ARCTIC Expeditions

The Peterborough show was pretty interesting. The Spill is a good-sized coffee shop with a stage in the window, and they have music pretty much every day of the week. They’ve got a great reputation for hosting local and touring bands, and the owner, Dave, is extraordinarily friendly and welcoming.

We had asked a local duo to play a set, met and talked to them in the afternoon about set times and so on. The Spill decided we should play first, so we went out to get a bite to eat with plans to start the show at about 9:30.

We ate at a Cajun restaurant that took a ridiculously long time to seat and serve us, and ended up getting the food as take-out. We got back right around 9:30, and started playing; I noticed that the other band wasn’t there yet, but that’s not unusual. We played a fine set - it’s a really nice room, and soundguy Sean was very helpful and attentive.

The other band never materialized, and we learned that they’d had some, um, technical difficulties and weren’t going to be able to play. Which was too bad - we’d been looking forward to hearing them - and officially made them the fourth band to bail on a bill on the tour thus far.

We hung around Peterborough a bit in the morning - I do quite like the town, it has a nice vibe to it, although it does get a bit noisy at night. There’s a great record shop up the street from The Spill, too, called Bluestreak Records, and we hung out there and had a great chat with the owner.

It’s driving me crazy not having my camera - I keep seeing awesome things I want to take pictures of, and not being able to. I should know later today about its condition.

We finally said our goodbyes to everyone and headed up Highway 7 towards Ottawa, which is a beautiful drive through the countryside, a nice change from the tedious 401. More on that next… have to hit the road to Oshawa now!