We just got back from ye old tour of the west and--let us tell you--it was a doozy. Of the dates we had booked, we are sad to say that Bass Lions only managed to limp into 4 shows. Our apologies to the good folks in Grand Prairie, Saskatoon, and Thunder Bay.
We were in a car crash.
Please view the the itinerary below for a more comprehensive view of the tour.
Day 1: It is discovered that one of our tires has a slow leak in it. We are still in Brampton at this point so we take it to a seedy joint in the industrial sector to have it fixed. While we are waiting, James meets his future wife. She has very very large bosoms. Our spirits are bouyed. We float across the boarder with no trouble despite the fact that Charlie is carrying counterfeit Canadian money that he is meticulously drawing by hand as an art project. Charlie informs us that they are perfectly legal as they are currently one-sided. Even so, he places each bill in a seperate manilla envelope and hides each envelope in a different spot in his sketch book. In Chicago, we avoid a gas station completely patronized by 'Bloods' thanks to Tony's streetwise ways.
Day 2: In Montana we drive through a snow storm: slush accumulates on our hubcabs in the shape of sea urchins. We re-name the van CoorslightthesilverbulletgotitrightCoorslightyougottherightbeernow shortly after emerging from the mountains and will accept no abreviations. We sleep in a wild-west themed motel room but have to leave in he wee hours of the morning thus disqualiying our claim to the free continental breakfast. Shame.
Day 3: We start the day by narrowly avoiding a small herd of zebras crossing the road while driving through a native reserve. Nathan insists that they were zebras. We cross the boarder back into Canada and play a sweet show in Kelowna. We are offered lodging in many a home but decide to stay the night at a Holiday Inn Express for the Express purpose of indulging in their free continental breakfast. It feels like payback.
Day 4: We aquire many 'road bananas' from the buffet at the Holiday Inn Express and head towards Grande Prairie. Unfourtunatly, we never make it to the show. Just outside the town of Grande Cache our van skids into the ditch in the suddenly-snowy foothills and flips onto its roof. Everybody is ok. We crawl out of the blown windows and flag down some locals. We rescue our equipment from the van despite the fact that many our road bananas are now smashed and strewn about the van's interior making it a very dangerous environment in a cartoonish kind of way. Everything is in good working order though Nathan's glasses, Tony's wallet, and Charlie's debit card are never accounted for. The van is a write-off.
Day 5: We spend two nights in the Grande Cache Hotel where they treat us like princes. We offer to play a set for them in their bar but the hotel defers: the last time they had a band play the locals wrote and signed a petition to get them kicked of the stage. The phone in our hotel room never stops ringing. Our Aunts and Uncles contribute to a disister relief fund; a friend orders pizza to our hotel room. We watch a lot of Star Treck: The Next Generation on television. We are briefly 'barred for life' by a drunk man in the 'Sky Hy Restaurant'. He later relents and allows us to order donairs. James vomits outside before he can eat and returns to the hotel room. Charlie empties his untouched beer into a Tropicana Orange Juice bottle and brings it back to the hotel so that James might enjoy it later. He never does. We are unable to make our show in Saskatoon.
Day 5: A prince named Matt rents a trailor, borrows a truck and drives from Edmonton to Grande Cache, loads our gear and our sorry asses into them and drives us back to Edmonton where we have a taco pizza that Charlie ordered as a joke. We rent and watch 'First Contact' and quote Picard.
Day 6: A prince named Thomas lends us his car to drive back to Ontario. We outfit it with a trailor hitch, rent a UHAUL and hit he road. We make Regina just as the opening band is finishing their set. We play one of the best shows of our lives. Our gear all seems to be in working order although Nathan has to whack his amp more often then usual to keep it working. Charlie committs a small crime though we are all accessories to it.
Day 7: A wonderful woman named Bev makes us pancakes in the morning and puts the leftovers in a ziplock bag for us to take with us. Employees at the Red Bull gas station present us with commemorative Saskatchewan pins after hearing of our accident. Nathan forgets his credit card there. We play at a record store in Winnipeg. James uses his ensuing store credit to replace a copy of 'Bedlam In Goliath' that he lost that belonged to his cousin. We play three sets at a bar across the street. The locals largely ignore us until we start imporvising on funk-metal. Every song has a drum solo in it. The locals go crazy.
Day 8: 'Uncle' Ray and his daughters make us eggs for breakfast, though we have gladly eaten the leftover chicken curry they made us the night before. An hour outside of Winnipeg, we run into a snowstorm. In an Esso station we learn that the Transcanada highway is closed. We aquire a room in a local motel [in the middle of nowhere] and painstakingly drive 10 kilometres back down the Transcan to its door. Upon learning that we are musicians, the hotelier states that we can stay for free. Her last guests were Mother Mother. James tunes her banjo for her and plays a few ditties. We are unable to play our Thunder Bay show. Charlie amuses himself by drawing tatoos on himself and others: his forarm declares 'I rule'. While James is asleep, Charlie draws a hotdog turning into a butterfly on his side. James doesn't care.
Day 8: It starts to snow in the evening. We make it to a town called Beardmore and stay the night as we are all a little jumpy. We are impressed by the name 'Beardmore' but little else. Dennis Quaid plays an emotionally stunted rancher in a movie who's name we never learn. Nathan refuses to turn off the TV until we see that 'Quintessential Dennis Quaid Smile'. His request is an innapropriatte one considering the plot and character's arc. We watch TV for a long time.
Day 9: We drive through Englehart--a small northern town that Nathan grew up in. Nathan insists on cataloguing each and every monument of small town life to his bandmates. They don't care. CBC radio states that it might snow that evening in North Bay. We drive faster. We arrive home in time for the Nevado Records invitational BBQ. Our loved ones breathe a collective sigh of relief.
The quality of people we have met across this great nation has been unparralelled. Thank you thank you thank you to kind strangers and precious friends and family alike.
We're home!