chumpville

Welcome to England - Here's Your Tiny Bed (Pt 1)

2007-02-23T07:23:00.000-08:00

"Art is long and life is short and success is very far off"
J. Conrad

Day 1-2 Voyage to the End of the Dawn
Departed November 8 @ 8am from The Last Resort, Victoria, BC.
Arrived Nov 9 @ 7pm (eight hours in THE FUTURE) at The Blue Bell Inn, Hempstead, U.K.

When was the last time you travelled 36 hours (at great expense) to get to a hundred dollar gig?
I thought as much.
Pussy.

I went out last night to play this new open stage
(times are tough), and the guy I played with
complained that they'd charged him for beer and I was
like "Honey, I've driven 14 hours to pay for beer and
I'm a wino. You only had to come across town and your
girl friend drove you, so shut it!"

10 hour plane ride. Diona slept like a baby. I
couldn't and woke her up in full blown petulant frenzy
to help me find my book. I had looked on my own. I had
gotten all manner of people to lift up their feet and
stand up to look on their seats. Nothing. And I was at
the last chapter too. Memoirs of Montparnasse. I had
to know if there was a later price to pay for youthful
hedonism.
No reason. Just curious.
Anyway, when I woke up Diona, she found the slender
volume in two seconds tucked into the seat ahead of me
right where I'd left it.
Oh.
Sorry.
It wasn't in there when I looked I swear!
A million hours later, we arrive at Gatwick, kiss our
new best friend DJ GoodcopBadcop goodbye, get the
luggage, clear customs and then...
And then what?
Oh yeah. This part. How the hell to get to The Blue
Bell Inn which is in Hempstead, the mailing address of
which says "Near Saffron-Walden", down a country lane
in the middle of nowhere god only knows how far away?

Damn future. Sneaking up on me like that. Ok. Buses?
Trains? I don't know.
I hadn't slept and was not at my best.
Diona suggested we rent a car and my stomach dropped
to make room for my sinking heart. The whole driving
on the other side of the road thing, the roundabouts,
and the law that any time you rent a car, despite the
advertised price and no matter what country you're in
or for how long, it will cost you 600 dollars.
"No look. It's only 24 pounds a day", she says.
Despite every experience I've ever had, I want to
remain positive.
"Well, will you figure out the whole driving thing?"
"Of course. And it'll be cheaper than train fare for
two everywhere."
Mmm...
We rent something called a Hyundai Getz from the
Europecar kiosk and go meet it in the parking lot.
This is so weird. We feel like ADULTS or something.
Diona figures out the left-handed stick shift and the
other-footed clutch (the signals are backwards too!)
and we nose out into the first of many roundabouts.
For some reason, screaming like Pee Wee Herman as you
go around seems to help. Somehow we make it to the A69
which is what the lady said to do. Okay. Okay. Holy
shit we're in England! Driving! What a world!
Drove until dark and then some, down the motorway and
were both sort of wondering how the fuck we were gonna
find the place and then I started worrying if I had
even confirmed the show. Then I saw a sign for Norwich
which I recognized from the second season of "I'm Alan
Partridge", this culty obscure comedy show. Fuelled by
the excitement of seeing something "familiar", I
suggested that we take the exit.
We stopped at the first petrol station to ask
directions and holy fuck it was the EXACT RIGHT EXIT!!
A narrow winding country lane in the pitch dark save
for the glow of a few tiny hamlets and then straight
on through Saffron-Walden, where it was apparently dog
walking hour, and more twisty country lanes and there
it is. The Bluebell Inn. And in time for dinner even!
We opened the door and the pub was just as we left it
6 months ago, which made the whole adventure seem like
not such a big deal even though on the inside we felt
like mental cases.
My brain rewound back to the last time we were here
which caused me to cringe slightly. If you'll recall,
I slept on the bar room floor after allegedly giving a
clarinet concert and propositioning the bar tender. I
love that they invited me back. But then I guess it
would take a maniac to even find this place.
Cute show. There was a keyboard so we worked it into
the act. D. and I both wore black and white and looked
kind of like music students at a recital. That is,
until I opened my filthy mouth of course. Nice crowd
of about 12 people sat in brightly lit chairs. Very
attentive. Totally freaky.
When it was over we sat around the wood stove with Rod
and Marion the owners, their daughter, their friends
from out of town and the two greyhounds. Except for
the posters heralding the arrival of several other
Canadian bands, it felt like we were in an oil
painting from the nineteen hundreds. Or a rural
episode of Coronation Street.
Upstairs to the tiny beds to sleep the sleep of the
penniless international traveller.
"Welcome to England. Here's your tiny bed!"

Newcastle

"In a nation ruled by swine, all pigs are upward-mobile-and the rest of us are fucked until we can put our acts together. Not necessarily To Win, but mainly to keep from Losing Completely."
Hunter S. Thompson

You know it's gonna be a good show when the promoter
goes by the name Fish Finger Frank.
We pulled into town mid-afternoon, hid our stuff
behind the DJ booth in the upstairs bar and ditched
the car. Newcastle was grey and rainy and well, just
how you'd think. We strolled and eyed fashions in the
fancy stores in the main square while keeping an eye
out for the perfect place to eat. Found an Italian
place with red checkered table cloths, thin pizza,
salad, wine and you could smoke at the table!
When we finished it was only 6:30 so we strolled some
more and found a wine bar. Glasses of wine were two
pounds forty but bottles of wine were three pounds
twenty so what's a girl to do? Vocal warm-ups? Oiling
and stretching? Communing with the instrument?
Whatever.
It was a perfectly quiet dark bar for a while until
they blasted piercing Eurodisco through trebly
speakers to welcome the Friday After Work Crowd.
Shit. I was a little drunk. I had noticed something
funny with the gravity when I went downstairs to the
bathroom. Crazy bathroom with a motion activated
fountain.
Killed the bottle, drank some water and headed back to
the club. The Telegraph. Near the station. Found Fish
Finger Frank pacing around wringing his hands
anxiously awaiting us. There was an opening act named
Mick Oliver. Good songs.
We drank more wine and became his biggest fans.
The bar was half full of lonely dudes. Apparently this
is my Newcastle demographic. My 'fan base' as it were.

We played to the only two people radiating any light.
Two swarthy guys at the front table who seemed to be
Getting It. In the break, we went to talk to them and
discovered that they had just arrived from the
Dominican Republic to take a sustainable agriculture
course (in NEWCASTLE?!), spoke barely any English and
had just randomly come to the bar not knowing they
were gonna be seeing any music.
Us foreigners gotta stick together.
The show was kind of a blur. My throat and fingers
felt thick and it was hard to sustain the notes. Sold
a couple of CDs and procured a local hostage to guide
us back to Fish Finger Frank's house where there was
to be a little after bar party in our honour.
The local turned out to be one of the worst
direction-givers of all time, telling us to go left
just after passing the turn-off and various other
shotgun crimes.
It made me think back to when I was a kid in the
passenger seat and my mother, a nervous driver, would
ask me to check if anything was coming on my side
before she pulled onto the road. I used to think if
was funny to tell her the coast was clear and then
sharply inhale as she pressed the gas. Boy would she
get mad. As we drove with this guy I was silently
apologizing to her for thousands of past crimes of
this nature. And to Diona for making her drive. And
well the list goes on.
I was a remorseful, lonely, boozy chanteuse in
Newcastle.
Got to the house. Diona had been here before to score
some hash when we played Newcastle last time with
Po'Girl when it was the big show at the fancy place
crammed with fans. Of course. She had dropped a few
hints as to the condition of the house, but I payed
her no heed as we had no other option.
It was shambolic.
Filthy, the ubiquitous really hairy cat, fur
everywhere and the fireplace was actually a coal
grate! Like, there were actual bags of COAL beside the
fireplace!
We all huddled around on the living room floor.
Fish Finger Frank, his silent wife, the bad navigator,
the simpering superfan, me and Dee, possibly someone
else.
Diona started making some 'well I'm off to bed, that's
it for me' gestures but I implored her with my eyes to
stay for 'just one' as they were doing this in our
honour. I don't think she was feeling well, but that's
not really an option any more. Some travelling
people, presumably the ones that are going to outlive
me, are able to ignore any troubles the hosts have
gone to and simply do what they want, oblivious to any
ruffled feathers. Or maybe they don't even notice. Or
maybe it just takes a giant self-obsessed diva asshole
to succeed in any way in this world. Lord knows people
love to be abused... Hmm I wish I was more of an
asshole but I'm a sucky pack animal with watery
boundaries lacking the integrity to say it at the
time, emboldened later by the safety of being miles
away shut up in my room replaying the events in slower
time and skewing the details with perspective so that
I feel like more of a star.
So we stay up with the men. They play us some tracks
from Fish Finger Frank's band's new CD, the bad
navigator sings me opera while crouching over me, we
smoke some hash, the Simpering Superfan opens this
Special Wine He'd Been Saving. (O.K. so I'm a TOTAL
asshole. A remorseful asshole in denial. The worst
kind.) At some point, Frank left the room and his
mates gathered round.
The Bad Navigator says, "You know Frank's really a
super guy, I mean, despite the whole Ass Burgers
thing..."
I am taking a haul off the joint, nodding. Agreeing
until I get to the end of the statement, I cough up
the smoke, look up and say "Ass Burgers?!", hoping
it's just accent confusion (It sort of sounded like
this: "ahhz behguhs") but getting the worst mental
flashes that maybe Frank liked to have lady singers
shit in hamburger buns as his promoter fee or
something.
You never know.
The Bad Navigator blinks, not understanding the
question so I say it again.
"Ass Burgers? Like in Ass Burgers?"
Finally the shilling drops. He covers his mouth with a
hand suppressing a shocked laugh. "No. It's a
syndrome. A guy's name. Like Autism.
A-s-b-e-r-g-e-r's."
Oh. Like that book The Curious Incident of the Dog in
the Night. Right. They explained some more details,
like a crippling desire for meticulous order, social
awkwardness and other stuff until someone noticed that
Frank had returned and steered the conversation in
another direction.
We discovered later, looking it up in London, that one
of the things about Asberger's is that you think that
everyone's talking about you. Poor Frank. Made me
think of an interview I read with Courtenay Love. They
asked her why she was so weird that one year and she
said bluntly, "Oh well I think is was the... uh...
crack!"
She went on to say that crack makes you paranoid and
you think everyone's talking about you only since it
was her, they were!
I don't know. It's kind of a touchy subject for me. I
think everyone's crazy and I'm suspicious of any
sanctioned cures and the motives behind them in a
world where the word 'functional' is good and the word
'shameless' is bad.
Maybe I have become such a crazy loser slacker that I
am looking for excuses to absolve me from my guilt of
not playing along or fitting in. Actually, since I'm
able to 'pass' enough to travel and get gigs, not good
ones mostly, I mean I usually owe a little at the end,
but maybe it's the guilt of fence sitting. Like being
able to pass but not using it to succeed. Like dulling
some of your gut reactions down to even sleep after
being paid like a whore at the end of the night,
underpaid at that, for something you (used to) love to
do. All the discomfort of selling out with none of the
profit! It's like I'm a social agnostic and you know
if I were Jesus I'd hate a fence sitter more than
someone with convictions. Luckily, it's hard to
punish someone who's already in Hell. Maybe in the
next life I'll get to be a dog.

We slept until four pm the next day waiting for our
nervous hosts to leave so we could use their phone and
computer and make The Next Plan. I don't like missing
the light in a day. The evening always feels like I'm
on a movie set waiting for the shoot to be over so
they can turn the lights back on. Diona is still
quite queasy and the filthy house isn't helping. Also
it's been 24 hours since we've eaten anything. We are
sharing three brain cells between us. I want to go
find C.R. Avery and go crash his gig. Diona wants to
go find Charles in Ireby. So get this: Our research
informs us that that night Charles in Ireby is putting
on the C.R. Avery show, so everyone's a winner baby!
Just as we were escaping, Diona realized that the cat
had pissed all over her jeans and she almost puked
into the coal grate. Luckily she had nothing left to
puke.
Ended up at a falafel stand and where the vegetarian
souvlaki was a pita stuffed with french fries, a
couple strands of purple cabbage and drowned in
mayonnaise. Blah.
Many round-a-bouts later we wound our way down the
thin rain-slicked inky roads to Ireby to a cute little
hall and open arms and a nice house to stay at and
they let us open the show. It was sold out and they
dug us which felt good. C.R. Avery and his band were
fabulous. They even got the audience on their feet
DANCING at the end which takes work over here.
Back at the house down the lane later, a piano
playing party with C.R. and the boys broke out and
Charles agreed to be my U.K. booking agent which is
encouraging except for the having to come back to
England part...
The next day was a twelve hour drive in the rain
culminating with London traffic and Diona was really
sick and puking yellow foam and unable to eat
anything. Couldn't really blame her. The food was all
disgusting. So even though I was mildy terrified, to
atone for and quel the disgust at my own lack of
empathy, I offered to drive so she could rest in the
back seat for a while. We were in the parking lot of
the Motostop after having spent some time pushing some
mashed potatoes around on a plate near this family
who's son kept asking "Can rabbits swim? Mummy, can
rabbits swim? Can rabbits swim? Can rabbits swim?" But
they had a new baby now and were ignoring him. We left
right when I was about to snap and drown them all in
the rabbit pond for being so ugly.
Okay. Get in the driver's seat on the left. Put on the
seat belt no problem. Okay. No that's not the gear
shift that's the door handle. Right. Um okay clutch.
brakes. Nope. Other way round. Let's see. Shoulder
check. Can't see shit. It's just all red. Okay well
maybe the windows are backwards too. Let's concentrate
on this clutch situation. Backing up, backing up, not
stalling, BANG!
Smashed right into a mail truck, which explains why
the window was all filled up with red, and promptly
burst into tears thinking of the expense and the
bruised ego of my inner man. I wanted to save the day
not ruin it.
So now Diona not only has to drive, she has to console
me too as projectile tears splash down on 'my side' of
the dashboard. About five minutes later I can tell
that she is trying to suppress a slight smirk. Six
minutes later we are laughing our fucking heads off at
the sheer comedy of how fast the whole thing went
down. I was seriously in the driver's seat for under 2
minutes.
Twelve hours later we got to London and somehow made
it to my friend Paul's place in Stoke Newington. Other
than seeing Paul, London was so horrible this time
that I can't even bring myself to think about it let
alone write it down.
I think you can get the gist from a letter I sent to
my mother, and maybe like eight other people:

Cher Maman,
I imagine you are wondering about the new level of
debt currently accrued on the old Mark Family Visa
card and well, I can explain.
It ain't pretty and I'm not proud but here's the story
to date:
Firstly, I'm in Italy now, having left the grey
Orwellian misery of England that leaves one filled
with ineffectual rage, screaming at the skies like
Basil Fawlty. I can see now why you left the first
chance you were able.
Yesterday was, in a word, frustrating.
To bring you up to date, upon arriving at Gatwick, we
priced out the cost of taking trains for two
everywhere and decided to rent a car. �24 pounds a day
all inclusive. All was well. Diona said she'd figure
out the whole driving on the other side of the road
thing which I think I could have done but also it was
a standard. Then Diona got The New Fall Flu and was,
among other things, puking yellow foam and feeling
terrible so I offered to try driving so she could rest
and in under 5 seconds, while backing out of the
parking spot, I hit a postal truck and creased the
door (�75. I'd ticked the insurance waiver)
In Newcastle, we rang the rental place to see if we
could keep said car (a Hyundai Getz, for the record)
for a couple more days, figuring that to return it to
Gatwick and then take the train into London and then
out to Luten would cost about the same.
I asked them if there was a fee to change the drop-off
destination because, hey man, I've been around, I
ain't no rube and the woman said it would be �13
pounds which I thought sounded too good to be true but
since I'm working on this Positive Thing now I thought
maybe I'd believe her.
Well, she lied. It was �150 and we phoned the number
and pouted at the woman and asked for the manager but
we ain't in Canada anymore which we'd began to notice
when we came out of my friend Paul's flat in Stoke
Newington earlier in the day to find the car 'clamped'
(Just like on Ab Fab) with two tickets on it even
though we had a perfectly valid guest pass displayed
prominently in the window. We phoned the number and
asked to speak to the manager but we ain't in Canada
any more and nothing's fair and do you think they
actually want more people in London? It's survival of
the fittest baby, like a game of chicken, like if you
can't handle feeling this shitty all the time, well
you're clearly not cut out to live in London so shove
off sister!
It's �115 to unclamp the car which is EXTORTION but
the plane's gonna leave and we have to return the car
by 3pm or else it's another day's charge so what are
you going to do?
And the tickets are �100.
Oh yeah and we're exhausted of course, partially due
to my sketchy knowledge of England's geography-put
1000 miles on the car between two gigs, and on top of
everything, man is the food crappy. (What do they
gotta do that to the tomatoes for?) So a thousand
dollars poorer, we boarded the discount flight to
Italy and I put on sunglasses, buried my nose in a
book and cried hot hot tears of deep despair thinking
it's not just about the money, it's the feeling of
being covered in loser dust and being made to pay
because you're trying things a different way and well
maybe this is the cost of all the joy etc.
I'm thinking of you and how you'll worry about the
money and how I don't want you to because I know
you're having some unexpected expenses now and I'm
grateful that you help me at all and I'm gonna pay it
back as soon as I can by hook or by crook.
Sorry about all this.
love you,
xoox
cm

Italy - It's Very Typical of the Region (Pt 2)

2007-02-23T06:59:00.000-08:00

Italy

Keith (old friend from Vancouver, bass player, living
in Italy with his girlfriend Serena, general awesome
dude) picked us up at the Bergamo airport in our fancy
new touring vehicle. Andrea, the guy who booked the
tour, had wangled a sponsorship from the Kia company
by chatting up the president at some corporate party.
I suspect that when the president sobered up, he might
have forgotten and from the looks of things tried to
do some fancy shuffling and when that failed, ended
giving us his own personal car.
The President's car. Back warmers, DVD player, a
G.P.S. system, rain sensitive wipers, all kinds of
fancy ass crap.
So weird how your luck can change in a day. It's like
weather.
Keith drove us into Milan to see Gurf Morlix and Sam
Baker (We'll call them The Texans) play at a small
club called Nidaba. I had always wanted to meet Gurf.
He played guitar with Lucinda Williams for 9 years and
he's produced a lot of great 'lady records' and has
always seemed like a cool guy from far away. I
suspected that one day we would meet but never thought
it would be in Italy.
Turns out Gurf and Sam would be staying at Keith and
Serena's with us.
The Texans were on stage singing about The War because
that's what American folk singers do. I got to perfect
my one Italian phrase:
"do-ay bee-carry de vino rosso per fevorre"
(Two glasses of red wine please.)
By the end of the show, The Texans had us all on
stage- The Python and a ukulele player representing
Milano, this girl from Brooklyn, me and D. and some
others- in a We are the World style finale of "I
Shall be Released".
When in Rome...
I suspected that The Texans, perhaps nervous at being
so displaced, were bumping up their "American-ness"
and pulling corny shit they'd never dream of trying
back home which, let's face it, is what Europe is for!

Andrea, the booker, had executed the plate-spinning
task of booking 6 tours for 6 different acts in the
same venues but staggered relay-style like The Amazing
Race.
Andy White was there with a Croatian keyboard player,
Gurf and Sam, Me and Diona, the girl from Brooklyn and
our old friend Neville would be coming from Toronto in
a couple of days. Andrea also works for Lifegate
Radio and was making an album of his own songs.
Musically his two heroes are Bruce Springsteen and
Townes Van Zant. The only time the acts would all meet
up was at the Townes Van Zant tribute night in Milan.
Before we left, Diona and I had been learning our
songs from a cassette a former suitor gave me before
he wised up.
Guys always play me that "Caroline" song about the
dead hooker thinking I'll like it. I don't really. For
starters, the name's Caro-LYN and it's not such an
inspirational tale and well, there's just better songs
out there.
But I'm jumping ahead. While reminiscing. Weird.
At the end of the night, Keith and Serena drove me,
Diona, Sam and Gurf back to Barlassina and we fooled
around with 'our' fancy car's G.P.S. system. As we
drove, a woman's voice with a clipped English accent
would announce "In two hundred metres turn left".
We decided that her name was Angela. The Texans
decided they were in love with Angela.
We noticed a funny thing about Angela; whenever she
says an Italian place name it's like she becomes this
whole other person, possessed by an Italian lady.
"In 600 metres, turn right in the direction of
MEE-LAH-NO"
We decided that the name of her Italian split
personality was "Eez-a-bella".

Pegaso, Arcola

My favourite bar in Italy and here's where we start
the tour! The hospitality of Pegaso is legendary. Out
of the car and into some vino. I spied dreamy Fabio
behind the bar reaching for the good stuff the second
he saw me. I guess my repetition precedes me.
Patio pounding and chain smoking until sound check
with Matteo who is also dreamy but very tired tonight.
I see the long nails on his right hand and remember
that he is a classical guitarist and ask him to play
with us (The Python couldn't make it) telling him that
music is the only cure for exhaustion. He agrees and
we set up the gear and it's back to the patio until we
are summoned for dinner. Andrea, the owner, in honour
of all the 'Andrea bands' coming through his bar has
decided to implement "American Food Week". Our hearts
kind of sank but the bean soup, burritos and apple pie
were mercifully unlike anything you'd find in America.
Delicioso!
The show goes well and people came and Matteo and
Diona sounded fabulous together, chasing each other
through matching riffs within my songs. So good. We
even got an encore at the end. And after the encore,
Diona and Matteo stayed on the stage performing as a
duo and it was amazing.
Keith and I just sat at a table drinking and
marvelling. I love this place. They paid us 350 Euros
to eat, drink and play music!
We ended up staying at Fabio's place where he lives
with his beautiful girlfriend and crazy cat Monk.
Woke up to coffee and Friends in Italian on the T.V.
You should hear Joey's voice! It's hilarious.
Then back to the scene of the crime for lunch.
Oh yes. After all that they give you lunch the next
day too. The Texans pulled up outside just in time to
join us as they were that night's band. Or maybe they
were just stopping in to absorb some hospitality. I
can't remember now but onion rings were involved.
It's weird. The Americans not singing their own songs,
the Italians not making their own food.
It's like everybody's thinking "Oh but I thought you'd
want this!"
Just be yourselves everybody and it'll all work out I
promise.
It's like that weird fable where the woman cuts off
her hair to buy her man a wrist watch without knowing
that he's cut off his arms to buy her a hair clip or
however that one goes...

Osnago

La Locomotiva. The communist train station. The tiny
place with the two sound men. The Python joined us
tonight on the guitar. He looks like a sexy walrus in
leather and plays like James Burton.
Stefano, the cute young guy who runs the club meets
us, gets us drinks, herds us in to sound check and
then takes us to his father's restaurant up the
mountain. The food is amazing and it looks like the
staff is having a wild party.
Stefano says it's not a party. Just a regular night.
The staff are all gorgeous waitresses in low-cut
gowns. Shortly after we are seated, the waitresses are
all behind the bar trying to tickle Stefano's father
who is also a handsome devil.
"Stefano where is your mother?" we ask.
"Oh she is in the kitchen cooking."
Hmm. Seems like a raw deal.
We ask Stefano who does the hiring and he says with a
grin, "My Father but when it comes to hiring
waitresses he is blind. It's all based on skill."
We all look over at Stefano's father who is literally
covered in waitresses and nod sceptically.
Pasta and then more pasta and then some pasta.
If it wasn't for the traditional espresso and grappa
jolt at the end of the meal I really don't think I'd
be able to get on stage. It's hard to sing about being
poor and lonesome when you're full and the place is
packed so we opted for the train medley/novelty song
set which the crowd seemed to dig. I mean I like to
think they did. There were encores and such.
On the way home we made the car go 200!
And found a product called "Drive Beer" at the
Autogrille.
Oh yeah. Checked the trap lines and found word from
back home:

Hey Ms C!
Hope the trip is going well, and you are in fine
fettle. Its raining like crazy here, so the out door
trips are few and far between. However,....an
opportunity has come up for me, in that I can move in
with Hoff, and have the back cabin at her place for
myself and my toys.The date for this to happen is Jan
1st. Because folks are shifting around and moving from
that house, the need for me to be quick in this
decision is important.
So I guess what I’m saying is that I'm giving my
notice at Chambers St for that date, a month and a
half from now.
take care,
xo
Tolan

Nuts. Fucker beat me out of there.

The Townes Van Zant Tribute Night

Word around the chiminea is that the city of Milan has
implemented a non-driving day in an attempt to combat
The Smog Problem. Serena got us some documents somehow
that would absolve us from the Hefty Fines is we were
to get pulled over by The Carabinieri. You don't ever
want to get pulled over by The Carabinieri. They dress
like Mussolini and carry machine guns. Oh. In the
Italian phrase book I found at Keith's house, there is
a chapter called "Don't Mention the War". Seriously.
It says that Italians don't like to talk about It and
visitors are encouraged to stick to the topics of
Architecture or Film.
Went for lunch in Barlassina, the Canadians, the
Italians and the Texans, and it was a nice place but
the T.V. was on and tuned into this game show where
amateur lingerie models with fake tits 'compete' for
I don't know what. At one point, after they showed
them changing, they put a bag over each girls head and
had her identify different things with her mouth.
"Mmm. I don't know. A penis?"
Naturally, the skinniest one with the biggest tits won
every time.
And on a Sunday too.
After lunch we hung around the house practising our
songs. I was sitting on the floor and Diona and Keith
were facing me on the couch. Sam was at one end of the
big table reading a magazine and Serena was at the
other end with her blueprints and plastic triangles
studying for her architectural exam. It felt sort of
weird to practise with everybody in the room and to
pretend I didn't care. Gurf was right beside me with
his back to the wood stove warming his ass. Halfway
through the song I stopped and asked him if he felt
like playing the guitar because he's only like MY
FAVOURITE GUITAR PLAYER EVER and happened to be you
know STANDING RIGHT THERE AND ALL and he snapped open
his case and started playing and it was awesome. All
those little Tex-Mex runs just like on all the Lucinda
albums. So perfect.
Loaded up the Kia with gear and Texans, gave Angela
the destination co-ordinates and hit the Autostradde
in the direction of Milano.
The "no-driving" law didn't seem to affect the amount
of traffic whatsoever. It turns out that if you have a
newer car or a hybrid or a smart car you can still
drive. Once again the rich are rewarded and I don't
know why people even talk about the rules in Italy
because no one ever obeys them.
Like how they're all allegedly religious but then have
lingerie models with bags on their heads on day time
television. Apparently the national nightly news
features The Weather Twins.
The club is a proper rock club. I was beginning to
wonder if they had them here. Found Neville playing
fooseball when we walked in freshly plucked from the
airport by his driver, Stefano from La Locomotiva.
A lone pizza crust lingered in a take-out box on the
bar. Guess we missed dinner but we were issued some
drink tickets and given printed sheets with the show
order. I was 15. Keith was 4. Gurf was 25. Everyone
wanted to trade with Keith as thirst trumps ambition
after dark.
The night rolled on. So much acoustic guitar. So many
maudlin lyrics sung in all manner of accents. This
crazy American rocker woman sucked all the energy out
of the room when she hit the stage and then did a
SECOND song she wrote about when she used to "drink
with Townes". It was then that I kind of snapped. I
had Neville in a conversational headlock.
I said, "Man if he was fat bald and living no one
would give a good goddamn how fucking great the dude's
lyrics were!" perhaps a little too loudly, high from
indoor smoking and no dinner.
"We should honour the living, man!" I said sounding
vaguely like Joni Mitchell on that footage from the
Isle of Wight festival.
I know Neville is old friends with Princess Deborah
who is a total force of nature so I know he can handle
me no problem as he is no stranger to crazy lady
outbursts.
Suddenly it was my turn. I said I certainly hoped that
they were planning on having one of these things for
me in a couple of years. I think it went okay.
Possibly some slight slurring. The stage lights were
pretty bright so it was hard to gauge any kind of
audience reaction. The next thing I remember is
playing piano with Andrew Hardin on Dead Flowers. And
then there was a gang bang finale. Diona and I played
the piano together and she covered me on the solo.
The last thing I remember is stopping at a roadside
truck for grilled sandwiches and throwing fatty bacon
out the Kia's back window and then waking up drooling
with greasy teeth and powerfully thirsty in front of
the crash pad back in Barlassina.
But like old Townes said, "Where you been is good and
gone all you keep is the getting there."
The next day there was a gang lunch for all involved
in the tribute. Pasta and (oh why the hell not?) wine.

Feeling the slight starch glow reminded of My Trip
from the night before so I proposed a toast to all the
living drunk song writers because ladies and gentlemen
that's a fucking accomplishment!"
And with that stepped outside for a smoke and almost
got wailed by a car whizzing down the alley.
Luckily Neville grabbed me by the collar and pulled me
back before they had a chance to announce next year's
tribute.

Brescia

The following is an excerpt from a letter I wrote to
someone nice:

"Weird show in a university-ish kind of place-You know
when the building's all new and totally cold and
nobody knows how to work anything but they're real
excited about trying everything and then you have to
tell them you're kind of a country outfit and politely
talk them out of the rave-style laser light show and
maybe less reverb on the fiddle since the room's made
entirely of stone and kind of echoey anyway? You know
that kind of a place where everything's new and the
staff are all new and trying not to get fired and
there's way too many of them and when you have to send
back the horse(!) (vegetariano per favorre) you know
it'll probably get the shy Croatian girl fired and
she'll have to go back to being a field hooker cause
it's all your fault for being a gluttonous picky
American asshole? Yeah. That kind of place."

I have decided that the definition of Hell is when
it’s ALMOST perfect.
Went by La Locomotiva afterwards to drop off Neville
back at his host family and well, maybe to see if the
bar was still open... Ended up going to a party up the
street where there was a hookah and a small dog and
Bob Marley on the stereo. Talked 'French'-ish with
this silver haired guy in a beret who was, I think,
suggesting that I should not worry about yesterday and
tomorrow but only today and when I looked up from the
bong and figured out what he was trying to say I burst
out laughing because I don't really need any
encouragement to, like, Live In the Moment.
Meanwhile, across the table, Diona's guy was holding
up his thumb and finger at her and she was going,
'gun? loser?' so we called in a translator and
apparently, he was showing her his, uh, 'dimensions'
in case she was interested in 'going to the mountain'
whatever that means.
Best party I've been to in ages.

Maybe this was the night that we made the car do 200
and found the Drive Beer.
Who can say?

Italy - In the Face of the Face (pt 3)

2007-02-23T06:46:00.000-08:00

A night off.

Keith and I took Diona to the airport (Big Po'Girl
show in Vancouver. Booked months in advance) and
thought about driving to Corregio to catch Neville's
show at the prison wine bar but even our inner drunks
were tired and thinking about the next five shows.
Robert Altman died today and they showed Nashville on
Italian television. They would never have aired it if
he was ALIVE. Sorry. Guess I'm still on my Honour the
Living trip.
Hosts gone to bed. Fire dying down.
Maybe tomorrow I won't eat all the cheese.

Milano

Chocolate gorganzola pasta (You only need to try that
once) at a restaurant where semi-famous men were
eating huge plates of raw meat. Played at Nidaba which
was the club we went to to see Gurf and Sam play when
we first arrived.
There was a man there that takes photos of everyone
with no film in his camera. Conceptual.
Joy and Paola, who I met last time, came ands and took
actual pictures and Serena brought her one armed
friend. Keith and Python were awesome but I was
missing Diona little bit. Or a "leetle beet" as they
say here.

Frosinone

Everything in Italy seems convoluted and mysterious to
us Canadians. It frustrates Keith considerably. When
Angela haughtily announced, "You have arrived at your
destination", we were pointed at a farmer's field in
the middle of nowhere. I've played some weird places
before but clearly this was not the venue. We phoned
the guy from the club to find out where we should go
and he tells us it's the Prima Estella Hotel only
there's no way we'll ever find it because it's not
really called that and it's not on any road with a
name or in any town (!) so he'll come and meet us at
the gas station.
The gas station is crammed and busy and probably the
most stressful place on earth to meet someone.
Especially if you've never met them before and don't
know what to look for and have no way of knowing if
you're even at the right gas station.
This is the weird part. In Canada, there's always an
address. In Canada maybe they don't feed you and
they'll probably rip you off a little at the end of
the night, but there's always an address!
A man appears at the Kia's window waving for us to
follow him.
He takes us back to the place we thought it might be
and tells us to check in and rest and that another man
will come back for us at around seven to lead us to
the club.
The desk lady wants our passports. I look at Keith but
he tells me it's normal.
We chillax in the room watching creepy Italian game
show television drinking birra.
The club is an A.R.C.I.- pronounced 'archie'- like
Locomitiva- Your basic socialist/communist
collective obligatory picture of Che Guevara behind
the bar kind of joint.
Eight mangy dogs lurk around outside. I want to
befriend them but they all seem a little weird. The
club is a big square room with no heat. A couple of
guys are there already. One wants to give me his CD
and be my myspace friend. He feels like the first guy
you meet when you change high schools. the one with
the desperate eyes who wants to 'get to you first' to
show you around and 'warn' you about the others. He
speaks English very well.
Keith and I are nervosa about our recent duo status
(Diona's gone, The Python had to work) so we
half-jokingly ask the bar tender if he knows any
guitar players, or accordion players even- any
soloistas per fevorre? The guy picks up the phone and
calls someone, speaks for a few seconds, nods and then
turns to us saying, "You are lucky. He was supposed to
go on a date tonight."
While waiting for dinner to be ready we go out back
to smoke. I giant rat runs across the alley and the
eager boy says "Oh that is a zoccola! That is a slang
word specific to this region." He then tells us that,
aside from rat, it also means whore, pussy and clog.
In Italy, EVERYTHING is either "typical of the region"
and/or slang for penis or vagina.
I am entranced with the word and write in on my hand
so I can remember to say it into the microphone a lot
during the show.
'Zoccola!'
Dinner is served. Pasta for eight. I am the only girl.
It's always mostly dudes at the communist clubs. Got
me thinking about communism in general. How it's
always the people that don't have anything that are
way more into the concept of sharing than those that
do. And how the communist club owner invariably comes
from a rich family. We clink our glasses together in a
toast that the eager guy explains means "In the face
of the enemy!" I look at my wine glass and ask Keith
"What if the wine IS the enemy?" and he said "Well
then we're drinking in the face of the face!" which
became the cheers of the night.
When they brought out the salad (Thank Christ!) a tall
bald young guy came in carrying a Marshall amp. Hmm.
This could go either way. He came and sat with us and
we introduced ourselves. Nicola (Ni-COAL-a). Total
sweetheart. Studied music in London. Speaks English.
He made a few comments that let me know he was gonna
be an awesome guitarist.
The show goes well. The place filled up. Nicola is
amazing and turns on a dime. He plays a really worn in
Telecaster in that loopy kind of Mark Knopfler way,
like my friend Phil, that works really well with my
songs. Keith played great. It was kind of nerve
wracking because everyone in the place was a musician.

Went out to visit the dogs in the break and met the
most beautiful girl I've ever seen. Elaria. Studied in
Boston. Spoke English. Into music.
After the show I was standing at the bar with the
original eager guy and a second eager guy when this
other guy comes up to the bar, orders a drink and
starts reading my palm. He's pretty cute so I'm kind
of into it. He says, "You are an artist and you'll
never have to worry about the future..." And I'm all
swoony and patting my hair going, "Really? It says
that?", even though back in the day, when I ran out of
money when I was living in London, I used to put on a
head scarf, sit outside Camden Station and pull that
very scam. "There is a lot of discrepancy between your
head and your heart etc"
So the first eager guy fucks off disgusted but the
second eager guy, who has known me a shorter amount of
time and is therefor still eager, grabs my hand and
says to the palm reader, "If you are trying to find
out what she is by looking at her hand, you need only
do this!" and flips my hand over to reveal the word
"Zoccola!" in flaming ballpoint.
Rat, whore, pussy, clog.
Situation. Comedy.
I do okay when I'm the only girl in a dimly lit
smoogie bar at the end of the night.

