Friday night we returned to the Albion Hotel in Guelph. We played there last year, and I like the place; swanky little restaurant/bar in an old stone building with a good stage upstairs. Good food, too. It’d be nice if they had some lights pointing towards the stage, but that’s not a crisis.

We played with Del Barber from Winnipeg and locals The Monster Show, who seemed quite nice and not like monsters at all. They had a good group of dancers out. Actually, we had one special dancer ourselves - when we started playing, one extremely drunk girl started doing what appeared to be interpretive dance to our music. It was pretty bizarre, and I actually felt like we were her puppet masters, controlling her movements. She seemed happy enough, though.

We headed down to Windsor a little early on Saturday to meet with photographer David Redding for a photoshoot. We thought with Windsor’s delightful urban/industrial landscapes that we’d be able to find some particularily good locations to represent ARCTIC’s existential angst or some such thing. Driving along the roads looking at power plants and chemical factories, we realized they probably really, really wouldn’t take kindly to strangers taking pictures there, and settled for a nice grassy field instead. We’d just pulled over and David had barely crossed the street to scout for a good spot when a customs officer, wearing a bulletproof vest under a bright orange one, drove up and demanded to know why we were there. David explained, and the officer said that we were actually on federal property and would need a permit to do a photoshoot there, so he would have to ask us to leave. He added, “And this is a very dangerous area” - making us think of pollution and chemical spills - “since we have problems with shootings and stabbings here all the time.” We agreed that it would be in our best interests to move on, and he was kind enough to direct us to a provincial park not too far away that was less of an urban war zone.

We took some pictures along the roadway to Tall Grass Park, and then went into the park itself where we read about the rattlesnakes in the area and were eaten alive by mosquitos. Poor Rob got a big nasty mosquito bite right on his cheek, but David assured him it can easily be Photoshopped out. Despite all the craziness, we had a good time working with David and are looking forward to the results!

Windsor has undergone some changes over the past year. Since the USA brought in requirements for passports at the border, the number of 19-to-21-year-olds coming over to get blind drunk every weekend has dropped a whopping 75%. Since a large part of Windsor’s business was focused around entertaining these kids until they puke, changes are afoot. Fortunately this doesn’t affect the wonderful Phog Lounge so much, as it’s never targeted that particular demographic.

Because we like the vibe and people at the Phog so much, we decided on a nametag policy for the night. We handed out nametags to everyone at the door, and told them they could use their real name or make one up, but they had to wear a nametag as proof they’d paid. After a brief moment of confusion most people picked pseudonyms, and seemed to enjoy the idea.

Brian, aka A Welcome Breeze, started the night for us again. He’s added vocals to his instrumental looping and it’s all coming together nicely.

The next artist up was Paisley Jura, a Toronto-based singer who plays stand-up bass along with a keyboard/trombonist. She’s got a lovely sultry voice and style. I think it may have been a little too jazzy for some of the indie/rock crowd that night; she’d fit in perfectly in a jazz/lounge scenario.

One item of note: apparently the entire bass section of the Windsor Symphony Orchestra was there to see her, as well as some other orchestra members. We met a few of them as they came in. As Paisley played her set, the entire group of listeners at the front was quiet and attentive - but her friends from the orchestra stood near the bar and talked constantly the entire way through. Occasionally they would shush each other, but then they’d start up again before long. We were shocked, honestly. How is it that orchestra musicians, for whom it’s an offense to even cough during a performance if you can help it, could be so disrespectful to their own friend on stage?

We changed the mood a bit when we got up there (and probably confused the hell out of the orchestra people), opening up with a version of Launching Pad that doubled as a soundcheck while we got all the kinks out of our setup. After that things rolled along quite smoothly. We told everyone we had a number of policies in place - nametags, pay-what-you-want for CDs, and the requirement that everyone move one step forward between songs - and that we follow Robert’s Rules of Order at our band meetings. Halfway through the show we revoked all policies and declared anarchy, but nothing seemed to change; I guess people were content with our dictatorship.

