Archive for the ‘Tour Diary’ Category
Tour Diary – Turnhout, Belgium (Nov 14, 2010)
Tuesday, November 16th, 2010
Kevin got the bus moving last night but he didn’t exactly fix it. Throughout the night we made our way across Germany with only two operational gears, 45mph was our top speed, our scheduled six hour overnight drive turned into an eleven hour odyssey. We arrived in Turnhout at around 3:30pm, it was raining and already getting dark. From the little I saw of it, Turnhout looks like your typical Belgium town: neat, tidy and efficient with a healthy scattering of artefacts from its medieval history and plenty of looming reminders of its dark Catholic spine. I’ve always liked Belgium, there is mystery here, I think it is mystery stewed in death and blood, but it is mystery nonetheless.
The gig tonight was at a very nice modern theatre, a much needed respite from the insanity of the previous couple of days. It was a beautiful sounding stage and a very keen audience. We had a pretty good show, but I think we slowly lost steam as the night wore on. The double dose of Christiania and the Rolling Stone Weekender pretty much sapped the little energy that we had left. It turns out that Alan doesn’t have the Baltic Plague, but he does have strep-throat, so he is running on fumes and isn’t the bouncing energetic bundle of joy that is his norm. This has been a tough tour on us all, but especially on Jared and Tim, our crew. Road crews generally depend on a certain amount of cooperation and support from promoters and local crews to get the job done. It only takes a couple of disinterested promoters or a lazy local crew or two to make the life of a road crew miserable. Jared and Tim have had a couple of those on this run, along with all of the other pressures and stresses that come with being on the road (especially if that road takes you through Europe). They are both completely beat, but still maintain their sense of humour and still take pride in their work: they are the absolute best at what they do, we can’t thank them enough. Despite all of the drama, and the unbelievably bad weather, spirits have remained high throughout this tour. This has been a very tough, but strangely fun run. Europe never fails to entertain.
We thought we were through. The bus was loaded up and we only had a short fifty mile ride to the airport hotel in Brussels, nice and close to our flight home tomorrow. But…no, that wouldn’t be a fitting end to this adventure. The address that we had for the hotel was wrong as was the phone number. We drove around the airport in circles for a good forty-five minutes looking for this ghost hotel. Finally someone steered us in the right direction and we found it looming, like the Promised Land, attached to the terminal, but just like the Promised Land, we couldn’t quite reach it. As we drove up the airport road we were pulled over by the airport police, barely 100 yards from the hotel, apparently our bus, the piss-mobile, was too high to get underneath one of the overpasses. So we backed up and pulled out of the airport. In desperation Jared decided that he was going to run the half mile back to the hotel to try and get some help ferrying us and the gear to the hotel. About forty-five minutes later he arrived back at the bus in a car with a hotel employee. We followed the employee back to the hotel (but not before he stopped for gas) and he took us back on the same road from which we had just been turned away. A heated discussion took place in front of our 4 meter high bus, between Kevin and the hotel employee, with the both of them gesticulating wildly at a sign that read “maximum clearance 3.5 meters”. The argument was finally resolved, it was decided that the bus was shorter or the overpass was higher than posted and we finally arrived in our room at 2:30am, three and a half hours after we left the gig. And so it ends.
We fly home tomorrow, we have the Toronto show on Friday and then we begin our cold turkey attempt at staying off of the road for a year. I think deep down we know that we won’t succeed (we already have a couple of NYC one-offs scheduled), but the idea of getting at least some extended time off the road definitely has some appeal. We have finished Demons, it’s mixed, mastered and ready to go. There will be more news on the release plans in the next couple of weeks and there will be more blogs posted about the making of the album as well. And then we’ll start work on Volume 3, Sing In My Meadow…more news about its content is imminent. We’ll see some of you at the Toronto show…make sure to stay in touch through the website. Keep safe.
