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