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