Day 3: Calgary (tpb vs. Dilbert and his motorcycle gang)

We awoke at the marshall's house an hour later than we had planned. this didn't mean much to us at the time, but it will later in the story. i, personally, awoke satisfied that i had been made D.D. the night before.

about 20 minutes after we finished our set, shawn announced that we were doing another round of jaeger shots, and because i had been left out of the first round or two, it was just easier for me to continue NOT drinking. a disappointment at first, but i wasn't really in the mood for debauchery. or girl chasing for that matter. so i left it up to them. a couple hours later we had somehow been led, (this must have been the girl chasing) to the bar next door that was allegedely closed, but for some reason didn't stop us from entering and was still serving my comrades drinks. after we sat around and waited for the two no show's (the waitresses from the commodore) i finally convinced shawn and shane to get some late night eats with me.

really it wasn't a tough time convincing them to go and get food. with both of them, late night treats is almost always a must have. upon arriving at denny's (the only establishment in the interiour other than tim horton's that is open all night) shawn demanded that we order him the biggest thing on the menu. this is quite common. shawn's eyes tend to be a bit bigger than his stomach. he'll plow through most of his meal, and then upon admitting defeat, as he did on this occasion, he'll sprawl out on the table and show no noticeable sign of life but a single finger that will still attempt to answer your questions. i'll leave you to decide on which finger that is.

Shane on the other hand, manages to remain as energized as he was at the beginning of the night. perhaps this is why we call him stallone (or sly). no that actually has nothing to do with it.

getting home at 4, i laugh at the likelyhood of us actually leaving by noon as we had planned. i awake to the sound of eggs on the frying pan coffee being brewed and i am so glad to remember that i still have to go for my sauna. needless to say, we took our time with leaving kamloops and didn't get on the road til about 1:30.

now i'd done this once before, and that was forgiveable cuz we weren't actually leaving the province. but to forget about the time change when we were on our way to calgary is just ridiculous. we were lucky for two reasons, sly drives like an animal and the venue didn't actually need us there for a sound check. so us rolling in at a quarter after nine was actually just fine.

we were psyched to meet up with our boys from Alpha Baby (www.myspace.com/alphababy), a kelowna band that we had already shared the stage with twice in the summer. great guys who play great music, so simple but remarkably hard to find. alpha baby was slotted to play first with us going on second and some calgary band going on third.

now normally i'd give a shout out to all the bands. but this band made a good run at trying to ruin our night. now to set the scene the venue was sketch. one of those hotel bars that you could still smoke inside of . there's some kind of acronym for such bars but you'll recognize them by their electronic gambling machines. as i said we were supposed to go on second. josh had booked the show with the promoter, and our set was slotted for between 10 and 11:30. Right after alpha baby rocks out an amazing set, we start setting up and this tall guy who kind of looks like the human representation of the comic character dilbert starts telling us that his band is on next. i'm confident that he is wrong. shortly after josh comes back from a brief meeting with dilbert and the promoter we find out that we are actually on last. turns out dilbo is good friends with the promoter and he can get his way. now i can see where they were coming from. nobody really wants to play closing slot on a weeknight. there's a good chance that everyone will be gone already.

what really annoyed us, though, was that dilly and his boys managed to make sure that most people headed home by playing the most obnoxious plug your ears crap bar rock imaginable. people were standing up and leaving in their first song. the rather nice looking crowd that had gathered on this thursday night basically dwindled down to shane's 20 or so family and friends, and a couple members of shawn's extended family. now i understand that music isn't exactly easy. i at no point claim to know what i'm doing. but when you have no consideration for your audience whatsoever, stay in your jam space and flex your muscles. it was like dilbert and his dudes were sitting around revving their harley's and trucks in a parking lot, and "no, sorry boys, we weren't impressed".

when we finally hit the stage at 1, shane regained my strength and positivity as he would do on many occasions on this trip by giving me one of his pep talks and assuring me that this would be a nice concert for family and friends, which it definitely was. the audience welcomed us by gathering around the stage and singing along to a lot of our songs, most notably 'intimate mistake'. highlight of the night was probably francis joining us on stage and providing the egg shaker for our newest song 7 Days.

we crashed late that night at a friends house in calgary, and could sleep in late cuz edmonton was only a couple hours away.

dom

Back to the Present for a second

Fear not, i will return to the telling of our BC Alberta Tour Tale briefly. We just played the festival of Guns festival here in town and i felt like posting a few things. Mostly the pictures that our photographer and former roommate Erin Pasternak took.
As for the festival, i've never heard so many people be confused by a name. Plus a lot of people who really didn't like the inclusions of 'guns' in the title. And where the heck was Charlton Heston? i think nerve magazine should really re-think this festival if they want to have any credibility whatsoever.
My sarcasms aside, the show was small and intimate, and definitely a good time. Thank you to all of you who came out and supported. I made a comment that may have seemed like a slam on Elton John, and it was. I appologize, i do like EJ it's just that i was raised to dislike him and think all of his songs sound the same. Now that i've grown up, i've learned that i was wrong. i appologize.

dom

Day 2: Kamloops

we were pretty happy about not having a huge commute from Kelowna to Kamloops on Wednesday. After having breakfast we finally gave our good friend Ara at the River, the radio station in Kamloops, a phone call. The last time we had been through, Ara had done an interview over the phone with me to plug our show. I remember being quite amused as we'd talked for about a minute before we 'started' the interview, at which point Ara turned on his radio voice which caught me quite off guard. I've called friends at their office jobs before and it's always quite amusing as their professional voice always sounds so serious or mature compared to their everyday voice. Radio personalities, however, are in a whole new ballpark. His voice was alive. Or comparative to Russel from still water's guitar sound; incendiary.

Since we were only a couple of hours away from kamloops and we could make it there with time to spare, ara suggested that we do one of our songs acoustic on the air. After the interview and song Ara's final comment was "How bout you give a good shout out to your boys!" Now my instincts told me to either yell out enthusiastically "Yeah boys! woo hoo", or wait for the rest of the band to do the same. I instead froze up and had to ask him what exactly he meant. Apparently this was my cue to introduce the rest of the band, which i did immediately after he clarified. the boys all laughed at me for my cluelessness, though shane did admit that he was also confused by the question.

later as our opening band played we overcame the ever returning anxiety of whether people will come or not. a good amount of people were piling into the commodore, (remember this is kamloops, not vancouver) and we were quite optimistic. that optimism, however was unfortunately somewhat squandered when we had to set up our stage. i have described the stage we played that night as something you might see in a safety manual, a diagram of a work environment in which there are several obvious hazards that you are supposed to label.

our diagram would have included a stage that was sliding all over the floor leaving a huge gap to fall into in the middle of the stage, cords hanging from the wall, leading to the sound man who was behind us and thus, couldn't hear his mix at all. shawn's favourite element that from where he was standing his bass was perfectly close-lining anyone on their way to the bathroom, or running orders to and from the kitchen. to top it off there wasn't enough space on the stage, so setting up felt kind of like loading the van on the first day again.

i had high hopes for kamloops that were somewhat let down by several external factors. i guess i realized for the hundredth time that when my hopes are too high i usually end up disappointed, and also that larger crowds don't always guarantee more enjoyable situations. we were once again battling against conversation, and it didn't help that we were playing in an echo chamber built out of tin.

i'm being far too honest with you again, though i must say that kamloops did give us one of our biggest highlights and that was hanging out with cathi and trevor marshall again, our good friends from our last trip. (i believe this is a... 'shout out'?..) their hospitality and good spirits were rejuvenating, as was their sauna. we'll see them again soon i hope.

dom