We’d written up our setlist as a flowchart, depending on how much people seemed to be into it, and opted for the longer, more energetic version. We played one encore and still got a few hopeful shouts for a second, but the night was done. As usual, the Phog left us feeling warm and glowy, and we had a great time. Even the news that there’d been a shooting down the street outside a hip-hop club a few hours earlier couldn’t shake our buzz. Windsor is Windsor.

The show was streamed live online as well, and Tom told us later we’d had about 140 people connecting - hi everybody! You can still watch it at the Phog’s Ustream page.

Next stop, Kingston. We’re playing at The Living Room Sunday night, along with Pawnshop Diamond and We Were Lovers.

Marcus: 2
Rob: 1
Kirsten: 2
Joey: off the scale

Wednesday was our third trip back to Maxwell’s in Waterloo. They’ve made a few changes since May 2008 when Marcus was the first person ever to perform on the stage - the stage is bigger now, for starters. We set up and did soundcheck, and were watched excitedly by a seven-year-old girl named Fiona who had just started taking guitar lessons. She was enthralled to see a real rock band at work, and with a GIRL playing bass too… made me feel famous.

Red Orkestra played a lovely quiet acoustic set that was easy to listen to. We took the stage, started quiet and built up into our more energetic songs.

I’d forgotten the difference between the audiences in the western provinces and the bigger towns in the east. I had the impression that the crowd wasn’t really getting into it - they did stop talking early on, and watch, but they were very sedate, not a whole lot of head-bobbing and certainly no dancing whatsoever. It wasn’t until we’d finished up and started packing up that everyone came up to us - people were super enthusiastic, really happy with our show, bought t-shirts and CDs and signed up to the mailing list. It took me by surprise, actually. But once I thought about it, it made sense; this part of the country tends to be a little less demonstrative… it doesn’t mean they don’t like it!

After we packed up we hung out with Paul, the owner of Maxwell’s, played Wii Sports for a while and chilled with Knuckles the very social bunny.

The next day was a bit of a rollercoaster ride. It started out with good news - we’re going to be playing on CIUT in Toronto next Wednesday afternoon, the day of our show at the Supermarket.

Then I decided to check the website for the venue in London to see what other bands were on the bill for the night… and saw that we weren’t listed on the site at all. A few phone calls later and I found out there’d been a huge SNAFU - the previous promoter had quit, taken the booking schedule with her, and the new promoter had never been told we existed. There was no way we could fit into the bill for the night, and we spent most of the day calling everyone we knew to see if we could sneak onto a bill somewhere.

Just as we had given up hope, and decided to spend the night handing out flyers for our show the next night in Guelph, we got a call and a perfectly good gig… sitting in with our friends Helicopter Pants at an undisclosed location.

So we salvaged the night and had a good time. Rob gained a new fan who stood right at the edge of my keyboard staring at him and air-drumming along. The same guy later told us his brother plays in Red Hot Chili Peppers… he plays bass and his name is, apparently, “Fly". *raises eyebrow* We still got to hand out flyers to happy drunken students, and made the most of our last-minute change. Apologies to anyone in London who was looking forward to the show - we hope everyone got the word and are trying to reschedule.

Marcus: 2
Rob: 1
Kirsten: 2
Joey: 3

Sunday was the long, long drive to Thunder Bay. There’s not much to report from the actual day, since we only had 4 hours to sleep before leaving Winnipeg, and anybody who wasn’t driving was sleeping pretty much the whole way there. We had a nice little picnic stop outside Dryden. That’s about it.

Okay, there weren’t any blackflies, but I did get a few mosquito bites on my ankles, which irritates me no small amount as the ones I got in Golden last week had finally just stopped itching.

Thunder Bay still baffles me. The Apollo is one of the nicest venues we know, with a great sound system, a long history and an amazing assortment of talented bands and musicians coming through, and yet the town seems completely oblivious to its presence. Apparently it’s been pretty quiet there even since the summer, even now that university is back in session. I don’t know if it’s just the location - most of that street is empty buildings, and the road was under construction, too - or something about Thunder Bay itself, but the Apollo is just being wasted there. I want to get a helicopter, pick it up and move it to someplace that’ll appreciate it. It’s sad. We played a slightly disheartened set.

