. That’s one portmanteau)). I guess the rule I’m breaking is always catching up to the present. For example, in a perfect world, I would always be blogging the day following (i.e.: Tuesday on Wednesday, Wednesday on Thursday etc.). But: a) perfect world = no stomach parasites b) Changing formats is exciting and fresh like waterskiing combined with strawberries! c) When I am in such deep blog-debt as I am right now (uh... Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday Tuesday.... five days?) the task of digging myself out is so harrowing, an earlier version of Tim Tweedale, I mean, Theside might have stopped blogging entirely, due to discouragement. This updated version of me just runs across the lawn and starts digging another way. And maybe planting some strawberries. d) Sometimes I am so filled with the present (or more recent present) than either i) the memory of past events or ii) the meditations on such memories that I simply must blog the more recent present. e) Fuck the blogma. Okay. Now that’s out of the way. Day, what is it. 18. Yikes. Day 18: Wednesday, November 7th, 2007 We’re passing the gigantic mushroom-shaped water tower in Sault-Ste. Marie (a town which we love, by the way) and we are leaving town. We’re bound for Peterborough where we’re playing tomorrow night. Alright. Left turn to a sign that says “SUDBURY”. So that gives you the idea of where we are right now. So that’s good. I will blog more about today tomorrow, so let me step back to yesterday. Day 17: Tuesday, November 6th, 2007 I would like to dedicate this blog entry to my immune system. Buddy, we don’t always get along and you really took me for a spin these last few days, but you really gave it your all there and we pulled through together, so cheers to you, and I’ll try not to do too much drinking or eating bad things to make you weak or upset. I woke up at about 2. I don’t know what time it was. I don’t keep a watch on anymore because I smashed it accidentally on a rock in a river in Merritt, and I haven’t gotten a new one because I like the way I relate to time better without one. Let’s say it was 2. The important part was that my whole stomach, from my esophagus down to my lower intestine was in pain, fiery, terrible pain. The kind of pain that is so sharp that when it hits you, it takes your breath away. So I sat up in bed, doubled over for a while, wincing and grinding my teeth, and trying to breathe more deeply, I guess adapting some sort of improvisational lamaze technique for my current predicament. Eventually the pain dulled from a stabbing to more of a punching sensation. I lay back down and tried to sleep, and I guess I fell asleep again until about 8:30. I woke up again to the nasty stabbing pains. I experimented with sitting doubled over and lying doubled over. Neither made me feel too much better, so after about half an hour I woke the other fellows, and asked if we could go to a hospital. The reasons I thought this would be a good idea were a.) this was going on too long to be food poisoning and b.) It felt like I’d eaten a jar of glass shards in my sleep, and my stomach was being ripped apart, and that had me concerned. We packed up, and I did what I could, but mostly I just sat there. Then I sat in the van while Kent drove us to the hospital. The town we were in, Wawa, is by a beautiful lake, and I noticed that it was very stormy on the lake today. Big whitecaps on dark grey-blue water. It was a short drive and we pulled up to the hospital. I’m sad that I can’t remember what it was called. I think it was “Our Lady” and then something like “Dune”, but it wasn’t that. I will have to look that up. Kent and I went in, waited in the first waiting area, then I registered and went to the second waiting area. I knew about these steps in advance from my visit to the hospital earlier this year when I had my little adventure with the axe (did I ever blog about that? Ask me about it, if not. That would be too long a story to put in brackets, probably.) Pretty soon the doctor came and got me. I can’t remember her last name, I am sorry to say, but her first name was Angelie. She was very good. She took me to the examination room and got my history. I think that’s what they call it when they find out what brought you here. I explained that I’d had a dubious burger from a middle-of-nowhere steakhouse between Winnipeg and Thunder Bay on Saturday, then a few sketchy cookies from a subway later on and that the hell had broken loose that night and had continued mostly unabated. After some Q & A she concluded that it was likely a virus rather than food poisoning, though she wanted to check out my blood just to make sure I was okay there and replenish my precious bodily fluids with an IV, because I’d lost so much over the last few days. Just like the psychologists say, just having had the problem named and a plan laid out before me by a doctor, I already felt way, way better. So a nurse came in. Her name was Judy. She had been a little bit gruff at first when I was trying to check in, but she warmed up. She also said that I have “lovely veins”. Interestingly, this is the second time in the span of a month that a nurse has told me I have “lovely veins”. Apparently the ancient Egyptians used to think veins were lovely too, and used their make-up to accentuate these. I felt happy that Judy told me I have lovely veins. To a nurse, I guess “lovely veins” means ““easy to access with an IV needle”. I think in subjective terms, it probably means “pronounced”, or “sticking out”. I’m looking at my hands now, and yeah, my veins do stick out, and I am kind of glad about it. They remind me of my dad’s hands. I remember that as a kid, I used to look at my dad’s hands and admire them. I am glad that I have my father’s hands (and veins). He has good hands with long, intelligent fingers. When Jon and I used to play target football over on Galiano, Dad would call a huddle and Jon and I would gather close around him. Maybe he’d taken off his glasses, but he still smelled a bit like windex, barbasol (the red kind), and of course, like Old Spice Original. Then, with his right index finger, he would trace out the plans for a play on his outstretched left hand. I remember being amazed at visualizing a playing field as it was laid out in the palm of my father’s hand. But wait a second, if Jon and Dad and I were all gathered around, who were we playing against? Stephen? Hardly fair. No. It was target football, where one of the players is always switching to the offensive side. Speaking of teams, shortly after Judy left, she formed a team with a medical student and the two of them returned. Amir, the med student would be doing my IV. If you have been reading this blog from beginning to end like most people read, you will know how that went down. If you read by randomly skipping about the pages reading random words, like a crazy person does, then fiddle-dee-dee! Zippalippaloo! But there’s more too. You’ve heard about how Judy was urging Amir to really “taunt” that lovely vein. Well, then she started explaining how he shouldn’t do this-or-that because we didn’t want a shard of the needle to break off in the vein. Judy, please! I’m lying right here. Don’t you have some sort of medical jargon that you could disguise that horrifying thought with? After a bunch of tries on that vein, team IV went looking for a new vein. Well, the hell of the past sixty hours was finally coming to a close, when that lovely French Canadian nurse came in, and stole some of of my blood with a friendly smile. The drip was all set up, and that weird cold feeling was going up my arm. Judy brought me in a nice warm blanket and called my chums in to see me. Craig had a nice hospital-green hospital coffee mug with him. I got a real kick out of it. Kent posed with me for a photo op, while Brendan took the picture. Then they