After being home for a few days and after reading through all the blog posts I feel like I should add a few notes to the whole thing – 

#1) It wasn’t as bad as the blog makes it seem! Something about writing a tour diary in the van every day makes the whole thing into a bit of a bitch fest. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who came out to all of the shows. This was our first headlining tour in years and for the most part it was as good, or better than we expected.  

#2) A big, big thanks to the rest of the band. This has been one of my favorite live versions of the band ever. Some of the shows may have sucked but the band was always good. 

#3) Thanks to everyone who took us in, fed us, let us sleep on their floor, paid our parking tickets (Owen), killed a day bumming around with us, etc, etc, etc. One of the best things about touring is seeing friends in other cities. The only thing better is making new friends. 

#4) After all of our bitching and moaning we we’re already talking about the next tour.

Waterloo – last show of the tour

It’s another lazy day today. I sleep late again, go out for breakfast and have another afternoon nap. We’ve played every night this week but after a few days so close to home it doesn’t feel like we’re on tour anymore.

We’re at the Jane Bond tonight. We’ve played here many times over the years and it’s one of my favorites. Our show coincides with an art openning by Iner at the club. It’s a nice book-end to our trip. We started at the Music Gallery surrounded by Iner’s instruments and end the same way at the Jane Bond.

Toronto

We got into Toronto a 3am last night. I sleep till 12, get up for breakfast and a trip to the bank then go back to bed till 5. The dogs follow me everywhere. It’s so nice to be home.

Great show tonight. The club is sold out by 10 and there’s line-up out front for the rest of the night. We’ve got Paul Aucoin with us on vibes and it feels like old times. We play our longest set of the tour covering pretty much every song we know with this version of the band. It’s just what we need after such a long hard trip. One more show to go.

Hamilton

We wake up late and hit the road to Hamilton. Will it be a good show? Who cares. I’ll be sleeping in my own bed later tonight. I’m so fucking tired I can barely hold my coffee.

Worst show of the tour. It made me think fondly of Regina.

Sudbury

We actually made some money last night (which I never expected). Thank god. It was getting dire there for a while. Now we’ve got gas in the van and food in our stomachs and all is right with the world.

We’re in the home stretch. The drives get shorter every day and the landscape looks more and more familiar. We’re going back over the same road that took us west. The fall leaves are all down now but the weather’s unseasonable warm. It’s hard to believe we hit snow on the way out.

It’s a short drive today. We’re going to get to Sudbury early enough to do some laundry and gave a home cooked meal. I’m down to my last clean socks, underwear and t-shirt.
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We have a good meal courtesy of Kate Maki as well as a sauna and a freezing dip in the lake. The show is pretty good too. Afterwards we go back to Nathan and Kate’s place and manage to stay up till 6am.

Sault Saint Marie

I got crazy drunk last night. When I wake up I have no idea where I am. It turns out we stayed above the club. The water’s been turned off so we have to go down the street to a coffee shop to use the washroom. No showers today. We’ll reek of booze till the next town. I’m drunk and smelly but from the look of it so is the rest of Thunder Bay.

We gas up and hit the road. My hangover kicks in full force as I try in vain to sleep on the back bench. I think there might be a little food poisoning going on as well as too much bad draft. When you feel this bad it’s hard to tell. Northern Ontario roads are winding and bumpy as hell. I keep thinking I’m going to barf or shit myself. Hopefully neither but I’ll keep you posted.

The toilet wins again. Everyone is feeling pretty awful. Brian sharts and has to throw his underwear away. My stomach is singing whale songs

Thunder Bay to Sault Saint Marie is one of the most beautiful drives in Canada. Highway 17 twists it’s way along the shore of Lake Superior through the Canadian shield and the stunted, warn down remains of a long gone mountain range. I sleep through almost all of it. I don’t have my usual car accident dreams. Just black, dead sleep.

We stop for gas. When the door opens the blast of fresh air makes me realize that the van smells like an outhouse. I’m pretty sure we’ve been poisoned.

We get to the Sault and have a nice meal with Nathan’s brother and his girlfriend. All I can think about is how much I must stink. Afterwards we head to their house to get cleaned up before the show. After a hot shower I feel almost human again.

It turns out to be an alright show. Also, Barack Obama is elected president. We celebrate by going to an all night diner next to the US border. Our waitress has the greatest helmet of hair I’ve ever seen. Our stomachs have returned to normal. Life is good.

Thunder Bay

We stay with Steve and John in Winnipeg again. It’s only a 7 hour drive to Thunder Bay so we get to sleep in a bit and have a decent breakfast before hitting the road. Winnipeg is unusually warm for this time of year. I have high hopes of good weather for the rest of the trip. Marc and CL are back in their own car again from here on in. The van feels huge and I plan on spending most of the day asleep on the back bench.