Tags: cowboy junkies, Tour Diary, Turnhout
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Tour Diary – Weissenhauser, Germany (Nov 13, 2010)
Monday, November 15th, 2010
From the sublime, to the surreal, to the ridiculously surreal: this seems to be the arc of this week’s narrative. We woke up in the parking lot of a low budget resort-hotel on the shores of the Baltic Sea. I haven’t had a chance to do any Googling but this place had a distinct Eastern Bloc feel about it, very bare bones and hard edged. But I think we are too close to Hamburg for this area to have been in the East so perhaps this is just the way the German hoi polloi enjoy their vacation time. Today was Day 2 of The Rolling Stone Weekender Festival. A two day event that brings dozens of bands to this odd little enclave and spreads them over three stages; one main stage under a huge temporary tent, a second stage in a low ceilinged convention room inside the shopping complex that is part of the resort and a third stage (which is where we played) inside an odd little room, next to the mini-putt. The promoter made all of the right sounds in apologising for putting us on the smallest stage, saying that we were so late to confirm the gig that ours was the last slot available. Not only were we scheduled for one of the smallest stages that we have ever played, but we also had the much coveted 12:30am slot. So when I woke up in the parking lot at 8:30am this morning, I only had sixteen hours to go before show time. It was a tedious day, but not a bad place to be marooned. We had a couple of rooms in the hotel that we used, so we could escape our multi-wheeled urinal; there was a beach and a boardwalk to stroll along if you could handle the bone chilling winds peeling off of the Baltic; there was this odd little retail mall with a bakery, restaurant, pub and vendors in stalls selling vinyl and other indie-rock wares; there was a wireless internet room in which the network was down all day; a cafeteria which served up some very good food and, of course, starting at 5:30pm there was live music. I saw the Black Keys; John Hiatt; Tindersticks; Blittzen Trapper and an assortment of other bands that I had never heard of and will probably never hear from again.
The biggest drama of the day was supplied by Al who has contracted the Baltic Plague and was bedridden all day with a very high fever. It was touch and go, right up until gig time, whether he would be able to perform. The last thing that we wanted to do after a day of waiting around was to do an acoustic set, we needed to get some ya-ya’s out. But he rallied right before show time and did the show semi-comatose, sitting in chair. We had a jam-packed little venue to play to and they seemed to enjoy the set. On stage it was a little difficult from a sound perspective, but we did our best. We were the last band to finish playing at the Festival so when it came to load out the gear, most of the local crew had disappeared and the key to the small cargo truck that had carried the gear to the venue was nowhere to be found. It was a long load-out for Tim and Jared. When we finally got rolling at around 3am, we pulled out of the parking lot, drove for about 100 meters, there was a loud crunching noise down below, the bus rolled to stop and the interior of the bus went completely dark. We all simultaneously broke out into howls of laughter: there just wasn’t anything else one could do. The final turn of the screw was that all of the gear had to be loaded out of the bus (it is travelling in the bus bays), because Kevin had to get to the transmission which was accessed through a panel in the bottom of the cargo bay. Fortunately he was able to fix the problem, and once the gear was re-loaded, off we went on our little “Carry On Touring” adventure.
Tags: cowboy junkies, Tour Diary, Weissenhauserstrand
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Tour Diary – Stockholm, (Nov 10 and 11, 2010)
Friday, November 12th, 2010
Pete, Jared, Tim and I fuelled ourselves for our long day of travel with a classic English breakfast. Greasy eggs, beans, fried mushrooms, wilted buttered toast, limp bacon and a rasher (kind of a fried potato cake). All that was missing was the blood pudding. A disgusting way to start the day, but necessary for your unapologetic English pub crawler. The bus left directly after the gig last night with all of our gear and excess baggage. Kevin was heading for the coast to catch a 5am ferry which would take him 14 hours across the North Sea to Norway and then another five hour drive thru Norway to Stockholm. The idea was that the bus would get to the gig on Thursday just in time for load-in at 3pm. Knowing the vagaries of European travel we were wondering when we would actually see our equipment again. While Kevin was bobbing away on the North Sea, we all piled into a cattle car disguised as an SAS jetliner and flew to Stockholm. We arrived, around 9pm, a little later than projected, because of snow (fuck, it’s back). After checking in to our rock-n-roll hotel (“check in and rock out”), we all headed out to a steakhouse (including our token vegetarian, Tim) to drown our pain in good old fashion blood. A few thousand Kroner later we retired to our rooms to enjoy the rest of our “day off”.