took off, and I was left alone to watch my drip go from 1000 mL down to 100 mL and think about the things. I looked around at all the different objects in the room too, and thought about the machine I was hooked up to. I felt grateful to Canada, and that guy on the tattoo on Roxy’s shoulder that this little visit was looked after. I thought about all the other people who had lain on this bed and what they might have ben going through. I also formulated a whole bunch of questions that I wanted to ask. When the drip reached 500 mL (I was timing things by the drip as there was no clock in the room, and as I said earlier, I don’t wear a watch), another medical student entered the room. His name was Kash. I asked him all the questions that I had thought of in my little time, and he was really good at answering them. He had a really good bedside manner too, and was energetic and funny. My bandmates came in one more time just before the drip was through, and we formulated plans to go get some breakfast. I really, really wanted to have dipping eggs – a comfort meal that my mum used to make for me when I was sick. You know? When you have soft-boiled eggs in egg-cups with the tops cut off and cut the toast lengthwise into “soldiers” and dip them into the egg yolks? Or, if you’re on the road, you order fried eggs over-easy, cut the soldiers yourself and make do. My bandmates agreed and, as they had already scoped out a restaurant over the past hour, they knew where we’d go. Great! The doctor came back with the bloodwork. All was well; I was low on one particular kind of salt, but she said that that was to be expected with my level of dehydration. I could go! Team IV removed the IV, I thanked everybody, and went out to join my pals. Off we went to the North of 17 Restaurant. The clouds had parted, and the sun was shining down on the little town of Wawa, Pop: 3700. The North of 17 was quite big and empty, but friendly. I sat down and ordered some orange juice, and my make-shift dipping eggs. It felt very, very good to get some food back in my system. I ordered some camomile tea, (which always makes me think of Peter Rabbit) and ate and drank everything slowly (very uncharacteristic, as those of you who know me will know). At last it was time to say farewell to the Town of Wawa, which I will forever remember as the town where the bad times came to an end and the good times began afresh. PART II. Ah! Back in the van again, but not feeling like I was about to die. Our destination was now Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. We needed to drop off some promotional materials for our upcoming show at Loplops there, and then possibly continue on to Sudbury for the night. The drive was beautiful. I slept for part of the way, and partly enjoyed the scenery. The highway we were on skirts the shoreline of Lake Superior, so around every turn, there are amazing views or the islands close to shore, or the bays, or a view so far that you can’t see the shore on the other side. We crested Montreal Hill where the trailer trucks had jack-knifed in the snow last night, shutting down the highway and causing our unexpected stay in the town of Wawa. At the bottom of Montreal hill there was a little dirt road leading off into a wooded area on the shore of Superior. Craig McCaul recognized it immediately as a place that he’d stopped on his recent tour with The Cape May. We drove a short way down that dirt road, stopped and got out. A little gravel path led down an embankment to the beach. The clouds had blown over again, but there were patches of blue in the sky, and there were big beams of light streaming through the clouds too. The wind was howling and it was mercilessly cold there on the beach. Big waves were crashing. Huge waves, like on the west coast of Vancouver Island. Far out the lake was bluish black, and closer into shore, and in the wave break, the water was shades of blue, green and aquamarine. We stood and watched the lake with a sense of wonder and awe. That was my first time standing on the shore of one of the great lakes. We got back in the van and continued on, stopping once for some drinks and snacks, and then continuing on to Sault Ste. Marie. Incidentally, I must say that I love the name “Sault Ste. Marie”, and I think that my bandmates do too, and if I had to guess, I would say that you do too. It gives you a kind of loose swingin’ feeling, like tossing a ball on a spring day. It’s sort of got that wind up “Sault”, grows perfect taut with “Sainte” and “Marie!” you fling it away. I have a feeling that people are using it more than they need to and enjoying the feeling as it flies carefree off the tongue, but that is alright with me. We arrived in town at around 4:00. Craig expressed a desire for some espresso, and a place called “The Steamy Bean” caught my eye immediately. It would become our go-to place for caffeine, internet (and, by extension, direction-finding). My first order of business was getting touch with Dave Spidel and finally sorting out the passport madness. We managed to straighten that out in one phone call between Dave and I and one call between the passport office and myself. I celebrated with a bowl of soup. We also got directions to Loplops, and that would be our next stop. Kent also found out some good news. Our new album is #8 on the soundscan college radio charts. Incidentally, every other album in the top ten is backed by a label. Loplops was a hard place to find. The sign itself is a very small stained-glass window that sits in the window of the building. We missed it on our first go-round, then parked and proceeded on foot. There it was! But it was locked. However, there was a light on inside, and I could see at least one person moving around in there. I knocked on the door and was greeted by Steve, the owner. I immediately got a very friendly vibe from him and he invited us all in where the soundman, George was setting up. Much like its owner, Loplops had an instantly friendly vibe. And what an incredible place! It contains all the good elements of a nice bar (well-stocked bar, lots of different areas, well-kept), dispenses with all the unnecessary aspects that all bars seem to think they must have (black walls, black floors, black ceilings. Plus a lot of incredible, innovative, neat original ideas, which, obviously, I love. Here are but a few: a.) Fish tanks. Okay. I love this. There is a fish tank behind the bar that is in its own area, and then it disappears and then reappears behind the gin area! Awesome! Plus another one in one of the seating areas. b.) Hardwood floors. Yow! c.) Big awesome Japanese-style lanerns over the stage – why not! d.) Art on the walls. – This was a big one for me; it made me feel like I was in a respectful space; that is to say, a space that you have to respect (because if you don’t you can literally hurt the art, and also a space that respects art, too. That is huge, because typical bars say so much with their body language, if you will. They are not typically respectful spaces, nor are they creative spaces, so this place felt very optimistic to me, and very respectful too, both of which are immensely important to me. Too much of the alternative to that wears me down. Anyhow, we hit it off smashingly with both Steve and George. As we got to talking, we learned that Cuff The Duke was playing and that the opening band who was to play had cancelled at the last minute, leaving Loplops in the lurch. Again, if you’re the kind of person who reads blogs from beginning to end, you’ve read the little conversation that ensued. And if you’re crazy, then, loplop loplop Sault Ste. Marie! So Steve said “Alright!” and we said “Alright!” and the high-fives went around like a round of firecrackers on Guy Fawkes day. We got a free hotel out of the deal, so that was where we went next to drop off our bags and catch