Salerno

This is my second trip to Italy and up until now
nothing, except Arcola I suppose, has really looked
like the Italy of the mind. Things are surprisingly
modern and we've been staying in the suburbs which are
never pretty. I mean, aesthetically, Italian suburbs
kick the ass of say, Vancouver suburbs with all the
box stores and pre-fab houses, but it's not the image
you'd conjure upon hearing the word "Italy". Salerno
is it. On the water, old old buildings, narrow cobble
stone alleys, those cool marble buttresses that hold
the buildings apart from each other that some people
live in, a pedestrian street of shopping and cafes.
This is Italy baby!
Angela was in a mood today. She kept interrupting The
Family Guy episode we were watching to say, "Watch for
fog up ahead, two hundred metres." Only it wasn't
foggy and she'd never mentioned the weather before.
Maybe I pushed a button...
Everyone in Milan and their dog told us, if we were
going to Salerno not to leave anything in our car. I
wondered if it was a North-South ignorant fear thing
like 'those people down there are all thieves and
maniacs who'll kill you for a cigarette!' or if it was
a real concern like East Van.
The club is another A.R.C.I. but a small fancy one.
It's in an alley that you're not permitted to drive
down. So the guy from the club meets us and we unload
the gear and he takes us down to the water to a pay
parking lot and he says "Don't leave anything in your
car!"
So maybe it is a real problem.
He then takes us to where we're staying for the night.
He calls it a 'Hotel' but I see the tell-tale tree
symbol from when I was eighteen in London and it's a
goddamn youth hostel.
My mind conjures images of sharing the shower with
dread-locked Australians, toast crumbs in the
margarine tub at 6am, bed bugs and well, eager
youthful backpackers. Most troubling is if we play
until two and they kick us out at 10, that's no sleep
which doth make a bitch quite cranky. And I'm already
there. Also, I am basically experiencing what can
best be described as a nosebleed of the cunt. Haven't
been able to find any protezione so am basically
shoving toilet paper down there and praying that I
don't leave it behind anywhere when I stand up. Neko
has a theory that as you get older your body gets
angrier and angrier for not having children. I think
it's more like it gets more and more unbelievably
painful each time so that eventually death will be a
relief.
At the hostel, they take our passports and
fingerprints and we cross through a giant piazza with
columns and a fountain to the elevator.
The room isn't bad. There is a bathroom. There is a
toilet seat. Two tiny hard beds and some bunk beds.
(For our son Nicola. We had convinced him to play the
Salerno show with us.) The window opens onto
beautiful building tops and the ocean.
I know that both Keith and I are eyeing the bathroom.
I do the honourable thing and leave him to it in hopes
that he will return the favour.
I go down the alley to the water, crossing through the
joggers on the boardwalk. It looks kind of like San
Diego. There's palm trees.
I go down to the water. I want to get in it so bad but
no one else is. There's some old plastic bottles
washed up on shore and I can see some stray cats are
living in a pile of driftwood, but the water itself
doesn't look too bad.
I take off my shoes and socks and wade in the surf and
it's magic. I walk along the shore wondering if
everyone is thinking, "Stupid foreigner" or "How
delightful to witness such a beautiful sense of
childlike freedom in these modern times" when the
smell hits. Like dirty diapers or mouldy coffee
grounds or a toilet maybe. I am trying to identify the
smell when a used condom washes over my toe and then I
realize that where I am standing is where the sewage
comes out. Just like back home in Victoria where I
never walk the dog. Ugh.
So I have to put my socks back on to fit them into my
boots and my feet are all sewery and sandy and I HAVE
to have a shower stat. I go back to the room and
Keith is passed out on the bed. I thought he might
leave when I got back but I guess our deal was all in
my head cause he ain't moving. Fine. I bring all my
stuff into the bathroom because I'm going to stay in
there a long time. I get undressed and I'm covered in
blood and sewage and open the shower door and am just
about to turn on the water when I realize that there
are no towels. Fucking Hostels. Hostiles. I suppress a
KeiteIian scream, get dressed, take the elevator
downstairs trying to remember the Italian word for
towel and approach the front desk. A young man is
working on a computer smoking under the non- smoking
sign with his back to me. I can't remember the
Italian word for towel so I ask him
in English and he disappears for ages before coming
back with one thin white towel. I go to grab it but he
tells me it's 4 Euros. Fine. I toss him a fiver
thinking that If I have to pay I won't feel half as
bad for what I'm gonna do to that towel and start to
walk away.
He tells me to wait and starts keying in data to the
computer. He wants my room number and passport info
and there, is of course , a receipt to be printed. I
am sighing heavily and throwing my head back like an
outraged American movie star. Can't a bitch just take
a fucking shower in this country?

(You know, I've been reading this book Amy lent me
about this guy who raises three abandoned bear cups in
a cabin in Northern B.C. and compared to him, my
complaints now seem bourgeois at best but I think that
the definition of Hell is when it's ALMOST perfect.)

I take the elevator back up and lock myself in the
bathroom, take off my clothes and get in the shower.
The shower is tiny. It's basically a raised platform
with these sliding hard plastic dealios that sort of
join in the back. It barely fits a body. I am just
about to turn on the water again when I realize that
there is no soap. I let out a long silent
"FUUUUUUUUUCK" and then I realize that I have some
olive soap in my bag that I bought for The Maintenance
Man. Yes!
Okay so back in the shower, pull the curtains together
and the shower head is one of the hand held variety
but there's nowhere to hang it so you have to hold it.
Okay so soap up first and then rinse I guess? I drop
the soap and reach down to get it but the shower is so
small that to bend over, I have to open the doors to
accommodate my ass. I feel like Lucille Ball only
angrier.
I stay in the bathroom so long that eventually Keith
knocks and asks if I am all right.
I whip open the door fully dressed and made up with
all my sewage-ey clothes washed in olive soap and hung
to dry. He seems impressed with the laundry.
We hit the town. Heading down tiny alleys until we
find the pedestrian shopping street and eye the shoe
stores and cafes and it feels so good to be walking.
End up at an outdoor cafe for snacks and vino where
homeless people keep trying to sell us weird things.
Flowers, ceramic lions. I want to tell them that I'm
just barely one step away from being one of them and
then I think about the fucking KIA with the GPS and
the back warmers and that I'm at an outdoor cafe in
Italy and holy shit, am I a fucking yuppie? Maybe
everybody thinks they really don't have much. I REALLY
don't have much. After England, I have much less then
nothing which makes me very uncomfortable. There but
for the grace of the mother Visa go I. But whatever,
Salute! You only live once right? In the face of the
face! The show went well despite the weird
microphone. Very directional. Only this one spot the
size of a nail head would produce any sound and so if
you moved it would feel like your voice was giving
out. Very unnerving and not so satisfying but we made
it out alive and paid in full which is saying
something.
The hostel, of course, threw us out at 10am despite
our heroic efforts to treat the matter of the knocking
desk clerk with "ignortion". He was wise to us and I
suspected that this technique had been tried there
before.
Said goodbye to Nicola and drove like madmen to Arcola
to catch Neville's show. He said we could play with
him and we arrived in time for dinner and they fed us
all and the show was awesome and after we all sat
around a table playing guitar and singing songs.
Andrea, the owner was singing all these sad Irish
songs. He lived in Scotland when he was younger and
had the time of his life. Fabio took us home with him
after the show. I'm supposed to send him a pink capo
when I get home. What's really funny is that I thought
he said "I vant a beeg cowboy" and I was like "Yeah.
Me too! Let's catch the morning flight to Alberta!"
but it turned out it was the pink capo he was after
and I already have one of those.
Woke up after a car-crash coma style sleep and walked
to 'town' in my slept-in funeral clothes in the bright
sunshine back to the scene of the crime in time for
lunch. "American Food Week" was officially over. We
had pasta con olio y aille, fromaggio, insalata, vino,
espresso, grappa and indoor afternoon cigarettes with
The Owner and The Python and Neville and Keith and
then drove through The Cinque Terra (The Five Lands)
with all the tiny twisty roads, vertical villages and
terraced mountains where the trees and stuff look like
they came from an H.O. train set.

Dear J,
The shows are done but
I'm still here counting down the hours. Neville just
went into Milano for a beezness meeting and my host
family's gone to Palermo for the architectural exam.
I'm staying here hogging the vacant house. Alone at
last. The Italians don't believe that people ever want
to be alone. It takes some fancy dancing to escape
their clutches. My neck is sore from nodding and
smiling and at my most paranoid, I suspect the
Italians are feeding us so much to fatten us up for
the final cannibalisto festa!
Or maybe I don't have to eat everything...
The guy that booked the tour is coming by later to
collect his fee. Ah well, At least they let me hold
the money for a little bit.
See you real soon,
xo
cm

Sweetheart,
Thank you so much for looking up the buses. You're an
angel. And I'm so glad it was you that told me of The
Vampire's fate. It would have really sucked to hear it
from any one else. I mean it totally sucks but I'm
glad it was you. I sort of don't believe it though
because everybody knows vampires live forever. I
guess I should probably stop calling him that.
Poor Neville. He came home with fancy wine from Milano
for us and after a mere one bottle, Andrea sent the
e-mail about how much money he was gonna take from us
and then I called you and heard The News and sort of
started bawling like a Broadway actress just as Andrea
pulled up in the alley to take us back to that weird
place in Brescia place which didn't exactly cheer me
up.
When I hung up the phone, Neville saw my face and
asked, "Do you want me to be nice to you?" and I said
"Fuck no!'". So then he said "Well then pull yourself
together woman and I'll give you a hug later!' which
was kind of awesome. God bless the stiff upper lip.
(By the way, the Croatian girl still has her job!)
Couldn't help thinking how much The Vampire would have
fucking HATED that place. At the end of the night I
had basically turned INTO him. Howling like a wounded
animal at all the hypocrisy and horror.
Later on, I got to see Neville snap. The band was sort
of brutal for two song writers to have to sit through.
Like taking chefs to McDonald's or something. But
Andrea and Python were digging it and every so often
they'd look over nodding and smiling at us and we'd
have to cease our elaborate "kill me now" pantomimes.
And after the third hour Neville, who is the most
relentlessly positive chin up go-towards-the-light
person I know just fucking snapped. He was crying into
his napkin over his pizza, which, by the way, looked
like a meat graveyard.
Good times.
Yup. Stayed at the party too long once again.
Anyway by tomorrow night all this will look like
something I want...
xo cm

Pulled an all -nighter in London. Spent some time at
Luten airport then caught the 1:45 bus to Gatwick. Was
having the best dream when I was awoken by the bus
driver shaking me saying, "Souf Terminal luv?"
Spent a few hours waiting and hitting the Bailey's
display in various disguises. It was on special at the
duty free and they were giving out free samples.
When I was going through the X-ray machines, this kid
started screaming, "I want my Louie! I want my Louie!
I want my Louie!"
The big dark security man had taken her doll and was
going to run him through the machine and he leans over
and he has these great big caterpillar eyebrows and
garlic breath and says "Louie vants to go through the
tunnel!" to the kid who starts really freaking out. "I
want my Louie! I want my Louie! I want my Louie!"
The kid was sort of voicing every body's feelings. It
made me kind of misty. I mean nobody really wants to
take off their boots and surrender their stuff and be
herded like cattle, it's just something you resign
yourself to as you get older.

This is an actual conversation that went on inside my
head on the plane:
Voice A-"Look at you. This cannot continue. Maybe you
have to get a job."
Voice B- "You can't get a job! It's all computers
now!"
Final assessment: Guess I'm into this music thing for
the long haul.

The Home Stretch

Made it to Vancouver and the Honey Sisters came to get
me in the Mad Max Volvo and there was wine and
vegetables and everyone was speaking sweet English and
I was so grateful but then then the next day, still
had to get back to this fucking island. There's a rule
that for some reason, the trip back to Victoria will
take however long the trip to Vancouver was and the
Volvo won't start when it gets wet so we pushed it out
of the way and dug the other car out of the snow but
then ran out of gas and got stuck and had to push the
car and got a snootful of slush when the tires grabbed
and wet feet and missed a ferry and then finally got
on the five and then the bus and to the liquor store
because they seized my wine at the airport in Italy
because it was obviously some sort of terrorist juice
and there, outside Big Bad John's, amidst the smoking
hobos, was Tolan looking kinda wobbly and I was
getting out of the taxi in midnight blue fur just back
from Italy and it felt so weird, so I did the
honourable thing and pulled my hat brim down
hoping we didn't see each other.
Got to the Maintenance Man's house and when he said
something about ladies and drinking, I somehow
accidentally took a bite out of my wine glass.
Seriously.
I think the trip home was a little stressful.
I apologized and he said, "Well I only have them for
you" which I thought was quite sweet.
Practised my new hobby of passing out mid-sentence.
Tried to get my stuff all the way home the next
morning but couldn't scrape the ice off the car or get
it to move so walked home contemplating the epic task
of moving out.
Decided that as usual, finding a box of money would
definitely take the edge off.
Also decided that even though I'm broke and it's
stormy and I might have to move, It feels so good to
be home. I'm going to watch movies and do dishes and
dust and do all the normal stuff normal people do just
to get along!

xo
Carolyn Mark
The Last Resort, Victoria, BC
Dec '06

Queens of the Hootenanny Part I

2007-01-25T19:31:00.000-08:00

The Cast: The Queens of the Hootenanny Tour featuring
The Queen of Hearts Miss Jenny Whiteley (guitar and
vocals) and The Queen of Clubs Miss Carolyn Mark
(guitar,wurlitzer, shaker and vocals),
accompanied by The Ace of Diamonds Miss Diona Davies
(violin and vocals).
The Vehicle: My Mother's 1989 Toyota Camry
The Mission: The funnest easiest tour ever.

Calgary Airport
I was standing near the taxidermied bobcat and
Stampede buffalo display waiting for Jenny when I
heard the announcement.
They are holding a 'seized items' sale on the third
floor. Ah these post 9-11 times...
I've had so many cork screws taken from me, I'm
starting to feel like a terrorist myself. And now the
liquids. Oh. Get this: According to certain fashion
magazines, dry shampoo is making a comeback. Yeah. Now
that no liquids are allowed on planes, guess who's
waiting in the wings? That's right. Dry shampoo. Wanna
make a bet that dry shampoo is behind the whole thing?
To totally digress for a moment, The Spinach Ban is
more troubling to me. I mostly just use conditioner
anyway but spinach is my formula man!
I wonder what really happened. Did Arugula have a nude
picture of a spinach executive with a goat or
something? Is it a Pee Wee Hermann/ Micheal Jackson/
George Micheals type of fall from grace/publicity
spin? Does Earth Bound Farms control all the spinach
in the world? God. After years of flawless
nourishment, one old lady keels over and now spinach
is jerking off a small boy in a public toilet and
can't get a gig. You work with wood your entire
life...
Do I have to find a dealer?
Where was I? Oh yeah. The airport. Seized items sale.
A room full of lighters. A room full of Swiss army
knives. Drawers full of lap top memory chips. Boxes of
polar fleece vests and gortex jackets. Half a bottle
of tequila. Acres of cork screws. (I think I
recognized some of them). Diona was in heaven filling
her pockets with knives and leathermans (leathermen?).
We got so into shopping we almost forgot our original
mission-picking up Jenny.
Luckily her plane was late.
Much hugging and jumping up and down and waiting for
luggage and then out to the practise ranch. Twin
Butte. Near Pincher Creek.
Since we're ladies it, of course, took ages. Supplies
were needed-guitar strings, a capo, food, that hat
she'd seen at the Le Chateau in Toronto and then well,
it was dark which makes the ranch hard to find. "Have
we gone too far or not far enough?"
"Jeeze I don't remember this part at all."
I know that the sign for Spread Eagle Road is gone on
the one side but if you pass it there used to be one
on the other side. Not no more. Huh. I think it's this
one but is it the second right or the third after
that?
Eventually we found it and pull into Burns and Lucy's
drive way and the door opens and the eleven fucked up
healer/Australian Shepard dogs pour out and surround
the car and I can tell from the way Lucy is standing
that we've arrived a day early and she's not expecting
us but we have beer and the store's closed on Tuesdays
so we are told to come in and pull up a stump
(literally!) around the kitchen table by the wood
stove. Burns and Lucy, the daughter, the guy from up
the road, eighty dogs and the cat recovering from two
broken legs are pouring over a dictionary looking up
the word 'snort'. Apparently Lucy makes this noise
when she laughs that the family calls a snort. Lucy
claims that a snort is an INHALATION, which is NOT the
noise she makes when she laughs. That is an EXHALATION
and therefore NOT a snort. This is kind of exactly
how I grew up so I don't think it's weird at all in
fact I kind of like it a lot.
But we had come to practise and make dinner and be
together away from worldy distractions and it was
boiling beside the wood stove so we started making
shuffling off motions but Lucy wanted to make the beds
for us and the daughter was making clam chowder that
we just had to try and since we were a day early they
held us hostage for a little bit which was not the
least bit unpleasant.
Also it turns out that the reason there's no sign for
Spread Eagle Road is that it gets stolen every '"May
long" because drunk people think it's funny.
We loaded into the ranch house and set up the
Wurlitzer on the table and plugged it in and got out
the guitars and the fiddle and started making a set
list. I'm totally in love with Jenny's new record so
it was a treat to get to play her songs. I hoped I
wasn't butchering them or that I wasn't too loud but
when there's nobody else to rely on you just have to
keep going. I detected no murderous looks being shot
in my direction and figured that Jenny would be the
type to say what she wanted if she wanted anything.
It was really fun and Diona was fabulous of course and
by the end of the night we felt kind of like a band.
We debuted the next night at The Twin Butte General
Store and Bar. Grabbed the P.A. from the community
hall down the road where they were having 'Bitch and
Wine' night -a dog training/wine tasting class(!) Felt
like I'd stumbled upon something so heart-explodingly
perfect for me that I couldn't even speak.
Farmers and ladies came from all around. Stella from
Beaver Mines brought a whole posse which was sweet but
I don't think she got the part that Jenny and I were
sharing the show because every time Jenny would sing,
Stella would dance over towards us, kind of lean on
the speaker, wave her free hand in a conducting style
motion and yell 'Come on Carolyn! Sing something!'
And Jenny would finish the song, a single tear rolling
down her left cheek.
Met an Australian cow hand outside who said he'd been
surprised by a 'joyant ilk' earlier in the day.
The friend who'd been at Burns and Lucy's set up his
drum kit and played with us for the second set and was
mercifully tasteful. At the end of the night the big
man who was buying everyone shooters passed out on the
bar. Everyone was poking at him until he lifted his
head, releasing a small puddle of drool. All in all a
total success.

Lethbridge, AB
Dinner at The Allens. We had booked an early show in
hopes that all our school teacher friends would come
out to see us. I wrangled a guarantee out of the
notorious promoter with the caveat that if no one
showed up he could kill me! The fact that I am typing
this now signifies that I lived to tell the tale. And
this is the tale I'm telling:
We were shorted a hundred bucks and the walls smell
like cocaine. There. I said it.
Fun show though. Our friend Dianne came and played
bass with us and was awesome. I was feeling
adventurous and tried this crazy organ they have there
that has all kinds of buttons and lit-up tubes and a
volume control you operate with your knee like a
sewing machine but it made the hugest farting sound
during Jenny's quietest song and gave me a massive
electrical shock when I put my lips to the microphone
so I stuck with The Wurlitzer. I knew the bands who
played after us - Chet and Away Rio. It always feels
good to meet up with friends from back home on the
road. Stayed with Shawna The Horny Hairdresser and her
awesome new boyfriend. Watched surf videos, ate
guacamole and fell asleep on the floor. Someone
removed me and I drifted off right when the doorbell
rang.
Fuck. The other bands.
I know what it's like to be desperate and from
Victoria so of course I did the honourable thing and
avoided their eyes all night, dodging the 'So where
are you staying?' question, but someone must have said
something. Ah well. I had a bed and that's the
important thing.
Woke up and the house was snoring and covered in men.
Got our hungover hosts take us out for Vietnamese
food-(for Jenny, the woman loves Asian food and hates
breakfast) which was, of course, a mistake. I mean
come on! It's Lethbridge. And then later, while Diona
checked out the motorbike and knife store, Jenny and I
almost got tickets for J-walking whilst seeking
peppermint tea. The cop said, 'Next time girls, wait
for the light!'
We muttered smart ass retorts as soon as we figured he
was out of earshot.
'Next time? With any luck that'll be never, ass
munch!'
Obviously, it was time to leave this town. Found Diona
hemming and hawing over a pair of leather chaps. Told
her to buy them but she left them there saying
something about how the only way to know if you really
want something is to walk away.
I said I already knew I really wanted to leave so we
walked away.
Successfully located and roused the Notorious
Promoter, extracted the key to the club, got our gear
back and got the rock out of there.
A couple of hours later, down a back road in the
middle of nowhere, we passed some sort of
factory/giant round silver refinery thingy.
Jenny asked me if I knew what it was and because I'm
from Out West and feel like I ought to be the tour
guide, I started to answer, not for a second letting
the fact that I had no freaking idea stop me.
'Oh well Jenny, it's obviously some sort of....
er... giant...uh... Uranium Ball!'
I could feel Diona's eyes rolling even before I heard
the snort.
And so uranium ball became the catch-all answer for
any unanswerable question for the rest of the tour.
'Sound check? Oh yeah. I just talked to the guy and he
said it was at...uh... uranium ball o'clock!'
* * *
Stopping for cheap gas out on the res. All a little
loopy. Diona kept flipping the open trunk switch
instead of the open gas switch while the guy pumping
gas waited patiently in that calm Indian way. I got
out of the car and tried to put on my coat but it
caught the wind like a sail and the arm holes kept
blowing away from me. I was making some Pee Wee Herman
type of 'Woah Woah Woah' sounds and the guy just looks
at me in that calm Indian way and says 'Windy.'
Thus another tour catch phrase was created.
Two in one day! What a great tour.

The Palomino - Calgary, AB
Headed to Diane's house. It's very nice and she's a
fab hostess. I like to torment the cat (Snowball the
Midnight Yowler) and bounce on the nubbed yoga ball.
Got all whored up and headed to the club. To drive or
taxi? That is always the drinking girl's nightly
question. Too late to taxi and it's Friday night and
the chance it might might not come so into Diane's
father's mini van! Get to the club and there's no
parking. I mean there's parking if you have a credit
card but that seems so unglamourous, to have to pay,
when you're playing. I went in and talked to someone,
the bartender, and he said it's a problem with the
OWNER OF THE BUILDING, not the BAR and all this crap
but there's some signs for STAFF PARKING and well,
we're PRACTICALLY like staff and they make Lance move
his car and we have to give our keys to this sketchy
dude and if Diane's father only knew he'd have a
heart attack, any of our parents would, but what the
fuck else are you gonna do? So we give the sketchy man
our keys and some money and now I'm mad at the bar for
having live music but not working out the details
because sometimes a half-assed job is worse than not
doing it at all so we follow Lance up the alley to an
old man bar where his other country band is playing
and it's pretty awesome and Dianne and I have a heart
to heart and drink a zillion vodka sodas, which isn't
really like drinking, and some weird old man offers me
a hundred and fifty dollars for my raccoon hat which,
coincidentally, is what the promoter has already told
me she's going to rip us off but no freaking way mack,
I love my hat. The band is awesome and we start to
calm down. We dance a dance and kiss Lance on the
cheek and wave good-bye and head back to the club. We
pass the sketchy parking guy and he doesn't seem so
bad and now I feel embarrassed for freaking out so we
pet his pit-bull for a while and go inside.
The Palomino. It's not perfect, they blast the music
upstairs and downstairs in between bands and the
sound's brutal, but the promoter girl is a sweetheart
rock-a-billy china doll so we do it for her.
There are seven bands tonight and we're on last. Fuck.
Two of them are our friends from back home again, Chet
and Away Rio (They are DEFINITELY not staying with us
tonight.) and I've never heard of the others.
The sweet rock-a-billy china doll has double booked
the night or done us a favour and let us play with not
a lot of notice, depending on how you look at it.
Anyway, I'm wiped and cranky and it's loud and there's
nowhere to sit and the wine's skanky and there's fruit
flies in it but finally we get to play and there's
people to play to and Lance brings the drummer from
his other band and he's perfect and so now we're a
five piece band and the sound's not so bad and the
songs are coming together and it turned out to be an
awesome relaxed show maybe because we'd already gone
through every emotion before we even started.
Maybe it was the little white pill Lance gave me...
* * *

The Powerplant - Edmonton, AB
They've changed the road to Edmonton. There's this new
diversion if you're coming in from Red Deer that takes
you to hell and back with no place to turn around. No
signs or nothing. Why?
Made our way to the University. If you're playing you
get to drive over the lawn and through bus only zones
which is always a good time. 'What are they gonna do
to us TAKE AWAY OUR LIBRARY CARDS? hahahah!' It's that
little bit of power that can make your whole day.
Sound check. Jenny, Diona and I meet up with Phil from
The Shiftless Rounders who now lives in Edmonton who
is the Best Guitarist Ever and Dianne calls because
she took the diversion thing too so we set up and the
sound man's a lady and the manager's a lady so it
feels awesomely take back the night.
And we get a hotel too! Jenny and I go back and watch
Bridget Jones' Diary and get ready and ditch the car
and take a cab back and as we come in I hear the
familiar sound of John Guliak's voice. I played in a
country band with him for four years and played his
wedding and all and so now he lives in Edmonton and so
by special request he is our opening act. As I come
around the corner and look on the stage, my brain
actually turned on its axis. That was John on stage
all right only in honour of the whole 'Queens of the
Hootenanny' thing, he was wearing a little black
cocktail dress edged with marabou feathers and a
bobbed wig.
'Oh my god!' I kept saying holding my hand to my
mouth.
'Is your friend a drag queen?' asked Jenny casually.
'NO! This is a man who wore the same brown sweater for
seven years! You don't understand how WEIRD this is!'
'Oh.'
Garb aside, John is playing great. I look around the
room and people seem completely unphased. Oh these
Modern times get kind of weird because now that it's
2006, everybody's so worried about being politically
incorrect that they basically don't laugh at anything
anymore in case it's offensive.
It's like it's easier to be weird now but it has less
of an effect.
I kind of liked it as a social experiment and John is
a bit of a prankster. His banter was really cute too:
'You know I thought, with the whole spaghetti strap
thing that when they fell off, you girls were just
being coy but I can see now that it's a real concern.'

Saw my friend Marc from Vancouver who said he was here
on tour with another band playing drums.
'Well you better go get them from the car then...'
Awesome show. Killer band. Everybody played great and
the sound was clear. Sort of hard to 'ignite' the
audience when they're all sitting down like that and
some of our older friends didn't show but tried not to
let it get me down.
Our friends The City Streets left us a care package in
the band room which is so sweet I can't believe it.
Didn't get ripped off, sold some cds and lived to do
it all over again and tell the tale.

Queens of the Hootenanny - Part II

2007-01-25T19:28:00.000-08:00

The Auditorium - Nanton, AB
Nanton is one of my favourite places to play. I can't
put my finger on why exactly. Pretty sure it ain't the
taxidermy. Maybe because it's not about the money or
what the show can do for your career, it's about the
joy of playing the show for no other reason than the
joy of playing the show.
Maybe?
Maybe it's what I think I deserve.
We got to stay in the funky rooms upstairs and were
joined, in order of appearance, by Lance and Toby,
Diane, Pat the Drummer and Shawna from Lethbridge for
pre-show cocktail hour and watched a lurid nature show
about black widow spiders. At Jenny's suggestion we
were drinking Tijuana Rashes- Tequila and cranberry.
Anti-oxidize while you oxidize! Cure while you poison!
Like the negative calories of celery. In any event we
were feeling no pain while we played and it was quite
possibly the most cutting edge banter of the entire
tour. You see, earlier in the day, Diona had read us
an article in The Economist. (She didn't bat an eye
when I was reading Pamela Anderson's memoirs so I
don't judge) The article was a cheery affair about
rape laws in the U.K. and how it's pretty impossible
to be prosecuted for rape any more, especially if 'the
victim' was drunk or crazy etc. which, incidentally,
is a line of thinking I kind of live by-not the rape
part, but the daytime self is much more uptight and
therefore more accountable than the night time self.
The article also suggested that there were different
types of rapists like "The Predator" or "The
Opportunist". It was rather bleak but of course we
still found ways to joke about it in the car.
"You think you're worried, I rape easy" etc.
So that night on stage I introduced a song sighing,
"Well if this next number doesn't get me raped in the
parking lot after the show, I give up."
And Jenny who is so supportive, no matter the mission,
chimes in from behind the organ and says, "Oh I know.
I've been taking that date rape drug the last four
nights and... nothing!"
And then she suggested she sing a song she co-wrote
with her mother that starts with the unforgettable,
"Quit your friggin' jiggin'
you cock-sucking son of a whore!"
Based on a true story apparently. Quite touching. And
not a lot of people can pull off the word 'piss-flaps'
in a song and make it work.
Since we were in Nanton all the ladies in the bar were
grinning like wolves totally getting it and the big
dudes were nervously laughing 'Hehehe you guys sure
look like you were having fun up there hehehe."
begging us with their eyes to not give their women any
more big ideas. Or maybe it was pity. Who knows?
That's the best part about being drunk, when you're
surrounded by a golden glow, in love with yourself and
immune to reality.
A long time ago my friend Nathan told me that the
definition of A Lady is one who knows when she is
being vulgar. I was thinking about that when I went to
bed.
One for the memoirs for sure.

The Royal - Nelson, BC
Monday night. Hardly anyone there. Even less people
for the second set. Slept like motherfuckers back at
the hostel.

Little Slocan Lodge - Slocan , BC
Only an hour and a half drive so we lurked in Nelson.
It was raining. Hit the good coffee place and
breakfast and then the health food store. Spent all
our money on milk thistle and ear candles. Got
Mandrew's glasses off Laoh from the June tour and put
them with Clay's jacket, thinking that by the end of
the tour we'd have enough stuff to make a whole man!
Speaking of which, our three transgendered friends in
Nelson are raising an accidental baby. Can you say
'Three Half Men and a Baby'?! Stick to hand jobs
people and this shit doesn't happen I'm telling you!
Got to the Lodge at sunset. God I love it here. We
were so grateful for the rest the night before and so
relieved that we weren't going to die anymore, to
celebrate fact that we weren't going to die anymore,
we had some drinks on the deck. Well, it started
innocently enough with throat tea but the conversation
was getting so good we turned to the wine. The
previous times I've played here I've always been
amazed at how the people just come out of the woodwork
at showtime and I guess I just thought it happened
every time so when Jenny asked if I figured she should
give herself a talking to or open the second bottle,
as her attorney, I advised her to continue full steam
ahead. Now, we'd been playing in bars as a trio so
perhaps to overcompensate for our sparseness, we'd
been getting pretty 'showbizzy' with the delivery of
the songs and banter. So picture us reeling down the
stairs after getting dressed in our spangles and
coming in to start the show in a Liza Minnelli 'thank
you all so much for coming' kind of way to discover
that 'the audience' is four people doing yoga
stretches on the floor.
And of course being a little stoned cause it's Harvest
Season and then having a total mind fuck argument with
yourself about how The Show Must Go On but then
becoming super shy because without an audience you
just feel like a big fake and then of course feeling
compelled to say all this out loud and then realizing
that you're kind of slurring and making no sense.
Rather sobering actually.
Think I'm getting the message that working together is
the cure for mental illness. The binding contract of
consensual reality. If we decided to be a band
together and play these songs then that is the
agreement no matter how weird it gets. This is the
wreckage to cling to when the storm hits. With nothing
to cling to it's all horrible and false and cold and
ludicrous. That night, the absurdity of performing
before four stretching people caused a door to open in
my brain. I've seen this door before. A couple of
times actually. I know if I chose to go through the
door it would be permanent. I would never come back.
The first time was years ago. We were playing at the
Town Pump. My first band. The Vinaigrettes. Kind of a
big deal show. After sound check there was an early
metal show and somehow I got locked out of the band
room and then thrown outside. The bouncers wouldn't
let me back in. It was February. I was wearing a mumu
and my coat was inside. They told me to go away. I
told them I was IN the band but they wouldn't believe
me and were unimpressed by my tears. Finally found a
back door four minutes before show time only to find
Brigette, the guitarist, had vanished without a word
and was AWOL. There was much yelling from management
to get the hell on stage and with one minute to spare
Brigette sauntered in with her girlfriend.
"Oh my god! Where were you?!"
"Oh we went out for Ethiopian food.." she says calmly.
CALMLY. That's what did it. How could she be so calm
when I was so upset? In retrospect, the whole having
money to go for dinner part might have been a deeper
thorn in my paw at the time too.
"Ethiopian food?" I say, a vein twitching on my neck.
At that moment, my friend J, who could sense the
tension, hell you could have cut it with a knife,
popped up in front of my face wearing a giant Russian
fur hat and said,"Ethiopian food? Such SMALL PORTIONS.
And the way the waiters hover over you asking 'Are you
going to eat that? Are you finished with that?"
That's when the door opened. I was laughing and crying
so hard that had I taken the door I would never have
stopped. From the comments of others I would wager
that I have a tenuous grasp of reality at best so this
would be akin to throwing the final sandbag out of the
hot air balloon and just drifting away from all
earthly troubles forever taking a permanent vacation
from tedious consciousness.
Of course I 'came back' and played the show but I
always remember the door and was reminded of it in
Slocan standing there tarted up in front of the four
yoga stretchers. I surveyed the room and I looked at
us and could feel the giggles coming on and I could
tell right away that these were gonna be the door kind
so I tamped them down but they wouldn't go away so I
just looked at Jenny and Diona and even though it was
ridiculous, they were still singing my song and so I
thought about them and how if I cracked up it would be
like breaking a promise and how being part of three
people makes you only a third and to make the whole
you gotta work together and the door went away. One
day I might take it but there are a few people I
really like down here like Jenny and Diona who make me
wanna stay. So, unlike Sartre, my theory is that other
people, as much as they make you crazy, keep you sane.
I don't want to be one with everyone but I'll make an
effort to be one with the people I like. If reality is
consensual it's necessary to have accomplices.
Jenny sang an a Capella song at the end of the night
that was so beautiful I was forced to bite her.

CBC taping of The Vinyl Cafe-Behind the Music
Community Hall/High School/Theatre - Mission, BC
We arrive in the rain at dusk and find the theatre but
can't figure out how to get in. All the doors are
locked. Someone is called and we are led through some
back hallways and then greeted by The Producer and
introduced to the band and shown to the dressing room
where the producer wants to screen my material for
anything too risque for the blue-haired demographic.
Before I begin, she asks if I've ever been on the CBC
before. I nod and tell her that if she's trying to
find out if I'm house broken, I am. Of course she
vetoes the whore song which would have been so perfect
for the occasion given that they were giving us $900
to play two songs.
Funny to come from Nanton where we played for three
hours for $200 to this. I don't know. I'm funny that
way.
We are then led to the stage where two silver-haired
dudes are playing a grand piano and a stand-up bass. I
suggest they stick around and join us and they do and
they're awesome. Jenny knows everyone from being on
the show so many times and through her family.
We go for Greek food in honour of Diona's birthday and
when we come back it's time to start the show.
They set us up three chairs so we can watch from the
darkened wings and Stewart McLean stands in front of a
podium and then that voice every good Canadian knows
comes out but what's surprising is the accompanying
gestures. He waves his arms around a great deal and
bounces up and down on the balls of his feet to
emphasize words. I had always pictured him sitting at
a desk in a cardigan. The audience love him. He is the
Canadian version of The Oprah Oracle in tasselled
loafers and wide wale corduroy. When he hits a
particularly pithy turn of phrase he pauses to let
them appreciate him. The CBC is all about bowing. The
stories are good and heart warming and the other
musical guest is Murray McLaughlin who sings a song
about getting older called The Second Half of Life and
then Stewie and the piano player rip into a
semi-rehearsed song about how their bodies are falling
apart now that they're getting old. And like I said,
it was Diona's birthday and we were pretty exhausted
and in that heightened
acid-trip-is-the-world-ending-or-do-I-just-need-a-
nap zone when the night's theme appeared unavoidably
before us: Ageing.
In the break, us dames slip outside for a smoke and
some sips of Lucky. There is, evidently, a high school
Hallowe'en dance going on in the adjoining gymnasium.
These two dudes come out of the trees, stumbling a
little and not doing a very good job of hiding a half
twenty-sixer of rum. I think that they probably want a
smoke or something but as they approach and see us up
close in the light, the one fellow's face falls and he
says, "Oh... You guys are a lot older than I
thought!"
"Honey I think that every time I look in a mirror."
It's more than a little awkward but the kid is a born
charmer so to cheer us up he says, "Well you guys are
hot from far away!"
"I mean, you guys must be like 25!", the other one
says.
"Just turned," we say in unison.
"So are you here for that theatre thing?" he asks
We start to answer and he adds, "My mom's in there!"
Yup. We're rolling with yer Mom tonight.
Oh my god. When they reeled off into the night we
laughed, holding our faces Macaulay Culkin style for
about twenty minutes.
Then back inside the blackened theatre for the second
half and the gospel finale. Jenny said I sounded very
soulful on my verse. I told her it was because I was
so scared of screwing it up I was ACTUALLY praying.
Packed up the car which was reeking of garlic from all
the Greek food and air-kissed all our new boyfriends
goodbye. Murray McLaughlin, rosy from scotch, turned
to Diona as we were leaving and said, "I haven't met a
nicer musician since Margo Davis!"
We left not knowing who that is but vowing to look her
up sometime. Navigated the dark and rain slicked
highway 7 into Vancouver down Main Street to the Honey
Hut where Baby Honey and Mandrew awaited us with
kitchen table drinkies a mere two steps away from the
World Famous Honey Hide-a-bed.

St James Hall - Vancouver, BC
Woke up feeling like ass. Finally broke myself for
real this time. Like when you feel so ridiculously bad
you have to laugh? Yeah. That bad. Had to drink
fluids and watch White Oleander on VHS to recover. The
problem is indoor smoking. Since it's so rarely
allowed anymore anywhere in the world, now when I'm
able, I go to town. It's horrible. You can't tell me
not to do something. It just makes me want to do it
harder.
Oh fuck. The car. Had to move it to avoid getting a
ticket. All of Main Street's under construction. I
asked Amy if she had any Armour All and a Dustbuster
and she eyed me suspiciously as if aliens had taken
over my body.
I suspect I am not known as someone respectful of
things. I am hard on my toys I guess. People too
apparently.
I wanted to clean up the car to my mother's standards
because I respect her and was grateful that she'd lent
it to us and of course there was the whole
not-so-noble motivation that if it worked out this
time she might be persuaded again at a later date.
But the Dustbuster sucked because it didn't suck hard
enough so mostly used my fingers to pick up the
disturbing amount of hay (?!)we had acquired in the
wheel wells and under the floor matts. Having a chore
in the outside air proved most restorative. I'll be a
farmer's daughter til I die.
Met my mum outside the hall. She came bearing cookies,
chatted with Amy and Jenny for a while and rolled on
home in her dirty car on half a tank. Where did the
day go?
Sometimes it occurs to me that if I didn't stay up so
late, the next day might not be a total write-off, but
then it's dusk again and too late to care.
Nothing was happening at the hall yet so we went for a
stroll. Sure it was to the liquor store but it did the
trick. In the parking lot I saw the guy that tried to
kill me in an airplane when I was 19 walking with a
woman and pushing a stroller and thought, "Oh good. He
bred."
And the show. Oh the show!
The hall is a former church with an apse and great
heavy curtains. My friend Nancy puts on our hall shows
in Vancouver and she went all out. There was dinner
for fifty before the show with all manner of things
drizzled and encrusted which was fabulous except I ate
in the dark and kept thinking I was eating the smoked
salmon lasagna but instead getting the black bean
tortilla pie which was an odd sensation.
The Pauls joined us. Paul Rigby and Paul Pigat. Best
guitar players ever. Got to sort of lead them through
the arrangements of Jenny's songs on The Wurlitzer
which made me kind of feel like Paul Shaffer. The
Minimalist Jug Band, Kent McAllister, Ridley Bent, Amy
Honey and The Weathered Pines rounded out the bill and
the whole night felt very old timey and sweet.
Funny Story:
Jenny had stashed a bottle of white wine in the
kitchen fridge in the basement and she went to get it
when we finished the first set and on her way there
people were congratulating her and she was saying
thank-you thank you as she whipped open the door and
was greeted by the sombre silence of an A.A. meeting.
She realized there was no way she could ever walk to
the fridge, get out a bottle of wine and walk back
across the room with everyone's ears all pricked up
licking their lips and of course just then there was
the unmistakable sound of someone dropping a beer
bottle down the stairs behind her in the hallway and
she bolted back upstairs while the clanging died down
thinking maybe she didn't need that wine so badly
after all. I mean it's not like any of us has a
PROBLEM or anything. I mean it's only a PROBLEM if you
want to stop.
I figured they must have been the advanced level
practicum group.
Ah the hilarity of multi-purpose buildings.