Monday was more of the same - five hours of sleep, followed by an all-day drive to make it as far as Blind River, and generally pretty quiet in the van. We had a decent dinner at a restaurant called Voyageur’s Lodge. Coming through Iron Bridge, we saw Amish buggies trotting along the side of the road. We found a hotel right alongside the river, serenaded by the loud rushing water from a dam. Rob and Joey (aka ‘Obbie & Yoey) felt adventurous and led us to the Riverside Tavern just down the street, which turns out to be one of the oldest bars in Canada, built in 1897. There was one door for men and another for ladies with escorts, which led to a moment of uncertainty, but we barrelled in anyway.

Turns out that Mondays are jam nights at the Riverside, and there was a welcoming little group of very talented players turning out some excellent covers and originals. One of the men, Fern, does a Neil Young impression that is incredibly accurate - made me swivel my head in surprise. Rob hopped in on the action pretty quick, first on tambourine and later on a keyboard. Joey joined in on a guitar. (Alas, there was no bass available, my keyboard skills do not include much improvisation, and Marcus is left-handed so he can’t really borrow a guitar. But I did sing along a bit.) We sat around with everyone for a few hours, talking about music and travel and the places we’ve seen. It was a wonderful and completely unexpected bit of fun, and helped revitalize all of us.

I stepped outside this morning after a nice solid night of sleep, and finally got a good look at the river and the lake - it’s quite lovely. We found breakfast at Mustang’s Cafe, the theme of which was Mustang cars (which made Marcus happy). However, we appear to be undergoing a laundry conspiracy. We’re getting increasingly desperate for laundry, but we didn’t do it in Winnipeg because we knew there were facilities in Thunder Bay. However, the dryer was broken. We made sure we found a place last night that was near a laundromat - and today we found out they’re closed Tuesdays. Who closes on a Tuesday?!?

Ah well. Today we’re driving to St. Catharines, Rob’s hometown, and we’ll regroup and get some laundry done. Tomorrow we start a string of shows in southern Ontario, starting at Maxwell’s in Waterloo (we play with a band called Red Orkestra). Looking forward to it.

Marcus: 2
Rob: 1
Kirsten: 2
Joey: 2

We got in to Brandon pretty late, found a room and headed downtown to the Double Decker Tavern for the evening. Vancouver locals Adaline (who shared the bill with us at our kickoff show) and Dan Mangan were playing as part of the WCMAs, and I knew so many people there I thought I was back in Vancouver. They both played great solo sets to a packed room, and it was nice to kick back and have some beer and pub grub with familiar faces.

We slept late, trying to catch up on sleep after the late night in Saskatoon. Joey investigated the giant waterslide but found it to be too plagued with kids. We ate breakfast in the sort of motel restaurant that includes Cheez Whiz as a menu item ($0.30 for a side order). Marcus and I had tea with Luka from kerfmusic.com, a Calgary-based digital distributor, who were in town for the WCMAs, and then we headed off to the ‘Peg.

Our show was at the Cavern again, where we’ve had some epic shows in the past. James Brown, who books the venue, is still a great character and now sports a mohawk. He appears to be made of wire, and bounds easily up and down the treacherous back steps during load-in like he’s on the surface of the moon. The openers were a new semi-local band called The Incentives, a friendly bunch from Winnipeg Beach, who put on a good show and brought a decent crowd out. Because there was already some dancin’ going down, we started with You Coming Down extended dance remix and played mostly upbeat stuff.