our breath for a few minutes. We hung out there for about half an hour. Some showers were had. There was wifi, but it was pay, and I was like, “No!” (Only this morning did I learn that I could have gotten a password from the front desk). After we each restored 10 hit-points, we headed back down to Loplops. We hung out outside (very cold, [by westcoast standards] by the way) with Andrew, who is sort of George’s apprentice soundman, then went in while Cuff The Duke soundchecked. I was pleased to see that they have a steel player. He was playing an MSA universal, which he has set up as an 11-string E9 steel (with two low-B strings. Man, I should have asked him what that was about). When they were done soundchecking, we loaded in and set up as fast and efficiently as music robots, but way better at music, because we can feel. We were running everything through a board that had a mix preset for Cuff The Duke and we couldn’t mess with that at all, but the mix was fine (probably the best so far this tour), so we didn’t need to. We soundchecked “Circumstantial Dues” and “Shaboom”, and then hastily got out of there to get some food because we were getting hungry. Even my weird stomach was mucking in and being like “Yeah! Let’s eat, Tim!” But I really wanted some comfort food. Earlier that evening, George had mentioned a place next door, but it was closed. There was a pizza joint too, but my stomach said “No.”. So the only place left was “The Fun” across the street from LopLops. The Fun is one of the strangest bars I have ever been in. It is cavernously huge, and dead quiet. Later that evening as our footsteps echoed on the floor in the solemn silence, I would whisper to Craig, “Shhh! It’s a bar.” The men’s room doesn’t have a men’s room sign on it. It has a large neon sign that says “My 2nd Home” over the door. Huh? And if that isn’t confusing enough, it also has a gigantic “DO NOT ENTER” sign on it. Unfortunately, their grill was off and would take a while to warm up. Well, unfortunately we had only fifteen minutes, so we’d have to wait until after our show. That was alright. Back across the street at Loplops, a good crowd had gathered. Kent brought out the set list that they’d played a couple of nights ago at Kilroy’s in Thunder Bay where they’d played without me (when I was too sick). It was a pretty rocking set; Paradise City was in there, Leavin’ Town. It started with Give up the Gamble. So it was pretty much rock rock rock from start to finish, and boy let me tell you, it felt great to be back in the saddle. Oh, check this too; Kent always introduces the band in “Things You Say”, and I’ve gotten kind of sick of the blues solo I’ve been doing up until now, so now I quickly swap Weissenborn for lap steel and launch into Gold Road for my solo on that. I’m really enjoying that. The crowd dug us, and we made sure that everyone knew about our upcoming show there on November 23rd too. After our set, we packed up so Cuff The Duke could get in there, then we headed back across the street to “The Fun”. Again, cavernous and quiet as the grave. Then – and this was the greatest moment ever – Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” came on over the P.A., as loud as can be. My fists shot into the air. Aces! I sang along, feeling great to be alive and took my seat. We all ordered some food. As I said, I braved the fried chicken burger (yikes), then Brendan and I went to play some Foosball. Oh, of course, he schooled me, but not so badly as last time. I think he beat me 5 – 4 this time. Then we went to play some air hockey. I have only ever played Shuffle Puck Café on the mac plus (and later on the mac classics at the mini school), but I found that the skills really transferred over! I was up 2 – 0 and my slapshot resounded with deadly force throughout the again-dead-silent and empty bar. But, pretty soon Brendan had warmed up, and I think he beat me 7 – 3. It reminds me of what it used to be like to play games against Jon when we were kids. Oh well. I can beat Jon at boggle now at least. And probably scrabble, given the chance. Anyhow, our food got there, and I got fries, even though I didn’t order “The Deluxe” which means “with fries”. I didn’t feel totally confident eating them though, even though the other guys said “these are the best fries I’ve ever had.” We went back to Loplops and checked out the rest of Cuff The Duke’s show. It was good, though I was sorry that I never got to see Dale playing his pedal steel. After the show (and also, I’ll confess, during the show) I was getting tired. Not the kind of tired where your head is falling down and your eyes are droopy, but the tired where your mind is like “you need to call it a night here”. So we hung about for a while. The band all had a round of absynthe. Did I? Are you kidding? No way! It was ginger ale and water for me all night. So gradually things wound down there at Loplops. I lay low, and pretty soon we all headed back to the hotel. It had been a pretty eventful day, and a real turn-around day, like that turn-around gig in Banff. I think Brendan put it best when he said “Man, it’s about time we got a break.” (You’ll find out more about the adventures of the days before in the next few days.) Back in our room, I brushed my teeth and got ready for bed. I tore off and threw away the bandaids on my left hand and right arm and marvelled at how I’d begun the day doubled over in pain, going to a hospital and getting hooked up to an IV, and ended off playing a rocking show in an amazing venue in a great town and being put up in a hotel. Not bad! We watched a bit of Conan. Christopher Walken was the guest. A guy named Tim something was on next, but I just put my head down and was off to sleep in no time. (Comment on this)
Sunday, November 4th, 2007
9:22 pm	Day 12: Thursday, November 1st, 2007 Day 12: Thursday, November 1st, 2007 Woke up very early. It was still dark out. I reckon it was about 6:15 or so in the morning. Whenever I know that I’m going to have to wake up early, I automatically wake up about a half hour or more before I’m supposed to wake up. Some people are good at waking up like one minute before it’s time to get up, but I don’t have too much practice at this (I’m happy to say). I had a quick shower and went downstairs where Glen was making some oatmeal. I ate oatmeal with Glen and Brendan and Sandy. Oatmeal is a good way to start out the day. It is hot and comforting. Every time I have it I say to myself “I should eat oatmeal more often”. I remember my mum used to make oatmeal in the morning and then refrigerate it for a snack later on. I can just tell you right now: bad idea. I can’t think of anything less appetizing than cold porridge. To me, porridge is like manna that God rained down on the Israelites in the desert. Basically God’s deal with that was: you eat it now, or it will turn gross. I remember in the Picture Bible when they tried to store it up, and it got all wormy-like. To me, that’s like porridge. Come to think of it, is there a difference between porridge and oatmeal? Please send in your answers. I would like to know. Speaking of things my family used to do, I was chatting with my brother Jon on the telephone the night before last. He is now reading his sons “The Great Brain” which we had as read-aloud books when we were kids. I told Jon that I used to really relate to J.D., especially in the way that his older brother, T.D. would always swindle him. I remember being swindled by Jon all the time as a kid. But when Jon tried to get me to come up with an example, I couldn’t think of one. So I gotta get my brain working on that one. Stephen, if you can help me remember, that would be great. Anyhow. Because we were all packed up from the night before, it didn’t take much to effort to get going, and we bid a fond farewell to Glen and Sandy and Maggie. Rod had already left