This is a great city. I have always loved it and whenever I return (which is way too infrequent) I fall in love with it all over again. It is urbane and sophisticated and very beautiful…just like its citizens. Yes, I have Swedish envy. Yah, I know they pay a lot of taxes, but man they have a great society, funny how that works. After tossing and turning all night, trying to digest the lump of flesh in my belly, I spent the day recovering by taking a long brisk walk in the cold Swedish air. I walked the perimeter, explored the old city, relaxed in a couple of cafe’s and explored a phenomenal used instrument store with some beautiful old guitars, I didn’t even bother to look at any prices and it wasn’t raining, it was a good day. As semi-expected the bus didn’t show up until close to 6pm. So we repeated our Manchester drill and did the setup and soundcheck in 90 minutes…ate some Swedish meatballs (no shit, and they were tasty)…and then we were on stage. After three nights of performing in reverb chambers, we found ourselves in a small theatre on a completely dry stage. It was very disconcerting. I felt that we were a little off tonight. It wasn’t a terrible night and there were many good moments, but I felt like we never picked up steam. After the show we climbed back in to our disgustingly putrid smelling bus. The heater was fixed in London and now all of the smells have taken on distinct personalities and have completely taken over the bus…we are the intruders. Together we head to Copenhagen.
Tags: Stockholm, Tour Diary
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Tour Diary – London, UK (Nov 9, 2010)
Thursday, November 11th, 2010
The day started miserably, but ended magnificently. There is no heat on this bus, it smells like mould and piss, the bunks are the size of “cozy coffins” and the lounge is just about tall enough for a Hobbit. It’s a miserable vehicle. We hit stop-and-go rush hour traffic outside of London at about 6am and that is what we did for two hours, stopped and go’ed. Not the best for sleeping. When we finally got to where we were supposed to be, a parking lot near the gig, the bus got stuck in the narrow entrance and our driver, Kevin, had to attempt to free himself but raising and lowering the suspension, which inside of our coffins, sounded a lot like one would imagine it sounded like in the hull of the Titanic as it ran up against the iceberg. Definitely not the best for sleeping. Abandoning ship seemed to be the best alternative but it was 8am, cold and pouring rain. As I said, the day started miserably.
Fortunately, Jared, our tour manager, is resourceful and responsible beyond his years and spent the next three hours in the rain securing a spot for the bus right next to the Stage door entrance, which made getting in and out of the venue and loading the equipment a lot easier in the continuing rain showers. I abandoned ship at one point to do an interview at the BBC (which was strike free today) and the rest of the Hobbits, alternately, wandered around and tried to catch up on their sleep. The gig tonight was at Union Chapel which is exactly that, a chapel. It’s a beautiful, but deteriorating old building, but it has a certain charm and a history of live music. Backstage it smells an awful lot like the bus and is perhaps a few degrees colder. I know now why all of those Kings and Queens were such miserable cusses: living in those castles and palaces they were forever chilled and no doubt they had the same sewage issues that seem to plague modern day London. In any case the whole day evaporated once we stepped on-stage. It was a sold out show, with a very enthused and excited audience and we played a very good set. One can put up with a lot discomfort and inconvenience if at the end of it all you get the type of lift and buzz that this type of night delivers. As I said, it ended magnificently.
Tags: London, Tour Diary, Union Chapel
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Tour Diary – Manchester, UK (Nov 8, 2010)
Wednesday, November 10th, 2010
We drove through the night across the moors, encountering hellhounds, werewolves, the ghost of Robert Bruce, snow and gale force winds. It was the winds that stopped us for a couple of hours. These double-deckers are a little susceptible to high winds. When it felt like we were being pushed over on to two wheels we knew it was time to give it a rest, as they say. We woke up outside of the venue, the Gorton Monastery, located somewhere on the outskirts of Manchester, which in turn is located somewhere on the outskirts of somewhere else that you’d rather be….if you know what I mean? A thick, impenetrable, dirty grey sky allowed only a rumour of sunlight, the rain and the wind blew across the housing estates that surrounded us and on through the bus. A freakin’ miserable day. The music of hometown heroes, Joy Division, seemed positively cheery when put up against this environment.
