ARCTIC Expeditions

We had a day off on Sunday, and spent most of it on Sunday hanging out at Morris Amps with our esteemed amp builder, Glen Morris, his wife Linda, and their greyhound Sugar. Glen made some clever modifications to Marcus’s amp, and tweaked my bass amp as well. They’re terrific people and a ton of fun to hang around. We tried to take them on tour with us but couldn’t sway them.

The show on Monday night was in Hamilton, at the Casbah. There are two rooms in the Casbah, an upstairs stage and a smaller downstairs lounge area. It’s a very nice venue indeed. There were a slew of hardcore Christian bands in the upstairs section, apparently, and we were scheduled to play the lounge along with some young local bands and singer-songwriters.

The stage in the lounge is pretty small, and it was an entertaining challenge to fit all our ridiculous amounts of gear on it. Marcus actually had to place his pedalboard on his case OFF the stage, and I played without my pedalboard and rested my keyboard off the stage as well. Yet somehow, a six-piece (named Alex&Andy) managed to fit in between all our stuff; fortunately most of their instruments were small and portable like fiddles and mandolins. They were good, too, a lot of fun. They and all their friends were from Burlington, just up the road from Hamilton.

We went on at 11, which in Vancouver would’ve been the death knell for any show - 11 pm on a Monday night?! Yet people hung in, and were really enthusiastic about us - we sold the most t-shirts we’ve sold at any show, had the most mailing list signups, and lots of great chats with new fans. It was a very happy night.

Tuesday we stayed in Toronto again and I had a bass lesson with Ian from the Sisters Euclid, and came away with some new ideas and approaches to ponder. In the evening we had dinner with a bunch of Toronto friends, and I managed to break my camera in a fumbled handoff to the waiter who was supposed to take a picture of the group. I am not pleased. I’ve dropped it off at a repair shop and hopefully can pick it up on Saturday when we’re back in town, but that’ll cut down a bit on the blog photos for a few days, probably. Marcus has a camera but I just like mine better. *sigh*

We’re in Peterborough now, hanging out at the Spill, which so far is an awesome cool place. Actually, so far I’m liking Peterborough best of all the towns we’ve seen so far - they actually still have a lot going on in their downtown section, and lots of little funky businesses with care and character. And it’s a beautiful sunny day, and finally warming up a bit.