to go and weld earlier on. Back on the road! But where was Craig? He was staying with a friend over in Forest Lawn over on the other side of town. We were leaving right around rush hour, but it wasn’t so bad. We listened to a Ricky Gervais podcast on the way over there, picked him up, and then it was back on the road for real. Hurrah! But boy, was I ever tuckered out. I put my head down on my greatcoat and restored many stamina points, and my mana went way up too (different kind of mana). I woke up intermittently. Brendan was on DJ duty, and the sweet sounds of Mother Mother, Savannah Leigh Band, Sam Roberts and Brandi Carlile filled my ears as I drifted in and out of slumber. When my wizardly powers were restored, we were passing the giant teepee in Medicine Hat. I gazed about drowsily and fell back to sleep, sleeping through more good tunes, and when I woke up this time, we were at a Husky Station and low on gas. I guess we’d been driving for quite a while, because we were all rather hungry. Hunger does strange things to one’s mind, as evidenced by our decision to eat at the Husky, where even the pictures of the food on the menu looked unappetizing to say the least. By now we had crossed over into Saskatchewan, and I guess we were probably around Swift Current, but I could be wrong about that. Anyhow, Brendan, Kent and I sat down at a table, but where was Craig? I guess he hadn’t realized that we were stopping for food, because he was still sitting out in the van. Oh, McCaul! So Brendan and I played best of three rock paper scissors to see who would go and get him. I started out with the passive-seeming “paper”, while Brendan threw “rock”. Victory! Next round, I switched ‘er up to scissors, my classic strategy: go to whatever WOULD beat the thing you just beat your opponent with. Tie! He had chosen scissors too. I then switched back to paper. Tie again! “He’s onto me.” I thought, my heart pounding. I really didn’t want to cross that windy parking lot. I took a deep breath and cleared my mind, offering up my choice to the cosmos. I threw rock and he threw paper. Damn! Tie game! Down to best of one now. “Think, Tweedale, think!” I thought as we were counting to three, “No wait! Don’t think!” I thought, as we threw another heart-stopping tie. Scissors and scissors. One more round. I closed my eyes as we counted together, “one, two” I gritted my teeth. Showdown! Three! I opened my eyes and released two fingers to indicate the “scissors” attack. Brendans fist remained clenched, indicating the rock which would crush the scissors in humiliating defeat. My heart sank, but my spirits quickly brightened as I noticed Kent had already risen from the table to go and get Craig. Phew! I just dodged a bullet there! Well, we ordered up some food; Kent and I ordered reubens, Brendan had a Husky Ham Club and Craig had some kind of ham sandwich too. The food was, as Craig described it, a good placebo. There was a really funny thing on the Husky menu about their coffee, “Jotogo”. They talked about how their coffees don’t come in confusing sizes like “tall” and “grande” (nice shot at starbucks), or weird-sounding flavours like “Guatamalan Peach-Melba”. It was just a good reliable cup of coffee. Craig had a cup and said it was terrible. Anyhow, after our passable placebo of a road-meal, we hit the road again. I can’t remember if I got more sleep; I probably did, and we made good time all the way to Moosejaw. Moosejaw is a really nice little town. I really like all the old buildings. I can tell that we’re getting further east because even in the small towns, the buildings are nice and old. Moosejaw is very, very proud of its heritage as the town where crime-boss Al Capone used to go and hang out during the bootlegging days. There are tunnels all under the city. I remember visiting some kind of Al Capone museum when I came to Moosejaw many years ago with my pals Shane, Aaron and Arash. This time, we didn’t go into any tunnels, but we did honour the town’s rich alcohol-themed heritage by stopping by a liquor store. Brendan and Kent went and got some alcoholic drinks while Craig and I went to get some coffee at the Java Express. I asked the guy there if they had WiFi and he said, “No, we just have wireless.” So I checked my email briefly, checked some Scrabulous games briefly, got some coffees and then got back in the van. Another couple of hours on the road and we arrived in Regina. I think we took the second exit to get to the futuristic-looking campus of the University of Regina. Just like every time I’m looking for a place on campus with a band, we got lost, and drove up to some student-looking people and asked them how to get to The Lazy Owl Pub. They gave us good directions and we were there in no time. Kent went in to check things out with Alexis, the manager there, and then we proceeded to load in gear. We weren’t allowed to set up yet, because there was to be another band playing before us, so we just put our stuff off to the side of the stage and sat down in the lounge area. The Lazy Owl is like most university pubs I’ve seen: awkward because it is trying to be too many things. First of all, it seems to want to be a barn; the ceilings are about a hundred feet high (great acoustics!), it wants to be a cafeteria, which is alright because lord knows, I like eating, but every five minutes a guy comes on the P.A. to announce “NUMBER 202! NUMBER 202! YOUR FOOD IS AT THE BAR!” Oh, yes, and I guess it wants to be a bar and live music venue too and massive gathering space, games room, there’s bright lights and you know, “bright lights” and “bar” just do not go together. Oh well. I’m not griping. It was fine, I just find those places kind of interesting by virtue of their multi-faceted natures. There were some pool tables and a foozballl table off in the corner loungy area too, so Brendan and I bought a round of foozball, stuffed our hats in the goals so we wouldn’t have to buy another game all night, and Brendan proceeded to repeatedly kick my ass at foozball. It was rough, but I think I learned some strategies and will not be so bad next time. Pretty soon, Alexis came around with some menus. She was super nice, made us feel very warm and welcome, gave us lots and lots of tickets for beer and generally joked around with us. Dinner was way, way better than lunch. Brendan had a huge Greek Salad with chicken in it. It was huge. He couldn’t even finish it. I had a Swiss burger with caesar salad. Kent had a wrap (also massive). Craig had a buffalo burger, Greek salad and soup. Apparently the soup was too salty though. After dinner, who should show up but Doug and Nancy McCaul! Craig’s mum and dad. They have just bought some land near Prince Albert, Saskatchewan and are living up there, but they came down for the show. It is always good to see Doug and Nancy. The McCauls got a table and caught up, and I did a little bit of blog maintenance and fired off some emails. Jon was online, so we had a rapid back-and-forth and I decided I’d like to try Skype. I downloaded it as fast as I could and after a little trouble-shooting I had it up and running. Fun! But he was trying to start a network game of Marathon with Stephen and Galen at the same time, so I downloaded that too, and we tried to start it up, but it didn’t work. We’ll have to work on that. Meanwhile the opening band, Rusty Auger, had started playing. They are pretty good; sort of rockabilly country with some delta blues, some modern elements, some finger picking in there. The only problem was that it was way, way too loud. I think the sound man was kind of out to lunch, or maybe had some hearing damage. No one wants to hear music so loud they have to cover their ears, and even the young people were covering their ears (not just the oldies). Mercifully, I had my earplugs in. Brendan and I played another few rounds of foozball