The following post refers to the final day of the Calgary Seattle Roadtrip of May 22-26.
Bells are ringing and try as I might, I can’t get them to stop. My alarm clock won’t shut up. Oh, it’s the phone. It’s Paul with an unexpected 5:45 am wake up call. Considering I have to be at his place in 15 minutes, it’s a good thing he called. I am on my way to Abbotsford Airport and Heidi, whose willingness to help only goes so far--she has three performances with her choir today, is not up for two early mornings in a row.
We get out to there with no problems, I’m on the flight and it even leaves on time. Unfortunately no one is at the airport to meet me and I sit there for three hours until Elegwen calls. We have to go pick up Jess at her brother’s place on the other side of Calgary from the Airport and then meet Matt and Graham our drummer for the show at the Lilac Festival on 4th street.
It is pouring rain for the fourth straight year at Lilac fest and the band is a little on edge as we haven’t rehearsed, it’s raining, there is nowhere to park and no covered area to store our instruments. Elegwen and I end up covertly parking the van in a Safeway Parking Lot, walking into the store and then splitting up and changing jackets inside to avoid detection by the parking patrol who are eagerly towing festival attendees who are not there to buy produce and toilet paper.
The festival, while popular despite the rain, is a bit chaotic. Without a green room (a place to wait for our turn on stage in) we huddle under the awning of a local business while a classic rock cover band finishes up. Our set up is rushed by a harried sound man, there is no merchandise table to sell our T-shirts from and the sound guy can’t get Elegwen’s vocals right. other than that it is pretty smooth.
We start up anyway and Jess, who is very stressed about her level of preparation, plays very well. Graham is a great drummer and Matt is laying down a bit more groove as he is not the time keeper this time. Everything is awesome except for the rain and Elegwen’s vocal sound. He's doing his thing like he always does, it sounds OK in the monitors (the on stage speakers) but the crowd is getting a really muddy sound. I go to talk to our sound tech and find he is in a foul mood and threatening to disconnect some vocal effects. I talk him out of it and try to make some suggestions to no avail—apparently he’s been doing sound for twenty years and doesn’t need my help. Alrighty, then.
Upon returning to stage, I sell a Damanta t-shirt to a guy from Galway who asks me where I got the Hurling jersey (Elegwen lives part of the year there). I include the mp3s from the new album but don’t have time to get his email before the start of the next song!
After the set we have a team pint at the James Joyce to celebrate Graham’s birthday and get a photo of the band before Matt and his buddy Patrick head back to Edmonton. (Back row l-r: the authour, Jess, Elegwen, Graham. Front Row l-r: Patrick, Matt ) and Elegwen, Jess and I head around the corner to “Ed”-fest.
On the front porch (of a guy named Ed's place) is an DIY rock show going and we have been invited to play. They have amps, a PA and tarps to keep the rain off. In actual fact, Ed doesn’t organize Ed-fest, his old roommate does. There is even a band from Lethbridge called “Famous Fifteen Minutes” that goes on before us. For our turn, Jess blasts some fiddle tunes while Elegwen accompanies on bouzouki and I hit the Bodhran. We play some Damanta songs interspersed with power outages and finish with our Tool cover. Ed-fest goes crazy and we have the most fun we’ve had all weekend.
Bells are ringing and try as I might, I can’t get them to stop. My alarm clock won’t shut up. Oh, it’s the phone. It’s Paul with an unexpected 5:45 am wake up call. Considering I have to be at his place in 15 minutes, it’s a good thing he called. I am on my way to Abbotsford Airport and Heidi, whose willingness to help only goes so far--she has three performances with her choir today, is not up for two early mornings in a row.
We get out to there with no problems, I’m on the flight and it even leaves on time. Unfortunately no one is at the airport to meet me and I sit there for three hours until Elegwen calls. We have to go pick up Jess at her brother’s place on the other side of Calgary from the Airport and then meet Matt and Graham our drummer for the show at the Lilac Festival on 4th street.
It is pouring rain for the fourth straight year at Lilac fest and the band is a little on edge as we haven’t rehearsed, it’s raining, there is nowhere to park and no covered area to store our instruments. Elegwen and I end up covertly parking the van in a Safeway Parking Lot, walking into the store and then splitting up and changing jackets inside to avoid detection by the parking patrol who are eagerly towing festival attendees who are not there to buy produce and toilet paper.
The festival, while popular despite the rain, is a bit chaotic. Without a green room (a place to wait for our turn on stage in) we huddle under the awning of a local business while a classic rock cover band finishes up. Our set up is rushed by a harried sound man, there is no merchandise table to sell our T-shirts from and the sound guy can’t get Elegwen’s vocals right. other than that it is pretty smooth.
We start up anyway and Jess, who is very stressed about her level of preparation, plays very well. Graham is a great drummer and Matt is laying down a bit more groove as he is not the time keeper this time. Everything is awesome except for the rain and Elegwen’s vocal sound. He's doing his thing like he always does, it sounds OK in the monitors (the on stage speakers) but the crowd is getting a really muddy sound. I go to talk to our sound tech and find he is in a foul mood and threatening to disconnect some vocal effects. I talk him out of it and try to make some suggestions to no avail—apparently he’s been doing sound for twenty years and doesn’t need my help. Alrighty, then.
Upon returning to stage, I sell a Damanta t-shirt to a guy from Galway who asks me where I got the Hurling jersey (Elegwen lives part of the year there). I include the mp3s from the new album but don’t have time to get his email before the start of the next song!
After the set we have a team pint at the James Joyce to celebrate Graham’s birthday and get a photo of the band before Matt and his buddy Patrick head back to Edmonton. (Back row l-r: the authour, Jess, Elegwen, Graham. Front Row l-r: Patrick, Matt ) and Elegwen, Jess and I head around the corner to “Ed”-fest.
On the front porch (of a guy named Ed's place) is an DIY rock show going and we have been invited to play. They have amps, a PA and tarps to keep the rain off. In actual fact, Ed doesn’t organize Ed-fest, his old roommate does. There is even a band from Lethbridge called “Famous Fifteen Minutes” that goes on before us. For our turn, Jess blasts some fiddle tunes while Elegwen accompanies on bouzouki and I hit the Bodhran. We play some Damanta songs interspersed with power outages and finish with our Tool cover. Ed-fest goes crazy and we have the most fun we’ve had all weekend.
A local busker plays a couple of songs with energetic backup singers and Ed recites some of his poetry. It reads pretty well even if the reading is a veiled attempt to pick up Jess.
After helping FFM clean up I begin to go into a bit of a comma from a weekend of substandard sleep. Elegwen drives us to Jess’ brother’s place and we drop her off. We crash at an overpriced motel on the Trans-Canada highway whose room décor evidently inspired the filmmakers of “No Country for Old Men”. I catch a flight home Monday and Elegwen heads to Banff to drop of the rental and pick up our van in Canmore. I’ll be at school on Tuesday back in class and the remainder of my ‘normal’ life.
No comments:
Post a Comment