Blog

 

Ho hummmm, ho hum. Where to begin?

 

 

I’ll try keep this as brief and to the point as I possibly can.

 

 

Atlin, BC – a house concert chez the lovely Rhoda. Small, quaint, cozy, sweet. Would have loved to have played the pub, but we were told it would be dead and that a house show would be the way to go. Cool. We love house shows. Except the opposite happened – the bar was rammed and the concert minimally attended. *shrug* What can you do right? We had a lovely time, the people present were gems of the north, and I trekked across the frozen lake afterward with Rhoda to check out this infamous Atlin Inn pub. Met a dude who won 16,000,000 bucks! He bought a Dodge Charger and is going to the Dominican Republic I think. All in all, a pretty neat place! I love the old small town saloons… People watching is kinda my thing, so that’s just what I did.

 

 

Whitehorse, YT – The Gold Pan Saloon @ The Gold Rush Inn. 2 night bender. First night – ROCKIN! Lotsa dancers and drunk people. Met a dude with 9 fingers, called him 9 Finger Dave – he lost it in a ski plane accident… showed us photos of his raisiny purple ripped-off finger that ended up taking the attached tendon with it. Gross. Nice guy though! haha Night 2 – every table is full by the time we start and they are ALL there to LISTEN. Gordie gets up and plays a few tunes with us. Met a ton of great northern folks. People are getting us stoked on Dawson City. Met a dude named Al whom we met in Golden at our house concert there who says he’s from Whitehorse and met a trucker named Trent from Rolla whom we met the last time we played there and said he’d come to the show in Whitehorse, which he did! Oh and a girl with pink hair whom we met in Kaslo, BC back in May Days was at the pub… she says “wow… your music really reminds me of the ocean… what’s your band called?” – I kid you not. haha Perfect.

Incident #1 Sitting around having post-show bevies and someone walks off with my iPhone. Brutal. I mean to them, it’s a glorified paper weight – to us is was EVERYTHING. Except in the north where Rogers has no coverage, it was a glorified camera… But still, not cool. I balled my eyes out.

 

 

Dawson City, YT – Bombay Peggy’s. A brothel saved from impending, sinking doom, fixed up beautifully and moved to a safe spot, open as a SWEEEEEEEEET hotel and cute pub. Ladies: claw foot tubs in every room. I kid you not. This troupe bathes and bathed. We stayed 2 nights. We played Sunday night to a wicked sweet crowd – not a single douche bag present! Dawson City is friggen RAD!! Although I hear for January and February the sun doesn’t make it to the streets therefor rendering quite dark… but in the summer months, Krissy the bartender says that at midnight the sun shines through her living room windows casting the most glorious light you’ve ever seen. JD and Blackie did some significant post show PR-ing, late night networking (while I bathed), and ended up scoring us a gig the following night at this place called Billy Goats – they met a man they dubbed The Greek and The Greek had to have us. Payed for our incredibly succulent and lavish greek meals, any drink we could ever want, created a shot called The Mermaid in celebration of our band name (some kind of blue concoction), covered our 2nd night at Peggy’s, and we played to the overly noisy post-hockey crew. Fun times.

 

 

Tuesday & Wednesday = driving days on the worst roads we’ve ever experienced. We crashed in Haines Junction on Tuesday night at Claudia’s gorgeous cabin – we’re playing a house concert there on Tuesday. We awoke at 5am to hit the road to Alaska to make the 1100km drive to Talkeetna in order to play a show THAT NIGHT at the Fairview Inn – infamous and haunted. Boarder crossing was smooth – as we’re handing in our passports, boarder patrol dude #1 says “So, what do you folks do?”, we say in perfect harmony “we’re musicians”, bpd#1 says “I’m sorry”. hahahaha Boarder Patrol Dude #2 says “Say… I know a few musicians… I’m good friends with Phil Collins – do you know him?… I’m also a drummer… have you got room for me?”. Yeah. Awesome. We were in and out in less than 1/2 an hour. Hello Alaska!!! Our American DEBUT!!!

 

 

Wednesday, Mar 14 – wild life count:

2 coyotes, 4 caribou, 1 bald eagle, at least a dozen moose – including a cute baby moose just sittin on the bank beside the highway.

Incident #2 The worst roads of all time included many patchy sections of very loose gravel. In other words, we got nailed and now need to replace our windshield.

 

 

Talkeetna, AK, USA – The Fairview Inn. Old hippy town. Very cute. Walk into the pub and ACDC’s blasting on the radio. “Oh great”, right? Yeah, I prejudged. And you know what? I couldn’t have been more wrong. I love it when that happens! It was the best night ever!! Thank you Toren, thank you Morgan (like the horse), thank you Marnie the bartender who pours a great shot of Jamieson, thank you Mark for your stories and overall awesomeness, thank you Monica for your exuberance! and thank you to everyone else we met and chatted with and grooved to our music – you made us feel so welcome! And thank you for not making us say “eh” and “aboot”. Oh and thanks to Denali for revealing your magnificence! Whoa…

 

 

Anchorage, AK, USA – The Taproot. Wow. Talk about an AWESOME venue. We were stoked to be playing an actual live music venue with proper sound tech n everything. Everybody knows how to get ‘er done there. Hats (and shirts) off to the incredible staff! But check this… There’s always something… We pull in to Rebecca’s (the owner) cabin and because of the RECORD snowfall here in Anchorage, we get stuck of course! High centered. So, out come the shovels and the rope! There goes the hour we were so desperate to enjoy in the peace and comfort of this quaint little cabin with the goats (we were hung over from Talkeetna).  Got about 45 mins of chill time, hardly enough, our bodies and minds are exhausted from the drink and the long haul drive we just did the day before. Incident #3 About to walk out the door and JD’s shoulder dislocates and stays out for almost a minute – excruciating pain.we get there, set up, everything’s great (besides his pain) mid set his whiskey glass vibrates off his amp and pushes up the volume, JD goes over to see what’s up, picks up the glass but some of the whiskey drips right down the jack and BOOM – the amp turns off. So, 5 min break, borrow an amp which totally alters our TONE (it’s not a tube amp), play the rest of the set. 2nd set, JD’s in crazy alarming pain, distracted, pops a string in the second song – good thing he’s got back up. A series of unfortunate song flubs ensues – nobody notices but us. Jeremy the heroic sound dude restrings JD’s guitar. 3rd set, people are dancing and having a great time – we finally gelled. So a totally strange first night but apparently everyone loved it cuz there are a many an Alaskan who’ll be receiving the new album in the mail next month!!

 

 

Can you believe this stuff??? This is just what happens sometimes. Rollin with the punches. What else could go wrong?!? But what else can go right?!?! I love this job.

 

 

Night #2 at The Taproot should be oodles of fun – if it’s anything like Gordie Tentree’s experience, it might be oodles of topless fun! I’ll keep you posted! Oh, and this just in, Jeremy the heroic sound dude found a replacement tube amp for JD to borrow tonight… Yay!

 

Brief enough?

~JB