and I finally beat him when he used the side with one damaged defenceman and wasn’t allowed to use his forwards. Success! Rusty Auger finished with “Ghost Riders in the Sky”, and we grabbed our gear, set up and started soundchecking. Man, I hate set-ups like that, and don’t really see what the point was. There was a gigantic stage, so we could have easily set up and just pushed our stuff off to one side for a quicker change-over, but instead we had to scramble to set up all our gear and get it all on stage. So we did our thing and got all set up. The sound check was very frustrating. I don’t think the soundman really knew what was going on. Things sounded really weird through the monitors, and he was having trouble making the adjustments that we requested. The big old barn of a place was pretty empty by the time we were ready to go. Maybe ten or fifteen people in there. Oh well, we played our hearts out anyways, and I people were enjoying it. The Rusty Augers and their friends were certainly having a good time and there were some nice surprises. When we were playing our cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hey, That’s No Way”, the kind of Napoleon Dynamite-looking guy (Paul?) from Rusty Auger leapt up on stage and sang a beautiful harmony line, someone bought us a round of some weird bubble-gum smelling drink (though I declined), we got a nice encore at the end of the set, and we had some dancers for the last couple of songs, too. So that was all very nice. After the show, we talked with our new friends, the members of Rusty Auger. We talked some gear, traded CDs, exchanged compliments. One of the guitarists, Sam told me about how he got so mad at his tuner that night that he had thrown it on the ground and stomped on it and broken it. In the end, it turned out to be the fault of his Bigsby Tremolo bar, though. We packed up our gear with plans to pick it up the next morning, said goodbye to our wonderful host, Alexis, and hit the road back to Aaron’s place. Aaron is the drummer for Rusty Auger. There was a brief bit of partying there, but I was getting sleepy (and anyhow, the party was drifting off to someone else’s house, I think Sam’s) , so I lay down on the couch, covered myself with a nice red blanket and fell fast asleep, while Brendan and Aaron bonded and nerded out to some drummer festival video, featuring JoJo Mayer and his incredibly orange pants, and Roy Haynes. Brendan told a funny story about a drummer, Matt Wilson, at the International Jazz Educatorrs (IAJE) conference in New York last year who invited every drummer to write a letter to their drums back home. “Hey drums, I’m having an awesome time here in New York.” etc. And at the same clinic, Matt Wilson got someone to play the drums as if they were from another planet and had never seen a set of drums before. I thought that was a pretty neat idea. I was dozing this whole time, then they got tire, turned out the light went to sleep and so did I. (Comment on this)
Friday, November 2nd, 2007
8:06 pm	Day 11: October 31st, 2007 (Part 2 of Friday's double header) [note: again, today, I have posted two blog entries, so don't skip the one I posted before this one! I work hard on my blogs, and not to brag, but come on! They're solid gold, so don't miss out on the one I posted just before this one, and be sure to check if you missed yesterday's double-header too. Whoah! You might have a lot of catching up to do! I don't know! Maybe you're checking my blog as obsessively as I've been checking my emails lately. I don't know! Anyhow, enjoy.] Day 11: October 31st, 2007 Today was Halloween and I am sorry to report that there were no costumed activities today. None. I know that my friend Ashley is disappointed because I had promised her that we would go out this Halloween with her as Peter Pan and me as Timkerbell (get it? TIM-kerbell?) But alas, I am way the hell and gone over in Calgary, so that wouldn’t be happening. Ah well. Next year, Ash. Nay, it was just more errand running on the plate for the old Iron Choir today. Things started out with a nice big breakfast of hashbrowns and eggs, which Glen and Sandy whipped up. It was very tasty. A package had arrived in the mail for Brendan Krieg who was actually feeling a little under the weather. It was from Savanah. She had sent the USB cable for his palm pilot, so now he can sync it with my laptop, so we (and you) can see all the pictures he takes on this tour. I perused the photos later on in the evening and was quite surprised and pleased to find pictures from the Blue Island Trio tour this past summer! Just a few; a couple of us in Lillooet, a couple in Kispiox, but that’s all one really needs. Those were a nice surprise. We hung about taking care of this and that at home, and then headed back out to Long & McQuade, Lextronics and Canadian Tire. At L & M I had a look at new volume pedals (not that I could afford one at this juncture), while Kent Purchased a new tuner pedal. At Lextronics, I picked up my newly fixed comptortion pedal. I was really delighted that the guy there, Alex, went above and beyond the call of duty, fixing the D.C., which he noticed was also broken, and installing a leather stopper on the switch so that there is not so much pressure on it. That means it will last longer. It’s really great to know a competent, honest and fast tech in a city like Calgary where I find myself a lot of the time. Now it was off to Canadian tire. Here is what our shopping list looked like: -screw to replace the stripped screw on Kent’s pickup - Kent almsot found one that fit, but not quite, so I guess it’s back to the stripped screw for now. -batteries for a coleman lamp that sits on our merch table –check -multi headed screwdrive - The kind that you can replace the head, and it magnetizes in there. I’ve been wanting this for ages and stuff is always coming loose on my gear, so it’s good to have this. -check - midget flatheaded screwdriver - check - midget Phillips screwdrier – check -duct tape – I had lost a giant almost full roll of Brendan’s duct tape back in Lethbridge; I was taping the mic to the wall, and left the roll in the back room, so I had to pick this up for him. - check -Bath chain – Brendan wanted to get this to for his cymbal to make a sizzle ride. He found it in the plumming section, I believe. – check Hey! We just passed by a tractor graveyard. And we are listening to Helleborg, Lane and Selvaganesh. We are passing a truck with hottubs on its flatbed. And now back to the past: So we got five of those six items. 83% success; not bad. Then it was back home for turkey sandwiches expertly prepared by Glen. Rod regaled us with tales of some amazing costumes that his friend, Murray had made in past years. One year it was a perfect Optimus Prime costume, one year, a Christmas Tree that actually lit up. One year it was Tron. I think my friend Tony dressed up as Tron for burning man a couple of years ago too. After dinner, we set about packing preparations, while Glen and Sandy answered the door to little trick-or-treaters. Kent also put together a tour book with information regarding accomodations, pay, meals and directions to all the places where we’d be playing in the month of November. A little later on, I reallized that the next day, I’d be spending between eight and ten hours cooped up in a little van, so I grabbed my jumprope and put on my exercise clothes and headed down to the basement and did some exercising, managing to work up quite a sweat and make all my muscles work and raising my heart rate for at least 20 minutes. Then I went back upstairs to shave, because I was getting so sick of this beard and have a shower. There weren’t a lot of trick-or-treaters tonight night. I think that there is a lot of fear in the neighbourhood, because there have been a couple of swarming incidents and random attacks lately. I