ARCTIC Expeditions

If you’re just joining us now that we’ve returned home, and would like to catch up on our month-long Canadian tour, here’s a quick ‘n’ easy table of contents. Enjoy!

1. Vancouver tour launch
2. Kelowna
3. Regina
4. Winnipeg and Thunder Bay
5. Sault Ste Marie
6. A few days off
7. Guelph
8. Toronto
9. Montreal and Waterloo
10. Hamilton
11. Peterborough
12. Ottawa and Oshawa
13. Windsor
14. Northern Ontario wanderings
15. Thunder Bay return
16. Calgary
17. On supporting local businesses
18. Kelowna and home

Drizzly drive through the mountains from Calgary to Kelowna. We saw some coyotes along the way, and stopped in Golden for a bit of lunch, where we got to scrawl in crayon on butcher-block paper on the table. Yay! We followed this up with a lengthy conversation on the nature of sustainability and world economies, and the mascots of chain restaurants (eg. Grimace and Hamburglar).

We took up more than our share of the Grateful Fed, as it’s a pretty narrow room and we take up a lot of space for three people. The Fed has a nice patio and big garage-door windows that give the place a big open feel, though. The food is quite good and the staff are a lot of fun.

We almost thought we’d lost our opening act, Jeremy Head, as he still hadn’t appeared at door time. It looked like he was going to continue our trend of lost openers, but just in the nick of time he made it and played a fine set during which he broke a guitar string, borrowed the only other right-handed guitar in the place which happened to be a 12-string, and valiantly kept going. Nice work, as was the closing set by the owner of the 12-string who I know only as Steve. Steve was going to fill in at the last minute and had just gone off to get his guitar when Jeremy arrived, so we had him close out the night and he did a great job on short notice.

Our set went really well and we pretty much gave it everything we had left. Some of our loyal Vancouver crew had come out to Kelowna to see us, making an adventure of it and checking out the Okanagan wineries along the way. After a month away, it was wonderful to see them there. Once we were all done and packed up we all went out for an impromptu end-of-tour party ’til the town closed down.

So that’s it. Marcus and I are back in Vancouver now, Todd is in Kelowna with his family. We’re readjusting to life not on the road for a bit, and I’m doing my best to avoid what I call Post-Ecstatic Stress Syndrome - the inevitable crash that follows a really huge event where you’ve had a really great time. It’ll help that we’re playing again in a few weeks: our homecoming show is on Friday, June 27 at the Railway Club in Vancouver. You can read all the details over on IMU’s site.

Huge thanks to everyone who helped us out during our trip - all the venues, promoters and soundpeople, everyone who gave us a place to stay, everyone who hung out and chatted with us, the other bands we shared stages with, and very importantly, everyone who listened to us play.

We’re in the process of booking another tour starting in late September. If you’re not on our mailing list, please do sign up if you’d like us to send you announcements about upcoming shows and recordings and anything else we think you might enjoy.

Thanks for coming with us!

Before I write up the last day of our trip, we wanted to tell you a bit about something we’ve been thinking and talking a lot about on the road.

Last time ARCTIC toured, we ate more Tim Horton’s and Husky meals than I think I’d ever had in my lifetime, just because that’s the easiest thing to find along the Trans-Canada Highway. This time, we wanted to make a conscious effort to support the local, independent businesses rather than the big corporations. It started out as an experiment, but after seeing over and over again how homogeneous the country is becoming, and seeing what rows of big box stores do to the heart of a town, we became even more convinced to stick to this goal.

We didn’t always succeed, of course. Sometimes when it’s 2:00 AM and you’ve just finished loading up after a show and you’re tired and you still need to drive an hour and you can’t find anything else open, a Tim Horton’s looks pretty good.

We also stayed with friends and relatives or at a room supplied by the venue, so we didn’t need a lot of hotel rooms. Once in a while the venues supplied food, as well.