The Waverly - Cumberland, BC
All aboard the 12:30 ferry in the Po'Girl van with
Diona at the wheel with minutes to spare!
"Oh my god you're magic!"
"Experience darling."
Took the scenic route to show our Ontarian hostage the
majesty of the west coast. Thought about stopping for
fresh oysters but only the bars where all the people
who work with oysters drink at were open so they don't
keep 'em on the menu. Shucks.
Stopped in Coombs at the store with the goats on the
roof and bought crazy groceries. Didn't see the goats.
Maybe they went out.
So tired.
We were expecting to play The Abbey which is a
gorgeous venue where the walls basically sing for you
however there has of late been Issues with The
Capacity so the promoters figured we'd make more money
if they moved the show to the working man bar across
the street plus they'd give us rooms upstairs for
free. It was Hallowe'en Saturday.
Last year we had come through town with the giant 14
person Hootenanny tour and then I got the impression
that we were too big and too wild for The Abbey and
now I worried that our new stripped down formation of
just three ladies singing pretty with only organ,
guitar and violin for accompaniment would be too
mellow for the wild night the whole town had come for.
Can I get more irony in my monitor? Thanks. Ah there's
no place like the right time.
I knew a bunch of our hometown gang were planning to
join us and I was happy to see them but (I'm sure the
Germans have a word for this) there's nothing like the
imminent threat of your best friends who really know
you showing up to make you nervous about performing
when you're tired. I was really proud of the music
we'd been making, the arrangements and the singing,
and wanted to show it off.
The sound was un peu brutal. The kind of sound where
you can't tell where the decay ends and the distortion
begins. Like, is that muffled boomy unsustained sound
coming from the monitors or could that be what my
voice actually sounds like or have I blown my own
speakers and have simply gone deaf? But press on. It's
only one night. There'll be other shows etc and we
still had the fresh memories of all the good shows
we'd just had to console ourselves with right? Right?
At least we weren't air traffic controllers or open
heart surgeons (Oh aren't we?) Just playing some songs
on a Saturday night right? It made me think about a
certain moment driving back into B.C.
I think Jenny, after spending 8 days with us, just
thought that Diona and I didn't like to listen to
music in the car which isn't true. I had even made The
Perfect Road Tape (and left it at home of course in
the early morning packing while still drunk state).
So somewhere on the long trip back while riding
shotgun, Jenny turned on the radio and was fiddling
with the knobs to make it sound good for quite a while
before I turned to her and said "I think the solution
here is that you must turn down the expectation knob".
See I'd had the whole trip out to figure out that the
speakers in my mother's car are blown out and that the
sound cannot be improved for all the knob-twisting in
the world.
I don't like thinking like this. It makes me feel old.
But sometimes it's the only way to combat
throat-slitting despair. The Weathered Pines came over
from Vancouver to join us and Hank Pine and The Pine
Family (total fluke with the two Pine bands I swear!)
and J. and Sarah and Emilie and the whole town came
out to see us and it's fine. Just tired that's all.
Hank got us to be in his band and Jenny playing the
drums in high heels is one of the hottest things I've
ever seen!
Afterwards we all played guitar upstairs on one of the
beds in a giant kitten ball trying not to notice any
underlying lyrical themes in the selection of
material.
This tour was one of the best I've ever been on. I
felt like we were real lady musicians and Jenny and
Diona are fabulous tour mates. We're all pretty
different people but maybe that's why it was so easy.
Structural integrity.
And thanks Ma, for the car!
Carolyn Mark
Nov 2006
Barlassina, Italy

Summer 2006 - Part 1: Tee Dot Party

2006-11-18T10:24:00.000-08:00

Toronto. Pearson Airport. Arrival and crosscheck.
Ah summer in Toronto.
Hot and stinky. Both me and Toronto.
Shared a taxi into town with this girl from Halifax
who was coming to 'surprise' her boyfriend because she
hadn't heard from him in a couple of months.
Holy bad idea Batman! He had moved to the city to
start a business and was apparently quite busy with
that and she had stayed back home on account of the
old dog. I asked what business and she said well, he
was featured on television's Seinfeld once.
"You're dating the SOUP NAZI?"
"Yup."
"Do you have any backup plan in case this doesn't work
out?"
"Nope."
"And he has no idea you're here?"
"Nope."

Oh boy.
Women. I swear there's a chemical that flows through
our veins to spare us from the obvious. Makes sense I
suppose. A great deal of belief must be suspended and
a lot of fantasy infused to distract us from the fact
that they are just men and when they are talking to
the dog perhaps they are simply talking to the dog and
it's not a metaphor for anything.
It was so boiling. Headed to the guitar store so the
Kesper Twins could take a look at my ailing axe.
Alejandro Escovedo was there and invited me to his
show that night. Left the guitar with boys even though
they fixed it right away no problem and headed up to
Garth's.
Garth Johnson. The Old Drummer. We used to live
together and play together and now he lives in
Chinatown. Totally awesome real estate. Right behind
The Horseshoe with enough room for guests. And he is a
fabulous host.  And an amazing cook. Heat and good
smells hit me when I walked up the stairs past the
bike in the hall.
Man it was hot and he was slaving away over the stove.

Rosa, his Room-mate The Artist, whom I adore, was
sitting at the kitchen table drinking wine.
"Hey! Hug hug kiss kiss let's get you some wine and
welcome".
It's so nice when you're real friends and there's none
of those strained host/guest feelings. (Or he's that
good of an actor.)
A delicious pasta was served and Garth's brother Brad
come over on a mission to drain a Jaegermeister
bottle. Wife away doncha know.
Suggested going to the Alejandro show but we were in
no condition to be seen in public.  Especially after
the joint was passed around.
I went to bed right when Brad climbed out the window
to get on the super pointy roof three stories up to
have a word with the raccoon.

Day 2

Up at the crack of 2pm! I had travelled through time
so it was actually 11.
Brad and Garth took me out to breakfast and talked
about making an appearance at their work but decided
to go to the lake instead.
They were making big city life look pretty easy in
their modern Toronto film maker glasses and short
sleeve shirts.
Garth lent me his bicycle and I went to rehearsal.
This was a Hootenanny Summer. Our little super group
side project that's slowly taking over everything. We
were booked at something every weekend. Rode over to
Oh! Susanna's house and found the gang on the porch.
Mostly hung out and made a set list. There was some
hilarity with the childproofed toilet and I think I
broke the sink. Both things in like under three
minutes of being there too!

Thursday was dinner with Neville only there was no
dinner.  We talked for like seven hours straight and
figured out the whole universe. Felt bad because by
the time Ford came over after practise we had already
peaked and were down to monosyllabic grunting.

This is vaguely distressing but I can't remember what
happened the next night. It's completely blank. I
remember being on the roof with Garth at like 5am
drinking wine while he wielded some sort of power tool
and put some screening over the hole where the
raccoons were getting in. I remember wrapping the
extension cord around the chimney and then making him
wrap it around his waist and perhaps holding an ankle.
We totally shook hands with danger.
I vaguely remember doing a voice over for a tampon
commercial at Garth's editing suite.
I remember loafing around Neville's. This is my
speciality and why I love Toronto. People let me
lounge around in their houses while they go to work to
pay for them. It's a beautiful arrangement.

Oh wait now I remember!  Another hootenanny rehearsal
out at Jenny's Dad's house in Etobicoke. Rode the bike
down by the Lakeshore. Snickered at all the people
stuck in the heat and the Friday rush hour traffic
underneath me when I cruised above the 401 on an
overpass but then remembered that it would soon be me
down there.  Got to feel smug for a moment though, and
it's been a while.
The ladies were making dinner. Jenny and Joey looked
gorgeous because they'd been to Granny's funeral
earlier. I remember my parents coming to get me and my
brother from school once and they were dressed up and
arm in arm and looked like movie stars in love and
we'd never seen them like that and they took us out
for supper and they said they'd been to something
called "A Funeral" and me and my brother were all
like, "You guys should go to way more of those!"
Dinner. Drinks. Practise.
The Mandolin Genius was kind of plastered and
listening to Merle Haggard. He kept grabbing me to
check out the lyrics man. There was this one called
'Shoot out the Footlights' that's like the most
depressing song I've ever heard.
I told him I'd be right back. I was just going to the
back yard to kill myself!
I think women secretly hate when their fellows get
wasted and blubber into the stereo over Merle Haggard.
Especially when they end up passing out before band
practise has even started. At least Merle Haggard has
some cred and worked jobs and made it to all his shows
and went to jail and kind of tries to be a man. I
think the Townes Van Zant 'loser as hero' thing is
more troubling. It's just like when all the dudes
gather round to watch World at War or something. The
ladies are just left going where's OUR heroes? Don't
you see it's up to you to make your OWN history? As I
used to say to the old guitar player when I was trying
to make her join me on some caper, "God Brigette! When
they write the biography, this night's gonna be a
total write-off!"  She never fell for it not even once
and will probably outlive me.
Uh, I don't know how this happened but there are
children in our band. Well they were at practise
demanding all the attention anyway.  I suspect they
came with their parents. It's an interesting
development as we were already having a tacit
competition to see who could be the most high
maintenance one. I was almost winning and then they
had to bring in the ringers.
I put on a puppet show when it wasn't my turn to play.

Figured out the order and ran everyone's songs and a
young man I've never seen before came down the stairs
and joined us on the organ. He was really good. Turned
out to be Jenny's younger brother. Didn't realize how
young he was. Might have laid Ali's "Double fisting is
the new black" line on him after band practise. Hard
to say. Jenny told me about it the next day but at the
time I was delightfully oblivious. Success!

Harbourfront Hootenanny Show.
Beautiful sunset while we played the stage right
beside the Jamaican booth. Made us feel especially
White in our matching outfits and enthusiastic
choreography. The children joined us onstage holding
paper tambourines and when I was introducing Jenny I
felt something oh so soft and smooth travelling up my
inner thigh. You know like THE FEELING. I jumped a
foot and screamed but it was just Jenny's three year
old daughter Lila reaching for my hand and missing.
Holy. If we're  gonna be having children on stage then
I get a dog goddamn it!

Afterwards, we went to The Handsome Family show at the
Horsehoe. Jenny and I held hands on the patio and had
a couple of bracers before going in. Seriously
considered getting The Horseshoe door stamp tattooed
on my wrist. I'm here so much it would just save time.
And also to symbolize my seeming career stasis at the
Smallish Canadian Bar level.
The show was SO GOOD. The Handsome Family are the best
band ever of all time! I love them so much it hurts. I
want to hump their legs and take them home and make
them mine. It is crucial if you are in a band to see a
brilliant show every so often because it makes you
remember what it's all for.

Sunday Morning Coming Down

Took myself out to Mimi's. Thought about calling
someone but thought I'd be selfish and savour the
freedom of going alone. Mimi's is a teensy  12 seat
cafe on Bathurst above a bathhouse run by Mimi.
Jane Siberry's song 'Mimi on the Beach' is allegedly
about her.
Garth's roommate Rosa, The Artist, works there too.
It's full of knick-knacks and autographed band posters
and she has a promotional McGregor's Happy Foot and
signed photograph of The Dalrubio Triplets. Live
concert videos play round the clock on a TV above the
bar. It looks a lot like Pee Wee's Playhouse which is
exactly my sensibility.
Okay, it looks like my kitchen.
Mimi does not give her love without a referral.
I went there once in The Before Times and she threw me
out.
I went again with Neko and Mimi fawned all over her to
the point that I was checking my pulse every few
minutes to see if I was still there.
Then somehow, she saw a show or heard something and I
was deemed Worthy and ever since then it's been pure
love. She once baked me a guitar shaped brownie cake
saying, "I didn't know how much you took so I put it
on the side" quoting a Woody Allen movie and handing
me some fine buds for the road. Ah what a woman!
She made me an omelet that was bigger than my head and
a giant plate of fresh fruit.
Went for a bike ride and headed back to the crash pad
to await instruction from Agent Jansen.
Shuyler.(pronounced Shy-ler) Currently my only ally
from The West in the group. The others had yet to
arrive.
He had a solo show in Waterloo that night at The
Starlight and I wanted to go and surprise the club
owner Bernard who is an old friend. The Starlight is
my favourite place to play. And hanging out with
Shuyler is like going swimming; I've never once
regretted it.
We were stealing Vanna White, Jenny and Joey's minivan
for the trip, but first we had to take them to the
party. Cam and Suzie's boy Sal's first birthday. Kind
of a big deal since the little fellow was premature
and was about the size of a mouse when he was born.
Knowing him now I figure he just couldn't wait to get
here.   As much of a fan of his as I am, afternoon
kiddie parties ain't my scene so we dropped them off
and then faked them out  by pretending we were coming
up the stairs behind them and then running back to the
van at the last minute and peeling out of the
driveway.
Tee hee.
For once there was no traffic on the way out of town
and Shuyler lit up a big joint and we were grinning to
ourselves at our Western Stealth and the prospect of a
night of undiluted Bernard hospitality. I believe we
were actually high-fiving each other when the oil
light came on.
Fuck.
"No! Joey told me to check check the oil but I thought
he meant like 'next time you get gas check the oil'
not like 'CHECK THE OIL!"
Shuyler is a man in a band from Alberta who prides
himself on knowing this stuff so this is killing him.
We pull over and pop the hood.
We were on the 401 and cars and rigs were wailing by.
And it was boiling and the sun was beating down.
Hmm. Well the engine wasn't seized so that's good. I
made a sign with some lined paper and a jiffy marker
that said, "Oil?" and stood by the side of the road
holding it up hopefully.
The thing is the cars were going like 120 so even if
they could have seen me it would have taken them like
800 meters to slow down.
We ain't Out West anymore.
A woman stopped though and gave us half a thing of oil
and then a rig stopped and then a tow truck and then
the cops.
The cop said someone had reported a woman in a crazy
dress holding a sign on the side of the road. Well
it's always nice to have advance publicity...
The tow truck guy was anxious to get the ailing van
into his clutches and the cop wanted us gone. I said,
"Oh try it just once more!" and it turned over and we
sent everyone away. We made it to the next exit but
Vanna was fading.
Went to a gas station. Had a smoke. Fuck it was hot.
"Guess I better call Joey..." said Shuyler.
"I'll call Bernard".
I told Bernard that I was on my way to see him and he
sounded excited. Bernard always sounds excited which
is why we love him. Oh how he stands miles above the
other jaded snobby club owners in our estimation. It's
so rare to meet kindred spirits who enjoy what they
do. I think it freaks other people out. To use the
porno film analogy, it's like we're having real
orgasms instead of faking them like you're supposed to
when you're working.
While he was still excited, I explained our plight.
Bernard is always rescuing someone. It's only an hour
and a half from Toronto to Waterloo but for some
reason it's notoriously hard to get to.
I figure it's called Waterloo for a reason.
Shuyler's on the other phone talking to Joey. I love
how undramatic men can be when shit's going down.
"Hey. Van's fucked. Yeah. Oil light keeps coming on.
Okay. Call you back."
We go out to the parking lot and turn her over and run
it for a while. Seems fine. Temperature's normal. Oil
light's staying off. Maybe we can just take back roads
and it'll be all right...
We make it about half a mile down the road and all the
symptoms recur and now there is smoke.
Fuck.
The next gas station we stop at is tiny and has no
phone so we walk a mile or so and end up at a computer
store in a strip mall.
Welcome to beautiful Mississauga. Population:Us.
There is a mosque across the street and the way the
wind is carrying the music it sounds like fucked up
George Jones. We end up in an Indian grocery store and
Shuyler makes one last call to Bernard.
"Hey look I'm really sorry. Looks like I can't make
it. Hey. Thank the other band for me would ya? Tell
em.. Tell em I would have been great."
You could actually hear the sound of three hearts
breaking.
"Okay. Stay put. I'll come and get you."
We start jumping up and down because it was looking so
bleak for a while there.
A tow truck is coming and so is Joey and so is
Bernard. Miraculously all three show up at about the
same time.
Shuyler says to Joey who arrives first, "Hey. You
think I'm a prick now, well I'm still going to the
show".
Joey is awesomely unphased.
We peel away with Bernard and speed towards the show.
Shuyler gets there just in time to play and he's
awesome. The sound is good and the little hipsters
enjoy him. Obviously we miss dinner but Bernard keeps
the vodka cranberries coming hard and fast.
The other band is young and American and obviously has
support of some kind. They sound like The Old 97's,
like it's Whitesnake pop riffs disguised as something
more gritty only the grit is dusted on the surface
instead of the other way around. Whatever, I'm tired
and fall asleep on one of the couches in the bar.
Shuyler is across the room passed out on two chairs.
The staff parties.
Oh yeah. Somewhere in there we ended up talking to The
Bouncers. They were celebrating the one's Last Night
and talking about cheating. My ears pricked up
immediately and I had to join them.
Turns out the one leaving was a Turkish prince who's
been hiding in Canada disguised as a Regular Guy
before his Real Life begins. The other one is really
funny. He tells wild stories that all begin and end
with the phrase "Ask Kyle man. Ask fucking Kyle man!"
Kyle is his younger brother and, to him, the
Kilimanjaro of authority. They tell a story about this
bouncer they used to work with who is famous for
never having any trouble during his shifts because of
his cool calming terrifying aura. Turns out it's
because he actually, you know, killed someone. Yup.
Dragged 'em to the river and held 'em under the water.
"Ask fucking Kyle man. Ask fucking Kyle!"
Bernard has obviously never heard these stories before
and I can see him wondering about the  secret lives of
the rest of his staff.
Bernard wakes us up at about four and takes us back to
his apartment up the street. It's boiling and smells
like rotting fish sauce. I kind of wish he'd left us
in the coolth of the bar.
We wake up ridiculously dehydrated .
Breakfast and then Bernard puts us on the bus back to
Toronto.   I bury myself in The Philosophy of Love
book I'm reading to escape my earthly pains.
Joey picks us up at the station in his Mother's car
and we go to the mechanic's to face the music. And it
ain't a pretty song.
They're putting in a new radiator to the tune of $500
which seems weird to me because it wasn't leaking or
spewing green smoke or any of the usual radiator
signs. I had just been through that a few weeks before
in Alberta with The Honeys but whatevs.
I left them in the parking lot and headed back to
Garth's and made a date with my friend Trish even
though I was kind of spent. It's a long bike ride to
her house but I needed the air. Any air'll do even it
it's hot and stinky air.
We were sitting in the back yard eating gazpacho and
drinking mint juleps with the dog when then the wind
and heat lightening started up. And it was mighty. I
was thinking about the overpass on Dundas that I
needed to ride the bike over. Trish made me a bed in
the living room. So awesome to sleep...


I think I realize why east coasters talk about where
they're from so much. It's because they're displaced
and homesick. I am starting to relate to them. It's a
lonesome feeling to experience culture shock within
your own country.  I think it's mostly the humour that
I miss. The jokes out here are like a different brand
of smokes; they'll do until you find your own kind
again.
I've been reading what I suspect is light summer lady
reading disguised as something more noble.
"The Consolations of Philosophy" by Allan de Botton. A
brief easy-read paperback on the history of and modern
applications of philosophy. Garth's buddy Glen, the
philosophy professor, hates it. Rosa, Garth's
room-mate, the artist, thinks it's wonderful.
It starts with Aristotle who chose to die rather than
compromise his beliefs even though he was the one that
came up with the whole sometimes it's stronger in
battle to retreat than advance.
Pass the Hemlock, A-Dog, I'll drink to that!
And then it's Seneca and Epicurus who found solace
when they lowered their expectations and then my
favourite Shopenhauer who claimed that there needed to
be rough for us to even notice smooth and then ending
with Neitchze the favourite of teenage girls around
the world who said all the other philosophers were a
bunch of cabbage heads and that life is a total shit
show and only he was strong enough to take it. That
is, until he went to Italy and it blew his fucking
mind and he fell in love and started writing poetry
and then spent his last eleven years locked up in an
asylum. Damn. I was so with him until the end. (Some
say it was the syphilis)
Anyway it's the dangerous kind of book that makes you
feel instantly smart without any effort.
Turns out The Philosophy of Love book is way more
dangerous if you happen to crack it when you're laying
around other peoples' apartments in the heat staring
wistfully out the window at your new boyfriend The CN
Tower. The book gives you the notion that you should
find someone immediately and what easier prey than
those waiting in the wings ready to pounce at the
slightest indication. So you Call Home and The Voice
on the other end has no idea what is hanging in the
balance and what magic words are so desperately needed
because The Voice on the other end does not travel or
suffer from self doubt and cares not for words and
will speak only of the dog's health leaving you with
only the hope that his words can be read as a metaphor
for his concern for you. So maybe you get drunk and
call someone easier to reach but it's never as good,
or no better rather, so then finally you give up, stop
dressing in the morning and write two songs which was
always the answer all along.
And you are so pleased with your two new songs you are
humming them and smiling fiendishly while putting on
your false eyelashes for the show and you embed the
two new songs in the set of tried and true faves and
when you are finished you cast your eyes coquettishly
upwards from the deep bow of the encore awaiting
Review and your real friends say 'Hey Anais Nin!
What's going on?" and The Rest gather around you after
the show and say they like the new stuff, mostly
because they want you to notice that they've noticed
that there's new stuff which is one of the fairer
deals this life offers and you drink too much wine
because your nerves are shot and stumble home alone
praying there's no one on the computer because now
you've got Something To Say Goddamn it!
Just another day at the office.

Waking  up in Chinatown:
What the? Oh yeah. Hey Michelle gave me some books
last night. Where are they? Oh yeah they're with the
guitar which should be ....HOLY FUCK THE GUITAR!!!!!!
"Garth Garth the guitar!!!"
We ran down the street back to the scene of the crime
where I had left my guitar. (My guitar that was built
special for me. There's only one of it's kind in the
world!)  The whole way there I was making a deal with
God that if the guitar was still there I would never
drink again. (Later I was all like "I believe in
God"?) We turned the corner and a familiar black
rounded shape came into view. Phew. Holy Shit.
I grabbed it and hugged the case. A guy was behind the
bar setting up for the day.
"Uh did you find any books?"
He held up two familiar looking tomes.
Holy shit!
Garth and I exit and on our way to breakfast behind
his back, I sneak a peak heavenwards and say with a
point and a wink, "You know when I said all that stuff
back there, I was just saying...."

Summer 2006 - Part 2: Lost Me bag on the Way to Perth

2006-11-18T08:30:00.000-08:00

Got picked up by Cam and Suzy and Baby Sal in the
Camry. The same one they told me they were pregnant in
last April.
Coffee and blueberries from Kensington Market and off
we go to The Festival.
Destination: Perth
Did puppet shows for the baby in the backseat arrived
a l'heure to discover my bag was not in the trunk. Now
this kept happening on the last hootenanny tour. By
the end I became a forced Buddhist:
I had nothing and was one with everyone.
Aw crap. My show gown. At my suggestion, we were all
supposed to wear black or white. Jenny said I could
wear her wedding gown because she had an extra dress
for Suzy. Her wedding gown was a black cocktail halter
dress that had been making the rounds so now it was my
turn. It's one of those magical dresses that looks
good on everyone. Thank God.
They'd given us a trailer and a two hour slot on the
main stage and snacks and all was well. Sewed the
glitter musical note bedazzles on the right lapel of
everyone's outfits. They look snazzy but also double
as our homing devices to the mother ship if we get
separated and find ourselves trapped too long on other
planets.
It was a civic festival in the middle of town held in
a park by the river. Very cute.  All G-rated material
would be required.
The organizer was named Carolyn. She was long tall and
blonde and we kept saying each others names over and
over again because it was so fun.
She told us that last year the trailer we were
standing in was ahem "broken in" by a "star" and a
"townie". I turned to Jenny who lived a few miles down
the road and said "You're from here AND you're a
star!" And without missing a beat she said, "Yeah I
could just lock myself in here and jerk off!"
Ah those former child stars are quick studies.
I took a look at the stage and spied two bubble
machines. I grabbed a techie and asked if there was
anyway they could be hooked up in time for our last
song. He got on the radio and activated a whole swarm
of volunteers.
I said, "Now don't get to eager and turn it on before
the last song. I know how you men get!", still scarred
from a certain incident in Calgary involving pyro.
They promised.
So at the end of a beautiful sober sunlit family
oriented set, the crew hit the machines for the last
waltz and children rushed the stage and danced in the
bubbles. Kind of touching, even for a Grinch like me.
Then dinner and a late night bar show in town.
Everyone was so nice to us. We are an exhausting group
to have to serve if you're a bartender, but the staff
were all smiles the whole night. Maybe it's because
they were all young and beautiful but it was such a
nice vibe. The people all crammed in and we got to do
the night time r-rated after dark adult show where we
get to be our real selves.  Someone must have stayed
sober and drove us home to Jenny's. Can't remember
now. Oh yeah. Mellie. Luther's girlfriend. I offered
but when I saw how fancy her car was I panicked and
became immediately drunk. The car ahead of us got
pulled over by the cops and as the cherry lights hit
it we saw Cam and Suzy silhouetted inside, and then
their worried faces, mask like as the lights swung
around .
Told Lu and Mellie stories on the way home to distract
them from the darkness.

Woke up to Luther freaking out!
Come on. Let's go!
Threw on a dress, grabbed some coffee on the counter
and got in the car which started peeling out of the
driveway before my leg was even in. Apparently the
dude had  a workshop at 12:30 and it was noon. He
drove like a maniac. passing a rig on a double line
and stuff and when we got there I had whiplash and
felt kind of pukey. He drove up the to gates and then
dashed across the field leaving us in the car.  Mellie
said she'd go park and meet me there.
I headed to the Luther stage and saw some other people
playing songs on it. Luther was to the side looking
distressingly relaxed. He was tuning his guitar and
trying not to look sheepish.
"What?" I say.
"Uh well I guess it starts at 1. I might have misread
the schedule", he mumbled.
So rule # 7:  It never pays to freak out ever.
A long afternoon of folk music loomed so I hit the
town. Bought a bra from the biker woman who ran the
lingerie shop. Finally found one that fit! And then
walked to the highway to the Canadian Tire in search
of hula hoops. Success!
Bought three and some hockey tape in black and white
so the hoops would match our outfits.
Filled them with water for added weight (Momentum
man!) and was taping them up at a picnic table by the
river. Really Nice Guy From the Canada Council sat
with me for a while and helped me rip the tape into
strips. He said he hoped I intended to put the Canada
Council logo somewhere visible
on each hoop since he had helped me.
"The Hell!" said I, "Pure joy cannot be compromised!"
Long afternoon. Another night time bar show party. I
think we were all a little corned. I was having such a
good time I didn't want the show to end. Shuyler, who
was that night's designated driver, was of the
opposite opinion. We were rough and cranky but I loved
it. Some people attempted to 'jam' with Suzy so she
did the honourable thing and left the stage saying "I
can't do this". Classy.
There was some talk that we may have run out on our
bar tab.
There was some other talk that the festival took care
of it.
I didn't even know there was a tab. I paid!
The next morning I had a workshop.  At festivals they
have 'workshops'. There's no power tools or band saws
involved, the organizers just put different performers
together, often when they are at their most hungover,
and hope that hilarity will ensue. I had a workshop
with the effervescently straight-edged and earnest
Ember Swift and Australian Lesbian sensations Fruit.
In the car on the way to my gallows, I asked  Shuyler
and Luther if they thought they put me in that
workshop because they thought I was a lezzer.
They said it was because they KNEW I was.
Huh.
Well we work shopped away against a backdrop of bright
sunshine and the river babbled away beside us making
the light all dappled and birdies sang and families
picnicked. I made of point of applying bright red
lipstick before my song and made everyone join me.
This girl did a song about consumerism which
questioned why people buy so much stuff when they have
to find places to store their stuff so they can buy
more stuff. I ventured that with ladies it wasn't
about the stuff so much as it is about The Shopping
and she suggested that the need to shop was symbolic
of a deep void in ones character.
Hmmph.
Then Fruit got down to business. Like Ember Swift they
are really well trained and dang that girl can sing
and there's a tuba player and the three part harmonies
and infectious heartbeat grooves and the sunshine and
the families almost swept me away only I started
thinking. And I couldn't stop.
I puzzled until my puzzler was sore.
I puzzled until I got in the car with Jenny and Joey
and young Lila.
When we were pulling away from the festival I had to
ask my tour mates if they thought that everyone
thought that life was kind of shitty and that some
people do the benevolent thing and make sweet inane
inspirational music to make everyone forget/notice
they're alive instead of dragging them back to the
present with their tales of grim reality, or, if they
thought that some people had never noticed it was
shitty in the first place.
Joey checked the rear view and said, "Naw. They
notice. We're just attracted to tragedy that's all,
cause it's the highest art form."
Huh.
Got to be adopted by the family and taken back to the
farm for the night which felt pretty good.
Tea, pasta and only a very little wine.

Hey where did everybody go?
You know how parents do that thing? One minute you're
playing with their kid and they see you playing with
their kid and then the next thing you know a car is
peeling out of the driveway. Happens to me all the
time. I'm no baby sitter. I'm more of an accomplice.
I'll watch A Bug's Life eight times in a row and play
dress-up no problem. "Let's play nap!" is my favourite
game.
So I'm laying around with Lila and we've run out of
games so she says, "Let's play Baby!" and I'm like
"Okay what does that involve?" and so she starts going
'Wah! Wah! I'm a baby!" and punching me in the tit. I
grab her little wrist and tell her not to punch me in
my best Serious Voice and the little minx says,  "I'm
a baby. Baby's don't know!" and continues with the
punching.
I told Diona about it later and she said, "You're the
only person I know that could get in a fight with a
three year old!"
Yeah well it's a talent.


God where am I? What's happened to me? How did I get
here?
Finally the others return and we can steal a car and
get back to Toronto. Country living's great and all
but we needed to flee stat.
Shuyler and I borrowed the replacement car. Big Blue
Late Eighties thing with power everything.
Oh yeah. Vanna White bit it after The Incident. The
mechanic put in the new radiator only to find that the
head gasket had blown. I know they have to hook it all
up to see if the pressure holds, but did he have to
put in a brand new radiator?
Keenly aware of our loser luck, we named the car
Ka-"blue"-ey as some sort of reverse prayer offering
to the group travel gods. Lunch in Sharbot Lake with
Luther where the vegetarian samosas are loaded with
meat but since we were all sharing like three brain
cells between us, we just ate them.
We dropped Luther off at his car at The Hideout.
"Oh so you guys are friends now?" he said mournfully,
standing there as we pulled away.
We booted it back to Toronto paying very close
attention to the gauges. Overshot T.Dot and missed the
exit , which I've done before, and then circled back
and got to Garth's at 9:20pm.
Garth was sitting in the kitchen shirtless, with a
friend who was also shirtless, shooting a bb gun down
the hallway at an elaborate target set-up. "Cease
fire!' we said when we come up the stairs.
They were drinking beer and holy shit was Garth a
sight for sore eyes. Only trouble was that we had once
again overestimated the benevolence of the Ontario
government and missed the liquor store. They shut at
9. All of them. Provincial law. So we drank their beer
until it ran out. I tried the gun once and it
backfired some bb's at my hip. Lesson learned. The
hard way. Which is apparently the only way if you're
me.
We swapped tall tales and got drunk.  Giddy with
freedom, Shuyler and I vowed that from now on we were
only gonna look out for number one and yeah, we were
gonna join the me generation and no more worrying
about everyone else and that if they handed us the
beer tickets for the whole group we'd just pocket them
and no more thinking of others but then we started
laughing because we realized that the very fact that
we were talking about it meant that we were probably
way too nice to ever be that way and that everyone
else was probably already doing all that anyway!
Garth told us about the Time Gobbler. He'd noticed
His evil presence in the big city. The Time Gobbler
wants your time. He wants to devour your time and he
is insatiable. He is a primordial mythical monster who
stems from the earths' depths and appears in human
form like he is the main fungus and the people are
just mushrooms that grow in a fairy ring around you
when you stand still, desperate to compost your time
We thought of all the notorious time gobblers we knew
and made utter sense.
'Ah but Garth, Einstein said that time is relative
like  how a second with your hand in a flame feels
like an eternity but an hour spent with a beautiful
woman feels like a second."
He agreed, but only I suspect because I was gobbling
his time. The thing is, like most things, if you can't
SEE the time gobbler you ARE the time gobbler.
When we ran out of booze, we hit the street and headed
to Kensington Market like hummingbirds in search of
nectar
About a block from the house, I was testing out
Garth's Friend's ancient cruiser bike and I mentioned
the light summer philosophy I'd been reading and he
said, "Oh so you're going that route?"
Garth's Friend was a member of Cirque De Soleil and
he's an actor and therefore no stranger to doing stuff
in groups and just the way he said it in sort of an
not -at-all smug yet knowing way, it hit me that if a
guy was happy he wouldn't need to be reading about the
consolations of philosophy, he'd just be happy. And of
course there's never just ONE ANSWER to anything. But
it was sort of nice while it lasted.
Ah groups. If you don't happen to have the steeliest
of cores, they make you freak out about being you.

Day 14
Tolan Arrives.
Tolan, Garth, Ford and I played at the new Six Shooter
Records Store. It's super cute and the treatment was
fantastic. The nicest ladies in the world work there.
The store is in the east of Toronto but you can get
there no problem on the TTC Skedaddler. Our show was a
reunion of sorts. We hadn't all played together in a
while but it sounded like no time at all had passed.
Ford brought his new huge accordion and it looked like
quite the workout. Tolan's mum came and a lovely posse
of friends all came on their bicycles and it felt like
we were part of a small town community right there in
the giant stinky city! Very moving. Children danced
while the parents drank beer and it was all over by
10. Headed to the Cadillac Lounge for food and drinks.
Nevile put 20 dollars in my hand for a taxi. I was
grumpy because all that love on an empty stomach can
hit you sideways. But then it was all fine on the
patio.
I tried to convince Tolan to come with me when I left
("Day ONE man!") but he refused to abandon his post
and unfurl himself from around Martin Tielli's neck.

Got a ride to the airport to pick up The Fiddler in a
truck with only five days to live driven by The Most
Hated Man in Toronto (He's nice to me.) Got pulled
over and screamed at by the FBI. No shit.
Since we were on the 427, when cops scream at you they
come to the passenger side to do it. I was tempted to
roll up my window but figured that would have done
nothing for our cause. The dude was a walking heart
attack and he screamed and screamed that that was some
of the worst driving he'd ever seen (guess the signal
lights were out) and he didn't even WORK traffic
anymore he was on his way to the airport to attend to
some terrorist related emergency and he outta pull
this truck off the road right now and make us walk,
but then he just sort of talked himself down and let
us go.
Holy shit! We were kind of shaking while we waited
outside the terminal, way too scared now to crack a
beer.
Diona comes out and hops in the truck. She says, "So
the woman beside me on the plane said she was a
hairdresser and I thought 'No way. You're way more
than a hairdresser and it turns out, she was a
combination dominatrix stash slipper... hic...
with HER OWN TRAVELLING BAR!"
What an entrance! Arriving drunk. That's my girl. I
looked her over and had to comment. "Um are those
dutch rubber gardening clogs on your feet? What's next
sweat pants? Have you completely given up?"
She assured me that they weren't even hers and that
there was no other choice and her real shoes walked
off with some acrobat or something at the after party
up in Dawson City and she was gonna get new ones in
Chinatown, tomorrow. 
Well...okay.
Shuyler was making us dinner at Garth's and he's a
fantastic cook. The dude even made me dig eggplant! I
don't know when the meeting was held where it was
decided that if you're a vegetarian you must love
eggplant because if i was there man, I would have
voted no. But Shuyler man, he made it taste good. Said
it's all about getting the baby ones not the giant
woody ones.
Tolan came over later and shot all eight targets with
the bb gun perfectly in rapid succession. Amazing.
Ate the food. Drank a bunch of wine. Smoked some
p.o.t. and headed out to bluegrass night at the Silver
Dollar. Miss Dottie was singing with all the pickers.
So funny to come from the Hootenanny tour where we
wear matching outfits and choreograph the segues and
make it like a whole production, to here where
everyone's in shorts and sandals and there's long
interludes between songs where they all stand around
choosing the next song until finally someone says,
"Okay in it's in A and it's a 1-2-6-4-5. Okay?
1-2-3-4."
Guess it's more about the music than the show.

Thursday
Hank and Lily arrive.
Opened for Sarah Harmer at The Harbour front Centre.
Totally beautiful sunset luxury show. Me and Tolan and
Diona. It's so easy when the setting is so lovely.
(Maybe hold out for only this? But what do you do in
the meantime?)
Met a lot of nice people after the show who had never
heard of me before. And Miss Sarah put on a wonderful
show. I love her. Everyone loves her. It's so great.
Afterwards we all were invited back to a little after
party in the next building where we ate chips and
salsa while Sarah and her band were presented with
gold records. When the chips were finished, we all
just took one step to the left and started in on the
pummelled carrots and hummous. Our needs were more
immediate than gold records. Maybe because we don't
have any gold records. Huh.
The problem is when it's all about survival there's no
time to think of the future.

Summer 2006 - Part 3: Irony vs. Respect @ Hillside, followed by random Kate-napping!

