*If anyone has any pictures or videos from any of my shows on this last tour, please do send them to me, as I wasn’t organized enough to bring my own camera, and I would love to have proof that this all actually happened.

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So, I'm just about done my disjointed, mini summer tour.  The whole thing kicked off with me flying to Montreal on June 11th, and realising about an hour before I left that I had lost my ID.  So, I scrambled and found an expired pass port and a birth certificate and my social insurance number, managed to make it to the flight on time, hoping that they’d let me on.  Luckily they did, and I landed in Montreal late that night with my clothes for the week, my guitar and my cord bag.  I met up with David and Jane of the soon to be famous Silly Kissers, dropped my things off at David's place and got acquainted with the couch that I slept on for that week.  The night of the 12th I played the first show of the tour at Lab Synthèse with Sans Deer from Japan, and White Flower from Montreal.   David, Jane and I happened to run into the people from Jane Vain outside the club before I went on and managed to convince them to come in and check it out, which proved to be a good turn of events as their dance moves definitely livened up the set.   

I also got to go down to Lab Synthèse again to see the Silly Kissers play a show while I was in town, and they let me come up and sing “Everybody Cries,” my favourite song off their first album.  Another show I had lined up for Montreal with Hank and Lily fell through, so I spent the rest of the time there just enjoying the scenery and getting to know friends of friends and stuff like that.  I also managed to play an additional two unplanned shows, one at a cafe called Le Cagibi - where I went over very well with all the crazy street folk who stumbled in, one of whom tried to steal my guitar so he could play instead, apparently he felt I wasn’t doing well enough- and another on the roof of an abandoned building, where The Silly Kissers, Oxen Talk, Miracle Fortress and a friend Ezra and myself all took turns playing songs on my guitar to a crowd that eventually grew to about thirty people or so.  Before I left town me and David managed to find the time to hang out in his bed room / studio so I could put down some vocals on one of the new Silly Kissers songs.  That album is going to great.

Then I was off to Toronto for NXNE.  I made the last minute decision to go by train instead of the Grey Hound, and that was one of the best decisions of my life so far.  VIA Rail knows how to treat a passenger.  I showed up in Toronto and went and got a beer and waited for Lee of Forty Thieves, and we managed to coordinate a meet up spot somehow even though both our phones were dying and I had no idea where I was in this big city that I had never been to before.  So, we dropped of our things at Lee’s girlfriend / my old friend Sandy’s currently unused ritzy flat on Bloor and Yonge, went out for more beers and eventually met up with Grant, another one of the Forty Thieves, and went back and spent our first night at out swanky suite.  While I was in Toronto I managed to miss every band I had wanted to see (The Black Lips, King Khan and BBQ, The Sonics, GZA...I think there’s more even), but I found out about a King Khan and BBQ secret show at Lee’s Palace which me and the Forty Thieves managed to get into (Caleb now also there, as he had showed up later than us after having driven across the country to get there).  Then on the Saturday of the festival I played an afternoon mini set at The Six Shooter Records BBQ (live clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_kPZpgBNNI ), which got rained on, but not rained out, as it was still possibly the biggest show I played in Toronto or any city on the tour.  Then that evening I played my official NXNE showcase at Mitzi’s Sister, which was filmed by a website, although I don’t think it has been posted yet, and was also reviewed by Chart Attack (read the review here: http://www.chartattack.com/reviews/71346/michael-rault-nxne-2009 ). 

The next day I went and hopped on a Greyhound bus to St. Catharines, where I was scheduled to play at an independent venue called Seventy-Three.  I played the earlier evening folk show, but there were a bunch of American hard core bands who were playing a punk show afterwards, and the mix of crowd made for a bit of tension, but I seemed to go over okay with all the different sorts of people there (I also happened to be wearing an old Minor Threat shirt which was a happy coincidence).   The next morning I woke up on a mattress on the floor of the promoter’s basement at 7:00 am, took the bus back to Toronto, cabbed to the airport and flew back home to Edmonton, where I tried to DJ that night at Prohibition, but left at midnight, because I could no longer stand, play music, talk to people, or keep from feeling feverish and nauseous.

I managed to recuperate by laying low for the better part of a week, although I played another show while I was home at the Varscona Theatre for Improvaganza.  Then, Saturday the 27^th I was off to Sled Island to play a show at Tubby Dog.  My Dad was kind enough to drive me and my sister down to Calgary, where we met up with Peter Sagar, who was going to be playing drums for me at that show.  About an hour after getting into town we ended up hanging out with a bunch of Edmonton kids who were in town for the festival and we all got drinking in public tickets which I have yet to pay.  Then it was off to the show, where we were supposed to be doing a full band show, but instead we had to deal with the case of the disappearing bass player, but we managed to make it work on the fly as a duo.  After our set we ate a whole bunch of veggie hot dogs and onion rings and drank a bunch of free beer (you get treated well when you play Tubby Dog) and split off into the night to go see different shows.  Me and my sister decided to go to the Legion to see a show there, and I am ever so glad we did, because we showed up just in time to see the last act of the night – Quintron and Ms. Pussycat.  One of the coolest shows I have ever seen, if you get a chance to check them out, you have to.  You owe it to yourself.

Then it was back to Edmonton yet again where I again DJed, and played the Riverdale Community League Canada Day Party.  But things were not done there, oh no.  I met up with my friend Bradey and we drove all day on Thursday July 2^nd to get to Vancouver for my show at the Purple Crab with the Manipulators and the Trap Doors on Friday the 3rd.  We made it there fine, but ended up stranded in Langley from 6:30 am until 2:00 in the afternoon waiting for repairs on the car.  Upon arriving at the Crab that night, Mike from the Manipulators informed me that him and his band had learned my old song “Sold! You’re Mine” and that I was going to come up and sing it with them (video proof: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVp3pPC2oVs ) and that he had shown my music to none other than Nardwuar, and that he had apparently liked it and might be down at the show (although he never made an appearance, you can hear Nardwuar say my name on his radio show, here (it’s near the end): http://playlist.citr.ca/podcasting/audio/20090703-153725-to-20090703-170226.mp3 ).  That night I crashed at Mike’s place although all my stuff had already been dropped off at my friends Adam and Mac’s place.  Then Sunday would find me at the Railway Club playing with the TVees, the Tranzmitors, and the Woolly Bandits, where I played two 15 minute sets in between the other band’s sets on the opposite side of the room, a set up that worked out really well (thanks to Bryce from the Tranzmitors and Frank Rumbletone for coming up with a way for me to get in on that show). 

This past Saturday Saturday (July 11^th) I bussed to Hinton to play the Wild Mountain Music Festival and  ended up hanging out with Lee again, this time with his other band, Falklands and I ended up driving back to town with them on Sunday.  Now I’m back in town for quite a while, and I’ll be going into the studio to start work on what might very well be my first full length album.  The album is going to fall somewhere in between my solo sound, and a full band sound, and will probably be released in January 2010.  I won’t be out on the road again doing my own music until October when I’ll be touring across Canada with Doug Hoyer.  We’ll hopefully be hitting up Pop Montreal and Halifax Pop Explosion, although we might just get denied from both and end up playing little club shows and house parties.  Either which way, should be fun.   I’ll also be working on a couple of other recording projects one of which will be with my sister for her first official EP, and another will be a mystery minimalist punk project, and I’ll also most likely be touring as a guitar player for Ben Stevenson for a week in August.