called my brother Jon and had a good chat with him. Apparently he had emailed me about thirty seconds before I called him. Weird! I also talked to Galen, who made my day when he sang me the chorus to “Fish and Whistle” by John Prine. I was amazed, because his rhythm and pitch were both totally bang-on. And let me tell you, that’s not an easy piece to nail the rhythm on; there are syncopations everywhere! But when you’re seven, it just comes as a matter of listening carefully and repeating. A lot of adults even have difficulty with this level of syncopation. So, go Galen! I guess he’s really been digging this mix CD I gave him and Bela a few weeks ago. Oh, and then Galen sang the chorus of “Nashville Cats” too! I put Del McCoury’s version of this wonderful song on the mixtape too. Galen, we’re totally jamming country songs when I get back into town. Sweet! Meanwhile Cal and her friend Crystal had stopped by to pick up a CD, and were hanging out with Rod and Maggie. They just stopped by for a little while, though. I made another turkey sandwich and helped Kent unload the truck. Then Kent cast his wizardly spells on the van and managed to pack everything in there. We made sure everything was tickety-boo to go in the morning too, then watchd the Simpsons episode in which Lisa befriends fat Tony’s son, Michael. It’s a weird thing; though I probably have a higher laughs-per-minute ratio while watching Family Guy, I still like The Simpsons a lot more. I guess that tells me that there is more to laughter in the enjoyment of a television program. I like The Simpsons because there seems to be more genuine emotion in it, and the characters have some depth and development. I don’t see this as much in The Family Guy, which just seems to want to tickle one’s funny bone as many times as possible per episode. That being said, I do like The Family Guy. After that, we all headed up to bed early, as we had to hit the road early the next morning, so as to get to Regina to set up at a reasonable hour the next night. I lay in bed for a little while reading “On Beauty” which Corbin lent me the night of the wake for Luc Dave and Kate’s place – the party which will probably always be remembered for the incident of Luc punching Corbin in the face and giving him a black eye. (Don’t worry; everything is fine there.) It is a good book and I haven’t been reading it much lately, but I got into it again last night. Then I turned out my light and fell asleep. (Comment on this)
6:53 pm	Day 10: Tuesday, October 30th, 2007 - Another Double Header! Whoah! Day 10: Tuesday, October 30th, 2007 We’re crossing the Alberta-Saskatchewan border. Kent is really letting himself go. It’s been a McDonald’s breakfast, and now a bunch of Halloween candy that Sandy left with us. That’s the thing about the road though. You’re not really on the road, until you’re eating that God-awful road food, and it’s doing its thing in your stomach and breaking down and then flowing through your veins. That’s the road flowing through your veins and now you are not just on the road; the road is in you too. See those new skin cells? That’s the road. See that desperate look in your eyes? That’s just the road. We’re all growing road-beards too (though I finally went crazy and shaved last night. Now I’m feeling sad that I did, but it’s growing back in its slow and patient way). And our beards are made out of road too. Eventually, theoretically speaking, the road and us will fuse and there will be nothing but road. That is why home exists. But that is the blog of the now. I must dive back into the past now. I spit in my mask so it doesn’t fog up and I check my oxygen tank. It is plentiful and full of the sweetest mountain air. My flippers are shiny and new. I pull on my rebreather and flip over backwards out of the back of the boat and into the morning of the day before yesterday. I awoke Tuesday morning having had a good and restful sleep. I ran to the window and threw up the sash to check if it was really snowy, but it was not. Just a little warning shot. A little something that lets us know Winter is saying “Hey, I’m getting ready. Look out.” I was a little bit sore from exercising yesterday, but that is good. I wandered downstairs and had some coffee and cereal for breakfast. I enjoyed a nice breakfast just me and Maggie. Oh yeah! I have completely forgotten to mention this but Rod has a really sweet 2- or 3-year old black lab that lives with the McAlisters. She is super sweet, quite energetic, well behaved and very loving. Rod rescued her from a situation where she was basically being abused by some horrible deadbeat owner. Since then she has really developed from being afraid of people to being a real people-dog. She is just great. She comes over and leans against my leg and enjoys a nice long ear-scratching session any old time. She really brings a lot of life to the household. I spent some time emailing and Facebooking, then it was time to do those errands. I wanted to get my volume pedal fixed and there was a switch on my CompTortion pedal that was behaving badly too, so we headed on down to Long & McQuade in the newly fixed-up van. Once at the L & M we set about our respective tasks. Brendan got a new drum bag, Craig went and looked at some dobros in the acoustic room, Kent went and looked at tuner pedals. I inquired about repairing my broken pedals, but the fellow there said it may take up to a month. Well, we were leaving in forty-eight hours, so that was no good. So he gave me the name of a really good electronics tech who worked nearby. I got some extra third strings because those are always the first to break, and I got some new chicken-knobs for my amp, because they have been falling off lately. We did those things which we needed to do and then headed to Lextronics. I inquired about the volume pedal, but it would cost about $70 to fix. Well, I couldn’t really justify spending that much when a brand new volume pedal would only cost slightly more, and I still had the lingering (possibly illusory) sense that I could probably repair that darned thing myself. Damn, I was really going to miss having a volume pedal though. I gave him the comptortion pedal to fix, because it just needed a new switch. We headed home through the most brutal rush-hour traffic you could imagine. Kent was doing an amazing job dodging and weaving, but it still took us about an hour or more to get through what should have been a fifteen minute drive. When we got back to the house, holy smokes, Sandy had baked a huge turkey dinner with all the trimmings! Stuffing, rutabaga, yams, cabbage, mashed potatoes, gravy, wine, pumpkin pie. Oh man. I am longing for that meal right now so badly and knowing that my next good meal may be days or even weeks away. Well, I realized this at the time, so I filled up my plate, ate it with great zest, went back for seconds, ate that with great zeal, and then went back for thirds too. It was fantastic. Wonderful dinner. Then suddenly fatigue kicked in like some sort of tryptophan bomb. We all practically fell over where we sat for the next three hours. I barely made it into bed and slept and slept. Whoah! I woke up and Kent was knocking on my door. His aunt and uncle had come by and wanted a CD signed. Well, with my hair all askew and my shirt wide open, and eyes blinking in the light I hobbled into the hallway to sign the CD. I was just about ready to go back to bed, but then Kent said that they were getting ready to head out. Where to? Why, The Ship & Anchor of course! And I couldn’t say “no “to that. So I re-buttoned my shirt, which I had just accidentally buttoned one button off and jumped in the van to head down to The Ship. This time we were meeting up with Craig’s friend Brenda. She is involved with putting on Independent Film Festivals here in Calgary, and she writes for Beatroute, I think. We grabbed