2006-11-18T07:31:00.000-08:00

Hillside Festival
The Friday

Oh my god the line-up! I've heard about this festival.
How it's not a 'Folk' Festival like the others. How
it's a Music Festival and upon consulting the
programme my first thought was "Holy shit this guy's
got good taste in music!"  And then because I'm older
now, I changed it to "Oh my god me and this guy have
the SAME taste in music."
Picture every band you've ever wanted to see and all
your friends all on one island for three days. And
nearby swimming for when your brain was gonna melt and
a backstage celebrity beer tent to boot.
All the conditions for manic euphoria.
FESTIVALE!
My only beef, upon consulting the program, was  that I
was hostessing "The Irony Workshop".
"Irony? I was kind of working on more of a real life
tell it like it is kind of thing here. My life is NOT
ironic." I thought puffing up my chest and sticking my
chin out.
I don't know why I chose to focus on this detail more
than others. I was also in the "Those Were The Days"
workshop and one called "New World Disorder" and those
titles stayed on the page their normal size without
glowing, growing and grabbing me by the throat.
Irony huh? Huh.
Also in the programme was a picture of The Arcade Fire
and underneath there was a caption stating that they
had played Hillside '04 and '05 and that "Hillside
excels at catching rising stars just before they meet
nation-wide acclaim."
I'll keep all my digits crossed, with one foot on the
floor like usual.
We got really nice hotel rooms for the first and only
time the whole summer and we were pretty grateful as
'habit blunts the edge of pleasure' or at least that's
what all the poor folks say to comfort themselves...
The catch was that the festival site was half an hour
away from the hotel and there were only a few 8-seater
vans leaving every hour on the hour for everybody and
there were like seventy bands.
The plan was to arrive early so we could practice but
since a time was never fixed, Tolan and Diona and I
wandered off in search of supplies while the others
congregated and then when we materialized the others
had vapourized. Then time sped up like it does and we
boarded the shuttle to the first workshop which had
its charms and then we hung out in the celebrity beer
tent in between checking out The Great Lake Swimmers,
Corb Lund and Katheen Edwards who were gracing the
main stage. Me and Serena Ryder hula hooped like
fiends. She was even wearing black and white so we
matched. She asked if she could join our hootenanny. I
said only if she didn't ask me any questions and well,
that was one already.
Quite drunk, fairly stoned, a little bit AWOL and
totally unconcerned with The Future, ended up missing
the last shuttle.
Headed down the dirt road with a fairly motley and
hopeless crew, representing most of the provinces and
even The Yukon, not knowing what to do, when a man in
a van slowed down because he recognized my orange
travel case. He should have. He sold it to me. Runs
the thrift store in Guelph. He's normally kind of a
handful but I've never been happier to see him. And
his van was empty and he had room for all of us and
gave us a ride back to town.
Who says shopping doesn't pay?

The Saturday
Had a very sober, brief and daylight set with the
whole gang. The people really dug Hank and Lily. Would
have been great to play at night but it left the whole
day mostly free to check out bands, swim and avoid the
lure of the beer tent.
Saw The Hidden Cameras play and my new favourite band
Spiral Beach before heading over to the dreaded Irony
Workshop.
Right before I went on I thought I'd ask The Poets
about it before I got out of my league. Shockingly, I
found them standing around the bar. (The guys from
TOFU-Tons of Fun University. Go and see them now!) I
said, "Hey Poets! Quickly before I go on, what's irony
again?"
And they sighed and one said, "When the outcome defies
the expectation."
And the other added, "The vast gulf between promise
and reality."
Oh like EVERYTHING in my life!
I froze. Oh my god! Maybe my problem was way bigger
than the title of the workshop. Maybe if you refuse,
or are unable, to pick what I call "Door Number One"
(marriage, money, 'success' that straight people can
recognize etc) the people for whom door number one
actually worked out for think you are simply being
'ironic' anytime you think you are speaking 'the
truth".  Holy shit. Did I once again pick the biggest
battle there is? Here I've been trying to convince
people (okay, and myself) to never accept anything
less than pure joy and not be lured by the promise of
money and that fun doesn't have to be accompanied by
consequence and the whole time they don't want to be
convinced because they've had to train those instincts
out of themselves to get hold of all the money and
power which would also explain The Humour Barrier.
Maybe some people aren't funny because they haven't
had to be. Oh god it was so depressing standing there
in the heat amidst all my peers about to go host the
irony workshop with these awful new revelations
running like ice through my veins.
Worst of all that fucking Alanis Morisette song was
stuck in my head. "Like ray- ee-ain on yer wedding
day.. " etc.
In the end it was fine. Garth had instructed me in
advance to simply say "I'm delighted to be hosting the
irony workshop" so I did.
The other guests seemed pretty sincere.
Well compared to me I guess.

Saw that Final Fantasy kid play in the evening and
holy does he ever have something going on. A SOLO guy
playing the VIOLIN through a LOOP PEDAL??? Give me a
break. But his songs were beautiful and the tent was
crammed and there were people gathered around outside
the tent. Even the back of the tent teaming.
He is so amazing that I saw straight guys lingering
around wondering what he was doing later!
Sarah Harmer headlined the main stage and she was
extra fantastic.
And okay, maybe in retrospect, perfecting the flaming
hula hoop trick with Lily during Sarah's quietest song
wasn't the best timing, but holy fuck we were so
excited we simply couldn't wait.
Holy Fuck played too but I missed them.

Hit the beer tent for some formula but pacing still
had to be implemented as they were paying us extry to
play the party at the end of the night. Sort of
thought there might have been a P.A. Also, we had only
said yes on the condition that there would be a ride
for us when we finished but at the end it was like
Saigon trying to get out of there. Plus everyone was
running out of smokes so it was Very Dire for a while
with those In The Know declaring to the darkness that
if we ever made it out they were going to have A Talk
With Sam the next day.

The Sunday
Loafed around, enjoying the fleeting hotel room luxury
and the brief respite from the heat and action.
Took a trip into town for some health food  (Funny. It
was this place where nothing was cooked but it took
fucking forever- like they were all fucked up on
health or something) before heading to the site. Took
a cab.
A couple of sips of a.m. ale and then en route to the
swimming hole where I was stopped dead in my tracks by
This Voice. The Voice was accompanied by shit-hot
guitar playing and pedal steel and wicked drums. The
owner of The Voice was a black haired girl with red
lips and matching Converse in a black summer cocktail
dress with hickeys all over her back, presumably from
the guitarist (he seemed about the right height to
have been the artist) who smoked while he sang
back-ups!
Sarah Borges and The Broken Singles was the name of
the act. From The States. Man was she good. None of
that ladyfake shyness. Just The Real Deal and what a
voice!  And Balls to the Wall music and that I've
never heard of her and that she was The Real Deal was
spiritually as good as a swim right then. I was soon
surrounded by all the other ladies that hearkened to
her siren call and we made up dance moves at the side
of the stage.
When it was over, all us Westerners floated out to the
middle of the lake and The Lone Yukoner swam out to
meet us because we know what time it is and where the
good times are at goddamn it! We even felt a little
bit bad for Ontario because everybody else was still
gonna have to live here when were were done with it!
Watched C'mon play to an adoring audience. Halfway
through the second song I saw a pair of orange
Converse go by horizontally, still attached to their
legs and thought, "Ah Tolan's started the stage diving
then has he? Good man. Good man"
But the admiration soon turned to dread at the
prospect of how drunk he was gonna be later.
Had a stroke of luck. Stopped to talk to The Snake and
Sean Dean from The Sadies and while we chatted a line
formed behind us and the clock struck five which meant
we were first in line for dinner! This never happens
and food had been kind of scarce so we were pretty
excited.
Confronted with our new found luck, someone had to be
worried and for once it wasn't me.
"Uh it probably isn't considered very 'rock'n'roll' to
line up for food is it?" Sean ventured looking behind
him.
We decided that it's a hell of a lot more
'rock'n'roll' to find yourself at the front of the
line-up without even trying than stuck at the back.
Also if everything you did was rock'n'roll you'd
probably be dead because that's the most rock'n'roll
thing of all so if you want to continue rocking and
rolling, you should probably eat every once in a
while.

I headed to The Sun Stage for The New World Disorder
workshop. It was the last chore before unfettered
freedom and the sun was finally going down. The host
was a CBC guy who I've met before and like but after I
played my "You're Not a Whore if No One's Paying"
song, he said "I guess in the future there's no
shame!" and did all these double takes to the audience
and waggled his eyebrows like what I was throwing down
was too risque to be associated with and it made me so
mad to be that misunderstood and dismissed.
I said, "No! Maybe in the future there's no MONEY!"
But by then my turn was over and it was his and he
sang some "George Bush is a jerk" song he had just
written.  Sigh. Fuck.
Ran into my friends Kate and Tara who were camping in
style. They took my picture a whole bunch on the way
back to their tent and said I was beautiful but they
were on Ecstasy and it is they who are beautiful.

Got drunk, watched Feist, saw Christine Fellows' most
beautiful show ever and stayed up late with criminals.
Have decided there's only two ways you can wake up:
wrapped in pride or covered in respect.
Went for the former but the blanket's getting so
tattered I might soon be tempted by the latter.
Festivale!

The Monday
Kate had been suggesting that I come for a visit the
whole weekend. Even though I should know better than
to ever doubt her, I hemmed and hawed feeling
obligated to The Group. Plus I could sense that Luther
was desperate to get us all out to his cottage on the
lake for the upcoming coupla days off.
Kate pulled up in her Wagoneer with coffees right when
the armada was shipping out and receiving/ignoring the
many instructions. We were all supposed to meet up at
some gas station a couple of hours up the 401 but the
one mistake a hostage taker can make is leaving the
hostages unattended as this is when they revert back
to having their own ideas. Once out of Stockholm, the
Syndrome wears off. Diona, Lily and I, spying an
opening, hopped in with Kate and about 20 minutes up
the road we had all started to get the notion that why
shouldn't we get to visit Kate and her dog and her
horses and opulence? I mean what the fuck we could go
to Luther's the NEXT day and how pissed could everyone
be since it was a day off and all etc.
But how to leave word so no one would be left waiting
for us?
Ah. The delightfully passive aggressive text message
feature offered to us by these modern times for such
occasions could be implemented and word could be sent
with limited consequences.
Think of the savings!
So with one flick of the wrist:
"Go on w/o us.
going to Kate's for the night.
C U 2morrow
xo us"
was sent into outer space and we were free!
"You had this planned all along!" I said to Kate.
She told me to reach into her purse and look in her
day timer under Monday. There in ink with no question
mark after it was my name.
A few minutes later Diona's phone rang. It was Jenny
saying "You fuckers are leaving me alone with all the
dudes tonight?" Ah shit. If anyone could handle it it
was her and it was only for one night.
We hit the ranch mid afternoon after stopping at the
grocery store and the farmer's market and the hooch
hut with lofty dinner plans on our minds.
Mojo the pointy headed dog met us in the yard as we
unloaded the Jeep. Fuck it was hot. Kate suggested
that we walk up the road for a swim in Greg's pool.
Greg Keelor. From Blue Rodeo. They're neighbours.
Awesome guy. Let me record a song at his house once.
Now because of the fashion in which we had abandoned
ship, we were left without fashions. Kate pulled out a
surprising array of bikini options but she is a
supermodel and I am, well, two supermodels. Found
something possibly intended for yoga that covered both
fur and flesh and headed down the road.
Lily had found a bright orange two piece to match her
flaming hair and placed a tiger lily behind each ear
to complete the ensemble.
Once we were in the pool we noticed that the deer girl
was completely covered in pollen. Then the bees
swarmed. We could hardly drown out her screams even
when we put our heads under water but the thing to
remember here is that if it is your goal to constantly
be the centre of attention, you don't necessarily get
to control the KIND of attention you'll attract.
Diona was in blue afloat an inflatable spiderman
donut, drinking a caesar and smoking, looking like an
ad for neglectful parents.
Except for the deer flies (hurts like a motherfucker
when they bite and the bastards can swim!) and the
young man with the weed eater, it was most relaxing.
Headed back to the house when it got a little cooler
to start on the dinner and mint juleps.
Ate al fresco joined by Greg and Kate's parents, Lord
and Lady B..
Candle sticks and plates laden with food overlooking
the darkening valley. It looked like a  gourmet
magazine or the set of a Peter Greenaway film!
Wonder where the poor folks are at tonight?
When the eating slowed down and it was back to the
drinking, Kate's father seized his opportunity to
grill his guests. He enjoys nothing better. He's
written several books on how well he knows people but
mostly he asks questions so he can tell you The Real
Answer.
He leaned back in his chair and said, "What is it you
like best about what you do?" I could feel it coming.
I've been here before so I know about this part. I
watched Kate and her mother exchange long eye rolls
and sigh.
"Uh Mr. B, as grateful as I am to be enjoying your
hospitality, it's like the MONDAY after a festival and
we're all a little depleted so if you start asking us
about that stuff now, we'll probably end up crying and
switching professions", I said tearing up.
I could see Keelor stifling a smirk.
He turned to Diona who was, as ever, more prepared.
"The travelling" she said without even a pause to
consider all the other things.
"And what is you you dislike the most?"
"The waiting".
"Excellent answers. Marvellous."
I felt like a failure. I needed to win back the table.

"So what is it you like about staying in one place
best?" I said trying to beat him at his own game.
"Well.... (huge pause).... you can't really just pick
one thing and say what's best ....."
"Well I just think if YOU'RE allowed to ask a 'what do
you like best' question than so am I..."
"All right. My wife. Now ask me what's my least
favourite thing!"
"All right. Shoot"
"My wife."
Ho HO!
There's something about dining with peoples' parents
that makes all us travelling rock stars act like we
are about seven.
Look at me Dad! I got an A!
I think when you are tired and exposed to opulence it
makes you want to rethink all your decisions which
makes you defensive.
Retreated back to Kate's teenager suite over the
garage where we smoked hash and played guitar man! I
love her. She is one of those rare souls who know
they're lucky, don't feel guilty about it and wanna
share it.

The Tuesday
Woke up quite puffy from all the everything but not as
bad as Lily. Man, when we were eating dinner outside,
those mosquitos ate the shit out of her ass through
the slats in her chair. Holy shit. Wow. It's usually
me.
Slunk into the main kitchen in hopes of discovering an
unattended coffee pot but alas, Lord B. had beaten me
there and was manning the espresso maker. I really
didn't want to face him without coffee. But it was,
after all, his castle so I waited with him for the
precious nectar.
We had yet to figure out how we were going to hook up
with the Mother Ship. There had been talk of buses
and/or trains and whatnot the night before.
Lord B, anxious to be rid of the hobo element, asked
if we had figured out a plan yet. I said no but that
after I had some coffee I was going to look into it.
Then he got me with a double zinger.
He said, "Well why don't you just rent a car? You're
too old for public transit!"
I said it was sort of a money issue and then he
reloaded and said, "Well poverty's a sin you know."
Luckily Diona entered right when I had to stick my
head in the fridge, under the pretext of finding
cream, to muffle the primal screams that lurked in my
throat. Mercifully, she was able to distract him until
the coffee was ready.
Kate had risen early and gone to work. She worked at a
restaurant we all loved in Port Hope called Zest. She
suggested we go down to Greg's for a swim and ask him
for a ride into town.
I hoped Lord B didn't think I was too old for that
too.
Of course Greg said he would give us a ride to town-
and in a Golden Cadillac to boot!
On the way there he asked us if we had all our stuff.
We told him we had no stuff and explained the
conditions surrounding our escape. "Oh so you're part
of a bigger thing..."
Then he said he'd give us a ride the whole way to
Luther's once Kate got off work and they'd stay for a
swim. "Better to be moving in heat like this anyway.."

Three heads nodded vigorously in the back seat. We
couldn't have agreed more.
We were all thinking, "You mean we get to pull up in
front of Luther's in a golden Cadillac driven by you
after a night like that and it won't even hurt?" and
marvelling at our luck.
We got to eat peaches and listen to Greg's new record
and take a cute ferry and everything. Luther called
Diona with the directions and we patched him through
to our 'chauffeur' grinning devilishly.

Summer 2006 - Part 4: 'Womyn' Behind Blue Skies

2006-11-18T06:33:00.000-08:00

Blue Skies Festival-Clarendon, Ontario
Middle of second day. about to die of exposure. Poison
ivy, mosquitos, the beating sun. Diona and I realized
that we were running out of smokes and if we ever
wanted to find a ride outta there, we better run back
to the farm and gather our stuff for maximum ease the
next day. Jenny was into it cause she had a bottle of
wine back there she wanted fetched and supplies were
running low and of course everyone wanted smokes. We
got to take Harmer's fancy new hybrid car,"The Prius",
down the back country roads marvelling how every day
found us in a different car. The light was perfect,
religious almost, when we pulled up to the farm. We
pulled down the clothes we'd left to dry a couple of
days before off the line and just for a second we got
to feel like it was all ours and it was heart
stoppingly perfect.
"Hey! we're living the fantasy while living the
fantasy!"
"Our" new car! "Our" farmhouse! AND, as if placed by a
set decorator,  just enough wine lingered in a bottle
on the porch beside two cigarettes.
"Oh my god! Are we in a play?!"
A Perfect Gorgeous Stolen Moment that defied space,
time and logic. It smelled like flowers and sunset and
forgiveness. We had found the calm in the eye of the
storm.
Of course you have to pay back every stolen moment
with interest, so as our shadows grew longer, we
grabbed the supplies and peeled back to the festival
with moments to spare before show time. We got held up
by the time gobblers directing traffic to the site.
They thwarted our plans to park in front the the
handicapped outhouse and made us relocate to the upper
lot.  Whatever. I had taken some of the stolen time to
change into my show outfit and write the set list so
if my guitar was still by the garbage can where I left
it after the workshop, we should be golden.
It was. It was that kind of festival. I mean our tents
had New Sleeping Bags in them and were set up for us
before we got there!  And it wasn't on a swamp and the
food was good and the people were nice. It's the
details I guess that get smoothed out after thirty
years of doing something.
Even the wristbands were cool. They were woven thread
affairs with pretty blue beads instead of the usual
crappy plastic thingies.

We played both nights but the second show was better
since we were all acclimatized and get this: the hula
hoops I'd left at the last festival were backstage at
this festival giving the illusion that backstage is
the only constant, which it kind of is for us show
folk. After my bit, I came off stage and told Jenny
that I was worried that we were too loud as I'd seen
some people covering their ears. She said "Oh never
look at the audience." as she poured wine from her
purse.
Wow. Never?
I was learning so much.
Speaking of covered body parts, somewhere on this tour
someone ("It was ME!", says Hank.) had told us about
how polar bears, when they want to be alone, simply
cover their nose with a paw because it's the only
thing on them that's black eh? and they live in the
snow eh? So a few of us had adopted the gesture as
shorthand for wanting to be alone. I have no idea if
it's true about the polar bears, but it's a hell of a
story. Ask Kyle man. ask fucking Kyle!
The show ran smoothly and everyone sounded great.
Safest place for all of us to be is on stage. There
are too many variables and temptations in real life
for this many people to stay focused on The Common
Goal. Plus it's the only place on earth you're
actually expected to follow your instincts and
encouraged to be your unedited self.
We asked the emcee/clown to announce that some of us
needed a ride to Toronto in the morning and within
moments we were set up. Dan, who plays with Romy Maze
and is the former president of the Ontario Trucker's
Union and an all around Awesome Dude, said he could
take Me and Diona and a beautiful woman came for Hank
and Lily.
Partied like it was 1999 back at camp and I got so
stoned I couldn't move even though the mosquitos and
poison oak were doing a number on my feet. Diona woke
up because I was moaning so loudly without knowing it
and suggested I go to bed. And once the blood left my
feet I slept hard, thankful that the whole ride thing
had been sorted.
In the morning, we loaded up our stuff into Dan's van,
had one last breakfast, settled up at the merchandise
tent, said goodbye to everyone and hit the fucking
road!
Blue Skies is a beautiful festival and I'm glad they
had us even though I fear our crew and The De-Rangers
might have made people wanna rename it The Booze Skies
Festival.
No brakes until The Fifth Wheel. Dan was thrilled that
we wanted to stop at a truck stop. Said none of his
other bands ever wanted to.
Dan took us to the Toronto airport and I went in to
rent a car. Aunt Flow had come to visit on top of all
the mosquito bites so there was no blood left to run
my brain. A beautiful girl with hair extensions and
golden green contacts set me up and because of her
contacts and persuasive ways I ticked the insurance
waiver which made it cost more but since we were
already lying about Not Leaving The Province of
Ontario, I thought of Dallas Good's mother and how she
told him never to break two laws at one time.
"Only one driver?"
"Naturally".
I could hear Geoff Berner delivering his speech about
"pot odds" and how they can never be beaten but
switched stations before the dashboard-pounding
finale.
Finally got out of there, without actually channelling
everybody I've ever met, in a sparkling blue Sebring
"Touring". The car was actually called a "Touring".
As we approached the border, Diona and I made a pact
to wear seat belts and not to speed, figuring the last
thing we wanted to attract in our semi- stolen car
would be American fuzz.
The plan was to just head "somewhere in Michigan" and
spend the night. We were going to visit my brother the
next day who lives in the "third finger of the mitt"
or something. I don't know. We hadn't got a map yet
but Michigan people are all about The Mitt.
And sure I've seen the movie Roger and Me but somehow
we ended up in Flint looking for one of those big
American grocery stores to get hotel pic-a-nic fixins.
Instead we found an endless ghetto strip with only
signs for Jesus and chicken and Jesus and ribs and
Jesus chicken and Jesus ribs. I got kind of freaked
out. Diona wanted to pull over and ask somebody for
directions and I was all like "You'll do nothing of
the sort young lady now lock your window!" which I am
never like but it was really freaky. Or I was just out
of my mind.
She got out at a corner store with bars on the windows
and asked this huge black guy  wearing giant pants and
a huge gold medallion. (I know any black guy in any
story is always "HUGE" but I tell you this dude really
was HUGE! )
I couldn't hear what he said because I had the windows
rolled up so tight they were about to go through the
roof but he was making pointing gestures up the street
and then when D. turned to come back to the car, even
though he was making a real effort not to, I saw him
cast his eyes downward and check out her ass.

We went up a main-ish road in the direction he had
pointed and found a giant American grocery store.
When we got to the check-out, there were two options:
You could either go to a til with a person or use the
automated check-out. Since we didn't see any people we
went for the machine.
Now the machine's fine if all your stuff has a
bar-code on it, but at the end we had two tomatoes and
cucumber we didn't know what to do with so we just
threw them in the bag and hit the parking lot,  our
little Canadian hearts racing as we got in our illegal
car and got the rock outta there. Diona was driving
and did a magnificent shit-hook to get us back to the
interstate. When the terror subsided into pure
adrenaline, we started laughing like crazy.
"Oh my God! Can you just see the headlines? 2 Canadian
girls of dubious orientation at large, last seen in a
stolen car peeling out of a Michigan ghetto grocery
store, doing a U-turn in possession of a stolen
cucumber"
That's like six broken laws! Do they cancel each other
out after a while? Holy Shit. Cross one border and it
all goes to hell!
Somehow we found a hotel and checked in using cash and
a fake name (M. Simpson 2541 Evergreen Terrace,
Springfield USA, if you must know)
I was bleeding so hard I knew I was gonna leave some
sort of crime scene worthy of calling in the dude from
CSI so I didn't want to leave my real name. Also I had
plans to dye my hair which is also never makes for
pretty leavings. Sorry towels. Maybe one day you'll
need to wipe yourselves on me!


*                         *                        *
                

Got to my brother's in the early afternoon. It was
closer than I thought. We had gotten a large scale map
so it took like twenty minutes to drive like five
inches.
Hung out with the calves and the cats and the dog
until Nancy and Baby Petra came home from town. After
dinner everybody passed out on the living room floor.
Guess we were saving the fire for the next night.

*                       *                           *
                   

Went to the Kent County Fair to see Nancy's twin
nieces participate in the goat obstacle course! Say
what you will but it's hell of a good time! Some of
the goats were more willing than others. Same with the
people.
Rode the zipper, ate gigantic onion rings and fell in
love with a pair of blue-eyed paint horses. Saw
earless goats and fainting goats and those chickens
with the crazy hairdo's. The twin nieces are really
sweet and eerily smart. Perhaps it's the home
schooling...  They kept bringing us different animals
to hold. Saw this one horse that had a sign on his pen
that said, "Don't pet me. I bite." Thought about
making my own sign.
Stopped at a U-pick blueberry place on the way home
for the full Michigan experience. Diona picked 25
cents more berries than me. God if we were migrant
workers she'd totally get picked first!
Got to have a big fire after dinner and my brother lit
off fireworks and he and I outlasted everybody and got
drunk together for the first time.

*                      *                      * 
        

Early Morning. Good bye to the family. Good bye to the
farm. Back in the Touring. The radio was still on when
D. flipped the ignition. Aerosmith's "Dude Looks Like
a Lady" came blasting through the speakers.  The
imminent reality of our destination-The Michigan
Womyns Festival- hit us with the first chorus and we
started laughing really hard.
Also I was still drunk from staying up with my
brother.
Turns out that the official song of the Michigan
Womyns Festival is more like "Lady Looks Like a Dude".

But I'm jumping ahead.
Nancy had printed off a map of Michigan back roads for
us and we tried pretty much all of them before finding
the right one. A long dirt road into the trees. Okay
deep breath. Why was this freaking me out so much? I
guess segregated events in general make me
uncomfortable. I'd heard that if anyone brought a boy
baby they'd be put in a separate pen and that The
Transgendered were protesting with their own party
just outside the gates, contentious of the 'no dick'
rule.
We pulled up and two security ladies in vests started
radioing frantically for a shuttle. We had cut it a
little close and the Po'Girls were allegedly freakin'.
We got in a van with some other people. Well, Dames.
Women. Womyn?
The driver had bleach blonde hair and some facial
piercings and seemed really funny and friendly. A
black chick from New York riding shotgun started
quizzing Diona on the sexual preferences of Po'Girl
and told us that when she was On Broadway they were
fined $75 if they were late for rehearsal and then she
reached back to clutch the hand of the big lady in the
back seat in case we got any ideas.
I was staring out the window trying to ignore the
black chick because she was humourless and I wanted to
punch her in the throat, which I realize is also not
funny, but one must fight fire with fire.
Also, I was crossing the border from Still Drunk to
Hungover.
As we wound into the heart of The Land, we passed by a
bezillion womyns. It was boiling hot and the grass was
all brown and beaten down. Without the prying eye of
the Evil Mens to worry about, most of the womyn were
walking around topless.
Erase the porn fantasy you just created for yourself
when you read that last sentence because the song
"Saginaw Michigan' kept popping into my head. It was
titty city out there and it wasn't pretty.
One tit. Two tits. Red tits. No tits.
Even saw Rodney Dangerfield With Tits walk by on our
way to the stage.
When we got there, The Po'girls weren't as freakin' as
we've been led to believe. Or they were hiding it. Or
they calmed down once they saw the whites of Diona's
eyes.
It's good to see them. We've spent so much time
together this year that reuniting always feels good.
The ladies took the stage. The sound man was a lady
and the stage crew were all ladies but most of them
had moustaches and cargo shorts so it didn't really
feel any different than usual.
A woman with dreadlocks and pretty cool clothes named
Bitch is the M.C. and she exudes confidence. I liked
her. She addressed the audience as "You gays" and tap
danced while reciting poetry. Apparently she is one
half of a duo called Bitch and Animal.
The sound was kind of weird at first but they figured
it all out while I watched from the audience. The
addition of a signer for the deaf to the right of the
stage added an interesting element.
It was boiling hot and the sun was beating down
relentlessly.
Beside me Chris Cooper With Tits (and a really nice
ass)sunbathed on a towel.
The girls asked me to come up and sing with them and
thank god. If I would have stayed in the sun any
longer I would have melted my brain. The stage was
covered so there was some shade.
I can see why people wanted to know if The Po'Girls
were gay. They were the hottest things around for
miles.
I was sitting on a bench side stage. Bitch came
running up and grabbed her clipboard off a tree stump
as the set ended.
The middle aged woman beside me laughed and said
"Bitch is always running around."

I met the ladies backstage when they finished and
spied Jane Siberry walking by in a shawl accompanied
by a handler.
Apparently she has changed her name to Issa and given
up all her possessions. Yeah. So now she's like a
"musician" I guess.
My Brother With Tits and Sook Yin Previn With Tits
walked by holding hands.
I was thinking that we were gonna leave right away but
the girls wanted to stay for dinner. Fine. It was
boiling and I was grumpy so Diona took me for a walk.
There was some cool stuff in the vending area and I
ducked into the bookstore for a minute and oh the
titles! There was a book for everything! I was
thumbing through a copy of something called "I'm
Happily Married But in Love With My Friend" when Diona
snuck up behind me. I jumped like fifty feet and threw
the book behind a shelf lest she get any ideas.  I
grabbed something else to replace it but the book I
grabbed was some hardcore erotica and I totally felt
as awkward and uptight as Don Knotts. I'm no prude-
well it depends who you ask I guess- but it disturbed
me that there was a book for everything.
It is equally as vexing as it is comforting to
discover that you are not alone.
Diona found a hammock in the shade and we got in and
she was like "There's no way you can bitch now" and I
was like "Oh yeah? Watch me".
It had been a full moon the night before so maybe
every bitch here was bleeding. This was not something
I enjoyed thinking about either.
A horn sounded and "The Bull Dyke Parade" wound it's
way past us.
Sailors and Hobos and Teamsters Oh my!
We spent the next hour perusing the programme and
checking out chicks.
Me: Hey do you think she's hot?
Dee: Nah. She looks like one of those dogs who ran
face first into a wall.
Me: Woah that's meaner than any dude.
Dee: Yeah well they think it. I get to say it.

The programme is distressing. All the workshops and
events are so specific and compartmental.
The Sweat Lodge for Native Recovering Alcoholics
Who've Been Abused.
The Beginning Strap-On Workshop.
The Chem-Free Zone. The Scent-Free Zone.
The Quiet Camping Area. Where to stand while watching
the music. Yeah if women ran the world it would be
like this. I found all this to be far more oppressive
that the 'real world'. It's like the reverse of what
they're rebelling against but it's really just the
same, maybe even worse.
I couldn't really put it into words what was bothering
me at the time.  I was just mad like an animal and
mostly just lay there flushed and fanning myself in my
little gingham dress moaning, "I just wish it was The
Fifties!" over and over again which I'm sure made me a
real treat to hang out with.
It was all the compartments. Reminded me of the first
time I went to San Francisco and read the personal
ads.
"Submissive top seeks M2F for fisting, rimming and
water sports. No weirdos".
Just how do you know what you are and what you'll want
in advance? Can people do that?
And how do you pick? Aren't you afraid that by
choosing you'll rule out other potential options you
haven't even thought about?
I've always had this problem. I just wrote a song
about it. I can never pick one thing.
Like I said, it was just undefined low level rage back
in the hammock but  Ali Riley of Vulcan later lent me
a book and there was this comforting passage that put
my feelings into words:

"Definitions are prisons. Divisions are useful only on
the level of great populations not on a personal
level...I am nothing and I am something ... and what
this is I'll never know and if I ever tell you I know,
shake me, shake me hard, for the finality of self
naming is as dull as death."
                                            
                               Nelly Reifler

Fuck yeah!

Also consoling was renting the Sarah Silverman movie
where she says, " I don't want people to think of me
as straight, or gay or whatever. I just want them to
think of me as white!"

But I didn't know all that then and I was hungover and
it was boiling. Let's go back:

We entered a big tent structure filled with long
tables and chairs in search of snacks. A smallish
faux-hawked creature looked up from her notepad and
said "How do you spell deviant?" addressing nobody in
particular.
We sat for a while but we had to flee when the people
a couple of rows over started talking about Po'Girl's
set, unaware of our proximity. It was positive but
it's always weird to hear people talking about you
when you're right there.
Diona and I had promised in advance to be each others
beards for the duration of the festival but nature
called and I had to hit the outhouse. I left her alone
for maybe four minutes and when I came back she was
surrounded. Womyn use a different technique to hit on
you than men. They smother you with care. One was
offering to apply sunscreen. Another wanted to know
where she got her shirt. Another felt her forehead to
see if she was feverish. She spied me and we bolted.
Yikes.
"Your powers are mighty grasshopper."
"Get me the fuck out of here!"
Finally the dinner hour arrived. And holy fuck was the
food good. There are some advantages to having women
run the show. Also it should be noted that the
outhouses were spotless and smelled good. Like they
didn't just smell good by outhouse standards, they
smelt good for any room in the house! Oh and of course
they are called "Janes" instead of "Johns".
Take back the night sisters!
We ate dinner with the Fruit girls and we started
telling jokes. To my amazement the redheaded one told
us this one:
"Guy comes home late after the bar holding a duck
under one arm. Careens up the stairs and whips open
the bedroom door where his wife is sleeping and says,
"This is the pig I've been fucking."
The wife wakes up and switches on the lamp and says
"Oh darling you're drunk. That's a duck."
And the man says, "I was talking to the duck!"
Surprise filth always impresses me.
I pulled out my showstopper I got from Tolan:
Father and daughter. Daughter wants to borrow the car.
Father says "Okay but you have to suck my dick."
She starts and then says, "Dad, your dick tastes like
shit!"
And the Dad says, "Oh that's right. Your brother has
the car tonight."
They didn't get it. Might be a bit cerebral for some
people.
I was so hungry I went back for more food but it
started to taste weird. I looked down and realized
that I was eating my plate! The juices from the
curried veggies had dissolved the paper and I had
eaten my way through to the table.
So long bitches, time to go.
Turns out the Time Gobbler is equal opportunity all
the way. We had to wait for a shuttle to take us back
to the car and they kept forgetting us. Hung out with
these girls wearing eyeliner and black jeans from a
band called Lez Zeppelin who seemed really cool and
then finally wove through the trees and got to the car
only Awna forgot her bass so she had to go back yadda
yadda yadda and then load up everyone and hit the
fucking road!
Drove and drove and drove and no troubles at the
border. Ended up in a hotel room in London, Ontario
and we were all so tired,  we fell asleep in our
clothes without even cracking the wine.

Summer 2006 - Part 5: Wolf Island and NYC

2006-11-18T05:37:00.000-08:00

London hotel room: Let's go.
Come on bitches get in the car! Drive drive drive. Hot
hot hot. Back through Tee Dot up behind Kingston in
time for the ferry line with all the Hootenanny Crew.
"Reunited and it feels so good..."
Wolfe Island is my favourite place in Ontario. It's
very B.C. It's 20 minutes from Kingston and the
ferry's free and it's where the mouth of the St
Lawrence confabs with Lake Ontario. And it's very cute
and the people are nice. We were playing in a hall to
kick off the Wolfe Island Music Festival. A local
French horn professor had donated his cabin to us for
the night. Hank and Lily had left the tour so Ali and
Awna stepped in. I found sparklers that burned blue
when I was in The States. Tonight was the night for
the flaming hula hoop finale. (You duct tape the
sparklers at right angles around the hula hoop and
have gentlemen light them). So far the experiments had
produced varied results. The sparklers take ages to
light which sort of compromises the momentum of your
finale situation. I had bought some lighter fluid
thinking it might speed up the process but the
American sparklers were too volatile and I burned the
living shit out of my thumb in the parking lot.
Back to the old drawing board.
The rest of the gang were setting up the hall with
Christmas lights and putting the banner up and rigging
the sound. I took a stroll down the road and found
Sarah McDermott and Mellie in the back yard drinking
Coronas and joined them. Two of the best smiles I've
ever seen and they fed me dinner too. Then over to the
cabin to snake the best room, get whored up and make
the set list as the sun was setting.
I went to use the payphone down by the dock to Call
Home as The Maintenance Man is a Wolfe Island
enthusiast despite never having seen it. He answered
right when all the cars were coming off the ferry.
Since most of the people were coming over for the
show, they all recognized me and everyone was yelling
stuff as they went by ("Who are you talking too, your
agent?? har har" etc) so it wasn't exactly Quality
Time. Ah well. You win some. You lose some.
Back to the cabin to get tuned up. Jenny and I sat on
the deck drinking wine savouring our last night
together. Everyone was full of love for each other
again since it was all going to be over soon. I had
spent 33 days in the care of The Ontarians and I think
we had all rubbed off on each other.
I was really excited about the finale. We decided that
we'd end with Jenny's circus song where we take down
the stuff DURING the song. (You wanna get show folk
excited about loading gear? Get 'em to do it in front
of an audience!) Then we'd lead everybody out to the
parking lot at the very end where Tolan had pre-set
some fireworks in honour of The Last Night.
The show was fantastic. Best one of the tour. We had
the whole night and didn't have to rush to fit
everyone in and the audience totally dug it. There was
so much love it was kind of overwhelming. Ali and Awna
ruled. Luther's from here so it was total home town
victory story for him. Jenny's always awesome but
tonight she shone. And Tolan didn't go to the dark
side and played great. Chris Brown and Kate Fenner
came by and sat in with some NY city monsters in tow
and the finale totally rocked.
As Me and Jenny and Diona spun the hoops of fire and
Tolan lit the fireworks and the audience went bananas,
I heard Luther say incredulously, "Jesus! What do
people WANT for 15 bucks?"
And then it was all over and I stayed up way too late
because it was THE LAST NIGHT. But that's an illusion
because in this racket there's always The Next Night
too.
The next morning Me and Tolan and Diona headed for New
York City to play in a circus tent.
Wolfe Island has this great eleven-car ferry that
takes you across to Cape Vincent, NY and then six
hours later you're in Man-fucking-hatten doing heroic
battle with the traffic. It's usually one of the
easiest border crossings too. Very mellow.
Diona was driving because she has Jedi mind control
skills with the border guards so they never pull us
in. She had proven herself so many times in this
department that I ignored the niggling feelings that I
should have been driving and that we shouldn't have
had Awna's bass in the backseat or volunteered to mule
the Po'girl Cd's in our trunk on top of the whole
rental car issue.
But we made the ferry and the sun was shining so what
could happen?
We pull up to the booth and the border lady says,
"Where are you going?"
I'm in the passenger seat holding a map to Chris
Brown's house in Brooklyn trying to look innocent.
To my horror, Diona says, "Oh... anywhere and
everywhere... " in this real whimsical way that they
hate.
"President street. Brooklyn. Three days!" I pipe up
nervously.
"Uh huh. And what do you people do for a living?"
"Teacher."
"Roofer."
Tolan and I are trained in the rhythm and we wait for
Diona.
"Oh. Me? Ha Ha. Oh. Um actually I'm between jobs at
the moment but you know kitchen help is my usual
thing."
Holy fuck this is going so badly. I'm especially
freaked out because it's the first show booked by The
Fancy American Booking Agent to the tune of $1200
UHmerican which is gonna pay for most of the tour so
it's pretty important that we make this one.
"Who's car is this?"
"It's a rental."
"OK pull over here and let me see the registration.
Actually, wait here. I'm just going to deal with the
rest of the ferry passengers."
My faith was crumbling.
Aw fuck we're sunk we've got the bass and Cd's and the
car thing and guitars and they're totally not gonna
let us in and what a terrible first impression with
the new booking agent out of all the fucking shows
we've made to not make this one and fuck I should have
been driving I bet I'm not even allowed to go to the
bathroom.
I opened the car door. No armed guards surrounded me
so I went across the street to a fish restaurant to
take care of business.
When I came back Tolan and Diona were gone from the
car.
Tentatively I pulled open the door to the office and
saw a nice looking guy with Elvis hair handing back
our passports and registration to Diona saying "Have a
nice day. Enjoy your trip."
We ran to the car.
"He was totally in a band and covered for us!", they
said.
I guess the lady cop told him we had "black things" in
our trunk that looked like instruments or something
and he got excited and  said, "Like what amplifiers?
Cables?" and she said "Oh I don't know. Black things!
And somehow they overlooked the whole 'This car must
not leave the province' stamp on the registration too.