The Monastery was built in the late 19th century by the Franciscans and was at one time a hub for the surrounding community. But over the course of a hundred years the community evolved (or devolved) and the Franciscan Brothers disappeared and the building fell into disrepair and was eventually abandoned, pillaged and vandalised. Over the past decade there has been a concerted effort to bring it back. Apparently we are a part of that effort in that we are the first rock band to perform in the building (it even says so on their Wikipedia entry). It seems like a good idea on paper, but buildings like this weren’t designed for bass guitar and a kick drum. A 60 foot high vaulted ceiling with stone pillars and stone floors are not a soundman’s friend. On top of all this the room had been double booked (there was a Coroner’s Inquest going on all day) so we weren’t able to get access to the venue until 5:30 which gave us 90 minutes to set up and tame the sound demons. Despite all this, we had a decent night. It was difficult on stage but as the night progressed we adapted and settled in. I’m not sure what it sounded like out front but Jared said that he had quite a few people come up to him and compliment him on the sound and one fellow who came up to him and said that it sounded “simply appalling” (Jared, being a native of Boston, wasn’t sure whether that was better or worse than somebody coming up and saying that it “sucked”). In any case playing Me and the Devil and then Good Friday (“two thousand years ago/Jesus was left there hanging”) with Margo standing directly underneath an enormous flown crucifix was worth all the effort.
Tags: Manchester, Tour Diary
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Tour Diary – Glasgow Nov 6 & 7, 2010
Tuesday, November 9th, 2010
We all eventually made it to Glasgow, straggling in at various times of the day. Margo and my flight was uneventful, the Toronto contingent (who hooked up with Alan who was coming from Victoria and had been sitting in the Toronto airport for six hours) hustled through Heathrow and caught their connection to Glasgow (just barely), and Jared, who was coming from Boston, suffered through a four hour layover at Heathrow but he eventually straggled in to the hotel as well. All bodies, instruments, fingers and toes accounted for….so far so good. Most spent the rest of the day and night recovering from the unnatural state-of-being that we charmingly call “flying”, wandering the streets of Glasgow like a squad of zombies making sure to look right, then left then right again before crossing any streets.
Glasgow is a big, old industrial city that is trying to re-make itself, trying to become hip and vibrant and modern. To a certain degree the face lift is working, but it is in competition with its neighbouring city Edinburgh which is only sixty miles away and is an internationally renowned city and has kind of cornered all things cultural in this neck of the woods. And then there is London to the south, sucking all of the youthful energy of this island into its great, voracious maw. So Glasgow has its work cut out for it. Alan compared its looks to East Berlin when the wall first came down, with all of its dour neo-classical buildings covered in decades of soot, Pete thought it felt more like Hamilton and I kind of think it has a little bit of North Bay in its gene pool, except that it’s more than a thousand years older. In any case the audience tonight definitely had an “Ontario” feel to it and why shouldn’t it have, we share a bloodline. Extremely quiet and polite, almost reverential at times, and then completely enthusiastic and exuberant at the end of it all. It’s difficult playing in front of that type of audience because there isn’t that exchange of energy that helps make a live show….live. But we recognised what was going on and it was so much fun to play again that we plugged-in to our own energy and had a very good opening night. On the road again.
