crows to burnaby

You'll be pleased to know that in May I'll be blogging reliably... just not here. May 10 is the start of our tour, with a kickoff here in Vancouver, and I'll be writing updates from the road (time and internet access permitting, of course) over on ARCTIC's tour blog.

So where are we going, anyway? Here's the current list:

May 10: Wired Monk, Vancouver, BC
May 13: The Gaslight, Regina, SK
May 14: Mondragon, Winnipeg, MB
May 15: The Apollo, Thunder Bay, ON
May 16: Loplop’s, Sault Ste Marie, ON
May 17: Tranzac, Toronto, ON (Marcus Martin solo)
May 20: Albion Hotel, Guelph, ON
May 21: The Boat, Toronto, ON
May 22: Bar St. Laurent 2, Montreal, QC
May 25: Circus Room, Kitchener, ON
May 26: The Casbah, Hamilton, ON
May 28: The Spill, Peterborough, ON
May 29: Black Sheep Inn, Wakefield (near Ottawa), QC
May 30: The Atria, Oshawa, ON
May 31: Phog Lounge, Windsor, ON
Jun 4: The Cavern, Winnipeg, MB
Jun 6: The Stetson, Calgary, AB
Jun 7: Grateful Fed, Kelowna, BC

That's 18 shows, plus we're playing live on CiTR on May 1 (you can listen online at 10 PM PST) and on CKMS (Waterloo) on May 19 (3 PM EST).

See what I've been distracted now?

Hard to believe it's just a few weeks away now. I'm pretty much done with show booking, but still have to finish making new t-shirts, posters, and submitting the shows to event listings here & there. At least I can relax knowing that I will probably not be called upon to a) drive, or b) cook during our time on the road, mostly because neither of the guys entirely trust me with either task.

If you're on Facebook and this trip interests you at all, or if you think you can make it to a show, please join our Facebook event page. I'd like that.

Also, if you have friends in some of these cities who you think would enjoy the band, please please drop them a line or blog about us. At this stage, you really can't underestimate what it still means to catch the ear of a few more people. And it's just more fun for us and then it's better for everybody.

I'm really, really, really excited. This is what I want to be doing, after all.

These are the sorts of things you might experience in the Commercial Drive area.

I was walking to the bus the other day when I noticed a man with a coathanger fishing his way into a truck. I had a rush of adrenalin, wondering if I should call the cops, or confront him, or avoid him, or what. Then after a moment, I realized his manner was strangely casual - not casual in an efficient car-thief way, but just unbothered and easy. Plus the fact that he was about 60 with a ZZ Top style beard tipped me off that maybe this actually was his truck.

He drove off, very very slowly, a while after I'd passed him by; a few days later I did spot the truck back in the same location. It's just how he gets in.

Yesterday I noticed a guy carrying groceries in one hand and fiddling near his mouth with the other. I assumed he was smoking, but didn't see any smoke; I thought maybe he was chewing his fingernails or something. As I passed him I could hear him humming and then trying chords out on his harmonica. Not what I was expecting, and a far nicer discovery.

I noticed a few signs today while out & about.

One, in the window of a vitamin store on Pender, said simply "BUY 2 GET 1".

The other was a pair of signs in front of a gym around Commercial. One said "$24.99/month", and was next to a special promotional offer: "3 months $99".

I ain't buying.

For the past week I've been thinking "Right, I really should get a blog post up there" and then getting distracted and doing something else instead.

And really the only reason you're getting something out of me right now is because I'm avoiding finishing up my taxes.

I hate taxes.

I've had a good but hectic month whilst not blogging. I moved at the end of March, and am loooooooooving the new digs (now that I've dug myself out of most of the cardboard boxes). I'm further east now, closer to Commercial, and I think it suits me nicely. There's a lot going on in this neck of the woods - lots of choices for food and entertainment that you just don't find near Main & Broadway where I was. I loved Main Street, but seriously, not many choices for places to grab a quick cheap bite. Even the dollar pizza places close early, and they aren't very good.

I'm decorating and refurnishing and loving that too. My challenge is to get as much stuff used as possible. This is partly to be eco-friendly and not be buying new stuff when there's perfectly good used stuff to be had, and partly because it's just way, way cheaper. You can find some pretty high-quality stuff on craigslist - good stuff that lost 30% of its value the instant it left the store. The catch is you have to do a fair bit of digging - I'm still searching for just the right comfy chair for the living room. And selling is a pain in the ass, because half the time people flake out and don't show up to look at or pick up the item. And don't even talk to me about the 45 minutes I spent trying to get the old couch out of the old apartment, along with the woman who bought it and two twelve-year-old boys. Not sure it was worth it.

My other preoccupation is the ARCTIC tour in May. We're now past the main booking phase (though we'd still like to pick up one or two more Ontario shows, if anyone can help?) and shifting into promotion. Posters, publicity, press releases - we've got a publicist helping us out and I'll be doing most of the online stuff as usual. Oh yeah, and there's rehearsals, too. Oh, and we did a photoshoot, which was a ton o' fun. You'll see some of the shots eventually. *hops from foot to foot*

So I don't think blogging will be at normal rates for a little while yet. But I'll pop in if the mood strikes me, I happen to be near a computer, and not completely preoccupied.

Guess it's on to those taxes now. Ugh...