The whole thing was a goddamn miracle.
"So D... What happened?", I said when we were down the
road and my heart rate had returned to normal.
"I don't know. It's been so long since I had a job, I
couldn't' think of an occupation and I bailed".
Tolan and I offered her a wide array of professions
she could choose from next time.
Half way there the phone calls starting coming in hot
and heavy on Tolan's phone (which costs like a
gazillion dollars a second once you cross the border
people!)
It was the production crew. Wanted us there for sound
check at two.
Two words sprang to mind: AS IF.
We would have had to get up half an hour before we
went to bed!
So we do the 'right' thing and kiss ass and tell them
we're SO sorry for the INCONVENIENCE and that we're
DOING ALL WE CAN to get there blah blah blah and we'll
see everybody at five and we told them we don't have a
drum kit or need one which always calms everybody
down.
I feel like hell and I want to die. Diona and Tolan
took care of all the navigation and driving and it
kind of felt okay to be the high maintenance one now
that we were stripped down to a fightin' three.
"Look it's New York!"
I can barely be bothered to lift my head to look out
the window.
"Yeah. New York."
I am jealous of New York.
There I said it.
I am jealous of her fame and the way everyone springs
into hopeful action at the very mention of her name.
What I wouldn't do with that kind of power. I'd be way
nicer too!
New York.
I'd play as good if I was in Nanton!
New York.
O.K. Maybe if I dug a little deeper perhaps my
mistrust of New York is sort of like Protection from
Optimism.
See I've been burned so many times before I've sort of
trained myself not to hope for anything. I steer
especially clear of the most obvious dangled carrots.
Of course every little girl wants to go to New York
but when you go the first time they stick you at some
shit hole in Alphabet City and you play for 8
Canadians and you wish that you could beam yourself
back in time, back to the chicken barn where you
dreamed your dreams and be MORE SPECIFIC.
"I meant Carnegie Hall!
On a Friday!
Headlining!
Wearing Clothes!"
So yeah playing New York on a Saturday night for
twelve hundred dollars UHmerican with my best friends?
Well that's just too many good things.
See I know about the "2 out of 3 Rule". I may have
invented it. It goes like this:
Check any two (2) of the following options:
{} You can be a lady
{} You can have fun
{} You can get paid

You can only check two. That's the rule.

I am dying and I think it's going to feel like this
forever.

Friends bubbled up from all over (except New York of
course) and we went early and ended up seeing this
adult circus from England called Absinthe. It was
incredible. The people were so talented and oh the
muscle men and the trapeze lady and the Russian hula
hoop girl and the drunk secretary striptease with the
reappearing red hanky, and the boozy chanteuse. So
good. We wanted to run away with them.
Their show was sold out. We thought the people might
stick around for our show but no such luck. We played
to like 8 Canadians but the tent was fabulous. I'd
been in it in Brighton England.
Fuckin' tent tours as much as I do.
Our show felt like a fever dream. The sound crew were
righteous dudes and there was a grand piano and our
show was very circus inspired and Tolan and Diona are
the best band a girl singer could ever have.
When they threw us out of our trailer, we took a taxi
back to Brooklyn.
Oh yeah. Remember how I knew there was gonna be a
catch? Well, when I caught up with The Organizer who
was drinking with chicks way hotter than me, he told
me that this here outfit
PAYS BY CHECK
6 TO 8 WEEKS AFTER THE SHOW.
Uh yeah see that's not so great for us right now.
God this show was breaking all the laws of touring
including The Sunrise Rule which is:
If you do not receive payment by sunrise of the night
you played, the chances of ever seeing that money grow
incrementally slimmer with each ensuing sunrise. Also
subtract likelihood from miles you are away.
Shit. When I book shows we get paid. Sure it's not
much but it's better than nothing and nothing is
better that the promise of more.
Especially when you're on tour.
Was I controlling this? I mean like do I keep myself
at this level because of my negative attitude? I don't
even think it's negative. It's more like "You can't
let me down because I can't get any lower"
Would hope help?
It's just that I'm on the cusp of becoming crusty. I
don't want to become crusty so I thought that if I
stopped hoping for stuff I wouldn't get let down
because if I get let down one more time I'll become
permanently crusty.
I don't know. Is it me?
Now some truly crusty folks in this situation might
get off on the feeling of Being Right. Since I'm not
all-the-way crusty, I don't want to be right. Next
tour I'm making t-shirts that say "Prove Me Wrong" in
silver glitter letters.
They say you gotta love yourself before others can
love you.
Well I dig me. Where is everybody?
I think they gotta know you're coming in advance to
really think they're in love with you.

(Okay, I just went for a walk, away from this fucking
screen that drains you of everything)

So wait just a minute here. Maybe this is part of a
bigger thing. Like a symptom. Like maybe this is right
where THEY want us- not even daring to hope.
Less than powerless.
Or maybe.. it's hope that makes you find your powers.
Yeah.

Okay so just like today when a walk made me change my
whole point of view, back in New York a big old 11
hour sleep kind of made me do a spiritual about face.
And how decadent is it to sleep until 3:30 when you're
in NEW YORK CITY? Maryanne Faithful said that's the
definition of decadence. Having it all around you and
not touching it.
People save up all their money to come here and hang
all their dreams on making it to Broadway and us
chumps are sleeping!
I could see the clock saying 3:30 but I couldn't get
the meaning to sink in.
3:30. What am I Dallas Good?
"Breakfast" in Brooklyn. Oh look how cute! The waiters
are all actors! I saw their little highlighted scenes
from The Seagull on the bar. Oh that takes me back,
bless them.
A walk over the Brooklyn Bridge. Holy Shit! We're in
NEW YORK CITY! I'm alive with pleasure. I'm not going
to die. The feeling wasn't permanent! Thank God.  I
LOVE NEW YORK!
I think I got unwanted X-ray vision from that womyn's
fest. I can now see through all ladies clothes and
wish I could turn it off.
That night we went to my friends Ben and Suohi's
restaurant. The Good Fork.
I've never had friends who owned a restaurant before
so it was kind of exciting. The restaurant is like a
living testament of their love. Ben did all the
woodwork and serves and Suohi makes all the amazing
food. It was to die for.
Our friend Marta joined us and at the end of the
night, the people from the next table were making
jokes about Tolan and his three ladies.
"Yeah. They're all my ex-wives!"
After dinner, Ben took us over to this little bar to
see The Hot 8. Brass band from New Orleans. Giant
black guys playing trombones and marching drums and
trumpets, saxes and a sousaphone. Incredible. The
bathrooms were on the stage so if you had to go you
sort of had to join the band.
It was all instrumental music except at the very end
the whole band started singing "Just my 'magination
running away with me.."
By the end the whole room was singing along and it was
perfect night in Red Hook.

Do you think maybe I'm like, bipolar?

Back to the crash pad where we found Ali and Awna
sleeping in the yard. Maybe we shoulda left the key?
Oops.
Stayed up drinking with Tolan and talking about His
Drinking, which was more interesting than you might
imagine and went to bed vowing to leave first thing.

I woke up when Diona came into the room holding her
stuff from the trunk. She said, "So the side mirror's
been sheared off and there's a big street cleaner
ticket glued to the window. I'll take care of the
ticket but you're gonna have to cut the mirror off for
the trip back."
Aw crap.
Thank god I ticked the insurance waiver!
Only thing was we had to destroy all evidence of ever
leaving Ontario or else the deal would be off.
I snipped off the electrical mirror wires with nail
scissors and threw it in the backseat.
Hmm the ticket needed to be washed off with warm soapy
water. Fuck it. We'd do it at a gas station. All
right. So long Diona. So long New York.
I'll get you next time you fucking bitch!
Somewhere in the Catskills, I was reclining in the
front seat desperate for snacks when I felt the car
slow down. I looked up and saw an overhead sign that
read, "Service Station/Rest Stop"   "Mm I need to be
serviced..."  I murmured while stretching. Tolan
looked down at me in his mirrored shades and said,
"Maybe you need a rest instead."
Guess the honeymoon's over.
It rained the whole way back which was good because it
dissolved the tell-tale ticket off the window.

God this is taking DAYS to write. My editor Hank has
his work cut out for him. And he's hardly in the
story. I don't know why. Maybe because he's just so
perfect and I love him so much there's nothing else to
say?   Just watched that Tristam Shandy movie-it's a
supposedly unfilmable movie based on a book that
couldn't be written! The author in the movie poses the
question that if the story takes as long to tell as it
took the story to happen, how then do you tell it?
Especially  when you consider the fact that if you're
still living, the story is still happening.
How do you simultaneously exist and document it?
Some time passed between the occurrence of the events
and the recording of the events so I feel that my
attempts to document how I felt then are tainted by
how I feel now.
Ah whatever. It won't matter in a year!

I'm gonna spare you the part about dropping Tolan at
his parents and returning the car and flying home and
all that crap.
Instead I'm gonna leave us on the interstate in
upstate New York winding our way through the rain, me
reclining in the passenger seat and Tolan driving in
his mirrored shades. I'm gonna leave us right at the
part where we figured that since the car was buggered
anyway it probably wouldn't hurt none to smoke in it.

Yours in show business,
xo
cm
Sept '06

The Always A Bridesmaid Tour - Part 1

2006-07-25T06:16:00.000-07:00

Renewing My Vows With Western Canada

"Where you've been is good and gone, all you keep is the getting there."

The mission this time? The Always a Bridesmaid Tour: A multiple destination choose-your-own-adventure odessey with a budget of 1 point 2 hundred dollars and a cast of thousands.

Day 1

"Slow Down Andrew!"

Left Vancouver at 3pm. A three vehicle convoy. Hank and Lily with Emma Crow in "Freedom" ('91 maroon Dodge Aerostar minivan), Me, Baby Honey and Mandrew in The Honey Wagon ('91 blue Camry sedan) and Tolan, Hoff, Goose and Clay allegedly en route in the latest addition to the armada, "Gwynneth Paltrow" (1980 white Dodge short box van with a slant 6 engine). When The Goose's father caught wind of our travel plans he said, "What's the van for? All the money you're gonna make?"
We bought walkie talkies so the fleet could stay in contact but they were crap. Had lofty and noble plans of camping that night somewhere in the Okanagan but could find no site devoid of family oriented Christian RV enthusiasts. Amy had the CAA camping guide to Western Canada but I think we need something a little more off the grid. Maybe "The B.C. Pirate Heathen's Guide to Stealth Partying" would be more like it, but I heard it's out of print.
The bumper sticker on Tolan's new van says "Habitat is the key to wildlife". The 'key' isn't the word 'key', it's a picture of a key. I kept thinking about it as we searched for a place to stay.
Suckered in by a pleasing font, we ended up getting rooms at The Spanish Fiesta in Osoyoos. The rooms were stuffy, tiny, and expensive, but, most importantly, it had beach access and there was nobody around. We tried to radio Hank and Lily but could only hear crackling. Had my back turned to the road and was shouting, "We're at the Mohawk!" loudly as they drove by. Caught their attention with my actual voice rather than the walkie talkie. Phoned Tolan. They were still near Abottsford. Gwyneth had been overheating and they'd hit rush hour and all the things.Gave him our co-ordinates: "What's it called? The Skiddish Fiasco?" Pretty much.
Played guitar on the beach until it started thundering and we all thought about how glad we were not to be camping.
Wonder if they found the murderer. There was a roadblock on the highway. Cops were stopping everyone. Border's near by.

Day 2
The Royal - Nelson, BC

"If I Was Miserable I Wouldn't Care Where I Was or How Much They Were Paying Me."

7a.m. wake-up. Strolling. Warm wind. Religious tractvista. This is my spiritual home.
Got picked up by Mandrew on the way to the T-Ho. Parking lot hulahooping and badminton. Breakfast at the ABC Country restaurant. Amy ran into her uncle the undercover cop. Guess we blew his cover by asking if they'd found the guy yet or what. He looked at Clay for a while and asked how well we knew him. I was thinking the same thing.
All day drive to Nelson. Kind of foggy. Osa Negro coffee and some thrifting and then rescued by The Bearded Ladies who totally took care of us. Balmy sexy valley mist all day and then surprise sun at the end. This is P.O.T. country.
Had an AWESOME show with everyone in fabulous spooky bridesmaid outfits. Dancing, hooping, badminton. A long walk with Goose. I wasn't bored once. Momentum, man!
I am so fucking happy to be back in Western Canada. It doesn't hurt at all to be here.

Day 3
Little Slocan Valley Lodge

"Since there was no one around to react to I just dealt."

I think I figured out why it's better to play in smaller communities. Firstly, the last thing a big city needs is more people but out in the boonies they're just so damn happy to see you. Plus, I think in the city you just get overstimulated into docile submission. I guess London's still on my mind. By the end I was going around asking everybody "So, like, are you guys happy?" which doesn't really jive with that whole stiff upper lip thing they got going on over there, and, since we all know deviants die, it was like by even talking to me they'd be marked by association. They're just too taxed from Survival to get enthused, instantly exhausted by the old "But if enough deviants got together..." spiel I occasionally trot out when the wine hits and I momentarily forget that people were never meant to be brought together. When you're tired any idea just seems like potential work.
Still Eager? Meet Already Resigned. Hilarity ensues.
Got to the Lodge early enough to play badminton and go for walks and hang out. There was a guy there who had bicycled from Calgary. He said he had just ridden four hundred miles to see if anyone needed any help. I'll take that over a fucking text message any day! Makes me happy to know stuff like that still exists!
I was looking for the river when Hank came out of the trees with a funny look on his face.
"If you're intending to swim in the river, you might want to re-think your plans".
He said he went in and was swimming around until the surprise sensation of leeches on the ball bag made him get out. The interesting part to me was that he said since there was no one around to react to, he just dealt with the problem.
All the kittens were lounging or reading or busy so I snuck into the kitchen to make my salad. Ah. Sometimes on tour a lady just needs to be alone in a kitchen so bad she can taste it. If you're away from home long enough you can become nostalgic for things like doing the dishes. I got a glorious twenty minutes in chopping, listening to the sattelite radio before all the other bitches got the same idea.
The troops were all laid out by 8pm but became resuscitated by the power of rock and the freedom of having nothing to lose. The road to sucks ass, as my friend Thomas would say.
Once again, with barely two days notice and without the aid of even a flyer, the people came out of the woodwork to see us play. Pass the hat and that's that. $200 bucks and three joints. Wahoo. In London they would have charged you that much.

Day 4
On the Road to Vulcan: The Convoy Reconvenes

Creston. Retroriginals Funky 60's and 70's Fashions is going out of business. It's the place that was run by the spooky Children of a Lesser Corn kids. Going strictly E-bay. That's where the money is.
Hoff's dog Lolita died.
Five matching marionette hats were purchased.

* * *

Vulcan's farther than you think. Got to Ali's at midnight. I felt bad. I know what it's like to wait for company in the country. While waiting and waiting and waiting for us she had gotten slightly tipsy with the cute new farmer boy from next door. And oh my god, he has a puppy!! The cutest baby heeler named Cash. Yup. After Johnny. Ali and I bonded over our love of hanging out with dogs that already have owners. All the love and none of the responsiblility. Funny, even with the Slocan marijuana coursing through my veins, I didn't think this was at all metaphoric at the time. Now sober in my boiling hot bedroom it seems so obvious.

Day 5

"You Just Can't Take a Bad Picture Here!"

From Ali's driveway, there's two ways you can go. Vulcan or Nanton. Is there a rivalry? You bet. I think I am a Nanton person. It's got antiques and vintage stores, music in the bars and a candy shop and cute lawns and vegetarian soup sometimes. You know. While Vulcan does have a replica of the Starship Enterprise and Spock Days going for it and the vague promise of Counsellor Troi, it just seems much more of a beef dip, draught beer and date rape kind of a place to me. But maybe I only think that because I have already decided that I am a Nanton person. We invited the cute farmer, who is a Vulcan person, to our Nanton show and he said he'd like to come but feared getting stabbed!
Went to town (Nanton of course!) early because we heard our favourite vintage store was closing down. Going strictly E-bay. That's where the money is. We all scored and Dreanne gave us super deals on everything. Amy bought the apron collection. Hank got a new hat. A Smithbuilt! She gave Mandrew the vintage fireworks collection as a reward for his boundless patience. I got some fingerless evening gloves, a new crinoline and some hors d'oevres toothpicks with plastic roses on the the ends all of which remain to this day in Ali's car. I learned something on this trip. Every time I tried to be greedy and spirit something away from The Others to a secret place, I lost it. I'd think, "Well I'll just put that 'there'." But if you are in motion, the 'there' keeps changing. Different cars everyday so nothing is where you left it. Well, it's there but you're gone. I guess it all goes back to the first rule of touring: Don't bring anything you love. Or anything you only have one of.
Hotel lunch. Phoned Lance about the P.A. and to see if he'd play some pedal steel with us. He was coming in the back door with a speaker when I went to see if there had been any word.
"How are you doing?"
"Well... If I would have known I was gonna live this long, I probably would have done things differently."
"Really?"
"Probably not."
Lance is an awesome musician/rancher and our Albertan Spiritual Guide. He makes me want to be a better person. Every time I see him he asks if I wanna come by and work on the farm. At last call I totally want to. I love work. Especially when I'm drinking and it probably won't happen. Or, you know, when it's done. He played in Jr. Gone Wild, the band that made me want to be in a band. So I love it when he plays with me because I get to sound like my favourite band!
I loved our show. Taxidermy and oil dudes were a perfect backdrop for what we were serving up. The myth about the Nanton bar is that the cat sleeps in the popcorn machine. Quizzed the owner. He denied. Dreanne showed up at the end of the night with a garbage bag of wigs, vampire teeth, manequin arms, and graduation robes. Something for everyone! The set went well except I was standing directly in front of Tolan's amp. Started to complain before I remembered the thing about how sound travels to the densest thing in the room.
At the end the owner and a couple of drunk dudes said, "You guys are having way too much fun up there." Not sure if it was meant as a compliment and in retrospect maybe the three song curtain call elaborate encore holding hands deep bow finale was a little excessive for Sunday night but it's too funny to resist. Ten people traveling around in full costume singing their hearts out. It's so obviously not about money I think we deserve that bow. They already think we're crazy. We've got nothing to lose!
Met a dude who left Newcastle forty years ago. We toasted to the majesty and splendor that is Western Canada. Overheard guy at the bar on the way out: "She was a wonderful mother but she wouldn't have sex with me after that." The cute farmer came to the show and nobody tried to stab him. Not even once.
Full moon car ride home. Wondered if Cash was the rebirth of Lolita and if the death of the vintage store heralds the birth of learning to sew.
Tolan: Why are you so busy collecting up more stuff when the ship is going down?
Amy: Because it's FUN.

Day 6

"Oh there's never enough time do anything."

Time's slow here because there's nothing in the way. No mountains, no gigs, no money, no chores, no nothing. We need it to feel the difference.
Tolan's last words at the end of the night were, "Well thank you for SEMI-orchestrating this." It's funny to see him stressed out. It's like he just woke up or something. It used to be me. Guess it's all kind of highlighted by the advent of the same old Dodge all these years later on the same road. I passed the stress baton and it feels good.
Most everyone left for Nanton or Vulcan for oil changes and vegetables. Hank was reading comics to the puppy, Clay was checking his email. Emma was smoking pot and reading science fiction. I went for a walk over the lone prairie which activated all the nesting mosquitos. Walked for miles but since I could see the house the whole time it didn't feel very satisfying. Thought about that prairie joke. The one about how you can watch your dog run away for three days. Had a nice long chat with a red-winged blackbird on the way home. Did some reading on the front stoop using smoking as insect repellent.
Wondered if we were getting on Ali's nerves. She is a total neat freak Virgo and we had exploded all over her house. Bodies, bedrolls, Louis XIV wigs, rubber ears and empties covered every inch of floorspace. Ah well, nothing's permanent. Soon we'd be but a memory...
We were stealing farmer boy's bar-b-cue right when he pulled into the driveway. Everyone had come home with food and we prepared a giant feast. Bar-b-cued corn on the cob with lime and Jamaican spices. Mmmmm. Lance and Toby came over with steaks they grew themselves. All the carnivores said it was the best meat they'd ever tasted.
FINALLY figured out The Golden Rule: If you find yourself complaining, shut up. Better yet, go to bed!

Day 7
Palomino Club - Calgary, AB

"It's only a problem when you want to stop."

O Calgary! Damn you and your mystifying grid system! Never once made it in and out of there without crying. Not once.
Palomino Club is awesome. Bar-b-cue joint upstairs with proper venue downstairs. Was worried because I didn't see any posters and they said the promoter girl was sick which is never a good sign but in the end she showed up and did the door herself and people came and we had a nice rock'n'roll show. Amy ruled. Clay was awesome. Hank and Lily too. Goose, Tolan, Lance and Dianne are the best band ever!
Low pressure and ladies pains. All the forces of nature. Got lost on the way back to the venue. Started bawling and wished that there was some sort of Clint Eastwood pill that ladies could take when they get crazy.
Received a much needed cash infusion to keep the organization afloat. Biblical rains and thunder when the show was over but there was Magical Joe waiting in his giant truck to take us all back to Dianne's. She was in a mood to celebrate as she had just gotten back from touring Australia to discover that her girlfriend had just relieved her of all her savings in the name of crack and gambling. I rode in the back out in the rain taking sips of The Goose's beer. Amy gave us the eye for having open booze in the back of the truck as we cruised by the strip with all the bars getting out wooh-ing loudly but it's so easy for the inside dry people to look down on the less fortunate. Especially when they're just lashing out because it's time for their nightly special.
Party party party. Sleep sleep sleep. Lather rinse repeat.

Day 8
The Black Dog - Edmonton, AB

"Everything's impossible and nothing really matters."

Okay troops. Today's the day we go over the top. Tried to arrange The Meeting Place at the perfect breakfast place on the north side of town but alas it was closed for renovations which foiled everything. We were about to descend into Oilers madness. One of my first tours was during the world series. I remember carrying an amp into some bar and accidently unplugging the television during a crucial moment and how popular I was afterwards. This was an even bigger deal. A hometown team involved in the Stanley Cup Play-offs. Apparently last time they won, there was looting and rioting on Whyte Avenue. We were playing on Whyte Avenue.
Also our group was about to become even larger. J. and Grayson were flying in from Victoria, Sylvia from Nanaimo and Dave, Laura, and Garth were driving up from Regina. I won't even get into the past indiscretions and overlaps that these six had gotten up to over the years (small town, no men, long winters) but suffice it to say that even the tension of an overtime shut out would have nothing on these people. I worried that more people would equal more questions.
Okay. A word about 'leadership'. I never really wanted to be in charge. It was only out of impatience and disgust that I even started. Everyone wants someone to be in charge so badly. It's easy to see why. The whole being raised by parents thing and then school and then more school and then a job with a boss and the benevolent and merciful God that watches out for all of us (if you Believe) or the imaginary camera that follows you around everywhere that you do Norman Fell "are you getting this" takes to when things get too weird (if you're me). But here in the pirate world there's a lot of grey area.
Now some would say that grey is just white that became soiled but I like to think of it as uncharted territory. We are all equally free to stake our claims and create the modern heirarchy, which is based upon the fact that everybody's in charge of their own selves. People don't seem to like this and continually endow whoever's beside them with the power of being incharge. I guess that way when things fuck up there's always someone to blame. I'm sure there's a physics term (Help me out here, Melissa) for when a force gets used to leaning on another force and then it's removed. If you get used to leaning on something and then it is removed, I think you fall with more force than if you just fell over on your own. Because you were leaning, I guess.
Maybe it's like if you work at a bar and they find out that you know how to tap a keg how you always have to be the one to do it. Pretending to be helpless seems to have its rewards. I will help if I can and if I think you need it and obviously if I'm at all hot for you, but if I suspect any kind of faking and that you could do it yourself, you're cut off. Where's my help?
Also certain questions have no answer. Just because I know that we play Nelson on Tuesday doesn't mean that I know if there happens to be a dry cleaners in Driftpile or in which hotel room you may have left your hat or what the gross national product of Abu Dhabi is. I'm not OMNIPOTENT! I just booked a couple of shows. Occasionaly it seems tempting to lie. It's like people would prefer an answer, any answer even if it's wrong, to "I don't know." Whenever I've been asked for directions by strangers in a place I'm not familiar with and I say, "I'm sorry. I don't know", they invariably drive away looking a little pissed off. Sometimes I think that they'd appreciate it more if I were to confidently tell them, "Yes. Follow this road until the next light turn left go for two blocks cross back over the highway until the first stop light can't miss it." The beauty is you know they'd blame themselves when they got lost.
Sometimes I wish I were just a little more evil. Or maybe I'm the worst kind of evil. The no hope kind. This is all there is people! There's nobody in charge! Constant Vigilance is our only saviour! Nobody wants to hear that. Especially when you're preaching to the perverted. I am a viral marketer selling "The Truth". My 'leadership' includes the caveat that there is no one in charge other than your own self ever. I guess not everyone got the memo. Maybe we should have a meeting.
To be fair, I've been on the other side too. I was That Guy on the Po'Girl tour. It's amazing how quickly you let yourself go if you think someone else is in charge. It's like your gut reactions somehow become dulled in the presence of others. Maybe because you get so busy trying not to block anyone else's dreams that you end up looking like a mouth breathing simp. Or something. Or maybe it's like The Paramedic's Code or something. Apparently if you are a paramedic and you start to save someone's life, you are obligated to finish the job. You are allowed to say no but if you START, you are legally not allowed to stop. I sometimes think that men think about sex this way too. "If you start something Lady, you have to finish it!" So maybe the very act of suggesting that we all tour together makes me responsible for everyone. Hmm.
Rule 2: Don't bring anybody you're not prepared to take care of.
Arrived in Edmonton before the actual chaos started. At least six cops on every corner for twenty blocks all the way down Whyte. Destination: Cafe Mosaics for the secret burrito and the tomato soup that's like getting your blood changed. No cops here. I guess if you were the type to loot somewhere after getting all fucked up on hockey, the vegan restaurant might not be at the top of your list.
Went with The Goose to get dressed and found Tolan and Hoff at Guliak's place watching the game. The Oilers won as we were walking to the venue. Honking horns and mad high fiving all the way there and everybody shouting "Goilers!"
The show was madness on wheels but for once the external vista matched exactly how I was feeling inside so for me it had kind of a reverse polarity zen calming effect. I was like, "Good. Now we're all even. Ha!"
I love Edmonton. It was the first town to dig me. I remember the heady moment when The Vinaigrettes sold 12 cassette tapes at The Ratt on our first tour. We felt like stars. You don't forget your first love. Renewed my vows with Western Canada on stage during the set.
Tolan was in a rage at the end of the night. He refused to come with me to our host Craig's house. Said he was going to sleep in the van because he 'knew what was there'.

Day 9

Cafe Mosaic breakfast. Whyte Ave strangely calm. No trace of last night's action. Like a secret party cleaned up before its parents got home. Everybody trickled in to the cafe in various states of zombified disrepair. Now that our posse had expanded, the rides had to be shared even more. I rode with Hank and Lily so J. and Grayson could ride in the back seat of the Honey Wagon. Stopped for supplies, snacks, booze, water, rubber boots, bug spray, digestive enzymes and what-not, and headed north... to the North Country Fair.

The Always a Bridesmaid Tour - Part 2

2006-07-24T11:41:00.000-07:00

The North Country Fair

"If you load your own wood it warms you twice.
If you blow up your own bed you sleep twice as hard."

Pulled in around 4. Roads kind of muddy. Overcast sky. Checked in and got everyone their passes. Jumped in the Tolan van to help with the gear. Had to take it to The Roxbury stage where we were playing the volunteer party later. We had been to this festival before but not since they moved the site. This one was much bigger and had more of a choose your own adventure feel. Near the abandoned stage there was a fire pit, some trees and no other tents. Looked good to me. Clay worried that it might be 'buggy'. We moved the van and set up the tents when our guffaws abated. The whole festival is held on a swamp so it's pretty 'buggy' everyfuckingwhere you go.
So me, Sylvia, Clay and Goose in tents. Tolan and Hoff in the van. Done. I thought maybe the whole gang would camp together but that would have made consensus impossible. This way we could visit each other. I was feeling like maybe I should go kiss some hands and shake some babies and see how everyone else was fairing so I cut a deal with The Goose. I'd bring back ice if he'd set up my tent.
Found the Honeys first. Near Dave and Laura. J. and Grayson were further in the woods. Garth was somewhere close. They were all like, "Oh. You guys are way over there?" I told them what happened. How we know you're never supposed to buy the first place you look at but Tolan had just fallen in LOVE with the area so we bought! Since I'll probably never own anything it was a pretty fun game.
Almost instantly someone started the bogus rumour that the Roxbury hosted the all night DJ stage and boy were we going to be sorry! Turned out not to be true but it totally kept the property value down and potential neighbours away! Found Lily and Emma out in a field with all the punters. Hank had my wine but had left them to come find me. The girls were cranky and just when they finished setting up their tent, two Eager Volunteers came over and told them that they were in the handicapped area and had to move! I piped up and said that they had to be near the mainstage because they were performers and had elaborate costume changes so the eager volunteers backed off. Plus you'd have to be basically retarded to be a musician in Canada, especially from a financial point of view, which should count for something. But come on! The HANDICAPPED AREA! We were in a fucking swamp!
Walked over with Lily to Camp Tolan. She said she kept spilling her wine as she walked. "You're complaints are my wishes!" I hissed through clenched teeth as I had yet to hook up with Hank. Apparently while I was out hobnobbing, the Roxbury stage emcee, respendent in Tilley hat and satin kimono, had come over to yell at everyone about why we hadn't started playing. So glad to have missed that for once. I guess he was getting hassled by this "Professional Band from The City" itching to get their blues on. Went and smoothed things over. Me and Mr. Kimono made up over some home made apple brandy.
Totally forgot about how North we were and the whole longest day of the year thing. No wonder they were looking for us. It was still daylight but it was like 2 am! I think we were all under the illusion that it was perpetually 9 o'clock. We played and played until dawn until even the most eager volunteers packed it in. It was raining really hard out there so mostly we knew if we stayed on stage we would be covered. Amy smoked some local pot and played two songs at half-speed before Mandrew carted her off to bed.
Oh the mosquitos.

Day 10

"Come for the drizzle. Stay for the malaria!"

Woke up in a tent. Raining outside. Not too bad inside. Kind of nice to lay there listening to the rain on the nylon. Rolled over and touched something soft and wet. Remembered Amy shoving a plate of wet eggs through the zipper at the crack of Christ bless her. A trip to the outhouse, some coffee, a little breakfast and straight into the badminton. It's the only answer in such conditions.
Got ready for our show in Gwynneth's sideview mirror. Hoff and I put on floor length drag-in-the-mud polyester cotillion dresses and blue eyeshadow in honour of the alleged Always a Bridesmaid theme. Got word that they were waiting for an important piece of gear up at the main stage and that the start time would be delayed. Killed time by trying to strum and juggle two ukeleles while hula hooping. We can do it but it ain't pretty. Yet.
The North Country Fair is the perfect way to learn the There's Nobody in Charge zen lesson. I thought it was hilarious. No questions can be answered here.
"What time is the show?"
"When it starts."
"How long do we have?"
"However long we get."
Of course it can kind of ruin you for the way the rest of the world works. But still, it was the perfect practicum to accompany this week's lesson plan. It would have KILLED The Ontarians.
Dozens rejoiced (mostly ourselves) when we eventually played 4 1/2 hours behind schedule. Got cut off before Dave Lang got to play which totally sucks because there is a History of this sort of thing happening which could totally look like it's my fault. Ah, the tender areas always get poked the most.
Wine, rain, mosquitos, Chad Van Gaillen, Noises From the Toolshed boys, Tippy A Gogo freakin', another show in a tent with everybody. We were filthy drunken pirates. Think we scared some folks off but come on how much can we take? I think the mosquito poison coursing through our veins was making us mean. My editor Hank said he approved of the banter so I'll give us a passing grade. Went to see Greyhound Tragedy on the main stage but it was too late. By about nine years.
Back to Camp Tolan where Hoff was trying to talk Our Hero out of putting all the antique fireworks into the fire at once. "Aw baby, there's better ways to hurt yourself."
Clay's tent washed away and he was wondering if he could sleep in mine. I told him I'd even fuck him if he promised to never ask me another question. Stayed up with Tolan until it got light. Stray fireworks exploding in the oil drum every so often.

Day 11

"If you don't come out of there I'm going to roll up this tent with you in it!"

Sylvia had promised to wake me up and here she was. Guess she'd been trying for a while. Had to pack up camp and get to Edmonton in time for the wedding. John Guliak and Christine. And boy were we all looking pretty.

The Wedding

"Everything is not enough and nothing is too much to bear"

This is how they get you. A rented hall filled with family and friends in their Sunday best good smelling with shiny hair, some homemade food, a few humble speeches, the hilarious relatives from Scotland, a portable T.V. at the end of the head table tuned into The Game. I tell you if you find yourself airlifted from Vietnam into this setting exhausted, mosquito bitten to the point of requiring an all-terain razor and about to die of EXPOSURE, settling down starts to seem like a good idea.
I guess every wedding is a cross section of any people anywhere. A powderkeg. Some people are breaking up, some are just getting together, others are a couple years in, the new babies, the older dressed up kids, all the History and who can't sit by whom. And there's something about celebrating someone else's union that tends to amplify your own lack of union. Oh sure I've got the Maintenance Man waiting on me back home but it's not like he'd ever go anywhere with me. Especially not to a wedding. Definitely not his own.
It's funny, even if in real life you don't even believe in the business of alerting the Church and State to your actions, and totally think that weddings are for people who don't get their own show everynight, like I said, when you're tired this shit starts to look real good.
Our country band The Fixin's reunited for the occasion. Never realized before that ALL the songs were the love-gone-wrong drinking-alone-now-that-you've-gone variety which are so nice for a wedding! It was boiling and we were exhausted but it was nice to sing with John again. At the end of the night John thanked me and gave me half a bottle of wine as a 'traveler' for strolling home in the Oilers Idiot Apocolypse.
The Oilers won so people were in a mood to celebrate. "Goilers!" It made me think of SXSW or Calgary at last call or Kilkenny, Ireland. You get this depressing wave of "Ohwow. Those idiots are gonna fuck those other idiots and make more idiots." And then a second even more depressing wave that someone's got to keep the species going and if it was left up to me there'd be just dying herds of smug non-participators roaming around snorting with disaproval at everyone else's joy, which is awful. Are we all one? Should we try to be? I don't know anymore.

Day 13

Heading Home.

