Winnipeg looked dangerously like it was going to be a wash. We got to the Cavern to find that the local pop-rock band set to open for us had cancelled (first one of the tour! Will the trend continue again?) Instead, we would be following two young local punk bands and not going on until 1 AM. We wondered quietly whether it would even be worth bothering, but we’re not ones to bail, and we figured we’d just stick it out and see what happened.

I needed to find some wi-fi, and there was none in the Cavern, which is down a steep flight of stairs underneath the Toad in the Hole Pub in Winnipeg’s Osborne Village. So I didn’t see too much of the two punk bands, whose names were “Untalented” and “The Savants". I did catch the beginning of one set and the end of the other, and I can tell you that there was much loudness and shouting and jumping. The crowd was pretty thick and punklike and increasingly inebriated. We sat in the van for a while, quietly trying to gauge what sort of a reaction we were going to get from a roomful of drunk punks. Possibly some of them would be into other styles of music and would appreciate us. Others might get pissed at our mellowness and start throwing things. I suggested that Marcus open solo with “Launching Pad” and maybe the angriest ones would just fall asleep. We settled on playing the most uptempo songs first and seeing what happened.

As it turned out, the punkiest of the punks had dispersed by the time we got on, and it was a different mix of people. While it wasn’t our typical crowd, they were extremely receptive. The only real problem was some kid from the first band, who was so drunk he could barely even walk, and got into the habit of staggering through the back door to hang out with his buddies in the alley, then bursting through the other door behind us and lurching across the stage to meet up with his buddies at the show. I had visions of him falling through the door and launching himself right into Todd’s kit and taking everything down, so I took off to lock the door so he couldn’t get through that way, at which point he fell into a chair and occasionally shouted “Play some f@#$% Springsteen!” until his girlfriend sat beside him and they made out for the rest of the show.

The upshot of the night, though, was that most of the kids were really great, everybody seemed to enjoy the night, and they were very cool to us. We told them we’re coming back on October 18 and they were pretty excited about us coming back. The manager/soundman, James Brown (no, seriously), shook his head afterwards and laughed and said “You won ‘em over". It all worked out just grand.

But what a contrast over the past few nights - we went from a downtempo lounge to a busy Irish pub to a basement full of punks? And made them happy in all three places? Never say we’re not versatile.

I’m very sorry I didn’t take pictures though. I totally forgot, two days in a row. I’ll try to do better from here on in.

Right now we’re nearing Thunder Bay and I’m listening to the two guys in a heated debate over the relative merits of heavy metal vs. jazz. We’re playing tonight with James Lamb, another Vancouver local, and Women, a band from Calgary with no women in it. Then we’ve just got a few days of driving until we hit TO.