November 29th - Edmonton - Avenue Theatre

The Avenue Theatre was a really neat show. It was in a theatre, whose stage had been extended in order to cover up some skateboard bowls for when it had been a skatepark. The entire show was held on the stage, as it was an intimate, acoustic style show. In fact, I was the loudest act of the night, an interesting change! I also made some really cool friends that play in hardcore bands and also run a screen printing shop out of one of the back offices. It's really great to see people being passionate about all ages concert spaces.

I made Edmonton a temporary home for 3 days, where I visited with old and new friends. I met Greg a few years ago when he was playing in a band called Mapping The Escape, and had booked them in Thunder Bay a few times. He opened up his place for a few nights, where we watched Saw 6, It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia and waited for pizza for hours, only to receive it and be completely shocked at the size of their 'medium' pizzas. He's in the process of putting together a new band, but in the meantime he does radio advertisements. I woke up one morning to the sounds of recording a new jingle for a funeral home. Pardon me. Funeral Homes. Connelly McKinley specifically. I wish I could link it, as it's fantastic, super peppy with some jazz, and makes me laugh at it's awesomeness every time.

Here's a picture of me being the antonym of awesome.


After that, I went and visited my friend Andriko, who used to play in Fractal Pattern and was also working on his MA at Lakehead with me. We partied hard. We watched a documentary on fonts, and went to a vegan restaurant, where he got the owner to purchase a CD of mine, and we listened to it on the spot. Awesome! That, and he introduced me to my new favorite instrument, the harmonium:

November 28th - Red Deer - Velvet Olive

Red Deer was pretty neat! It was a really small room, but it definitely filled up after a birthday party group showed up. I got a little scared for my life at one point in the evening, here's the story:

As I was playing, all of a sudden, the audience starts to go crazy! Coming in the main door, is a really buff looking guy...wearing nothing but the same type of g-string thing as Borat, except it was leopard print, and not bright green. So, he heads over to the party group, who are all squealing in hysterics. I definitely stumbled in my lyrics too! When I finished the song, the guy ended up leaving to go back to the bathroom to change, so I figured I'd be a comedian. "This next song goes out to the guy in the very revealing clothes, it's called Junior". Funny, n'est pas? However, one of his friends yelled out something along the lines of "better watch out, buddy!", meant in good fun, but still, I apologetically countered, saying that "that's why I didn't say it when he was in the room, because I saw the size of his arms!" The song repeats the word 'junior' fairly often, so I changed the lyrics half way through to avoid saying it, because my physique is more like that of Borat (although my moustache is less than glorious).

There's a next blog, so I lived!

November 27th - Calgary - That Empty Space/The Underground

Calgary is always a good time, and I was glad to be coming back to That Empty Space at the University of Calgary campus. I played with Jonathan Li once again, and managed to do an interview at CJSW right before my set! It was definitely set to be a really busy day.


Not only is Calgary always deadly, but anytime I play there, they always make cool posters. Unfortunately, as soon as I came out of the University show the weather had completely flipped. When I walked in at 2, I had socks and sandals (faux pas, I know), but when I left, there were dozens of vehicles every hundred feet along the side of the road with broken axles and stuck in ditches. It's like Calgarians don't know how to handle icy roads at all! (I jest, they were really slippery, even for my new wagon!). Sadly, the roads affected the turnout of the bar show that night, but Brandon and I went upstairs during the breaks to dance it up at a rave in The Warehouse!

November 26th - Cochrane - Java Jamboree

After hauling to Calgary from Kelowna, I took a quick nap before I headed out to cochrane to play at a coffee shop. Java Jamboree was having a 'cupping' which is coffee speak for 'tasting', and I was to play before it, and potentially after if the crowd so desired. They did, so I gladly obliged!

It was an interesting evening, because at one point I played a song called 'Pensando En Ti', which is sung in Spanish. Before beginning I asked if there were any Spanish speakers in the room, and surprisingly there was one (I say surprising because this was in Alberta - not none for that particular demographic). She understood and enjoyed the song, and was still around after the cupping, but had been joined by some new friends, so I offered to play it again for this new audience. Turns out, she's part of an Honduran - Canadian exchange program, and so were all her friends...all 15+ of them! I tried to think of other music I could play that was in my repertoire, but drew a blank so I asked for a style of music to improvise and a lyrical theme to start with. Someone called out blues while another yelled 'riding on a bus'. Everything was going well until the blues loop I had created started to truncate and was now missing part of a beat at the end of the phrase. I powered through, then asked for more lyrical inspiration. Although he said revolution, I definitely heard 'evolution', so for the next few minutes he sat there perplexed wondering why I was singing about Darwin instead of Che. Please note that I'm fluent in Spanish, but that doesn't take away from the fact that singing about evolution is difficult on it's own without having to worry about translating while keeping time over a dysfunctional blues loop.

Once that was over, they still wanted more, and requested La Bamba. 30 seconds later the latin dance party began, and didn't stop for 15 - 20 minutes! After that, the show was over, and I chatted with my new compadres and comadres, leaving the staff confused as to what the hell had been going on for the last half hour!

I was even invited to a feast the next evening! Had the weather not turned to garbage and I didn't have 2 shows the next day I definitely would have been there!

Rogers Pass

And now for a special 'show-unrelated' entry! After Kelowna I drove
to Cochrane, beginning at 1am. It was a long trip through the Rockies,
with lots of snow, slush, rain and fog throughout Rogers Pass.
This is the part of the trip when nostalgia really kicked in. AVS and
I have traveled this route a fair bit over the past few years. In
fact, we've taken a group photo everytime we pass a particular gas
station.

2005 - Woodpecker Tour



2006 - 40 days and nights tour


2007 - Rude to TOurDD


And even though it was 4:30am, terrible weather AND I was weather
sandals, I made sure to continue a photo tradition.

2009 - "Windows and Doors" national release tour



Now you can see why I'm sad, as I'm now the only one screaming through the subsequent
tunnels at the top of my lungs. I miss those guys.

November 25 - Kelowna - Grateful Fed

The Grateful Fed! I've met some interseting people there over the years, including Bucky from the Liptonians (he was touring by himself at the time). On this occasion, I met David Kopp at the open mic night. We discussed our own sounds then agreed that I'd back him up on one of his songs. I did and it went over quite well! Anyway, we got to talking after and he described a script he had written, and then informed me that he wanted me to do the music for it in a film adaptation! I graciously accepted, and the film won't be in production for a while yet. However, it's a great story and I'm really looking forward to reading the script! This opportunity comes at the perfect time as I've been wondering how I was going to get more film composition work!

The roads that afternoon were a little rough!

November 24th - Kamloops - Pogue Mahone

The roads through the mountains were not the best, and I encountered snow again.



In Kamloops I finally shared a stage with an artist similar to me. Devon (of DevonanKevin) was also a solo act, using an acoustic and a lap steel through an RC-2 loopstation. Pretty standard fare, except that he also had built a wooden box out of plywood and duct tape that he would mic up to create his own stomp box that truly mimiced a kick drum sound. Before the show I did an interview with Kyle for CFBX, and he asked about my sideburns: I suppose I have been growing them for a while! Last trimmed on September 22nd!

Pogue Mahone was a really nice bar, and the promoter.

Sean is one of those guys that really understands promotion and is also helping to foster music within the youth community of Kamloops. He put me up for the night, in his well setup basement meant for film watching. So I went to bed quite late after watching Jacob's Ladder.