Thought long and hard about it and decided to keep my nest in the back of the Honey Wagon. Decided the best thing I could do for everyone was to be happy. I love The Honeys. We have a good time. It's easy. Sure Tolan would miss me but a man is only entitled to one primary caregiver at a time and he had brought The Girlfriend. She and I apparently have different "parenting" styles but that's a whole other wasp's nest. I mean, every woman knows, you don't start the day yelling at your man. You feed him and give him coffee and THEN you yell at him. That way he'll actually hear you!
So I rode with The Honeys and about 50 km's out of Edson the back tire blew. Just as Mandrew was gonna fill it up with his trusty Man Goo we heard a second hissing sound coming from the front of the vehicle and then saw the green smoke. Cracked radiator. Never seen a crack so big. Never actually seen one go on such a 'new' car ('91 Camry). Thing's plastic.
Since it was Alberta, within two seconds all the big dudes in the pick-up trucks with the gas tanks in the back were pulling over to see if we were all right. We borrowed a phone to call CAA and Andrew changed the tire while we waited it out with the black flies. Amy was rolling a spesh when the cop pulled over but he was just checking to see if we were all right. He kind of looked like Dom Delouise. A bear man.
"Hmm. On the bright side, it could be worse. At least it's not raining" said Amy after a while. This would become our mantra for the next few days. After an hour or so, the tow truck came. Luckily he had a bench seat and agreed to take all three of us otherwise one of us would have been left behind on the side of the road. He dropped us in Edson outside the mechanic's but since it was Sunday there was nothing to do but wait until morning.
Found the Odessey Motel. Liked the name because it felt like our journey was reaching Homeric preportions. Sign said "We Sell Sleep". Man said we were really lucky to get a room. Oil crews had booked up everything in town. Got one with a balcony over looking a pile of dirt!
Dinner at Boston Pizza (they have spinach salad) and then stoned hotelivision night. Became obsessed with a Micheal Jackson sensational Behind The Music type tabloid special. Can't quite work out if he's in charge of his own propaganda or not. It's kind of genius.
Been reading loads of Amy's trashy celebrity mags in the car so feel strangely au current on such matters as Bradgelina's African birthing, Britney's struggle with motherhood, Nicole Richie's rocky road to weight gain, etc. The celebs are like dollies for adults. We especially like the "They're Just Like Us!" section.
"They Pump Their Own Gas!"
"They Buy Their Own Smokes!"
"They Beat Their Own Servants!"
Mechanic phoned in the morning. Said it would take "a couple of days" to get the part in from Edmonton. I got out the yellow pages and called around. No one cared except for one guy in Hinton. Rad specialist. Said he could probably fix it. I liked his voice. It didn't sound like he was dead already. Called a second tow truck. Waited in the hotel parking lot for four and a half hours. Apparently Monday is a 'big tow day'. Dude finally showed up but refused to take all three of us so Mandrew had to take the Greyhound. I offered to hitch but they wouldn't let me.
Pulled into Hinton at 4-ish. Rad shop. Small wiry guy. Pony tail. Ball cap. DJ Timewarp t-shirt, bent over giant truck rad with blow torch. Smoking. Didn't want to startle the dude so lurked in the periphery with the tow truck driver until he noticed us. "You made it eh?"
Popped the hood. 'Larry' shook his head muttering the words "plastic" and "Japanese" and something about how some people had recently got fussy about the lead in soldering so the laws changed and it's all fucked now. Said he could get us a new one by morning and put it in for us for way less than the other places. We said yes and went to find another hotel. The Tara Vista. Left a note for Mandrew at the Hinton bus station. And one with Larry in case he didn't see it.
Got beer, wine, hors d'oevres. The Oilers were playing again. Final game of the play-offs. Low pressure system building. Thunder storm broke right when The Oilers lost.
Watched Scary Movie 3 and Scream3. Awesome. There's something about movies in hotel rooms. It's a whole different rating system from real life.
Amy had the quote of the day: We were walking accross the highway to the access road in matching ballet flats on our way to the Hinton bus station to leave the note and she said, "Well sometimes I guess it's more about circumstance than manifestation!"
Amen Sister! Decided that getting somewhere slowly sure beats going nowhere fast.

Day 15

"Wishes do get granted. But it's up to you to notice."

Picked up the car from Larry who said putting the rad in was fun right up until the end. Paid him in cash and thanked him heartily. What a fucking dude! Okay, NOW can we go to the hot tub?

Sun Peaks Resort.

Just outside Kamloops. Our friend Bob lets us stay there if we're passing through. Tolan and his crew had stopped there Sunday, the Hank and Lily contingent the next night. Now it was our turn motherfuckers! I was supposed to be playing at a songwriter's night in Vancouver but I called the hostess to send my regrets as we were still twelve hours away at noon and the thing started at seven.
Drove and drove and drove all day. Stopped for supplies near Barriere and headed up the mountain to our chalet! It was perfect. We could see the thank you notes from the others still on the counter and The Honeys got the honeymoon suite upstairs and I stayed downstairs and there was laundry and the gorgeous mountains surrounding us. Saw a black fox with a white tipped tail near the golf equipment storage barn. Couldn't get the hot tub really hot but maybe our hearts would have exploded if we had.

Day 16

"Think of all you miss by staying
Think of all you miss by leaving."

Got up early and went for a hike up the mountain. Wondered if all the other mountains mocked it for selling out. For being too commercial. Was sitting on a ledge contemplating this when a deer flew up and almost landed on me. Guess he was out for his morning walk too, walking up the other side of the mountain and didn't see me when he jumped. I think deer pride themselves on their Constant Vigilance so if you happen to catch one day dreaming, they freak out. He started sproinging around me in circles snorting kind of like a dog does. The circles smaller each time, his hooves getting closer to me. I stood up. This seemed to make him even madder. Just a young buck on an adrenaline rush, mad at being suprised. (Maybe because I was wearing pink?) He kept up with the snorting circles. I was talking to him all the while.
"I know it's your mountain but I'm not one of the bad humans. I was supposed to be a St. Bernard man. Okay Okay I'm going!"
I headed back down the trail and he followed me still snorting to make sure I was leaving. Jeeze. I always wanted to see a deer up close but I never imagined meeting an outraged one. When I saw some pretty fresh bear shit near some big footy prints, I decided that the hills were alive and that my nature walk was over.
Went to the market to get Amy some cream for her coffee and learned that the fox lives in town, has three kits. It's weird to be somewhere offseason. It's like being back stage of a movie that hasn't started yet. Kind of neat to get to see the mountain in all it's different phases. Bob came over for breakfast between golf games and convinced us to stay out one more day to play the Folk Festival party in Salmon Arm with Luther Wright and The Shiftless Rounders. Oh yeah. Music! It had been ages.
We made a should-I-stay-or-should-I-go list of pros and cons which was mostly the same words on both sides of the page and of course decided to stay. Bob got us a deal on a luxury resort hotel in Salmon Arm. Our french doors opened right onto a pair of ospreys nesting over Shuswap Lake. Yup. Not too shabby.
Luther and boys came over for a visit when they pulled into town. "Hello darling. You're mosquito bites have gone down" said Luther, that silver-tongued devil. Yeah the bites. I thought everyone would see the red pinhole marks and welts all over me and think that I was a junky but then wonder how come I was still fat.
So dazzled were we by the opulence and fluffy pillows and the patio sunset that we missed dinner and were a little shaky for the show but I think we pulled it off. I got to play with The Rounders as my band which is always a treat. Patio party after the show. Amy passed around crackers from her pic-a-nic basket and the stoners and the drunks took turns telling Important Stories and worrying about The Noise because everyone knows that habitat is the key to wildlife.

Day 17

"Where's the channel that tells you what's going on?"
"I don't think there is one."

A few days late and many dollars short, we rolled the Camry down the beautiful old highway 1 throught the desert past Cache Creek to Hope where Amy broke her fast food vow with some Dairy Queen. Made it in time for the last ferry, fearful that one more day out would completely flatten the cushion of hospitality. Since we weren't fighting yet, I thought why ruin a winning streak by sticking around? Phoned Tolan from the ferry to let him know I was coming home in case he was fucking a pork chop on the couch or something to which he replied, "Whadja get one of those new cameraphones?"
Fell asleep on the city bus. Was awoken by the bus driver at the place where they put the busses away at the end of the night. Wiped the drool off the side ofmy face and flagged a cab home. Opened the front door to discover that Tolan was having the boys over to watch "The World at War". Episode six. The Holocaust. Wow. What a home coming. Clay had passed out on the bunk. It appeared that someone had jumped out the window and the lone remaining conscious guy was saying "Does it have to be war everytime?" I knew he'd never be invited back.
Tolan and I shared the last smoke and rehashed our voyages. Sounded like even though my trip was four days longer it might have felt shorter. Any Hell's bearable if you're with kindred spirits. Thank you Honeys. Andrew I still owe you $25 bucks for wine.
You know in the end the car troubles just gave us a couple of days to relax. We like each other so it wasn't a big deal to be kind of stuck. We got to play the party in Salmon Arm and finally made it to the hot tub and I'm home now and learned that sometimes it is more about circumstance than manifestation. The weirdest part is the first tow truck guy said we were the third car he'd picked up there in as many days and we blew a tire at the same time the rad cracked so maybe there's something on the road. Maybe if the tire hadn't have blown we wouldn't have noticed that we were overheating and seized the engine or something. Who the fuck knows? Who cares? It's bigger than all of us. It's what happened.

xo cm
June 2006

England: Where You Get A Second Chance

2006-06-09T16:55:00.000-07:00

When I was driving around The States this Spring with Po' Girl, it was suggested that I should accompany them on The English Leg. They invited me to play a few songs every night before they went on, to warm up the crowd. In Canada you are called The Opening Act. In the U.K. you are referred to as "The SuPPOHT". The Po's had been a few times before and had the trap line all set up in advance and there was to be a van and driver which sounded glamorous. I knew that when we got there, even if it looked like the fire wasn't built specifically for me, no one would mind me sharing the warmth. I am always grateful for the chance to play for people. Thank you ladies. And John.

Po' Girl

Day 1

London
The Borderline

Historical Folk Hole. (Sarah Harmer, Ramblin' Jack posters on the walls). Strange music on. Kind of fake Americana where the accents and instruments sound slightly wrong and the word Texas is said a whole lot. Have been omitted from the bill for some reason which is a little disheartening but, you know, what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger. So they don't get the full outfit then.
Nervous. Drunk. No dinner. Unannounced. Played my big 4 song set. Started Edmonton twice. Thought they loathed me but they're just English and reserved, I guess. Sold 12 CDs so some of them must have liked it. Or maybe they're masochists, which would explain how they can live here.
Waited hours in the alley for our driver Charles, who is really sweet but a country mouse at heart, to come back with the van. Like, HOURS.

Day 2

Bracknell
Cellar Bar

Spent the day negotiating many roundabouts as our driver Charles, who is really sweet, just won't fucking turn left for some reason. Wiled away the hours making up English sounding place names like 'Twatford upon Cocksfoster' and 'Shaggy Muffstead'!
Bracknell bed and breakfast. Weird pig crocodile stinkdog in the garden and Jesus pamphlets in the room and surprise booming voice at the door saying "Tea's ready!"
Yeah, well I'm not.
What's up with basements and folk music? The whole building was an arts centre, The Ye Olde Entertainment Mall. The audience so silent it's unnerving. And I thought Canadians were apologetic. This woman came up and said, "I don't mean to be rude but I really enjoyed that."
How could that ever be construed as rude? "I don't mean to be rude but that blew donkeydicks" would make more sense to me.
I am never smoking again. Think I've sprained a tonsil.
New Blueberry No-Sugar Added Ribena undrinkable in case you're curious.

Day 3

Hempstead
The Blue Bell Inn

Best Bar Ever! As always, beware of the phrase "They make their own cider".
Ducks, two greyhounds, a goat named Abigail, five hot daughters, John, Rob and Marion. Scrumptuous local organic dinner of stuffed RED peppers with minted couscous and shiraz and when it's over you get to sleep upstairs, if you can make it. I didn't.
Had a lot of free time to test the boundaries of the seemingly endless hospitality after my set while Po' Girl played every song they'd ever heard before. I was left as unattended prey for silverhaired wine buyers. "And another one for the mad girl!"
Thought I was 'maintaining' but awoke on bar room floor clutching the fiddler with a throat full of knives and whiplash and blushing at the vague memory of trying to convince the bartender to join us. The publican and his family started stirring, came downstairs and simply stepped over us saying, "Morning girls! Tea?"
Crikey! In Canada sleeping on the bar room floor would activate police, or a news crew, or at the very least, yelling, but here it's just, "Morning girls" and then there's tea and breakfast with veggie motherfuckin' homemade sausages and all.
There was some further fallout from my one woman show: Allison found her clarinet adorned with a tell tale ring of red lipstick. Oh yeah... Well, I'd watched her play it all night and she makes it look so easy! Like when you watch downhill trick skiing on the Olympics and think you can do it.
Left some CDs for Rob and Marion, apologizing and informing them that they're on the trap line now for life.

Day 4

Brampton
Will Howard Centre

The English countryside is so green. But it's a different green. English green. Like it should have it's own wedge on the colour wheel. The green is broken up only occasionally by stone fences and dotted with sheep.
Stopped in a tiny town and spied "The Famous Thaxted Sausage" kitty corner to "The Little Hay Hole" and smirked like a pervert for the rest of the day. Went into a big cold church from the fifteen hundreds and thought, "This reminds me of something... Oh yeah, our house!" The same coldness inside the walls and moldy smell. Perhaps the lady doth need more modern castle for approaching twilight.
It's cramped in the van. Pissed bright orange. Gargled with some sort of stinky antiseptic/toilet cleaner. Wondering if me and the wine will arrange for some sort of truce by showtime.
There is no evidence of my alleged 'suPPOHT' so they're not gonna know what hit 'em if there is indeed to be a 'they' but batting a hundred so far attendance-wise.
Went to pick up our band dinners at a wine bar and heard a man say: "I'll have the steak and my wife will have the CHOOONA." Then remembered that I was the foreigner and that mockery is a two way street, but man you should have heard him!
O, The William Howard Centre goes WILD on Friday nights! And by wild I mean sitting like statues ("delightfully still!" as it says on the bottled water) until the last song when one couple started ever so slightly wiggling their shoulders to show their appreciation. Another stone folk basement. I played the hangover set of contrition which worked out rather well.
Met Ken and Sue, the Po' Tour people, who mentioned something about next year's festival. Charles has left us. Met his wife, Noleen, who had just recently fallen on her face.
After the show, on the way back to the Oval House B &B, the gang ventured into the Nag's Head for teenagey obbo karaoke night but D and I returned the forks to the wine bar and headed back to the Ogle Room where I drank hot water. On Fridays I goes wild. Don't worry about killing me, I'm already dead. .

Day 5

Newcastle
The Cluny

Oh boy! Newcastle is my town! It's a Geordie point of pride to never wear a coat, ever. Famous for "slappers" who wear their bikinis to the bar, dampness be damned. Nice to be back in a proper bar again with actual moving, drinking, smoking, Saturday night humans!
Beautiful show. Sold loads of CDs. This, apparently, is good. The Po's were awesome. Everyone loved them. Met a woman named Karen who said, "Are you on your own then when they play? I came over because I felt a bit sorry for you." Gee thanks. She told me she used to be married to a lead singer but she left him because he was terribly insecure. Really?
Nice venue. Every time I asked for a glass of wine, they gave me a bottle which is always dangerous. Restocked the dressing room for when the ladies came off stage. Went on a hash run with the guy putting on my return engagement. And then back to weird tiny hotel.
Ugly Americans we. "Yes hello. Listen, we're going to go up there and smoke some hash so we're gonna need some sandwiches. Can you make us some sandwiches?" The nervous night porter whipped us up some cheese and pimento triangles on white bread and brought them up, backing out of our room clutching a fiver, navigating his way through the smoke and bodies while Trish offered him some culinary suggestions. "Maybe some crisp green apple?"
Our new driver Ken was last seen clutching a large tumbler of scotch, running up stairs muttering "They're all mad!" before a door slammed hard. Had some wicked hash theories. Can't remember now. My neck is officially 'out'. Quite painful when I look to my left. Have tried to cut down. Looking left, that is.
We gave ourselves pep talks and have decided as a group that here in England, stony silence does not equal hatred. That silence is just another form of appreciation. And that any perceived negativity is all in our minds. But lead singers are all insecure.

Day 6

Sheffield
Memorial Hall

Went to see The Stones. Well not Mick and the lads, although his brother's band is playing in the area, but these ancient mystic stones in Castle Rig. Apparently they are famous for their Energy. A man there held two coat hangers and when he got to the middle they moved together. This, apparently, was significant.
Learnt the expression, "If it should all go pear-shaped" (fall through, get weird). Wonder if it has anything to do with ladies.
Have decided that unheralded suPPOHT has it's perks. Intoxicating randomness, no sound check.
Came up with new tourist slogan for the U.K.: "England: Where you get a second chance!" Because of the way the roundabouts work, if you miss the turn-off, you get to try again the next time around. And, judging by the ads we've seen for the North American acts on tour here, it seems it works that way career-wise as well.
So, Sheffield. Home of Judas Priest, Human League and Cabaret Voltaire. Memorial Hall, huge. Alice Cooper's here at the end of the month. There's a smaller theatre as well, which is, of course, where we are. I tried out my "Silence doesn't equal hatred" theory on the oil painting out there daring to call itself The Audience and the theory was greeted with, you guessed it, resounding silence which I took as unbridled communal agreement!
Went for a smoke outside in the interval and eavesdropped on some actors rehearsing elsewhere in the building: "It's a Roman farce about a slave who wants his freedom. All comedy. All the way through. Come and have a laugh!" Been thinking about how when the folks back home say, "Oh they must love you over there!", it implies a deep-seeded belief that there will indeed be a "they". This tour, for once, there is and they do, I think. In their own way.

Day 7

York
The Centre For Early Music

Gorgeous hotel last night. Drinks in the bar, a little hash, some stories, and then early-ish bed. Ken was funny: "I was going to say that you were one of the most TOGETHER bands I've ever worked with but the words just sort of stuck in my throat!"
Woke up at 12:03. "Weren't we supposed to be standing outside at noon?"
"Uh Yeah"
"Fuck."
I have become That Guy. You know. The one I hate. The one on tour who's always late and never knows what's going on. Ah well, everyone takes a turn.
York is beautiful and me dear sweet mum is from near here. Apparently there is a museum nearby which has the "Smell the History" room where they blast in different fish, coal and seaside smells.
The Centre for Early Music is ancient. There's a wall out back from eleven hundred. The place is giant with huge columns. Spinets and harpsichords in the corner. Good sound. I like singing into tenth century marble.
I sat on Thomas Holmes' grave under a spec-dracular moon, pantiless in my new polka dot dress, having a drink and a smoke and a think, figuring Thomas wouldn't mind and that I can't have been the first as he was stored in the Artist's Garden (tulips, clematis, gravel).
Been reading The Master and Marguerite. Wonder if I would have survived 1920's Russia with my treasonous thoughts and trucker mouth.
The ladies sounded beautiful tonight and I always like it when you can see the audience. They were slightly more animated than the previous few. Tried in vain to find drinks past eleven but walked around with Allie and Awna in the old cobblestone streets and down this lane called "The Shambles" where all the buildings are tilted and Yorkminster looked gorgeous in the moonlight. Smell the history. Ended up sitting out front of that night's B & B at a picnic table with Diona discussing desire and if there's a difference between Want and Need, and gardening, and how the world is big and small and how maybe it expands and contracts- all your basic serious moonlight topics-hoping we weren't keeping anybody up.

Day 8

Basingstoke
The Forge at The Anvil

Last day of tour. Dr. John is playing in the big theatre. His bus is outside. The trailer behind it is bigger than our van. Cute tiny theatre. Very nice sound man. Went to Tesco's for some last-night-of-tour-celebratory-dressing-room-thank-you snacks and wine. Really nice show. Attempted gargle solo in the Whore song and people liked it. Went out to the lobby in the interval to find dressing room key and was actually mobbed for autographs!
"No. Thank YOU. My pleasure. We'll always have Basingstoke!"
Sad to be parting ways with my tourmates. They are sweet people who know first hand that everyone is weird. Trish and John were off to play some festival with The Be Good Tanyas, Allie and Awna were headed to Brighton, leaving me and Diona and Ken to figure out how to get to glamorous Stanstead airport at the crack of arse. I made two hundred pounds in CD sales and left it on the stage. (Gee, motivated by money much?) Luckily, John called later and said he had it. He said he'd keep it for me but that I'd have to say goodbye to my little red suitcase. Fair enough. Ended up in some hotel near Heathrow for like an hour before the taxi came.

Arriverderci England. Fuck. I forgot to learn Italian.

Italy Andiamo!

2006-06-08T16:14:00.000-07:00

Day 1

Bergamo

Italy.
First impressions:
Very hilly. Lots of red roofs. Thought Italian movies were That Colour because the film stock was different, but turns out that Italy is actually that colour! (Is it the light? Is it the colours? Is it my PERCEPTION of the colours?) Wish I knew some Italian.
"Espresso fantastico per favorre!" There.
Diona and I of course went straight to bed last night after the last show of the U.K. tour and did not almost light our hotel room on fire during the hour we were there and arrived feeling totally refreshed! Budget flights make you hate people because they all look retarded and sick and then you hate yourself because you are too.
Our tour host, Keith, came to get us at the airport in a boxy euro van and Sexy Jenn Barker, Who Doesn't Like to Be Called Sexy Jenn and Would Prefer to be Recognized For Her Accomplishments in the Industry Thank You Very Much, popped up from the back seat and announced "I have to go puke!" and walked into the airport. Guess she had a quiet night-in too. She is my Alleged Manager but first she has to catch me.

Brescia

The band is Me, Diona, Keith (bass) and David MacAnulty (drums). Had a little practice with the men while the ladies slept in the van. The place is a music school. A woman with Julie Andrews diction was singing 'Killing Me Softly' in an isolation booth across from someone practicing their Eddie Vedder/Nickelback grunge growl. Diona got stung by a 'vespa' while we were playing 'volano'. Our opening acts were students from the school. One group did 'Baby Can I Hold You Tonight?' by Tracey Chapman - choir style, in all earnesty and eight part harmony with hand gestures. The funny thing is I know that song because my old roommate Sue used to fuck to that record and she was a busy woman. Suffice it to say I know all the songs by heart.
We played and the people were nice, but it was kind of surreal because I was pretty tired and stinky from my Quiet Night-In, and the 'toilet' was this porcelain affair you have to squat over which wasn't terribly, uh, 'inspirational' if you catch my drift. We have promised ourselves to only drink non-flammable wine from now on.

Day 2

Como
Ultimo Cafe

Keith and Andrea, our handlers, taught us the word 'Smoogy'. A smoogy is the older weird guy at the bar that hogs all your time conversation wise. I guess the Canadian version would be 'loomer'. Anyone that drains rather than infuses The Energy. The rub is if you can't see the smoogy, you are the smoogy!
I'm trying to get everyone saying 'Fumares! Andiamo!'('Smokes! Let's go!') like The Trailer Park Boys. The people are really nice and it really is all about food. They are foodists!
I have decided that everyone wants the thing that's the hardest to get. You can see it in Italy. They have the old buildings, the fine leather, the history, the food, the wine but they seem interested in North American stuff. Who would choose a new Harley piece of shit over a Duccatti? And they love Bruce Springsteen. But want is perpetual. I don't think it ever goes away. Unless you get what you want, I guess. Then you gotta pick something new.
We are staying at Keith's girlfriend's (Lovely Serena) house in Barlassina which is a suburb of Milan. It's beautiful except for the barking one-eyed dalmation next door. It's not the dog's fault, he's being ignored by his owners who exiled him when they had children.
I sure wish I could speak Italian. I kind of feel like a lazy caveman. Without words I am nothing.
Having some 'issues' with the crazy toilets. Stopped at The Autogrill, which is a gas station but like if the Tim Horton's was a four star restaurant with a deli and specialty store attached - Badminton rackets, salami, cheeses, chocolate, everything. But here's the thing: the toilets at The Autogrill are seatless and constantly flushing. Hard times for a 'sitter' like me. Fairly frustrating. My mind was playing coach. "Come on guys, if we all work together, I think we can do it!" but the body said "No! No! No!"
Then it all just became a total Fellini film. Trapped bird in the glass ceiling underscoring cinematic quality of incident. Wildly flushing toilets. Don't know how to order anything. Can't find the exit. Panback to trapped bird. Could hear it and see it trying to find it's way out all through lunch which was kind of stressful, and it's all loud and busy and all the cool Italians are drinking espresso at the standing counter. Back to the bird who's still trying to get out and chirping. The orchestra swells. Back to me running up the stairs. I' m trying to flea and, since I am unable to read any of the signs, I bolt out the side door and set off the alarm. Pan back to The Cool Italians all looking at me, looking so cool because they fucking are, like I was a retard which I fucking am.
Final shot: The parking lot. Where a foreign woman wearing clothes much too young for her age bursts into tears. I'm not suggesting this would happen to everyone as I'm pretty sure it was a four star triple wham my exhaustion/hangover/PMS related incident but there is some culture shock afoot.

Cafe Ultimo

Nice venue. Before the show they made us dinner which was amazing. Pasta, wine. This is The Europe I've heard about! Listened to Neville on the stereo for a taste of home to go with all the other tasting. Canadians in Europe are like raccoons. You let one in and they'll tell all their friends. "Look! That's him! That's the nice man with the gigs!"
Learned how to say 'Mi Dispiachi, sono Canadese'. ('I'm sorry. I'm Canadian'.) which I thought was pretty perfect to sum up our country and our people, but they don't do that Humble Hank humour thing here that we do because why would they? So they were all just blinking, going like, "Why are you sorry?" instead of laughing.
We have a guitarist. Marco- aka Il Pithone- The Python! He is awesome. We don't know how to speak to each other but it's musically perfect so we don't have to, which is my favorite thing. I love it when people know what I want without me having to tell them. (Oops! Guess I just told you...) He has that awesome country telecaster tone and he's tasteful and not too loud and a total friend of the lady singer. Did the encore outside to the people in the alley smoking and drinking grappa shots with the dogs and motorcycles. My people. Keith and David and Diona and The Python are the best band ever. We were introduced as Carolyn Mark and The Northern Vaginas. Nobody knows. No sign of George Clooney.

Day 3

Lerici

Got to the town a little early so went further down the autostratte to see the sea. The Ligurian Sea I believe. Beautiful. People sunning themselves. Straight men wearing what would be considered totally gay suits back home. Had a perfect moment. You know that thing how people look like their pets? Saw a guy with long curly black mullet sitting with big poodle!
Get the picture? Yes we see.
Went into a toilet near the beach. Seat? Yes. Toilet paper? Si. Only this time the angle of the bowl was different so I created a piss fountain into my skirt which was awesome. So lean forward because you never know, I guess is the lesson learnt. Had wine and delicious snacks by the water and then off to the show. Oh yeah, rockstar, remember the show? Good thing you drank all that wine.

Arcola
Cafe Pegaso

Um, we don't live here because....?
There was a moment at sound check. Diona was playing something beautiful on her violin while the waiter and the sound man (Fabio and Matteo), who are so hot they are gay AND married, hugged and fed each other olives. Am I dead? I just saw heaven.
The food is like they say and everything looks perfect in those spaghetti western kodachrome colours and the cobblestone streets and the old ladies in black, like someone went into the holodeck and said "Computer! Small village square in Italy!" This is the first time that something has been JUST LIKE THEY SAY in my entire life! It's kind of shaking the foundations and I keep waiting for the punchline but there doesn't seem to be one!
Sigh.
My Inner Skeptic is naturally quite livid: If ITALY can be like they say then maybe EVERYTHING could be- true love, popular American films, a career in music etc... This would mean I'd have to reconfigure my whole belief system and would severely compromise relations with The Comedy God whom I must serve. I could tell you I'm a skeptic but you probably wouldn't believe me. I don't get why everyone isn't fat or drunk here. Oh. Maybe it's that thing: If you can't see the fat drunk person, you're it. Fuck.

Day 4

Cantus

This is how it happens. I just figured it out. This is how you would come to be one of THOSE PEOPLE. You know the people that end up at the gas station in Hope sighing that the coffee is just so much better in Italy! Well. Fuck it is. It's like the bar has been raised so much in the realm of food and beauty I'll never be able to settle again for riding the goddamn 401 for six hours in hopes of a cold shoulder, no dinner and 300 bucks. Man the autogrill kicks the ass of a Tim Horton's. Delicious sandwiches, espresso, better food than RESTAURANTS in Canada. It's gonna hurt to go back to England. The word for Canadian is Canadese which if you're hungover enough sounds like "Kind of dazed, eh?" Totally.

Dear G,
Ciao from Italy. It fucking rules here. It's kind of raised the bar existence-wise.
Funny to get emails from Geoff Berner about HOPING that that fucking Irish bar in Regina writes him back so we can play there in late September for 150 bucks. Just seems kind of hard to get it up when you compare it to the treatment and beauty here. Ah well. Modern problems. (By the way if you ever see me at parties in Canada saying anything of the sort, promise me you'll shoot me!)
Yesterday, we woke up in a small town and me and Diona and Jenn Barker walked by this extremely hot guy fixing his motorcycle and he said 'This is my house. I make spaghetti in one hour. If you want spaghetti you come to my house in an hour.'
We were all like, "Um, does 'spaghetti' mean the same thing here as it does back home?"
Every second guy is named Andrea.
I think Italians are superhuman. They should all be fat and drunk when you consider how much rich food and wine and grappa and sugar is going on at all times but they're hot. (Yesterday, Diona and I said, 'Keith! Keith! We just went almost a whole hour IN ITALY without eating anything! Quickly, some salty meat and delicious cheese!!!') Saw a guy on a motorcycle zipping up his leatherjacket going 90 km/h on the autostratte. No helmet and no hands on the bike! I would have hurt myself trying just one of those things let alone simultaneously but it's like Italians are protected from the elements simply by being Italian.
To atone for not exactly speaking Italian we have all developed ESL, 'vaguely European' accents.
David MacAnulty upon leaving last night's venue: 'Apparently the large man who looked like he was in the mafia is a famous chef!'
Oh yeah, on the tour poster for my shows it says 'Reginetta di Canadese Rock'n'Roll'Canadian Little Queen of Rock and Roll'!!!! I saw a preview for one of the shows in a magazine and right beside my name it said 'eccentrica' which I think I get the gist of. They think I'm fucking crazy! Ah well. Maybe they're right!
Best line though came from one of the promoters talking up tonight's place. He said very passionately, 'My only hope for you is that it is THE SOUP OF ONIONS!' Sigh. Ah well, better get dressed. We have an 'acoustica aperitivo' show at the top of a 'funiculare'. Yeah. I don't know what it means either yet but they keep giving me those 'you should be very grateful and excited' faces so fuck yeah! Bring it on!
ciao ciao,
xo cm

Dear J,
Buon Giorno! Or buono serra rather as it's a few minutes past noon here at Keith Rose's girlfriend's place. Diona left this morning back to Canada to play Ashcroft or something. Played a touristy marble place yesterday to nobody really except got to watch these two immaculate Italian ladies eat lunch. The one on the right, the red haired one, produced a silver hors d'oevre eating tool from her leather purse when the food came! Worth it for that.
Oh the beauty. Oh the history. Went to a church yesterday from the 'ornate-teenth century'! Raised a few eyebrows with my bare shoulders apparently. Scandalosa! The tomatoes. Oh! The Pomadoros! Holy Fuck. A guy could get fat here.
Love you miss you.
xoox cm

Day 6

Osnago
La Locomotiva

They've got these Field Hookers here. Ladies of the night standing in roadside turnouts in the middle of fields in the middle of the day. It's the craziest thing to see. Apparently lots of them thought they were coming to Milan to be models. We have all started to speak like phrase books. Even to each other. I'd hate us. Keith was joking around about Tony Prito, "the olive skinned boy of Italian descent" from The Hardy Boys books and Jenn remembered that one of the Wakefield Twins in the Sweet Valley High books drove a Fiat.
Played in a communist train station. Asked Andrea for some Italian phrases to use on stage and I think he got me to say "My cunt is too full to sing!" ('Mio sticcio est troppo grosso per cantarre'). Met a lady 'smoogy'. ('Smoogetta'?)
The parents of the kid that runs the communist train station own a fancy restaurant and we were taken there for 'cena'. I guess Keith had told them I was a vegetarian so the waitress puts down a giant plate of food and says,"This is the first first, then there will be a second first and after the second first there will be, well, a second. Do you think you'll want cheese and fruit after that?" Jesus Christ they're trying to kill me. When we were leaving the restaurant Sexy Jenn, who has a hard time with languages and hadn't been saying much, said the word 'fellatio' and all these churchbells started ringing and I'm like "That's Italian! You're speaking Italian!".
Not one but TWO meddling sound men. "Step away from the board. Thank you." I can take bad sound or medium bad sound but constantly changing sound? No way. Keith is amazing. Always up for anything. An inspiration. The wife of The Python is beautiful.

Dear J,
It's Tuesday or Martedi as they say here. It's like they got a different word for EVERYTHING! Andiamo! Azit!
Tonight London. Sigh. After Italy, it's gonna kind of bite. This is the problem. When you've experienced perfection, it's hard to go back. Better not to have seen it at all or is that what it costs? Gotta stop drinking that philosophy espresso first thing.
Milano yesterday. Beeesy, Feeelthy, deisel exhaust, expensive but oh the Duomo (cathedral)! It only took 400 years to build, Hell they're still building it. But sadly nothing holds a girl's attention like the shopping across the piazza. People are shallow idiots and I'm one of them. Played on a radio station that plays songs that almost sound like the real thing. It's an odd thing to find yourself contributing too. Our Italian guitarist is called The Python! He rules.
Anyway, gotta go pack,
xooxox cm

Most comical translation moment: Andrea was telling me that I was the first band to ever be recorded live for the radio at the venue so I said, "Oh so I'm the guinea pig?" and he agreed heartily saying "Yes! Yes! You are the beegeeningpeeg!"

Dear J,
Leaving Italy today. Sigh. Gonna be a harsh toke getting back to grotty old London, but hey! At least I speak kind of the same language and I won't feel like such a lazy retard! God, without words I am nothing. It's like you just become a caveman with no nuances.
'Me need natural water please' is about the extent of my conversational Italian. Oooga Booga!
Been smoking Chesterfields. Never again. Harsh little bastards. The Cansmokes ran out so I've adopted a 'round the world' approach with varied results. Almost lost my marbles on stage yesterday but reigned it in with some severe threats to myself. I thought about The Others and it took my mind off my mind. Next level please.
Arriverderci Baby,
xo cm

Best Tour Ever! Keith and Andrea thought of everything. They booked it and did the driving and got us paid and everyone knew we were coming and nothing bad happened and Serena was such a gracious hostess and the band (The Northern Vaginas-Diona, David, Keith and The Python) was perfect and turned on a dime and there was Sexy Jenn to shop with. This has never happened to me before and I didn't think it ever would.
'Chicco, mi hai salvato et ti ringrazio!'

You Don't Have 2B Famous 2B Good: Part I

2006-06-07T19:05:00.000-07:00

Day 1

From Milano to London

Descent into London. Gatwick. Reached into Sexy Jenn's purse on the way down and started reading Creative Visualization book. Wish I'd never done it. Too susceptible to ideas these days. Everything's resonating and sticking. Read the "It's your movie and everything's a mirror" chapter. Funny because I never needed help in that department and then had the illusion inadvertently, yet permanently, shattered for me by Slo Tom's brother last winter in Ottawa.
O Irony. Burst bubbles are the cost of lingering too long with straight people . One harmless comment about how things could seem a certain way if you were to look at them through 'that lens' and my mojo is shattered. I have lost my innocence. Had until that moment never even considered the possibility of Other Lenses. But this book suggests that the world is a mirror and whatever you see is your own projection.
So imagine landing in Gatwick feeling like shit and seeing people running around and little old East Indian ladies falling off the back of carts and screaming children and confusion and chaos. Hard not to think that the outside is representing the inside. BUT! If I wasn't there hungover bad vibing everything, do you think everyone would be all smiles and helping each other at the London fucking airport? I think not.
Sexy Jenn goes to the can and I grab a luggage cart. Those things are always kind of buggered so I start to push it and it flies across the path of this beautiful Italian woman who looks like Sophia Loren. She looks at me and says 'Numero Uno, ah?' And I think she means,"Oh so you think you're number one huh?" and I assure her telepathically that I think no such thing. Somewhere between 'numero duo dicce' (12) and 'a piece of shit' would be more like it and then I realize that she was TRYING to tell me that our luggage was going to come out on carousel number one and it had nothing to do with the cart or a personal assessment and that she was actually being helpful. I always think that I am see-through and forget that people watching the movie can't actually see the projectionist.
Sexy Jenn comes back from the toilet and we realize that we are about to be Random with Luggage in London, which sucks. When we discover that every hotel in London is booked up with The Chelsea Flower Show, I say, "Wait here," and return with two baby bottles of wine and some cigarettes. I insist that before we make any regrettable decisions we step outside and make the present less tense to ensure a more perfect future.
Jenn remembers that she has a friend in London but she has to call her other friend in Vancouver to get the number. The Vancouver friend only has the email address and says, "Okay, got a pen? Ready? It starts with a beak..."
Okay. Plan B. Yvette. She's meeting someone in Camden Town. I used to live there when I was eighteen so I figure I'll know my way around. Gatwick Express to Charring Cross. Switch to the Northern Line to Camden. I am saying 'ciao' and 'grazzi' and bowing to everyone because of the guitar and luggage. We almost get eaten by the tube because I have gotten so used to not understanding anything from being in Italy, that when they announce that the back doors in the last compartment of the tube don't open at Camden Station, which I KNEW from living there, we just stood there waiting for them to open until it was almost too late. Then, the revelation and us dragging our luggage across everyone's ankles to jump out before the doors close. Almost didn't make it because it's not like anybody on the tube will, like, MOVE or HELP YOU or anything. It's like they're all thinking, "Well you don't see me walking around with my clothes on my back and a guitar. Maybe next time you'll save up enough for a taxi!" Did I mention it was raining?
We come out of the tube station and I spy The World's End Pub across the street. I used to hang out there with these actor types and we'd drink cider and cast each other in leading roles ("No. I could totally see you in The Seagull!") Sexy Jenn and I run across the street and into the pub. We find a table in the corner away from the nasty speakers blasting some crap and stash our luggage and order drinks so we can make a plan. I get the Filthiest Wine Glass in England but it contains the important nectar and we talk about boys and shopping, happy to be out of the rain.
Yvette calls and says she' s going to see The Shins, who I like, but no way am I taking LUGGAGE to a rock show. Dinner perhaps? I bolt out the door luggage free in search of this restaurant that blew my mind once, foolishly thinking it might still be there, let's see now, holy shit! NINETEEN YEARS LATER!! Everything's all different. The whole street's changed. Chain stores have taken over all the mum'n'dad shops like everywhere else and of course there's no sign of a long shut restaurant called Rubies in the Dust. I feel like a ghost. Has everything changed or have I changed? The world is a mirror and I'm old.
I see a newish place that says it has Thai food. It's a bar with leather couches, indoor smoking, wine list, looks good. I go back and get Jenn and we haul all our stuff there and order and settle in and my host Paul phones and says I can totally stay over and he's on his way so everything's coming up roses and sunshine and then this band starts up. The loudest most piercing band that ever rented an amp. It's a horrible moment to be in a band, always counting on people's compassion, to find your own in-a-band self thinking, "Oh no. Not a band!" But when the world is your house, sometimes you just want to duck into the study for a moment before going back into the basement.
The food comes and the band is so loud we are laughing. I spy Paul out the window and run out so we can hear each other. He's so great. The sweetest boy that ever lived. Fresh off a blind date. I was the escape hatch. We eat our food and pantomime a lot to each other until the band ends. A man comes over with a clipboard and asks if I'd like to join the band's mailing list. "Hell yes!" I say because I want to know their whereabouts at all times so I can plan not to be anywhere near the area.
We find Yvette and the gang, our friend Clare (Clah) and her merry men. Yvette is with Vincent Gallo's twin brother. Clah and I have a drunken chat about books and then Paul and "English Vincent" and I share a cab back to Stoke Newington. Turns out English Vincent works for "Wohp" Records (Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada, and Vincent Gallo(!)) Can't wait to tell the Maintenance Man!
Back at the flat, Paul gives me his bed and I sleep the sleep of the no longer random.

