Day 8 and 9: His name was Derek from Canmore

Now it's tough enough to get people out to shows as it is. You're coming in from a different town, you know people who know people in the town, but all you can do is notify them and hope they pass on the word. you're best hope right now is to use facebook and myspace to the best of your abilities, but you're busy with several other shows. and your friends never pass the word on as well as you hoped they would

After another day of rest at the Lynch's in calgary we arrived at the venue, the canmore hotel, on wednesday night. now i'd heard crazy stories about this place. Some say that it's 'the place' for indie bands to play in canmore.

Warning sign #1: outside the door of the bar there is a chalkboard/sandwich board with the heading "what's happening tonight?" We read it to learn that apparently the event was 4 dollar high balls? "no mention of the band? mmm that's strange". Inside a bunch of guys are playing pool and on the other side of the bar there is a hall with a good sized stage at the front. in front of the stage the hockey game was being projected on a big screen, but only 2 or 3 people were paying attention.
Warning sign #2: As we looked around the bar we noticed several posters for bands that were coming to the bar. it appeared that this was 'the bar' to play in town. "but wait, where is our poster??". Josh thought this was exceedingly strange too, as he had confirmed with the 'Ho' when they recieved the posters. Not a single poster of ours, however, hung from the walls.
Warning sign #3: Much like the sandwich board outside, there was another chalk board inside the bar that listed the goings on for that week. On the board they had clearly written what bands were playing on tuesday, thursday, friday and saturday. our beloved wednesday was of course left blank.
Sign #4: As the icing on the cake, when we started to load the stage some long haired dude hobbles on over to greet us. "Hey are you playing a show tonight?" he slurs jovially.
"Yes", we respond.
"Oh!!" he laughs, "it's a good thing i stopped by, i was about to head across town and continue getting drunk with my friends!".

The long hair was Derek our sound guy for the night, and probably our saving grace. You could just tell that things weren't going to work out that night. There was a strange apathetic feeling in the room. So when Derek asked me if i partied before i played, in the same way ricky fitts asks lester burnham in american beauty, i responded, "not usually, but i do tonight".

Armed with a cannon between us, Derek proceeded to tell me a series of disjointed stories. Derek was just one of those souls you'd hope and expect to find on the road. Definitely a kind hearted fellow, Derek continually appologized for his odd ball sense of humour, though we were both laughing the whole time. Derek's shining moment came when he told us how to deal with the crowd at the "Ho". I kind of need to show this in person, but essentially a band best reel them in with simpler straight forward numbers and then, when they weren't expecting it, shock them with something insane.

Derek's imitated this musical insanity by swinging the guitar he had fetched from his quarters in a slap shot like manner at our faces. Shawn and i were on the floor.

We hit the stage with about 6 or 7 people on our side of the bar. Somewhat discouragingly there was a line of people at the bar at the back, kindly turning their backs to us the whole time and watching the game or conversing with their favourite local bar tender. We decided to play our whole repertoire as the stage was nice, and we were having fun all the same. From behind me i swear i heard shane yell out between every song, can someone get me a beer. Which as it was happening, i of course did nothing to help but thought to myself, "can somebody just get this guy a beer already". As he stumbled off stage at the end of our set i was relieved to know that Josh and the bar tender were in fact fetching our boy beers, perhaps, everytime he asked for one.

With about 4 songs to go, our film-maker corey's brother and his friends show up. They kind of saved the day. We just wished we could have had them the whole time. Ah well, such is life. Canmore was in the least an adventure, and a dip that made peaks like broken city and salmon arm that much more special.

dom