We didn’t really make an effort when it came to gas, as it’s insanely hard to find non-chain gas stations along the highway. Grocery stores were a bit of a mixed bag; we hit the occasional Safeway-type thing when we were on a schedule, and independent places if we had the option. I would love to stop at more produce stands, but it’s not entirely practical for people in a car; it’s more of a hassle to wash and cut farm-fresh veggies, since we don’t have the facilities. If we were more prepared, we could have bought them, washed them in hotel rooms, and chopped them with camping supplies… but we weren’t.

If anyone has any recommendations for places along the Trans-Canada, please reply in the comments!

In case you’re interested, here are the places that we stayed or ate on our way out to Montreal and back again. I may have missed a few here and there, but according to memory and receipts:

Independent businesses

Sunshine Motel, Indian Head, SK
Craft-Tea Elevator Restaurant, Indian Head, SK
Northern Lights Motel, Wawa, ON
A truck stop (don’t know name), Pass Lake, ON
New York Sub, Toronto, ON (x2 - OMG we love this place)
Swan Restaurant, Toronto, ON
Everest Cafe, Toronto, ON
Pizzaiolo, Toronto, ON
Maggie’s Eatery, Peterborough, ON (x2 - lunch was so good we went back for breakfast)
Koi, Hamilton, ON
La Cagibi, Montreal, PQ
Abstractions Cafe, Regina, SK
The Haven, Port Au Baril, ON
Hot Belly Mama, Peterborough, ON
Bren’s Bakeshop, Belleville, ON
Big Red Barn, Moosamin, SK
Great Northern Hotel, Sault Ste Marie, ON
Bestway Motel, Windsor, ON
Gargoyle’s, Thunder Bay, ON
Viva Vietnamese, Winnipeg, AB
Some pizza place (non-chain), Medicine Hat, AB
Inn at Macleod Trail, Calgary, AB
Strathmore Station, Strathmore BC
Golden Grizzly Steakhouse, Golden, BC
PapAndreas Greek Taverna, Hope, BC

Chains

Mohawk restaurant, Hope, BC
3 x Tim Horton’s
Pita Pit, TO
Comfort Inn, Winnipeg MB x 2
Comfort Inn, Medicine Hat
Husky House, Golden BC

The drive to Calgary was pretty short, so we took our time getting going. The hotel had a make-your-own-waffle machine and some waffle goop, which was disproportionately exciting to us. We saw antelope along the way! And deer! They weren’t playing, though, and the sky WAS cloudy all day, so I guess they weren’t home on the range. It was annoyingly cold and rainy, not what I’d had in mind for the prairies.

The Stetson is a little way outside Calgary, sort of in the strip-mall entranceway called Macleod Trail, and is part of a hotel. It’s a really big space with a clientele that ranged from skinny indie kids to beefy Albertan boys to grizzled ex-cowboys. It looks for all intents and purposes like a good ol’ country bar, but it’s got a little more pizzazz than that, and they’re pretty serious about bringing in lots of indie bands. They had a huge stage and some of the nicest posters and tickets that we’ve seen on the trip. There were four bands on the bill: Disasterman, a solid funky dance rock group; Nixie, an uptempo all-girl electronic dance band, and Move It or Lose It, an improvisational four-on-the-floor dance party. I just realized that I described them all as “dance", so I guess it was a pretty dance-heavy night; the bands were all pretty different, though, and an interesting blend. We played a short set, about half an hour, to accommodate everyone in the evening, and didn’t chat much so we could get more music in.

Move It or Lose It is actually two guys who were joined by other musicians and friends throughout their set, so that at any point there were at least three people and up to seven or eight people on stage, bopping around and having a great time. I kind of wanted to get up and play something - there was an open invitation - but just didn’t have the energy to keep up! I just sat back and bopped my head and enjoyed the show.