Day 3

Dear G,
I am in London. Played the 12 Bar last night. Man is that a filthy hole. Andy was strangely absent- even though he was there, which is a talent. No drinks. No money, but a really good show nonetheless. My new tourmates Moses (led by Paul Mosely and his brother David Mosely. They are Moses, get it?) are really really good. Nick Drake meets The House Martins with strings and things. Feel good pop music sung by hilarious tenderhearts. Melty.
So you gotta have 21 people pay to make any dough but the joint was 'crammed' so I don't understand. Guess no one paid. The opening opening act was a monk on stilts with an I-Pod who read the bible and played the banjo for like two hours. Saw him necking with a girl in the front room when it was all over so at least somebody scored!
Went to The Phoenix after, of course for more. Currently in Paul's flat figuring out how it all works. I'm starring in my own 'Brit-com' - Just mistook gravy browning for instant coffee and how the fuck do you get hot water to come out of the taps?
Could go to Brighton today and find Jenn Barker and Yvette at this music festival and/or play for some business men at a pub but kind of wanna save up for Newcastle because those people are animals and my Po' pounds are dwindling now that the shows have stopped paying. Actually the Po's didn't pay me either, but I sold records to the folkies to keep me in wine and cherry tomatoes. Thank god. Hmmmm the world is my oyster baby!
Yours Near Stoke Newington,
xoxo cm

Dear L,
Arrived in Brighton in a mighty wind and rain storm. Hard to even walk. Lost. Feeling particularly random. Skirt blowing over head and then all of a sudden Leeroy Stagger pulls up in a minivan saying "Get in! We're gonna go watch The Trailer Park Boys!"
The pier was all lit up and spooky carnivale and Yvette and I went to a circus tent to see a girl band from Scotland called The Pipettes. Matching polka dot dresses, bouffants, three part harmonies, gestures! Ended up in the hotel bar with fighting Canadian rock boys and a woman from L.A. who works for NBC. When it got ugly I went upstairs and ate the cookies because for once all that shit was taken care of.
xo xo cm

Could have stayed on Paul's couch watching Family Guy. Might have been cheaper. Ah but then there would be no story.

Day 4

Dharma Banana @ The Chillingham
Newcastle

Taxi, train, tube, train, coach, taxi. Met Paul at the station and he brought my guitar and everything for our voyage to Newcastle. Ah, my people. Had great show there with Po'Girl and was hoping for repeat customers. Hilarious train ride with Paul. He taught me some new terminology: "Cottaging"- what George Michael was doing in the public toilets, and "dogging"- watching people have sex in cars. And I told him Hank's joke that set the bar for disgusting on the last Hootenanny Tour: (Mother, cover your ears!)
Q. How do you get a gay man to have sex with a woman?
A. Shit in her cunt.
And then of course the day was a write-off and we were away expounding on all the possibilities. I'm sure all the other commuters could hear was some hushed tones followed by some snurfling noises the whole way there. At least I'm hoping so. But hey! Since they were English, we'll never know!
Arrived early and postponed the inevitable by buying some postcards, but was pretty much drunk by soundcheck, the promise of dinner washed away with the drizzle. Got changed in the toilet and told myself to drink some water and then all of a sudden it was time to play. It's a little hazy but I remember saying something about how some people thought of mine and Paul's relationship as a Liza Minelli/David Guest thing but that our marriage was very physical. Dedicated the Whore song to the drunken school teacher who was dancing on the tables, said the word 'cunt' a lot and didn't fuck up any of the songs. My kind of show. I suspect I have a slightly different rating system than "The Industry".
Drained the bar of red wine, ate a bunch of food when we got home to Paul's brother's house, then smoked a joint with Paul's brother David, smoked a cigarette with David's wife Julie, and as David dropped the needle onto Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town by Kenny Rogers, I hit the floor while the school teacher stole the bed. They tried to warn me but I was out. Slept with my boots on and coat and make-up. Everything.

Cock-Eyed Dwarves and Rubbish Cunts: Part II

2006-06-06T19:26:00.000-07:00

Day 5

They had tried to warn me about the children. They had told me to take the upstairs bedroom but somehow I didn't put the two together before I turned into John Wayne: "We'll...camp... here."
Oh my. At the crack of Christ, two little girls. Nelly and Nancy ran over me on the way to the telly and put on some show with a big chef and a little chef and loads of computery noises. I awoke with a start and sprang up, a surprise hobo in their midst. They screamed. I winced. Had seven or eight glasses of water and a cuppa tea and watched The Jungle Book and put Nelly in between two couch cushions and ate her like a sandwich while the adults congregated in the garden. Seaside walk in Whitley Bay with the whole family. The air tonic.
Packed up, abducted Daddy and headed for the last train to Edinburgh.
Sunday night.
On the menu that night: Two open stages followed by a 'proper' set at a place called Whistlebinkies at 'shit o' clock'. Of course it was fuckin' raining. Train ride even more hilarious with the double brother action. David confessing to having a recurring dream about a muscle bound dwarf with cocks for eyes. Worked on 'The Act' . Considered doing Billy Connelly stand up routine only without the accent.
Moses' cellist lives in Edinburgh but she was away at a wedding down south so we got her flat which was awesome. Without it, the night would have been unbearable. Made some tea, raided her cupboards and decided oat cakes weren't our cup of ... well, our thing.
Blue Blazer-open stage.
Just a pub with blokes sat around with guitars. The host was a long haired hippie who was prone to offering unsolicited comments after each 'act'. ("Yes David. I like your new medieval direction", "Robbie, you're finger picking's come a long way" etc) despite the fact that he was rubbish himself as my tourmates would say. I thought about my own open stage back home, for it was Sunday after all. I never comment unless I'm sober or my life is in danger because frankly where would you begin? ("Joey, I like the way you rock those two notes over and over again", "Stevie, maybe a little less drool on the mike next time!") When I finished my two songs, he said "Mmmm. Interesting lyrics". Then he asked me if I liked George Bush. Since he was Scottish I couldn't quite make out what he said. I think I said, "Why? Is he on next?"
Then off to another open stage with Ozzie Hannah. Talk about time travel. The place was the parallel universe version of The Old Bailey where I first started The Hootenanny! Right down to the protective fence around the tiny stage. Fun show. They had a piano and some people from the first open stage came with us. (Biology majors representing Canada, Texas and this beautiful girl who looked just like Lauren Bacall from Scotland.)
Walked miles uphill in the rain to next gig with our five fans in tow and it was alright but afterwards got my arm clamped by some shouty men who sprayed me with drool. I invented the Drunken Scottish Man Simulator. Ask me for a demo. Bring a towel.
Called The Maintenance Man from The Filthiest Phonebox in Scotland ("Welcome to Kismet. You are low on credit.") It was full of rubbish and smelled of cold damp piss. I brought a glass of wine and some smokes in with me to mask the odour.
Followed the progress/decline of a tossed order of take away chips as it diminished in the relentless rain (everything's a mirror) every time I 'nipped out for a fag'. Smoking ban. Since last March. Everyone thinks it's rubbish. Cute young bartender. Tall, gangly, long hair wearing a jack daniels shirt. Saw about seven Luther Wrights walking around. I suspect his people are from these parts.
Best line of the night:
He: I just feel like we've met before.
She: Yeah. I'm yer mum. Go to bed!
I love my tour companions, the two fookin' hilarious Geordie brothers. Light and dark. It's a million laughs like when Tolan and Rigby get on one of their rolls. Yvette's joined us as well so we've a built in audience. Any Hell's bearable if you're with kindred spirits. Boy I'd hate us if we wasn't us on the train.
The brothers are teaching me how to say stuff in The Northern Way so it's kind of like My Fair Lady in reverse. "Now repeat after me: Roobish Coont".
"Okay. Rubbish Cunt"
"No no no! Too posh. Have another go."
Somehow survived until the end of the night and they actually paid us and we made it back to the crash pad. "It's strange staying at other peoples' houses." said David.
"Oh. Is it?"

Day 6

Train back to Whitley Bay so David could get the car, hug the kids, have a row and exit stage left. Apparently we would be 'stopping at some nice lezzers' in Bradford. Janice and Alex. Very nice indeed. Lovely house. My own room! Paul had found us a last minute replacement venue as somehow the original place had double booked us with 'salsa night'.
McRory's. "Computer! Program English Pub." Exactly how you think it'd look. Had a great set. Have been noticing that mouthy unattended ladies speaking full sentences are kind of rare in these parts. I feel very modern. Like it's a side mission or something to show them that it's 2006. Who knows? They're probably just pretending to listen while they check out my 'milkers' which is no fur off my back as my old best friend Kerri used to say.
I think humour was invented here. You know the one about the Scotsman, the Irishman and the Englishman? Yeah well that was table two. World class hecklers. I didn't stand a chance. A golden round of banter went round the bar like smoke without me saying a word and I was the one with the microphone. Borrowed the P.A. off this really nice stoner woman in a tam who told me she practically books Glastonbury.
Feels like home. Talked some serious shit with the third Mosely, their sister Karen who is Paul in a wig. "We're like the Osmonds!" The band Moses is down to just the two brothers. They are so great.
A man walked up said, "I'm sorry" and put two pound coin in the old tip jar which kicks the ass of any subservience a Canadian could have come up with! These are our ancestors. We were invented here.
At the end of the Moses set I could hear men yelling "Get that fookin' woman back up there!"
Funny to have come all this way in an attempt to get drunk people to remember my name and by the end of the night it's "Get that Fooking Woman oop there again!"
If there is a theme or recurring motif to this tour it's that "You don't have to be famous to be good".
"That fookin' Canadese woman was quite good! Them blokes as well." They all seem so surprised. Party at The Lezzers after. David got into the spirits.

Day 7

It's the Moseley way! Hartlepool. Hometown of our heroes. Took the back way into town so got the local tour:
There's the nuclear power plants, oh there's the four ghost ships filled with asbestos in the harbour, there's the waste dump, that's a man selling onions on the roundabout, that's where they kicked us in.
As I looked around, I said "No wonder you guys are so funny."
David said, "Well look what's surrounding us! If we opened our eyes to reality, it's a wasteland!"
So humour was invented here because it's so shitty. Interesting.
Then there is the troubling legend of Napoleon's Monkey:
It seems that during the historical Napoleonic Wars a ship capsized and Napoleon's monkey washed up on shore where he was mistaken for a Frenchman, put on trial, and hung in the square. I thought the brothers were just having us on but I saw a commemorative plaque and some postcards to corroborate the story. "Hartlepool: Come for the nuclear power, stay for the monkey hangings!"
Stayed with (stopped at?) Ma and Pa Moseley's house to make ourselves a sandwich, do some laundry, watch the tube and use the phone. Mrs. Moseley took Paul down to the shops for new trousers. Fun show. Couldn't help saying filthy things in front of Paul and David's parents. I introduced Yvette from the stage as my Traveling Companion and then said,"Well we're not lezzers! Although I occasionally let her massage my uh, coont!"
Home after for late night snacks and Linda McCartney sun dried tomato fake sausages which are awesome. Although in retrospect they probably tasted so good because we were drunk and starving and Ma Moseley fried them up in lard.

Dear W,
London.
Holy Christ every time I order a glass of 'wadder' or black coffee I'm basically George Bush. Playing the role of The Foreigner on tonight's episode of 'That Foocking Woman!' is yours truly. "I'm George Bush and I've come for all your wadder!"
Been playing in The North (Think Hedwig meets No Surrender!) where jokes were invented and it's a million laughs and then back to London where nobody's actually from so they're all pretending they got here first like any big city so no one claps so you just think they hate you even though you are laying down Golden Material and Neko's sold out across town. Goodtimes and glamour my friend. Paul and I are writing a musical called "Cunt!Cunt!Cunt!" Can't you just see it on a marquee?
xo cm

Dear L,
Still in London town. A little recording sesh with my new best friend and primary care giver Paul. (We are Will and Grace on the Dole) and then lunch with Yvette and Potential U.K. Booking Agent. (He was nice which is troubling.) Internet cafe in Camden Town en route to tonight's engagement. Did some proper shows in the North where the people laughed and clapped but am now back to playing shit holes for free in the cold big city. Ended up as stage door johnnies last night at the Neko show. Like a mescaline Fellini dream. Only four more sleeps. Essex tomorrow. Gonna see Harmer play on my last night in town.
Yours til they find Bin Laden's brother,
xo cm

Dear J,
Last night I took a two hour train ride and then a 20 pound taxi to a barn in Essex to play for half an hour for free. Well they did give me a bottle of wine for the train after but I smashed it getting out of the second 20 pound cab ride of the night but it looks like I'm totally welcome back any time I want! It's a really beautiful barn.
xo cm

Day 11

I think I'm killing my host. He didn't know that I'm a vampire and was trying to keep up, bless him. Ah well it'll all be over by tomorrow night when I go back in time nine hours on the plane! I intend to use the time wisely of course (jerking off in the toilet, finally joining the half mile high club, etc.) and then into the arms of Baby Honey and Hubby Honey and Goose for a night and then home to The Last Resort and George Jones whom I'm apparently living with.

Dear J,
Only half a day more and then it's fucking Vancouver, nine hours back in time. Crazy. Made some mates over here so we can bet on horses knowing the outcome in advance. Yeah. Tofield, Alberta sounds like fun. It's on a farm. I may go alone to spend some time with myself so I can remember who I am. Yup. Pretty tired now. Cried at the Sarah Harmer concert last night cause she sings this song about a soft bed up in the sky when it's time to rest. But then went out with her after to her hotel bar until shit o'clock because I am a genius. See you this week??
xo cm

Fantasy Island. A couple of days later.
Now that I have had some rest and seen friends and sunshine and reclaimed the power of language, I'm not so convinced that everything's a mirror and life is shit but I'm pretty sure I saw an older woman in the actual mirror the other night and I'm almost certain she was saying, "Go to bed loser!"

Touring out to Alberta with ten people should be restful though...

To Live is to Fly

2006-06-05T20:04:00.000-07:00

Air Transat Flight # 703
London (Gatwick) to YVR
Seat 44F - Right side of Middle Aisle
Estimated travel-10 hours + 8 hours back in time!

18:40
Just boarded. Fuck is this ever going to suck. Twinges of excitement upon hearing the awesomely Canadian accents of the stewardii. Fuck. Chatty American rowmates Ron and Betty interfering with the reception. Betty is Freaking Out. I am poisoned.

18:48
Betty is moaning about getting the middle seat and PICKING AT HER FEET! Cue the screaming children.

18:52
Betty examines foot yield. I'm thirsty.

18:55
Safety announcements:"In the event of a crash landing, you can protect yourself by adopting the bracing position." Seriously.

19:03
Every second person on this plane is reading The Fucking Davinci Code. Punters. They have finally hosed the dead hooker off the runway and we are taking off. Betty is paralysed with fear which is keeping her silent.

21:45 (over Keflavik)
"All love is true in different ways." Hmm.
Just watched Cassanova starring Heath Ledger.
Q: If I lived in a time when you could get hung for cheeky beliefs, would I still be so bold?
A: I think I'd be the same.
Or, am I just hanging myself due to the distressing/intoxicating amount of freedom/disinterest?
I'd wager that the whole Dying for Beliefs gig was generally done by people on that mission anyhow. Like how people who want to have babies get pregnant. I think there's no stronger belief than Life is Shit and if the punishment is death so be it! She died for her beliefs. She died from her beliefs. Now, is it all the late nights and vino that's led me to this Life is Shit conclusion, or was it this conclusion that led me to all the late nights and vino? I never got into Townes Van Zandt before but suddenly his lyrics are resonating with I-Ching like significance. Troubling to find oneself suddenly relating to a dead, clinically depressed alcoholic, and little else.

22:51
Fun With Dick and Jane. Jim Carey, Tea Leoni. Rubbish. I miss Paul. His STOOL'S funnier than this shit. Nay, His stool has chunks of guys like Jim Carey in it!

23:04
Pride and Prejudice. Kiera Knightley. Can't feel my leg. Crap headphones. Can't really makeout all the words but shall not attempt to convey the depths of my misery. Don't know about Mr. D'Arcy. So tired of that whole, "Oh he's not an asshole, he's just shy!" business. Plus I'd wager he only did all those nice things for the family to get into Elizabeth's knickers.

Hour 7

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

One more hour to go. Full on thrombosis setting in. Betty is getting cranky saying "This is the worst plane I've ever been on!" Yeah, well lady, nobody said time travel was easy.
The pilot just came on: "We're gonna get you on the ground in the next 35 minutes." Hopefully we'll all still be in the plane when that happens. I feel like shit. Shit with chunks of Jim Carey in it. Everybody loves Raymond.

Ladies and gentlemen we have started our descent intoVancouver.

Keeping the Bitches Between the Ditches: 7 Dames, 7 Days, 7 Towns (1)

2006-05-02T12:08:00.000-07:00

Forgive me Father. It's been six weeks since my last confession.

Holy crap. So much happened in so many places. Memories melted together like gummy worms left on the dashboard. There were vans and minivans and planes and bars and halls and all night drives and carnage and joy and pain and exhaustion and love. All of it. All I know is that I'm here now in my room. Alone, which is what I wanted. It's pretty good. I'm not hurting anyone or myself. Well maybe my eyes and spine from riding this rig too long. I think that computers make their light by sucking out yours so I plan to take small shifts.

I bet the spleens, lungs, and liver might be grateful for the crop rotation. If I can just ignore my inner wino, who comes out every night at dusk to charm me out of my day time vows: "Come on! Just have one glass. What's the big deal?" he says putting his hand on my knee and kissing my neck and looking so good.
Back off mister! I'm saving myself for Italy!

It would be thick irony if I sprained my wine bone right before I finally got to go there. I'm just starting to see that anything you do has its residual effects. Maybe you only get a certain amount of drink tickets in one lifetime and you can either use them all up at once or space them out over time. I hope they gave me a lot.

I guess this adventure started in Texas. Well Seattle actually. Well, if you wanted to get technical, Cumberland but it's sort of like skipping at this point. The rope's always going. You just gotta jump in somewhere.

So Texas. It's as big as they say. It takes up four pages of the Rand McNally atlas. In the midst of all the driving, I was thinking we could have just ripped out the middle two pages and saved ourselves a bunch of time!

Seven ladies. Seven days. Seven towns.

Originally, the plan was that Christine Fellows (canary yellow blonde, piano player, writes the most beautiful songs, hilarious, lives in Winnipeg) and I would do a Thelma and Louise style solo double bill tour in a convertible wearing headscarves. We had talked about how every gas station bathroom seat we had ever encountered was piss covered and we wondered how these seat pissers could be so casual. I once snapped and chased a woman out of a rest stop in a natural park screaming "I am not your janitor!"

Since Christine and I were kindred spirits on this matter, we planned to call the tour "Christine Fellows and Carolyn Mark are the Janitors of North America and They're Coming to a Toilet Near You!" Well that was the plan but then, while I was out touring, my magnetic Velcro powers had become super human and somehow our ranks had swollen to, well, five. Five ladies. Actually now that I think about it, maybe there were a just a lot of Canadians around killing time between gigs. I used to be so convinced that it was all My Movie. I tell ya, this getting older business is murder on the confidence!

When I broke the news to Christine from a gas station pay phone that everything we planned had changed, she sounded excited and suggested we bring her cellist(!) Leanne along too to make it an even six. Leanne lives in Austin and studies at the university, plays in the symphony and had just run her first marathon. Thank god she smokes otherwise we'd have to kill her.

Day 1

Diona and I flew in to Austin from Eugene after a delightful weekend of opening burlesque clubs in the Pacific Northwest. Things must be looking up. They used to call me to close 'em!

Allie and Awna (of Po'girl) picked us up at the airport in Shaggy the Love Van looking all tanned from Mexico. We are the most penniless jet setters that ever lived. Allie and Awna made some money busking in Peurto Vallarta but then they got robbed. Right after that they almost died in a rip tide but then got rescued. They'd had to scrape the change off the van floor to get it out of the airport parking lot to come and get us and the tank was pretty close to E but they were being pretty zen about the whole thing.

Diona suggested the only thing to do upon arriving in Austin no matter what time you get in - fish tacos and margaritas at The Marisco Grill! I'm sure the locals would cringe to hear us say that, but some places aren't for the locals.

When the inevitable fade occurred after the first taco and half way through the second margarita, the ladies took us back to Laura Freeman's house where they had been crashing. Laura Freeman has a great house with a gorgeous turquoise kitchen and a huge back yard. Laura Freeman is a great songwriter with a huge range and she's gorgeous and crazy. Luther Wright had been talking us up to each other for years but you know a name doesn't mean anything until you meet your destiny face to face. And sometimes you gotta have a nap first.

When we met again that evening, within ten minutes we were wearing each other like scarves and planning an evil prank. We were both gonna call Luther and say "Why didn't you TELL me about her?!" just to make him crazy. Tee hee.

Laura Freeman is like if you put me and my best friend J. in a blender but we were from Texas and could sing really high and liked children. That's a lot going on in one person.

That night we sat in her back yard listening to the grackles and mocking birds and playing songs.

Day 2

Wrangled all the ladies and practiced in Laura's living room. So cute. The moment Diona The Fiddler met Leanne The Cellist, they bonded heavily over some obscure European composer, ran into the bedroom giggling and started playing the shit out of this concerto they both knew by heart. Ah, to be Classically Trained...

A few songs in, I couldn't help but notice that a certain someone who had vowed to give up touring was looming in the door frame wearing a washboard and tiny purple evening gloves with buttons sewn onto the fingers and singing the third part harmony. In between songs I said, "Laura, you're going to have to decide which side of the door you are on. Either you're in the band and coming with us or you're not, but you can't keep lurking in the doorway 'cause it's gonna give me adult acne!" After a pause, she said, "Let me make a couple of phone calls!" and with that our band became a seven piece. Christine taught us this Townes Van Zant song that is like the I-Ching of songwriting. Every line means something to me. I had never really 'got' him before but colour me a convert. Sometimes you need someone else to sing you a song to make you notice how great it is.

After a seven hour practice, Diona and I escaped. Unbeknownst to her, I had pimped her out to The Meat Purveyors who were recording that night. They play the fastest bluegrass ever. They had her play on a cover of Foreigner's "Hot Blooded" and made her do it like eight or nine times. Whenever she accompanies me I'm always dazzled by everything she plays but these guys were Picky Petes! There was a video monitor so we could see her sawing away in the other room. What I didn't know is that it was a two-way system so she could instantly see the band's reactions in the control room when she finished a take. Creepy. I would have bolted for sure.

After the sesh, we went looking for Sherrylynn at her bartending job but she had gone home so we called it a night and got caught in the most amazing Texas thunder storm. Incredible sizzling lightning, deafening thunder and sheets of rain. I'll never forget it. Everything is big in Texas.

Leaving Austin.
Intended Destination: Muleshoe Texas. Birthplace of Lee Horseley: Television's Matt Houston.
Intended departure time: Noon.

Actual Destination: Lubbock Texas. Birthplace of Waylon Jennings: Outlaw Country Singer.
Actual departure time: 3:30pm

Getting seven ladies to leave anywhere is a feat and a half. Someone always has to go to the bathroom or buy something. But eventually you get where you're going and when you have to pee nobody minds and someone has usually brought snacks.

Found a hotel in the middle of the night. The desk clerk was an old man on two canes who was a real sweetheart and gave us a deal, which is a first for me. Usually my charms are invisible to hotel owners or I somehow anger them into charging us more. He had two little dogs. I asked him what kind they were and between coughs he said, "Woofenhausers" and left the perfect pause before adding, "They WOOF in the HOUSE". I was in love. He gave us the special deal reserved for people in the military. The air force I believe.

Santa Fe - The Second Street Brewery

Our first gig after two practices and many miles. Our ladyboners were way high and it's a good thing because that night they had to be. The place was a big noisy brewpub with no P.A. and a $40 dollar guarantee. Hmm. Glam-our-us.

After some gentle probing the bartender found us an old mixing board, some speakers and a couple of microphones in the back. No sound man though so Diona set everything up and put up with all our suggestions in a very Clint Eastwood way. Cap down and mouth closed. Eventually we got seven ladies a place to stand and microphones and set up the keyboard and glockenspiel and cello and fucking rocked that joint.

Through sheer tectonic force we made those fuckers pay attention to us and were grateful for the chance. Our biggest fan was a prim librarian looking lady with long blond hair and glasses in the front row who had all our CDs and some recording gear and a giant digital camera. In the break she came over to shake our hands and introduced herself as Ann. Ann had giant hands and a really low voice. Ann was a man. A man in a flounced Laura Ashley dress. You know how the way people dress in drag reveals a lot about them? You can see it on Hallowe'en. Dudes that dress as ladies either go for their mother or a total slut. It just proves once again that just because you're "gay" doesn't mean that you can't be super "straight". Actually I'm out of my league here. She may have been just a sweet transvestite and not necessarily a transsexual or transgendered person. Whatever, who cares? Ultimately what she was was really nice and well, flattery is a sure way to win us boozy chanteuses over, whatever else you get up to in a day.

At the end of the night we passed a hat and thrice tripled our guarantee (I'm bluffing because I don't know the word for when you times something by ten). And we all learned firsthand how the power of positive thinking and good vibrations manifest themselves into tangible rewards.

Later I wondered why it is almost impossible to consciously keep your spirits that high when you're closer to home. Is it a survival thing? Like if you know you're close to home and have a long history with a place and the people, you just don't try as hard and you all kind of just wait til it's over because you know you can just go home? Or is it because when you're far from home and don't know anyone, you have nothing to lose? Maybe it's just a perspective issue, like the way you can never remember to pack a sweater if it's warm out. My friend Lily always keeps her ladyboner up at full mast even when we're at home and I love that about her. Except when I'm tired and paranoid. Then I think she's eating my brain. Probably because at times we work the same strip.

Because we are ladies, we blew all our money on a night at the fabulous El Rey Motel. It's all adobe and beautiful. They gave us a room that was so big we kept getting lost and there was a fireplace and many beds and some fan gave Diona this killer pot. We smoked some and it made us all want to call our friend Ford IMMEDIATELY. I can't remember the exact reason but it was something REALLY important. Forgetting that Toronto is three hours ahead and that it was like 3am our time, I pulled out my cell phone that I'm only supposed to use for "career related" calls like interviews or venue coordinates and we called him and sang one of his songs at the top of our lungs into the answering machine.

A couple of seconds later the phone rang. Now Ford lives with Yvette, who is also my friend, but works for Mint Records who PAY for the phone that I'm only supposed to use for "career related" calls and she says, "I think you may have thought you got the answering machine but I was on the line the whole time." I panic and say, "So uh, can you give him the message?" and hung up so busted.

See, Yvette had been leaving messages for me to call her back about "career related" matters, and also she is my friend, and I hadn't. Then while Christine called her husband, which I don't think went very well either, Laura channeled all the unspoken thoughts in the room in the form of an opera, which was pretty awesome.

When we woke up, we got to have our morning coffee in the adobe courtyard hot tub in bright New Mexico sunlight and got the road out of our backs and shoulders. Yessssss. This is the life.

That night it was Albuquerque

My favourite duo, The Handsome Family, aka Brett and Rennie Sparks, had offered to put on a concert for us in their house. I was so honoured I thought I might burst. I am a super fan and basically just want to hump their legs every time I see them but I love them so much I don't want to scare them off. So mostly I just stare and then laugh a little too loudly.

We arrived to find them awaiting us with open arms despite our swollen ranks. (Hey that's a good band name Laura-The Swollen Ranks!) Brett is on the computer rocking the i-tunes. The Supremes. "Some Day We'll Be Together". He looks up like he's just arrived back on earth when we walk in and actually says, "Check out the kick drum in this mix!" He'd been listening to it all day. I instantly made him play DJ. "Oooh play 'Love Child'! Do you have 'Love Child?' I love it when people that play music still like music. Rennie took us to the grocery store and marvelled at our ambitious plans for dinner. It's just nice to be able to cook when you're on tour and all of us were so into it despite the fact that it was 7:30 and the show was supposed to start at 9.

The house filled up and the people were really nice and I think they liked it and I met a new Joan Cusack best friend in the back yard. At the end of the night with some wine in me, when she let me smoke inside, I think I started to fawn heavily over Rennie and thank her for putting on the show and being so awesome and she just fixed her big brown eyes on me and said, "I too was greatly comforted to learn of your existence" before I could get too annoying. What a woman.

Next stop: Tuscon, Arizona

A bar called Plush where they made us play in the lobby. Paul Rigby was there and at the end of the night I jumped ship and ran off with him and he put on Neko's new record and gave a running colour commentary about the guitar playing. "Aw here's where I put in the A minor augmented!" So cute.

The next day we went to the Cactus Forest with the jumping jollas, which nobody believed me about until The Cellist, of course, consulted the pamphlet and said "No. She's right. They DO jump out and attach themselves to you!" My clumsitude precedes me so my word is suspect.

All day long ass drive. Stop for supplies and then back to The Hot Springs Ranch. The Commune, man! Yup. We were going back, voluntarily this time and bringing fresh meat.

continue...

more pictures...

The Unattended Bags - Coming to a Commune Near You! (2)

2006-05-01T16:08:00.000-07:00

...previous
Commune, let's go!

Arrived in the darkness of course, because no wrangler could hurry these kittens. Parked and ran into Sally's house where she was waiting for us. She met us at the door, jumping up and down, and hugged us and greeted the new girls warmly.
She showed us to our sleeping areas and then, since it was a full moon again, Diona and I quizzed her about how to take the peyote she'd given us last time which had been burning a hole in my guitar case. I'd done some research myself and everyone was universally adamant about carefully removing the white strychnine button in the middle of the dried flower. I'd always heard that vomiting was part of the trip, but it turns out if you clean it well enough you don't actually have to puke. At first I was hesitant, "Well it is kind of late..." But when are we ever gonna be able to do peyote in New Mexico on a commune with natural hot springs when the moon is full again? (Actually, the way things have been going, probably next month!)

Anyway, we put on our robes and poured some wine. I was playing the grand piano quietly because there was the threat of a sleeping baby in the area and Diona brought over a bowl with tiny wet hard lumps in it. We put some in our mouths. It tasted like ass. Like if absinthe came in a solid form. Truly nasty. I wondered if you had to chew it or if you could just swallow it whole to get the awful taste out of the way and get on with the business of getting high.

When we felt the first tingles we went out to the hot pool, which was gorgeous in the moonlight and surrounded by wild mint. Oh man. It was so beautiful. The other girls wanted updates. "Are you feeling anything yet?" They didn't want to try it themselves but they wanted a full report. I said, "It's like mushrooms without the hollow feeling of self-doubt!" to a circle of wet heads nodding knowingly.

Diona and I stayed in the pool for eight hours freaking out when we heard rustling, not sure if it was spirits of the ancient natives or javelinas or both. "Are you ready for your vision?"

When we noticed that the moon had traveled across the entire sky in the time we'd been out there we went inside.

When we got to the kitchen, Diona flipped on the lights and said "Look at my hands." I turned around expecting them to be a bit pruney from our extended soak but they were huge. White fingers like swollen larvae. Her hands were bigger than she was.

You never know you're stoned until you come inside. Like when you play an outdoor concert and you can turn the sound system up to eleven and there won't be any feedback because there are no walls to stop the sound. It's the same with highness. Same reason drinking doesn't count when you're camping.

We ate some microwaved tamales and had some tea and went to bed and woke up feeling Fantastic. Everyone was wiggling their eyebrows all like, "How are you guys feeling?" when we came into the kitchen and we said "Awesome!" and meant it. And then I climbed a mountain. Leanne, The Cellist, had already climbed three of the four mountains by the time we woke up and was happily making a giant sandwich. Awna was practicing her accordion in the outhouse.

In our honour, Sally had tried her hand at concert promotion and got us a gig 'in town' at the Buffalo Bar Ballroom in Silver City. By far the best gig of the tour as far as turnout, money, and good vibes were concerned. We named ourselves The Unattended Bags. I was sober because we had to drive all night after the show to make it back to Austin in time to play. The memory of any show you have to drive after is overtaken by the memory of the drive. Newfoundland to me is a dark two lane highway where every branch is a potential antler.

We loaded up the van and strapped ourselves in fur coats and sleeping bags as Shaggy still had no heat and drove down Main Street while Sally and the women of Silver City flashed us their titties!

Got pulled over for speeding in the middle of nowhere and the state trooper shone a big light in my eyes while I found my license. Then he made me get out and stand in front of the cop car saying, "Don't put your hands in your pockets! If you get cold put them in your armpits!" Jeeze, welcome to America.

Cold air kind of woke me up though, and then, as we got to the Texas border in the dawn, a thousand jackrabbits lined the road and kept running for our tires. It was so awful but there's nothing you can do when you hear the sickening thunk. The best is when you don't hear it.

D. and I took turns driving until sunrise, because that is the pay off of the all night drive, and it was gorgeous and we could warm our frozen driving stumps at last.

Got to Austin in time for fish tacos and margaritas! Feeling very acidey. I think we broke Laura. She wasn't really speaking to us when we dropped her off and her curls were wound up tight. I guess at the end Christine was driving with a very pouty shotgun, which is no fun at all.

After lunch we went to the convention centre to register for South By South West, which was a total nightmare if you'd been up all night. No day at the beach even if you hadn't, I'm sure. Thousands of hipsters and their managers awaiting laminated passes and free stuff. I got smokes and guitar strings which is all right. Saw a bunch of people I knew and tried not to breathe my all-night margarita breath on them. Found Tolan, who was traveling with our friends' band Frog Eyes and took him with us. We reconvened at the van hours later, dropped off Christine and Leanne, and then headed to Peggie's House.

Allie and Awna and Diona had been telling me about this woman Peggie that had put on a show for them in Santa Barbara at a beautiful theatre. They all kept saying, "She's like you in the future!" I don't know why, but I pictured all my worst qualities sped up and amplified. I pictured some fading diva with badly dyed black hair and painted lips who talked too much.

Apparently she had a mansion with a pool in Austin and had invited the girls to stay with her. I tagged along because I was so tired and had no other bright ideas. When we got there nobody was home except an old pointer dog named Gretchen. We had some drinks by the pool and caught up with Tolan. I was a little nervous about our hostess coming home and seeing this sudden revelry, and because Tolan gets drunk in like three seconds these days. We held our breath when we heard tires crunch on the gravel and then a beautiful woman with long brown hair came around the corner and said, "Well thank GOD you're all smoking!"

After a round of introductions she went into the house and brought out some vodka and a tiny silver spray bottle and joined us. "Oh my god! Is that a vermouth atomizer?" I'm in love. I think she's very beautiful and witty and we talked about authors that we like. "I think Fitzgerald wrote about other people and Hemingway wrote about himself and that is a huge difference". Within minutes she leant me a copy of The Human Comedy by William Saroyan. Then she looked at me and said, "I feel like we've met before" I looked at her and said, "Well, if I may, we kind of have similar profiles..."

She talked about how she books the theatre in Santa Barbara with only acts that truly move her, paying no heed to who has an agent or a record deal or any of the other outward trappings of success. The series is called The Best Music You've Never Heard and I long to be worthy. We quiz her for gossip about who's nice and who's not out of all the people she's booked and she tells great stories. I feel honoured that the Po'Girls thought of me when they met her. I felt like I've seen the future and it ain't so bad!

After a million drinks, Tolan announces that he has a show that night so we try to phone him a cab but we're far too drunk to operate the phone, so we drive him to the gig. We also give him all our money and smokes, and help him with his gear, and he's kind of in a rage that we're not coming in. "Dude, we've been up all night!" He's like, "Yeah, I know but you don't know what that feels like unless you're the one doing it!"

We went back to Peggie's for a nightcap and were in bed by eleven, which felt damn good.

SXSW-Day 1

Came into the kitchen to find Peggie making coffee and breakfast tacos. I pantomime the appropriate "blown away" double take but Peggie shrugs and says, "People are just so much more managable when they're fed".

That afternoon I am hosting a Hootenanny on the patio of a tiki bar called Headhunters. It's a joint party for Mint Records and Six Shooter Records and apparently we have a tequila sponsor. Must remember to pace as we have our real show after that at 9pm.

The Hootenanny is amazing. I had a plan to not have a plan. Instead of making a list and getting all flustered, I thought any time someone asked me when then they were on I'd just say, "You're on next!" It actually worked until the middle when time sped up and more and more bands came. I could book anyone I wanted from 2-6pm but this band Elliot Brood had to play a full set at 4pm. Well, everyone wanted to play at 4. Some people had to go to other gigs and some people got left out and there was more tequila. In the end I think we had 40 bands in 4 hours and it was the best damn party of the whole weekend.

Only thing was that by 7pm I had kind of broken my charm button so I went for a little stroll. Came upon the others, you guessed it, at the fish taco/margarita place and finished off their dinners and drinks for them. Went to see They Shoot Horses Don't They? at an outdoor tent and they were great. A bunch of people jumping up and down playing tubas and keyboards and so forth.

Then it was time to play again. The Mint Records Showcase. Place called Nuno's. Upstairs black bar. Air conditioned. Nardwar was the emcee and he was doing these epic ear-splitting screechy introductions, so we left the stage until he was done. Then they bathed us in ghoulish green light and somehow Tolan fell off the stage. He had borrowed a guitar promising to be very careful with it, so instead of hurting the guitar I think he bruised a rib or something. Not one of our finest hours but I think we played ok and there were people there. I hope we weren't too much of an embarrassment to The Organization.