a table where the stage is and where, in about exactly a month we would be rocking out. But right now we were just sitting and enjoying some good chatting and some drinks. I talked with Brenda a bit about Macs and how much we enjoy them, and she shared her woes about a recent complete hard-drive crash. Unbelievably, we were all hungry again, so we ordered a big plate of nachos. Then some of Craig’s friends from Calgary band The Cape May joined us. Jeff and Matt. Matt has an absolutely huge beard, and he also plays with Chad Van Galen. Jeff was sitting to my left and I chatted with him briefly about the pros and cons of Canadian touring. The Cape May just went on a huge tour to Halifax and back and Jeff talked about staying positive and having a good time even when you’re playing to mostly empty rooms. Good advice... He also talked about travelling to South America and Central America because he was about to embark on such a voyage after finishing a book (I asked him about this, but he kind of dodged my questions). Brenda had a lot to say about that because she had recently been to Guatamala and Belize. She talked about how good the fruit was; like mangoes and avocados, but also how terrible coffee smells in its raw form, I guess when it is growing on trees. Matt’s friend Jamie joined us at one point too. She had just gotten off work at Cafe Beano which has amazingly good coffee. I went there with Dan Gaucher (drummer for Uncommon Gold) when I was in Calgary in the Summer and was very pleasantly surprised. Jamie brought some cookies with her, which she shared around generously. Another fine night at The Ship! We drove on home, watched some Family Guy and went to bed. And now I am coming up for air, breaking the sunshiny surface, looking around and all those golden fields meeting the grey sky. A train is passing in the opposite direction to my right. Hi, Saskatchewan. (Comment on this)
Thursday, November 1st, 2007
6:32 pm	Day 9: Monday, October 29th, 2007 (Double Header! Days 8 and 9!) Day 9: Monday, October 29th, 2007 [Okay. I just posted two blogs in rapid succession. This one, and the day before, which you have to scroll down to get to. Don't just read this one. Read the one before it too, because that is new material, and I don't mind saying there's some gold in there. While you're at it, check and see if you read the day before that too. Make sure you're all up to date, because I don't want this gold to go to waste! Okay, now I've got to go eat a burger. Enjoy!] Well, I just counted up the days of this tour, and I guess there are 56 days in it from Day 1 when we played at Doc Willoughby’s to day 56 when we triumphantly return home to Vancouver BC and play our victorious hometown CD release show at The Western Front. So if this is Day 9, that means that we’re approximately 1/6th of the way through the tour, not that I’m counting it up like that because I can’t wait for it to be over; quite the contrary, I am having the time of my life. But I remember my brother Jon telling me about how he learned a lot about fractions when we were in church as youngsters, looking at the church bulletin and calculating exactly what fraction of the service was through and what remained. I remember when Jon told me about this, I was quite shocked, because I had been doing the same exact thing. I also do the same thing with pizzas. I look at it and say, I’m a quarter of the way through (if I’m at The Naam, where they divie their pizzas into quarters), or, I’m a sixth of the way through, if I’ve ordered a pizza from, say, Dominos (do they still exist?) or Panagopoulous (as they used to be called). So I guess I’ve eaten that metaphorical metaphysical first slice of pizza of the tour. If I can stretch the analogy, it’s the slice that you eat and you still feel great, like you could eat a whole pizza, but you’re still hungry, so you’re like “give me another slice!” the cheese is still hot and gooey, and life is great. Now, I’m not saying that by the time we get to the last one sixth of this tour my belly will be huge and distended and I will feel slightly ill and I will feel “I simply cannot eat one more bite of pizza”. I’m not saying that necssarily. No, I’m not saying that I will feel like that per se. I love it when people use per se to get out of any sticky situation. Be that as it may. Okay, that was like the opening hymn at the beginning of the church service. Maybe while it was happening, you looked at each of the six verses and as each verse conclued you were like “sweet, only 5/6ths to go.” Then “Sweet! 2/3rds complete!” Then, “Rounding the bend! Halfway checkpoint.” I don’t know. But if you were, I hate to think how Friday’s nine-pager must have affected your psyche. I woke up at some point, but I didn’t want to get out of bed, so I organized files on the laptop for a while, watched some Bas Rutten fights and then headed downstairs to breakfast. Glen had made some fantastic pancakes which we enjoyed a’ mightily. Today was to be a rest day, and rest we did. After the pancakes, and a shot or two of coffee, I set about the momentous challenge of blogging Friday. Well, I spent several hours tending to that and little else. I had to get every detail right! And be cooly detached and impartial to every event as it unfolded. So I blogged and blogged, then joined the McAlisters for burgers, then blogged some more. I finished blogging that momentous Friday, and then leapt up from my chair. Gadzooks! I needed to get out of my chair and shake it up a little bit, so I went downstairs and jumped rope and interspersed that with some shadowboxing and pushups and situps and back exercises. Well, that felt pretty good. I was pretty sweaty then, so I went to have a shower. I put on some clothes and zounds! fresh as a daisy! Then, all of a sudden, “bing-bong”. What in Heaven’s name was this? Trick or treaters? Why, this is not hallows eve this eve, or even the eve of hallow’s eve, but rather the eve of the eve of hallows eve! What bedevilment was this? Why it was my dear friend Cal! But of course! We had arranged to have coffee tonight, so I hopped into her car and sped off to this place called the Something Earth or Earth Something. We listened to a really nice South African musical piece (Cal is from South Africa) as we went. Anyhow, at this coffee place I had an Americano and Cal had some tea. We both had some pumpkin ginger loaf too. We had a good chat and caught up, and I decided I would like one more shot of espresso, so I went up to the bar and waited around for about ten minutes while the one guy there single-handedly made a couple some huge deluxe meal. I then ordered my espresso and returned to the table where Cal was having an enlivened discussion with a very impassioned middle-aged fellow. I had become Cal’s “phantom-boyfriend” for the time being, which was okay with me. Sometimes ladies will do this if they feel the need to deflect the “romantic attentions” of other men, and that is okay with me. I have invoked the “phantom-girlfriend” when I find myself in a similar situation too, so it was cool. Anyhow, this guy was actually very interesting. He was a computer scientist writing his thesis on meta-data and its application on the web. This will eventually make the internet better at anticipating the way that people think and make inquiries. We talked with him for quite a while and enjoyed his very intelligent and educational discourse. It really was a fascinating discussion. I wish I could remember more about it. I would like to learn more about meta-data and its web applications. Perhaps I will. We headed back to Cal’s place and hung out for a bit and chatted some more. Then she dropped me off at The Ship and Anchor (a bar on 17th ave that we all really like) where Kent and Brendan were hanging out. It was a really good visit with Cal, and I bid her a fond farewell. When