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