We had a great night despite a few random quirks and hiccups here and there. The most bizarre incident of the night, though, was something only I was privileged enough to witness. There was an extremely drunk guy staggering around in front of my section of the stage, clinging to his drink and occasionally sipping it through a straw. While I was on keyboards in War of Ideas I glanced at him just in time to notice him starting to drool into his half-full glass… and then slowly, gradually, he started quietly puking more and more into his drink, right on the dance floor, as if nobody would notice. In the meantime he kept swaying around, half-dancing, half-falling. I started laughing and just about lost it - it was the most ridiculous thing, I had tears running down my face, and though I was petrified that he was going to fall over and spill the contents on my keys, I could not stop laughing, I could hardly play. Finally I think he realized his retching could not be contained in half a glass of rum & Coke, and he practically crawled to the washroom. That was the last I saw of him.

Speaking of the washroom, Marcus tried to do me a favour by writing “The bass player in ARCTIC is single” on the chalkboard in the mens’ room. It might have been my imagination that I was getting a few more looks than usual. Then again, maybe nobody was actually using the mens’ room because of a drunk barfing guy laid out across the floor… who knows.

Anyways, we had a lot of fun - I like playing Winnipeg. Even though there’s always some crazy times (such as, there was a huge fight at the bar next door when some guy punched a girl in the face and a bunch of other guys taught him a lesson), there’s always an enthusiastic crowd that isn’t afraid to dance. Thanks everybody.

Marcus: 2
Rob: 1
Kirsten: 2
Joey: 2

Okay, first I have to confess that I didn’t get as good a look at Saskatoon as I ordinarily would have because of that damn road game where you have to find words on signs with the letters of the alphabet. The whole way into town I was feverishly reading everything in sight looking for “Q". It seems like a pretty nice town, though; I got a good vibe from it.

Marcus had an interview scheduled at CFCR, and we thought we pulled up right on time only to discover that Saskatchewan doesn’t use daylight savings time, so we were there an hour early. We hung out at the station for a while, caught up on email, and then Marcus did a few songs and an interview on air. From there we headed over to Lydia’s to load in and settle in in the band room. To our surprise, there were some familiar faces waiting for us - Trina Nestibo, a solo singer/songwriter from Brandon who is also touring right now. Her tour manager, Joelle May (ModMay Promotions) is our publicist from Calgary. Last week we found ourselves all at the Railway in Vancouver on the same night, when Trina played an early show before our tour kickoff show. As it happens, she had played Lydia’s the night before, and was sticking around another day to open for us. Small country, isn’t it?

Lydia’s is a nice place with a really nice stage. Rob had to set up in the corner, which was optimized for drums. That meant I had to be in the middle, since Marcus is left-handed and if I am on his right, there is a very good chance we will smash our guitar headstocks into each other and bad things will happen. Joey worked with the house soundman, Ian, to get things fine-tuned, and everything sounded great both on and off the stage.

We were initially competing with a few bigger shows down the road, but by the time we went on there was a decent crowd of drinkers ready to roll. When we started, a girl sitting next to the merch table grabbed our display t-shirt and put it on over her own to dance alone in front of us. There was a fair bit of happy cheering and hooting between songs. Marcus decided to do the raffle this time by asking who was from the furthest north, and rewarded a girl from Nunavut with a package of Insta-Snow powder - it’s the kind you mix up with some water and then it turns into fluffy snow-like stuff that doesn’t melt. Unfortunately she was a little too drunk to handle her Insta-Snow, opened it up and sprayed the powder all over the stage, so I’m still picking the damn stuff out of my keyboard and laptop. Thanks.

Anyways, we had a fantastic night. We played through all of our material (except Launching Pad, a little too mellow) and had a good crowd of people dancing, so when they all went on a mass smoke break, we took a quick break to wait for them, then hopped back on stage to give them the extended dance remix version of You Coming Down. We weren’t done until almost 2:00.

We packed up and headed up to the band room, which is a pretty crazy little place. The bathroom has been done up as an homage to Jagermeister (apparently Lydia’s is the top Jager consumer of the country). Really a photo will do it better justice than I can with words:

I was wiped and headed off for some sleep but the more resilient folks hung out for a while with some beer and what was apparently the most overpriced pizza in history.

Today we’ve got a day off, and we’re headed towards Brandon because we’ve got some friends playing at the Western Canadian Music Awards and want to go say hi. Bye Saskatchewan, hello Manitoba!