The drive across the Rockies was gorgeous as always, despite a fair bit of rain and drizzle and fog (known collectively in Newfoundland as RDF). We saw coyotes this time but no bears. We’ll be in Kelowna shortly for our very last show and last night on the road. It’s pretty hard to fathom this. I don’t feel any strong sense of weariness or wanting to get home - I know the guys are probably tired of driving for so many hours, but as far as the performing part goes? We just want to keep rolling. I could stay out here for longer still. We’re starting to book our September/October dates now, so I’ll have that to look forward to. And it will be nice to be back in Vancouver - I get to reunite with my dog and I won’t have to live out of suitcases and bags for a while, so that’s a fine thing.

Now that we’re almost at the close of the tour, it’s probably time to announce a few things:

Top Five Inside Jokes That You Totally Had To Be There To Get

1. Infamous BUTTER
2. “Ahhhh” heavenly voice
3. Giant Tiger!!!
4. Mic Stand To The Head
5. Mug O’ Gravy

Quote Of The Tour

“Will that be for ALL night?”
– Bestway Motel desk clerk, Windsor, at our 3:00 AM check-in.

Honorable Mention:

“Beer is my girlfriend, it’s my @#$%^&* companionship, it’s… @#$%^&* you.”
- Some guy in Oshawa

We had a good stay in Wawa (I just like saying Wawa) and it wasn’t a terribly long drive to Thunder Bay. We saw two moose and a mama bear with two cubs (from the car, thankfully). Tonight we had Jean-Paul De Roover opening for us. He also does looping, but mixes in a bunch of different sources, like percussion and voice, to give more of a one-man band effect; he uses slow builds to create big wide happy songs.

I can’t get over how good the sound is at the Apollo. We’ve played a lot of different places now on this tour, and it was really a joy to play the Apollo again. I also think there was a noticeable difference in our playing between our May show and our June show - we’ve gotten a lot of gigs under our belt in a short time, and I think we’re playing tighter and are better at adapting to situations. Todd had some technical difficulties with his mixer, so Marcus started a funny little improvisation and I joined in, and we kept that going for a bit until we could get rolling on the set again.

An Australian alt-country band called The Re-Mains were hanging out, having just arrived in town for their show the next night. We had a good chat with them after our show; they’re on a 50-date, 14-week cross-Canadian tour and by the sound of it, they will most likely be coming to a town near you.

We slept at the band space over the Apollo again. Seriously, did I mention how great it is to have this sort of all-in-one experience? Unfortunately I only got about three hours of sleep because of some kind of seasonal allergies that kept my sinuses all stuffed up, so I was a total zombie. I spent most of the drive to Winnipeg in a sort of miserable groggy state occasionally catching some shallow nap time. It rained heavily. My blackfly bites itched. It wasn’t my favourite day. And we didn’t manage to replace our Winnipeg show. But Todd and I had dinner with a fan/friend in Winnipeg, which was pretty cool, and looked around the city a bit, and I got to sleep early and am all rested again now.

Today… today is Thursday, right? First we thought we’d go to Regina. Then we thought we’d go a little past Regina, because Marcus wants to get the car tuned in the morning. So we thought maybe we’d head for Swift Current. Once we got to Swift Current we just kind of… kept going. We thought we’d stop a little while before Medicine Hat, and we even stopped into two really tiny towns that claimed to have motels - Tompkins, SK, and the unfortunately named Piapot. It took about 30 seconds to drive around the town and we didn’t have a lot of confidence in the lodging, so we kept going, past Maple Creek, and eventually it didn’t make any sense not to go to Medicine Hat. This, by the way, meant we’d been on the road for about 12 hours, and by the end of it we were starting to get a bit silly. We got lazy about our no-chain policy and checked in to the Comfort Inn because it advertised a hot tub, but it looks like it hasn’t seen a good scrub in a disturbingly long time so it wasn’t that pleasant in there. We’ve ordered a pizza and are chilling out and I’m catching up on all the internettage that I’ve been missing. Northern Ontario and Saskatchewan are not the best places for internet access, as you can see:

It’ll be a nice short drive to Calgary tomorrow. Only two more shows to go… boggles my mind.

Hey, have you been enjoying our tour blog, or did you come see one of our shows? Leave us a comment on our guestbook.