The next week might be the hardest of the whole trip. We’re so close to home but still so far away. It’s hard not think about how easy it would be to blow out the shows and drive back to Toronto.

We’re in Ontario again. It’s amazing how quickly the landscape changes. The Rockies give way to the plains in a few hundred kms and the plains give way to the Canadian sheild even faster. Once established each new landscape stretches on for days.

Northern Ontario is the land of the giant monument. Each town has it’s own world’s largest something or other. Kenora has Husky The Muskie (he’s a statue of a giant fish), Vermollion Bay has the Sasquach (this is my favorite and possibly the strangest big monument in Canada. Big Foot is wearing a loin cloth and giving the thumbs up to traffic on the Trans Canada Hiway. He looks like a giant black man in a diaper. The town dresses him up for holidays and you can buy postcards of the Sasquach dressed as Santa or Batman), White River has a giant Winnie The Pooh statue (the bear that inspired the original stories was from here), Wawa has a giant goose, Sudbury has the big nickle, North Bay has a cruise missle (probably not the world’s largerst but weird none the less).

We stop at gas station/hunting supply store. They have a wide selection of deer bait with provacative names like Stump Licker, Buck Jam & C More Bucks. The marketing guy must moonlight a porn director.

The last hour of our drive is through the dark and heavy fog. Time doesn’t mean anything when you’re driving at night. It could be 7 or midnight or 5am. The fog only adds to the confusion giving the impression that we’re not moving at all.

I won’t say anything about the show other than there were 8 more people than I expected. We stay above the club and have a party.

Drive day

Wake up at 10 only to discover that the clocks went back over night and it’s now really 9. Later today we’ll cross into another time zone and the clocks will go forward again. Time travel confuses me. Luckily we’ve been away for long enough that I have no idea what time or day of the week it is anymore.

Today we start our drive back to Ontario. We’ll be covering 4 provinces in two days. The plan is to get as far as Winnipeg tonight and then have a leisurely eight hour drive to Thunder Bay on Monday. We get an oil change, load up on coffee and hit the road early.

I don’t know what’s worse, the stink of manure as we drive through cattle country or the startling combination of farts happening inside the van.

We drive all day stopping only for fuel and bathroom breaks. Hours of empty country punctuated with small prairie town ands signs saying No Services. Calgary, Medicine Hat, Swift Current, Chaplin, Parkbeg, Moose Jaw. We pass through Regina at 6:30, choke down a Burger Barron value meal and keep heading east. 500 kms to go.

After 10 or 11 hours in the van there is no longer any way to be comfortable. My legs and back ache, my neck is sore from sleeping sitting up and my eyes are buggy from hours spent playing solitaire on an iPod. Get me out of this fucking van.

10:30 Brandon Manitoba.

12:09 Winnipeg. Thank fucking god. Unfortunately we’ll be on the road again in less than 12 hours.

Calgary

Sometime last night we crossed into another time zone and lost an hour. This leads to a little confusion in the morning. The beers and joints don’t help.

Another crappy and expensive breakfast. Nathan walks out in protest. After walking up and down the strip of too expensive/shit restaurants he returns to drink a cup of the brown water they sell as coffee here.

We drive a hour south and stop at the radium hot springs. This is the highlight of the trip so far. The road to the springs winds through a narrow canyon with a 200 foot sheer rock face on either side. After a few minutes the canyon widens and you can see the steam from the springs. We spend an hour and a half soaking and swimming with German and Japanese tourist. I can feel the stress melting away. If I could eat BBQ in the pool this would be the best day ever.

We get to Calgary and meet up with Dawn and Owen from Saved By Vinyl. The two of them fulfilled a life time dream of mine when they released the 12″ of our new record. Dawn treats the gang to our best meal in days. God bless her. Owen puts us up for the night. It strikes me that the two of them represent the best of the music industry in this country. They only release records they love and only on vinyl (which they also love). There’s no business model better than “do what you love”. It’s a lesson that the rest of the business should but probably won’t learn.

We play a pretty good show to what is becoming our typical western Canadian audience. They’re attentive and enthusiastic, I just wish there were more of them.

After the show we hit the late night liquor store and retire to Owen’s place. Everyone takes turns DJing and digging through Owen massive record collection. I decide it’s time for bed once CL starts playing ELO.

Halloween – drive day

Five hours sleep and we’re up early again. Brian and I have breakfast with Ford Pier at Slickity Jim’s before gathering the rest of the band to start our drive east. It rains all day. I wind the van through the mountains for eight nerve wracking/boring hours before stopping in Golden on the BC-Alberta border. It always surprises me how early the sun goes down in the interior. We drive the last few hours through dark and heavy fog. Tomorrow we’re planning a trip to the Radium Hot Springs before we hit Calgary. Hopefully it stops raining.

We have a fairly crap dinner, get some rooms at a motel and watch Saw on TV.