Tags: Glasgow, Tour Diary
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Tour Diary – London, UK (Nov 5, 2010)
Monday, November 8th, 2010
Margo and I left a day earlier than the rest of the band to do some radio in London. It’s always exciting going to Europe, it’s never exciting getting on the plane to make the journey: unending line-ups, long delays, cramped spaces, bad food, bad movies, bad air and testy waiters and waitresses-in-the-sky. But all-in-all Margo and I had a painless passage. The rest of the band was not so fortunate. Their flight was moved up two hours (who ever heard of a flight being moved up) and no one received the email that the airline said that it sent out. Fortunately the flight was delayed by an hour and they arrived at the airport a couple of hours before the flight was originally scheduled to leave because of the piles of equipment that they had to check in. So they made the flight and had just enough time to pay the $1750 excess baggage fee. Oil Companies, phone companies and airlines….I’d like to see a poll that ranks the most hated industries in the eyes of your average consumer. While the rest of the band was dealing with their headaches Margo and I were facing a few of our own. The BBC, where most of our interviews were to take place, was beset by unscheduled strikes and our day of interviews went down the drain. So Margo and I spent the day wandering around the West End. It rained all day, apparently it was a “wet” rain, the type of rain that I’ve rarely experienced outside of London. It’s more like an extremely intense mist. One steps outside and thinks, “this isn’t so bad” and then after walking a couple of blocks it’s like you’ve just done a couple of laps in a swimming pool. There’s no point in using an umbrella, there are no drops, there is no gravity, the water just envelopes you. Despite being shutout by the union and soaked by the weather it was still a pleasure to be back in London. This is such a great city. It vibrates with energy. It is ancient and powerful, an entity unto itself. I love being here.
Tags: cowboy junkies, London, Tour Diary
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Tour Diary – Napa and San Francisco (Oct 8 and 9, 2010)
Monday, October 11th, 2010
Napa, CA: A lazy day in Napa. We could only find one hotel room in this town because it’s the start of “Crush” week, or month or something…it has something to do with drinking wine. In any case we could only find a room for our driver so we spent half the day parked on a highway beside the hotel, while Marc, our driver, slept. It seemed like a good day to spend in my bunk, so I did. Napa is an odd little town. Its’ one visible function seems to be to serve the wine-tourists. A considerable amount of money has gone in to refurbishing some beautiful 19th century buildings on the main drag: tonight’s venue, The Napa Opera House is one such building. It’s a beautiful old building which has been creatively and lovingly restored. We had a pretty good show tonight, aided by an excellent audience.
San Francisco, CA: It’s Fleet Week in San Fran, and that, coupled with the Giants being in the playoffs, gave these usually intense, boisterous streets an extra edge of insanity. The sidewalks were teeming with sailors and baseball fans and the skies were screaming with the Blue Angels acrobatic fighter-jet team. The beautiful weather also seems to have enticed all of the locals into the streets….the end result is a type of controlled-mayhem. I love this city: a wholly unique and special place. Tonight was a new venue for us, Bimbo’s 365. Apparently the place is an old North Beach institution. It kind of has that 1950’s Gentlemen’s Club vibe, complete with painted Vargas style pinup girls on the walls and a signed photo of Liberace in the lobby. It’s a little on the funky side, but not a bad venue. We were worried about geese tonight because of the layout of the place, but the audience was excellent and attentive. A full house and a very good show from our side of the stage made for a great way to end this run. We head back to TO very early tomorrow morning and then it’s off to Europe for some fun with our old world friends. Tonight’s show was our last show in the US for a while. After the Toronto show on November 19th we plan to take an extended break from the road. Something may materialise for the summer and there might be the occasional one-off, but, in general, we plan to not do any extensive touring in 2011. So if you can make it to Toronto, we’ll see you there. Otherwise, stay virtual, maaan…there will be lots happening on the website.
Tags: cowboy junkies, Napa, San Francisco, Tour Diary
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Tour Diary – Bend, Portland and Grants Pass, OR (Oct 5 -7, 2010)
Friday, October 8th, 2010
Bend, OR: It would be difficult to find a nicer town than Bend for a day off: lots of locally owned shops, good coffee, a brew pub on every corner and a beautiful river cutting through the town with a huge public park along its banks. We stayed at a very funky (in a good way) hotel…the building and compound once housed an old school and it has been converted with warmth, comfort and history in mind: a nice combination The many different bars and restaurants at the hotel seem to attract the locals, which is also a good thing. There seems to be a bit of money in this little enclave in Central Oregon. We had a sold out show tonight with a very receptive audience and we delivered. A very refreshing couple of days.