I joined Brendan and Kent, Kent ordered us a round of Kilkennys and we talked for a while about what our experiences of high school were like. I was interested to hear that Brendan had gone to an alternative school, much like my younger brother Stephen had. It wasn’t long before we were joined by three young women, Siobahn, Anya and Juliet. We hung out and chatted and shared much laughter and lively debate with them until quite late. Among the topics discussed were; Elvis Presley: good or bad? Brendan was very much on the “bad” side, while Anya and I leapt to Elvis’s defense. I invoked Gillian Welch’s song Elvis Presley Blues to our defense. If you haven’t heard that song, I would really recommend it. We also talked a bit about Anya’s thesis which she was writing. It was about what it means to be a blind person in a sighted world. She had received funding to go around north america getting first hand accounts about this topic. She recounted one experience that really stuck with me. In Quebec, she met a blind man who had climbed a mountain with a friend. When they got to the top, the blind man’s friend felt the need to describe in detail what he saw. But when the blind man was relating this story to Anya, he said, “But I didn’t want my friend to tell me what he saw; I wanted to live the experience as I was experiencing it.” When it was time to go, we went outside and were enchanted to find it snowing. We walked down the block to The Wicked Wedge, but were sad to find it closed. Ah well. We bid a fond farewell to our newfound friends, and headed off into the snowy night, reflecting on how fascinating and wonderful people are. Back home at the McAlisters’ I had a bowl of “Just Right Cereal”, watched a couple of episodes of “The Family Guy” and hit the hay. We hadn’t really managed to do any errands today, but that was alright. Tomorrow (Tuesday) would be an errand day. (Comment on this)
6:30 pm	Day 8: Sunday, October 28th, 2007 (Double Header! Day 8 and 9!) Day 8: Sunday, October 28th, 2007 I don’t know when I woke up. It was some time past noon, and I was feeling much better and much refreshed, and very grateful to have this comfy bed and awesome place of rest. A comparison to Rivendell would not be inappropriate and has, in fact, been made. My bandmates and I (sans Craig McCaul) hobbled sleepily downstairs at roughly the same time, and enjoyed a fantastic breakfast that Sandy had made for us. She made a kind of omelette that Kent likes to make too, with pesto in it. Super good! So we had that, and some coffee and toast. Meanwhile Glen was out shopping for bargain basement batteries. Man! What are we going to do without the McAlisters when we’re in the middle of Northern Ontario! Now, we were supposed to be in Black Diamond (about an hour’s drive out of Calgary) at 2:30 for soundcheck. I think we had finished breakfast and were about ready to hit the road by 2:00. But where was McCaul! Well, I’ll tell you, if you’ll just listen. He had called a few minutes ago, and was just outside Medicine Hat. That is pretty far from Calgary, if you look on a map. But not to worry. Glen had just returned with fresh batteries which I quickly installed in Darlene and also my Weissenborn (which doesn’t have a name), and he offered to go pick up Craig while we drove out to Black Diamond. Again! Glen saves the day. So off we went. It was a really nice drive, a little overcast and cool, as we drove through the beautiful rural roads towards Black Diamond, listening to the performance in Lethbridge (I hadn’t recorded Saturday night, as my hands were full enough as it was with technical glitches galore). It was a very good listening session, and we discovered many things. In a couple of places in the slower tunes, it is quite hard for me to be playing harmonized melodic passages on my lap steel while simultaneously singing long held notes, so I taught those parts to Brendan (who is an excellent singer, and who has been absolutely deadly on the harmonies lately), so it’s just little refiinements like that that makes everything way more smooth, and makes listening back to the performances invaluable. Yeah! We arrived at the stop at about three. The Stop is a lovely little place. They serve coffee and food and beer. It’s a lovely and cozy room for playing in. The stage has some nice potted plants, and there are lamps and easy chairs and couches as well as tables and chairs. So, 3:00. That gave us an hour to set up, soundcheck and play. We did our own sound, which was super easy. Kent had it set up and sounding great lickety-split. All our gear was set up and we ordered things. Brendan had some kinda raspberry smoothie, while I downed a super powerful double Americano. Then Craig McCaul arrived with moments to spare! I had my computer set up at this point and received and sent one (1) email from my dear elder brother Jon. By then it was four minutes to show time. I set up the computer to record on the merch table. Jac was very excited. There was a nice little crowd there, and we got underway, starting with the tried and true “Circumstantial Dues”. I was playing sans volume pedal, and guess what? I didn’t really even miss it! Sometimes I feel I overuse it a bit, so playing without it might be some good therapy for that. It was neat playing a mid-day show too. The band felt super-tight and all the songs felt good, and the performance felt really good and relaxed. It’s kind of nice playing with the sun shining in the window. I don’t know, it just feels more healthy somehow. Some musicians complain that it is a hard thing to do, but I didn’t feel that way today. I was feeling a ton of love in my heart, thanks in part to the really good strong coffee. We ended the first set and took a break and I went outside to the awesome large backporch at The Stop to hang out with Brendan and Craig and also Kent’s aunt Dean. Oh, we also met Myra, who seems very nice. Man, it was so warm out there that I was hanging out in my shirtsleeves and not even cold. Can you believe it? It felt good to be alive. I ordered one more super strong double americano and we launched into the second set. This also went really well. I can’t remember what song we finished with, but Sandy really wanted to hear “Ring of Fire” and who were we to refuse? So we played that for her, and everyone, and everyone was happy. Then we packed up a bit, and Brendan and I had a talk about the healing power of music. It was a really good talk. Then I chatted a bit with our dear friend Rebecca, who was dressed up as a bowling enthusiast and also met her friends Myra and Sarah. Rebecca is feeling much better after breaking her leg really badly last winter and is hoping to get back to running, jumping and dancing really soon, because those are the best things in life. Godspeed, Rebecca! But take it easy on them ski-hills, okay? Suddenly, a wave of fatigue, hunger and dizziness hit me like a ton of bricks. I mentioned this to my bandmates, and they felt the same way. I think that we still hadn’t fully recovered from the madness of Friday, so we bid a fond farewell to The Stop, loaded up the truck and hit the road back to Calgary. When we arrived home, Glen was cooking up a mighty pot of chili. Go Glen! Saving the day yet again. So we sat down, and heartily set about satisfying our hungry bellies with delicious chili, bread rolls and rice, and starring some pumpkin pie for dessert. I chatted with family back home which was really good. Then I went downstairs to join the other felllows. Well, this time we actually were awake enough to take in the Star Wars episode of the Family Guy, and Kent’s brother Rod was up and about too, so while Craig went out and about galavanting on the town yet again, Kent, Rod, Brendan and I relaxed and ate pie and watched Family Guy until late. A pretty mellow day, and well-neededly so. (Comment on this)