Hung around to see our labelmates The Organ and Novillero, slipping outside inbetween acts. During the festival they block off Sixth Street to traffic, and it's also spring break and St. Patrick's day weekend, so there's a lot of action out there. Diona and I decided just to sit down in the middle of the street to take a break. We got to meet a lot of cute dogs. A man came up to us and asked if we were sitting down in protest of anything or just sitting down. We told him we were in favour of sitting down. And then my old friend Tony from The Great Lake Swimmers emerged out of the crowd and came and sat with us. A cop came and told us we couldn't sit there anymore because if he let us sit down then EVERYBODY would want to sit down etc. Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips rolled by all lit up waving in a giant bubble followed by a parade of giant Easter Island heads and we found Paul Rigby. Then I slipped away to see the 1am Po'Girl set at some hotel convention centre. Man were people tired but the girls played great. It was a calming tonic to all the action. I may have drifted off for a while in my chair. Then we drove back to Peggie's and slept like logs.

SXSW Day 2

Bloodshot Records Bar-b-cue- Noon Show. The Yard Dog Gallery Backyard.

What a great way to wake up. Got there just in time to play and we had a great show and there were veggie burgers and tequila for breakfast!

Stayed to see some of the other bands but it got too crowded to see. We dropped Tolan off at his other gig and went to a park to see The Old Crow Medicine Show. We said we were playing and got rock star parking. We watched them sound check and a beautiful girl came out. When she started singing we were like "Holy shit! That's Norah Jones!" The band was great. I got to be part of a communal shiver. They have a new song called "I Heard It All", it's the tasteful modern day protest song and it was amazing. There's no way I can pick apart what made them so great. I could tell you that they're a six piece bluegrass band with two banjos and tight harmonies but that wouldn't make you run out to go and see them. There is something inexplicably good about them that defies review.

Then it was off to Cheapo's Records for another show. Really fun despite the bright lights. We did one giant medley to save time and so we wouldn't have to talk. Randy from Mint had promised me wine so I held him to it, and The Organ girls were there singing along. We met this cute boy band of charmers from Edmonton called The City Streets when we were outside smoking. Hubby Honey (aka Mandrew) was there so we kidnapped him for dinner at Whole Foods across the street.

Diona was playing with Billy Bragg and Jolie Holland that night so we followed her to the venue and on the way got caught in the middle of the biggest fireworks display I'd ever seen. Every time we thought it was ending it would start again even bigger. Everything's big in Texas. And these were Real Money fireworks. We just lay on the street laughing like maniacs until the actual finale and then we found the Irish Drinking Complex.

It was St. Patrick's Day and there was a huge line-up around the side of the building. I had my guitar and Diona had her fiddle and we both had Mandrew's hand. We got past the first gate into a courtyard filled with a thousand people watching a band with a muscley guy in a kilt with a purple mohawk singing some sort of stadium chant. We shoved our way through to the next gate which was even tougher to get through. "But we're playing!" we said. A woman took our cause on and shouted to the bouncer, "These people are IN THE BAND!" Finally the velvet sausage was lifted and we were shoved past the front of the line-up, down some stairs, and into a stone bar.

The second we got inside I smashed the bottle of wine I had in my bag on the cement floor and somehow Diona magically reached behind a door frame, produced a mop, and cleaned up the whole thing in two seconds flat before she flew out the window. The next moment we could hear Billy Bragg singing the word "Fascism" over and over again accompanied by a familiar fiddle sound. We look out the window into yet another courtyard where they are playing and Mandrew leans over and says, "Say, he's kind of tubby for a socialist..." and I say, "Well he spent the last year writing a book!"

We wait out the concert inside the stone cave because there's really nowhere else to go. Christine and Leanne walk in and then Diona comes back beckoning us all to follow her. She leads us up a backstage staircase to an awesome V.I.P. area where we can smoke and drink and totally see the stage. She finds us a table and then hits the stage with Jolie Holland who was awesome. Beautiful red hair, a slip, ankle strap shoes, and an amazing voice. Damn. The last few months have taught me that no lady ever lives up to her reputation. I had heard crazy stories from the others about her and was quite excited to meet this modern day Garbo. So, after the show, when she came right over and shook my hand and said "Very nice to meet you" I was almost disappointed. I wanted to see some real live diva action. I have also realized that the stories other ladies tell you about other ladies are incredibly subjective and that no one is actually pure evil.

Speaking of alleged redheaded divas, we headed over to Antone's to see Neko's big 1am show. Sold out. Line up around the block. We used the instruments as props once more. The bouncer said, "Well I better see you on stage at some point tonight or I'm gonna come and find you!" as he let us in. The place was crammed and I waited by the stage door to catch a glimpse of Neko or Kelly or Rigby or Rauhouse, remembering I had played here with Neko three years ago on Valentine's Day. I found them all and we had a nice little hang before they took the stage. Met the new back up singer Rachel who seems awesome. Black Hair, red lipstick, funny. What's not to like? The band played great and the vocals were drenched in reverb the way The Lady likes 'em.

I did a shadow puppet show for Grant Lawrence in the back while Mandrew secretly smoked in the closet and check out this round of banter:

Grant: "What is that? A vagina?"
Me: "Have you ever seen one?"
Grant: "Once in New Orleans"
Me: "That wasn't a vagina darling!"

Guess we'd both been taking our Noel Coward pills as Luther likes to say.

Grant looked up at the stage and sighed. "I just wish she'd do one rocker" I looked around at the giant crowd, all digging her like zombie slaves, and said, "I think she does all right".

At the end of the night I said goodnight to the band. Neko told me to call her but I said I wouldn't unless she changes her message, which is like an hour long monologue about how she's not taking any calls which can really hit you sideways if you're in a less than super confident mood.

I'll probably call her.

When we got out to the street the exhaustion hit. We were so tired. It was like we had three lifetimes in one day. We had arranged a meeting place with the other girls and Shaggy but we couldn't find them. We walked up and down the streets thinking the worst but then finally we found them just when they were about to pull away. Thank god. Home to Peggie's to sleep the sleep of the dead.

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"Well, I'm Not Gonna Stand Here LIKE A PERSON" (3)

2006-04-30T13:39:00.000-07:00

...previous

SXSW Day 3

Slept in and woke up to find that it had rained in the night. I had felt the low pressure building up all week and was glad when it finally broke. Should take some of the maniacal edge off of 6th street too. Christine called to see if we wanted to go over to Leanne's for an impromptu cello concert. Leanne had been working on a piece and wanted to try it out on friends before she played it for her teacher. Also there would be drinks and snacks.
Uh, yeah.

When we arrived we could hear cello and when we peered in the window we could see a few people sitting in the living room listening attentively. We stood on the porch for a while before going in. Leanne took a break between movements to pass around chips and salsa and tequila shots. This was my kind of master class! She played beautifully and when it was over Awna piped up from where she was lying on the floor, digging the vibrations, and said, "Them are some loony tunes all right!"

We mingled with the other guests who were a mixed bag of architects, classical musicians, and marathon runners.

Then it was time to go and see Kelly Hogan sing at a Mexican restaurant called Jovita's. I was really excited for Christine to see Ms. Hogan sing. I thought she'd really dig it. I got to meet Kelly's mother Hilda and some of her friends from Atlanta. One of the ladies said she was a nurse so I asked her the question I ask all nurses, which I think may have somewhat horrified the rest of the table.

I always ask nurses about this thing I've heard about where they can rehydrate you with a saline drip to atone for the sins of the night before. This lady wouldn't bite and said, "The thing you should ask yourself is how you came to be so dehydrated in the first place..." Yes! Yes! We all know WHY! We were just hoping there was a way to have it all!"

Kelly took the stage and was looking foxy. She told me the night before that she lost all this weight from getting "lime oil poisoning" from making too many margaritas at a party one night. Ever since she told me that I've been fondling all the limes I can but so far no results. She played with a hot guitar picker and an awesome steel player and they sounded great and did a lot of jazzy songs. Man she's such a good singer, and the ladies all dug her like I knew they would.

Then it was off to The Mint Records Dinner. They had scored us a giant patio at some restaurant on Lamar where all thirty of us could sit together and there was good wine. Luke from Immaculate Machine discovered what Frito Pie is when he ordered it. It's corn chips covered in chili! A local delicacy apparently. It was really nice of them to take us out to dinner, and, just like Peggie says, "People are just much more manageable when they're fed"

Back to Sixth Street where I think Pink Mountaintops were playing. Christine borrowed me some broken badminton rackets and I played street badminton with one of the architects from the cello concert for an hour. A cop on a horse rode up and said, "Ma'am you can continue. Just don't hit anyone in the face". "You got yourself a deal Mister!" Christine acted as my coach feeding me bottled water and rubbing my shoulders between volleys. So fun. And the architect was as obsessed with the game as I was which is always nice.

Mandrew and I strolled over to The Dirty Dog to see Corby Lund and every Albertan I've ever met bought me a drink. Can't remember what happened next, but ran into our old friends from Norway, The Real Ones, somewhere on Sixth Street and led them to the final show: the much talked about Church "Hootenanny"- Billy Bragg, Ramblin' Jack Elliot, Jolie Holland and a bunch of other people were allegedly playing.

Well whaddaya know? A huge line up. We stood in it for a while but The Real Ones are kind of superstars where they're from and Jergen, the guitar player, kind of snapped after ten minutes and said, "Well I'm not gonna stand here LIKE A PERSON!" and strode off into the night and the others followed him. I had to see. After a while the line-up thinned and they let me in.

I went to the front and sat on the floor by the stage. When my eyes adjusted to the dim light I saw my friend Leeroy Stagger from back home sitting on the floor a few feet over. I scootched over to join him and in doing so must have brushed against this woman's leg with my guitar case or something so she fucking kicked me! In a church! I think I blocked it out until the next morning but fuck man! What a c-u-n-t!

It was the end of the weekend at the end of the last night and the exhaustion in the room was palpable. It's like the air was viscous oil. I ate the Laura Freeman apology chocolate from my purse to stay awake and then all of a sudden Billy Bragg comes out flanked by Diona and Jon Rauhouse and they sing "Willin'" in perfect three part harmony! For some reason this blew my mind and there was no one there to delight in the bizarreness of the moment. The saddest I have ever been is when I've seen something so mind blowingly weird and had no one to share it with. That is the definition of loneliness. Then to make it even weirder, Marty Stewart popped out for a couple of numbers, and then Ramblin' Jack finished off the night with and extended version of "Me and Bobby McGee".

I guess none of it was that weird except that it was so normal. I've been wild for so long that it's so rare for me to be in the presence of Normal that it seems Weird. When it was over I found Diona and Jolie and some bottles of water.
"How are you getting home?"
"No freakin' idea"

So they drove me to The Woodward Hotel to the awaiting cot of Miss Yvette who had cued up a George Clooney/Jennifer Lopez heist movie for us and I was out like a light in seconds.

Fuck. Forgot my coat in the van and I'm heading North.

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From Shaggy to Dierdre-On The Lam With Run Chico Run (4)

2006-04-29T14:00:00.000-07:00

...previous

The Morning After SXSW

Woke up to the alarm with the TV still on. It was raining and I had twenty minutes before Leanne and Christine were coming to get me. I made a hotel room coffee and sprinted to the courtyard for a quick hot tub. It was awesome to sit there in the drizzle while the whole world slept. I had the place to myself although I did see a suspicious eye behind a moving curtain four floors up. Ran back inside, said good-bye to Miss Yvette and was waiting in the lobby when the girls pulled up. Our destination? Houston. A place called Super Happy Fun Land.

Houston was very humid and greener that I would have thought. Gardenias and hibiscus everywhere. Super Happy Fun Land was in the middle of nowhere. Kind of a hippie arts collective. A tiny girl with acne and dreadlocks told us to help ourselves to the vegan chili. There was another girl with a stutter who didn't blink once who was dressed like Raggedy Ann, complete with two red circles of blush on her cheeks. She said we could b-b-borrow her u-u-ukulele if we wanted to.

My friends from back home Mattie and Thomas who are in a band called Run Chico Run were coming to join us and play a set, for this was to be the meeting place for the start of The Next Leg. A couple of shows and then 1500 miles straight from San Antonio to Chicago with no gigs in between because we are ambitious geniuses!

While we were waiting to play, I took a walk with the guy behind the counter and acne girl to the gas station for cigarettes. On the way back we cut through a park and she said, "You know swings are a great place to have sex. You can use the chains to rock yourself back and forth and it's awesome." I thought about the proximity of the park to the venue and how many bands come through here and the vegan chili and shuddered. When we got back the boys had shown up so we all had a drink outside in the moist air while the first band of seven played.

Our set was pretty interesting. We were trying to fit three bands into one. Christine and Leanne played their sweet cello and piano duets and then I'd play some barn burner with Matt and Thomas pounding away on the drums and keyboards and then they'd take a turn while the ladies plinked away on the glockenspiel. Kind of disjointed I suppose but really fun. And there was only like eight people watching from dark theatre seats, and none of them had any money anyway so what the fuck? Afterwards acne girl wanted to trade "original artwork" for CDs and I bought a comic from the collective organizer about a super hero called "Minimal Effort Man" which is pretty funny. Then we stayed and watched Luke Doucet who rolled up in a rental car with his latest fiance and rocked the stage with his white Falcon and catchy tunes. "Oh you've gotta have a heart to have a broken one..."

We all made $30 and blew it on the last supper of salad at some cafe, and then you should have seen Leanne's face when I asked if we could come home with her! It had been a long week for everyone and I probably shouldn't have, but she had such a nice back yard and the spinach had just hit me. She quickly asked her friends from Houston that were dining with us if they had any room and a lovely couple (Sky and Calie) gave us an apartment for the night which was awesome.

I slept for twelve hours in a child's cot with Spiderman sheets realizing that if I just went to bed, I'd have wine and cigarettes for the next day. Think of the savings! Went to sleep with very bleak existential thoughts about how I am living beyond my means by merely existing.

Denton, TX

Only a four hour drive, but we hung around Houston for a while in the morning. Arrived in darkness at a bomb shelter in the middle of nowhere. The place was called Rubber Gloves and it looked like hell from the outside. The back alley was covered with razor wire and there was shit everywhere. Gingerly we tried the front door and it opened to reveal a pretty fantastic bar. Indoor smoking, old video games, a jukebox, a whole other room with a big stage and it was all red and black.

About eighty other bands were sharing the bill. This is what happens after SXSW. All the zombies still have to get home so there are hundreds of dispossessed bands still trying to work the same trap line. It makes for some interesting bills. There was a band called The Nein from North Carolina-a combination of pop and math rock and Dada Swing from Rome, Italy who were hilarious. Punk rock but really funny. Like Muppets. Lady drummer and low voiced guy with spiky hair. One of their songs went (in awesome Dracula accent) "FIFTY EUROS AND A SHOWER!!" which I presumed was about touring.

It's kind of weird to be on tour and not playing. The Italians brought this black haired girl from Brooklyn with them. Turns out in real life she was in a band too. Tried to instabond with her but she spent most of the show on her cell phone talking to her mother.

Ended up staying in suburbia at someone from the other band's parents' house on couches in the den. Got the bum's rush fairly early, headed for the nearest Starbuck's, and thought about stealing for the first time in a while. We are down to eating the rider and promotional SXSW leftovers- granola bars and fortified water. The boys are drinking their way through a cube of Miller Lite. Looks like work.

The University of the Incarnate Word, San Antonio

Looked on the itinerary and pointed the Chico van -white with black and blue stripes, answers to Dierdre- in the direction of San Antonio. It's funny to get to drive so many different vans. I had just come from Shaggy, who has a hair-trigger gas pedal (pump the gas twice hard before you start it!) and spongy brakes, crappy stereo and no heat, to Dierdre, who has a spongy gas pedal (don't touch the gas when you start it!) and hair-trigger brakes, awesome stereo and heat.

From our experiences of the last two days, playing Super Happy Fun Land and Rubber Gloves and all, I was certain that the University of the Incarnate Word would be another cheekily named arts collective. Imagine our surprise when we followed the instructions and pulled into the midst of a sprawl of brick buildings and realized that it was an actual Christian college!

Thomas and Mattie have played together for nine years and are best friends. They don't seem to bug each other at all. They are funny mellow zen masters. Most of their stories about touring begin and end like this: "Yeah, there was nobody there and then they tried to rip us off with the money." There is a certain bred-in-the-bone underachiever gene in people from Vancouver Island that drives Easterners crazy. Actually calling them Easterners drives them crazy too, but hey, everything is East to us and they're all crazy anyhow! But back to this situation, I think that Matt and Thomas just love the drums. They love listening to music with lots of drums. They love playing the drums. They love drums. "Anything with a back beat" Mattie would say when I was playing van DJ. They both play drums in the band, switching off to the keyboard and guitar. They both play the bass on this keyboard at the same time as playing the drums, which seems like a feat and a half of coordination to me, but having met their former bass player, it makes sense.
They are equally passionate about mustard.
They have pretty much invented their own language, which mostly centres around the word "chuck". You don't have to pee you have to "chuck a piss". And the goal seems to be to use the word "moist" as often as possible, except it's pronounced "mwast".

It was sunny in San Antonio so we went to a park under an off ramp, had a picnic before the show and then a disco nap in the van. Perfect.

The bands played under a little white tent outside in the courtyard. The show was scheduled to coincide with the end of a mandatory school-wide meeting. When we arrived I ran off in search of a toilet to 'chuck a piss' and treated a group of rebel students to a spectacular wipeout when I went to take a short-cut across the lawn without seeing the small dusk-coloured wire fence hidden in the flower bed. "Woah dude! Are y'all right?" they drawled as I landed face first on the lawn.

The boys loaded their stuff on the stage and rocked. Also on the bill were our old friends The Nein from the night before so we partied by their van for a while. When I was selling CDs I learnt that most people at this university are budding nuclear physicists. Although I did meet a future meteorologist. "I love living here and I love weather!" he said passionately. I suspected that he may have been bi-polar and was glad to be catching him on an upswing.

Ended up at a friend of the promoter's, frat boy rancher, with the other band and got stoned in the driveway. Slept with a little white cat named Weenie that nobody loved, vowing to one day make The Nein be my band just to freak them out!

The Long Drive. 1500 miles. San Antonio to Chicago.

Run Chico Run Van Snacks:

Take one purple cabbage leaf. Fill with sardines, hot peppers, refried beans and hot sauce. Roll up and hand to driver with one can of Miller Lite. Repeat until full or ingredients run out.

Shove one handful of mustard greens into half a pita pocket. Drizzle with raspberry vinaigrette and hot sauce. Hand to driver with one can of Miller Lite. Repeat until full or ingredients run out.

Realization halfway through day two: my tourmates are skinny and need to eat constantly. I do not.

Headed for Hot Springs, Arkansas thinking I had studied enough under the master (Trish) and could find us a nice hotel with some adjacent hot water. No such luck. Ended up at The King's Inn nowhere near anything groovy. Paid an East Indian man's eyes through a late night fear slot and he released a key. The boys had been thinking of sleeping in the van but since I had neither coat nor sleeping bag, I suggested the cheap hotel option. Thomas said, "You mean I had to drink all that Miller Lite to get drunk and now we don't even have to sleep together? Fuck you!" Hilarious.

Tried to find the hot springs the next morning but found that all the water from the mountain has been diverted into these downtown spas, which cost fifty dollars. Good old America. Land of the free? My ass. Went for a walk and the town looked like where a young Eminem grew up in the movie 8 Mile. Lots of pit bulls on chains, couples yelling through basement suite windows, and a Cadillac for sale on every lawn.

Drove all day. When wine o'clock hit, had a little freak out about the amount of cement in our lives and steered Deirdre to a park somewhere past St. Louis where apparently the first dinosaur bones in North America were found. Whatever, it was green. Or so I thought. Went to chuck a piss behind a bush only to discover that it was a bundle of barbed wire.

Our day ended at the Super 8 Motel in Lichtfield, Illinois with a bottle of scotch from the Super Walmart. The boys were eating sardines in bed so I figured it would be okay to smoke. They seemed to have no problem with this arrangement and South Park was on. Super.

Got up. Packed the van. Headed for Chicago. I could tell we were all excited to see people again. I mean, we had fun driving and all but three days without shows and only talking to each other can make a guy kind of antsy. Both our bands had shows that night. Mine was at The Hideout and J.T. and The Clouds had promised to be my band! The Chicos were playing at a punk rock warehouse across town. I think it was called something like The Filthy Nihilist.

We pulled up to The Hideout and my old friend Lawrence was working. Lawrence is in at least three bands and wears his trousers high. He poured us drinks and marveled at the level of disgusting that three days straight in the van had caused us to sink to. I realized that we should probably recalibrate our levels if we wanted to fit back into normal bar room society. No more did I want to hear about Thomas' desire to "clean the peanut butter out of his shag carpet" in place of the word "shower".

Jeremy, the "J.T." in J.T. and The Clouds, showed up first. He asked if I wanted to practice before the show. Since it was 35 minutes until showtime, I opted to get dressed instead. He told me he'd just broken up with his girlfriend that afternoon and ordered a scotch. I was about to tell him that he didn't have to break up with her on my account when I realized, for once, that the world doesn't revolve around me, and that he was just telling me about it lest he started acting funny later.

We were playing the early show in the front room. We rolled up the piano from the back and the rest of the band filed in and set up a small P.A. My friend Marie showed up with some total Chicago mobsters from her work. Thankfully they dug what we were doing. We had a fair sized crowd but it was so nice just to be playing again, the fact that people showed up was cherry atop gravy. Kelly Hogan came with Big Mike and her dog Auggie. I was amazed that none of my Chicago 'peeps' had ever seen The Clouds play, so it was part of my mission to introduce them to each other. It seems strange to me that a city could be so big that kindred spirits with the same area code could potentially elude each other. What a world!

At the end of the night, Marie took me home with her to her swinging new house. We had some wine and played drunken guitar until she poured me into the leopard guest room as she had to get up early the next morning to help underprivileged girls pick out prom dresses.

Mattie came to pick me up the next morning and Jeremy too! We found the twenty dollar breakfast place to blow some of our winnings since we had gone days without. Some friends of The Chicos, a band from Calgary called The Cape May who were in town recording at Steve Albini's studio, joined us.

After breakfast the plan, I thought, was to head to my brother's farm in Michigan, but there appeared to be some sudden grey area. Maybe the dudes wanted to stay in Chicago another night to hang out with their buddies.

Thomas, the more overtly assholish of the duo who must have noticed the way my smile faded at this development exclaimed, "You mean you're depending on us? I'm so swollen with power right now I'm gonna explode!" and laughed fiendishly. But after a brief visit to Electrical Audio, Albini's studio, which was wasted on me because I know the men back home are going to quiz me on what kind of gear he had and all I'll be able to tell them about is the extensive DVD collection and band bunk beds rather than what kind of pre-amps he had running for the sesh, we headed West down the old cement interstate and got to the farm at midnight.

My brother Chris and his wife Nancy had a baby a year ago named Petra, which I guess makes me an aunt. The star of the show was of course in bed tuckered out from her first birthday celebrations. I'm sure Chris and Nancy were tired too, but nonetheless they hauled out this crazy television baby monitor/extension cord set-up out to the back yard where they had a bonfire waiting for us noisy road weary rock'n'roll types and let us avail ourselves to their bourbon and wine supplies until the fire faded to embers and darkness high-fived the dawn.

We spent the next couple of days playing old pumpkin bocci, petting the neighbour's horses, trying to help with the chores, checking out anthills, meeting The Baby, and hanging out. There was some awesome comedy when a couple of calves got loose. We thought we were helping my brother catch them but he just leveled his gaze upon us city slickers and says, "So are ya watchin' or helpin'?"

"You're the farmer!" I said, all indignant like as he will always be my younger brother and has no business acting this cool.

"Well if you're not helping, it's just that I have a different way of doing things", he says, which was kind of chilling.

He raises dairy calves for bigger farms and I guess there are too many of them (700) to get sentimental about on a daily basis.

Eventually we corralled the offending escapee. "Well grab the tail!" he says. The tail in question was shit encrusted and the calf was kicking like crazy. "YOU grab the tail!" I say. And he does and puts the calf back in the pen shaking his head at our ineptitude.

The day we left, Nancy's sister came over with her kids-The Twins and The Boy and we hung out with them for a while. When we left they all ran down the country road beside the van waving like crazy and it was like a goddamn Disney movie. Felt like crying.

Felt like crying even more when we got lost on all the country roads and could find nowhere to chuck a piss but we finally found the main road and headed for Detroit where the boys were playing that night. Talk about your contrast. From the farm to Detroit. Well, Hammtramk actually, a Polish suburb. The Belmont Bar.

Well first we went for dinner across the street at a place called Clock's All Night Diner. When we walked in the door, these two big black ladies with matching hair processes who were smoking and eating french fries stopped what they were doing, took one look at my get-up (gingham dress, li'l blue sweater) and said, "Dang girl! Are you IN A PLAY?!" I said, "Are you guys on TV?!" and we all started laughing. And then the waitress came over and said, "So are you gothic or punk?"
"Well neither if I don't get my hands on some black hair dye soon!" said I.

When we were leaving, so many people were staring, I said, 'Good-bye everybody!" and the whole restaurant said good-bye back. I felt like I was in a musical. Crazy. I thought they would have seen it all in such a big city.

That night The Chicos had the best show of the tour. Laura the bar star bartender and her young bitch-in-training DJ Sparkle, between shots with the customers and suggestively dancing together, brought a tray of whisky on stage for our heroes who had several attacks of the giggles (cute!) while marveling at their waning coordination. Then they hugged (hot!) and the show ended with Mattie pounding away on the drums while Thomas danced his new dance in laps around the stage. (Wave your arms around like windmills while kicking as high as you can with each step while grimacing!) Such a good show!

The boys found us an awesome tour host for the night. Jeremy. Totally not weird, awesome, in a band, clean towels, funny, lives around the corner from the bar. He took us in and let me play all his records.

The next day I had to catch a plane and Thomas and Mattie had kindly said they'd drive me to the Detroit airport.

Mattie noticed that his jacket was missing at around the same time he noticed that Dierdre's tank was on E. We swung by the bar and miraculously the owner was inside cleaning up and had the jacket in his hand when he answered the door. Then miraculously there was a gas station just a few blocks away and we rolled up to the pump right when the engine cut out. Felt like the debt of a nine year losing streak was being paid off all at once. Or maybe it's a zen thing. A reward for remaining calm in the throes. Or maybe I was the only one with anything to lose in the situation. Who knows? Made the plane no problem. Wished them the best of luck on the rest of their trip and started missing my little buddies almost instantly, vowing to take a page out of their book of mellow and apply it to the next tour which was to start the second I got off the plane to climb aboard The Hootenanny Express.

More later. It's far too nice out to be in here.
xo Cm
April 24.2006

Saloonatics Gone Wild (Part I)

2006-03-03T15:32:00.000-08:00

Horrorscope, January 24.
Capricorn:
You need some time to be by yourself today. There are some things you need to sort out. You're trying to get a better handle on your finances. It's been said that the price we pay for money is liberty. (It's hard to have both time and money)
ALL SIGNS:
MOON ALERT! Avoid shopping or making important decisions until 1:45 today. After that the moon is in Sagittarius.

Jeeze there's nothing like a lack of time, an imminent border crossing, and lunar activity to make us ladies start acting like spooked horses. I longed forHumphrey Bogart to walk in wearing that tan trenchcoat and slap us all saying, "Shut up will ya? I'm trying to think."

Me, Amy Honey, and Lily Fawn. The Three Faces of Evil Tour. Corsets and crinolines. Two guitars, drums, and trumpet. Saloon girls lost in America was the angle this time. Halfway through the tour we will change our name to The Saloonatics. But let's start back in Victoria.

Amy Honey was freaking out because her mother had checked out our web site and saw us all dressed like saloon girls on the poster with the words "evil", "sinners", and "whore-ific" under our faces. She was worried that her daughter was going straight to Hell, or worse, to drive around America dressed like a whore, which to a mother is probably the same thing.

Bogie failed to materialize during our one and only band practice so I attempted to play both his and my roles, which was, of course, a disaster. Oh, and as if to symbolically manifest our collective doubts, a giant rat ran across the basement floor roused no doubt by one of Ms. Fawn's high notes. This did nothing for our already waning morale.

Ladies again. What was I thinking? I should know better. I am one. The worst part is having to admit it. We should have hired a band.

Day 1

All together now: "This is the first day of our holiday! Ya-a-a-y day one!"

Well after the moon passed into Sagittarius and we all started bleeding and made it over the border and the sun came out, things were looking up. I had my dear sweet Mother run my guitar and me stateside in the blue Camry of Stealth. ("How do we know each other? Mother and Daughter!") Apparently I teach at the conservatory.

Filled with tales of horror from all they encountered, (Loony birds, don't you know that TALKING about it only JINXES everything?!), the ladies decided to rent gear on the Other Side so they could cross with clean hearts. I didn't know this then so when the bartender leaned over and said, "Canada? Oh you're friends aren't gonna make it. They've closed the border!" My heart sank. Then I thought about my poor Mother heading back across.

It turns out that two guys murdered someone in California and made a run for the border. The Americans started shooting and the Canadians squealed like girls and hid in the bushes until it was all over. The best part is that the runaway vehicle actually SMASHED INTO the Peace Arch!

Found out later that the girls had taken a different crossing and my mother made it home safely, albeit four hours late. I've never been so relieved to see a minivan pull up in my life. We had an excited reunion and met up with our Bellingham show-host Robert Blake- not the actor that killed his wife, the Washington singer/songwriter- who petted our hair and told us everything was gonna be all right.

He made us dinner and we got all whored up and had a great show at the Green Frog Acoustic Tavern. Despite the name and its strip mall location (just next door to the Wing Dome!), it's a pretty cool bar. Guitars on the wall, good wine, and they let us bring the dog in. Oh yeah, Lily brought her dog Korma. He was the star of the show and looked fabulous in his stage outfit. It's so great to play with ladies again!

Day 2

Breakfast at the Old Town Cafe in Bellingham where you can sing for your breakfast. Since we were pretty hungry and they insist that you sing for an hour, we just ate and paid like civilians and then a vintage shopping frenzy broke out with our new best friend Anna. (Uh, traveling with ladies? Finding ceramic vegetables with faces on them for 25 cents? Holy crap what YEAR is this?)

Then on to Seattle for more shopping and then over to The Tractor Tavern in Ballard for our show with Donna the Buffalo. (Awesome band from New York State, been together seventeen years, well oiled machine, pure class.) Ballard always has the kindest audiences. A man bought us a bottle of wine and luckily my old pal Dre showed up and took us home with her to Capitol Hill.

Day 3

Drove the boring old I-V to Portland into the awaiting arms of Melissa Dyne and her Flashdance warehouse in the vegetable packing district. Since Portland has become the new L.A., we were unable to bag a show and were faced with a night off.

Lily made us snacks and we tackled all the major topics at the ensuing square table discussion. Melissa told us about collapsing at the airport and then waking up in the hospital in Hong Kong surrounded by beautiful lady attendants all in white thinking, "Am I in Heaven? Oh. They kept pain. Interesting." The Po'Girls came by for a while after their show before driving off into the night which seemed like a bad idea to me, but a guy can't say nothing when a lady has set her mind to do something.

Day 4

San Francisco is between 9 and 14 hours from Portland. Ask anybody.

Here is a typical van conversation:

Lily: Last night I had this horrible dream. One of my chickens dove head first into a sandbox but the sand was really hard so my chicken got brain freeze and then the paramedics came and put him under the covers and took him to the hospital and he was in a coma and they said that for my chicken to come out of the coma, he would have to decide if life was worth living and then he turned rainbow coloured and never came back.

Amy: Why didn't I bring my slippers?! I always have my slippers. If you see a place to buy sheep skin slippers, you pull over!"

Carolyn: One time on tour, blah blah blah blah...

Three ladies. Three running monologues that only interweave occasionally. Three people talking, just not to each other.

Horrorscope, January 30.
Capricorn:
At the banquet of life, the food is terrific and the portions are ample. So when someone tries to fight you for crumbs on the floor, it's best to be big about it and let him win.

Day 5 and 6

San Francisco. Ah the much needed sanctuary of the Wig and Ad Pad. Wig and Ad are my friends and host family Cynthia and Adam. They live in The Mission and we always end uphaving many heart-to-hearts on their patio.

My friend Camille who plays in Pickin' Trix and The Widows with Wig, organized two shows for us and made me realize that I had totally lost the plot when she confessed that it was more important to her to be funny than a "good musician". Shit, how could I have forgotten my main man the Comedy God! I had just come from The Calgarian experience of getting to play grand piano in a theatre with the orchestra and I think the temporary opulence deluded me into thinking I was a 'real musician' for a second there. On the outside, it had made me a smug uptight pain in the ass. Here's the thing: You learn something from each trip; it just never applies to the next one. O life! Thank God Camille set me straight. I had totally forgotten about the Pure Joy.

We played with two other lady bands at The Stork Club, which is in a formerly shitty part of Oakland that is now starting to become 'happening'. It was interesting to talk to Amy about her views on gentrification. I always dread the idea of change in my neighbourhood because I have no money and view the hipster art gallery as a death knell, and the organic breakfast place as a nail in my coffin, never seeing myself as part of it. I have, in my time, been accused of decreasing property value and felt red-eared pride.

But Amy thinks big and seems to embrace all of it. She's like, "Well you just keep moving!" She's also five years younger than me. I guess that's the conundrum. If you're older you remember how things USED TO BE and resent the change. If you're young you ARE THE CHANGE and wonder why everyone resents you. I thought about maybe standing still in the shittiest spot I could find with open gunfire and boarded up windows and babies in the gutter and just waiting it out for the day it would become worth something. Hmm... New Orleans perhaps? I still wanna BE the change but the energy depletes, which is how they get you.

I took the day off and was conscious for only a moment. Pyjamas until 7pm working on the Calgary story, and then Amy rolled me a special and poured me some wine. In my stoner brain, every conversation I had that night tied in nicely with the theory we had come up with the day before in the van: If you are driving too slow in the fast lane, pullover! Somewhere in there Wig told us a calming mantra: "There are no emergencies." I haven't got to try it out yet while in The Throes but it seems solid and inoffensive. I'll let you know how it goes. All that and we wrote a song too. The chorus goes, "Get it up, get it in, get it out, don't mess my hairdo!" Amy's mother's gonna love it!

Day 7

Packed up the gowns and the dog and the ladies into the van and waved good-bye to Host family who were spectacularly gracious as ever. How can people be so sweet?

Long drive to San Diego. We were gonna meet the Po'Girls in Los Angeles but they fled South due to stifling disinterest and found beach cabins for all and sent word for us to find them when we were losing it at the Lost Hills Love's.

Funny to be back in the van after three stationary days. Much comedy and many head exploding moments. Lily had promised the folks back home that she'd practice the trumpet every day we were away but of course time sped up so now, racked with guilt, she brought the mouthpiece up front and was letting out almighty blasts every few seconds in an attempt to improve her embouchure. Korma had found himself a new squeaky toy and was going to town on it right by my head. Amy was talking about how glad she was to have found sheepskin slippers in San Francisco. And we were playing this game where you rename the flavours of stale jellybeans ("Oh I know. Movie popcorn mixed with ass!" "No Wait. Wait. I've got it! LINT!")

The sugar was making us even more crazy than usual. At one point, Lily asked Amy if she could have a tissue and Amy, revealing her true Oldest Sister colours, said, "Well normally I'd lend you one but I only have four", which made us laugh til we cried. And then there was The Pistachio Incident: Lily asked Amy if she had any left and Amy passed up the bag and was silent for a while but then, when she could no longer ignore the guilt, confessed that the nuts left in the bag were the ones that wouldn't open and that she MAY have had some of them in her mouth which was so fucking funny we almost had to pull over.

Ten hours later lost in the dark with the sugar wearing off, the whole thing didn't seem so funny anymore, especially when I almost ran over Diona who had stepped out to look for us. But oh, the beach cabins and the pounding surf, the ladies had made us soup, and there was wine. Long drives are always worth it when the destination exceeds expectation.

Met a speed-freak on the boardwalk named Ben-o who recorded us on his laptop so now we have our new album- The Saloonatics-Live on Pacific Beach- complete with crashing waves and interjections from freaky passersby. Ended the night with a spectacular tumble from Ben-o's long skateboard and came home with the bruises to prove it.

Day 8

I think California is where all the people with broken brains go. Or maybe it just appears that way if you're just passing through. So many California Moments. I was playing guitar outside and this old man stops and says, "Do you appreciate yourself?" And then at the wrap and smoothie place, just I was putting the key in the public bathroom, a man came out. I apologized and he said, "Why are you sorry? It's as much your bathroom as it is mine." Maybe it's just that particular area. Pacific Beach it's called, just north of downtown San Diego.

That night we went to go play our show and as Lily was putting the van in reverse these dudes tried to hop in with us. Luckily Korma started barking like crazy and showing his fangs so they went away. Later when I called Home, The Maintenance Man said, "Well you're driving around America dressed like whores, what did you expect?" I really hadn't given much thought to what we looked like from the outside. But you know, what other people think of me is none of my business.

The show was great despite a serious lack of crowd. Best one yet. We just played for each other and the opening act was this guy named Tom Heinl from Eugene, Oregon who totally rules! So funny and great on stage. Sherrilynn from The Meat Purveyors was there too as a sweet surprise. And Po'girl sounded great from the smoking patio. I tried to chat up Tom Heinl but he kept asking where Lily was.

After the show we headed back to our beach chalet and mingled with some more boardwalk crazies. Met a mumbling shopping cart man and tried to help him with his diction, and a Frisbee man who was big into the spinning theory: "Things just wanna spin and when there's resistance that's when weird shit happens. Like a Frisbee or a hula hoop and that's why there shouldn't be skyscrapers on the earth because it impedes the momentum man!" I was into it but when he told us that he'd invented a "designer drug in his mind" and that cops came into his house and beat him up for no reason, we decided to call it a night.