Portland, OR: It was a very full day in Portland, one of my favourite cities in the US. We arrived early in the morning, so Tim and I took the opportunity to head over to the Doug Fir restaurant for a very tasty breakfast. Jeff, Margo and I then headed downtown to KINK-FM for a live performance in their new, beautifully put together, performance space. Jeff and I then headed over to Powell’s, the greatest bookstore in the freakin’ world, where I kept a check on my impulses and successfully kept my bill well below $100. Then it was back to the Aladdin Theater for soundcheck and the show. It wasn’t sold-out tonight which is a little worrying because Portland has always been such a great town for us. Perhaps we have been through here a little too often in the past few years. In any case, those who did show up were in fine form and more than succeeded in holding up Portland’s rep as having some of the best audiences in the US. We had a very, very fun night.
Grant’s Pass, OR: We have definitely stayed in this town before but I don’t think we have actually played the town. After tonight I have a strong feeling that we’ll never play here again. A shockingly thin audience tonight. The numbers were kind of confounding to us and the promoter, but if the town itself is any indication, this area has been hit hard by the recession: a lot of empty windows on Main Street and way too many pawn shops, thrift stores and so-called antique stores, a sure sign that there are many people around here in desperate need of cash. It’s a beautiful area, though, with some spectacular white water rafting and hiking nearby and all sorts of other healthy, fun and dangerous things to do. Tonight was not a good night on-stage, despite performing a triple shot of Neil during the set….as the song says, ‘we tried to do our best but we could not”.
Tags: Bend, cowboy junkies, Grants Pass, portland, Tour Diary
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Tour Diary – Bellingham, Edmonds, Covington, WA and Vancouver, BC (Sept 30 – Oct 3, 2010)
Monday, October 4th, 2010
Two months off the road can seem like an eternity when it comes time to packing up and preparing to head out again. A sickening mixture of anticipation and dread flows through the body and then muscle memory takes over, you find yourself tucked away in your bunk, the rattle and hum of a bus rolling down the highway buzzing away in your ear, that antiseptic clean-not-clean smell in your nostrils and it’s like you’ve never been away. At least we are in one of our favourite parts of the continent, the Pacific North West, and it’s October, one of the most beautiful months of the year out here.
Bellingham, WA: We couldn’t have picked a better day or a nicer town to kick start this little jaunt: a cloudless, sparkling blue sky, mid-70’s temperature with a light breeze, Mount Baker’s snow-capped peak in the distance, a perfect day to wander around and explore. It’s been over ten years since we’ve played here, which is too long to stay away from a cool little town like this: a couple of great coffee shops, a specialty donut shop and one of the best used book stores that I have ever come across….all the necessities for life on the road. It was a very nice sized audience tonight and very appreciative. They helped us to get through those opening night jitters: an excellent way to start this run.
Edmonds, WA: Another excellent day and this time we find ourselves on Pugent Sound in another quaint little Washington State town (perhaps a Seattle bedroom community these days). This town doesn’t have the university presence that Bellingham has, it’s a little more upscale and therefore not quite as engaging to the itinerant musician, but those ocean breezes make up for any lack of a boho scene. Another full house tonight and another excellent crowd. This is kind of fun.
Covington, WA: I’m not quite sure where we were today….it was very close to Seattle, let’s call it a Seattle suburb. We lost those high blue skies as the clouds rolled in and we were stranded out in the middle of nowhere behind the venue, which was a Performing Arts Center attached to a high school. It was a strange day. Not a bad gig tonight…we were a little unfocussed at times but there were some nice moments and the audience picked us up when needed.
Vancouver, BC: Back across the border to a strange gig in the East end of Vancouver. Two shows tonight at a very odd little venue, The Cultch. We’ve had our problems attracting an audience in Vancouver over the past few years and tonight was no different. The first show was sold out, the second, not so much. Unfortunately we suffered a bit of a meltdown in the first show, we just couldn’t find each otherand so we flailed around for ninety minutes. The second show was a lot more focussed and we felt slightly redeemed. After the show we packed up and headed for another border crossing and a nine hour overnight drive to Bend, Oregon and a much needed day off: a cross country flight, three border crossings and five shows in four nights….yes, a much needed day off.
Tags: Bellingham, Covingham, cowboy junkies, Edmonds, Tour Diary, Vancouver
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