Day 12
Free breakfast is a funny thing, especially at hotels. It's not really free, for one thing, because most of the time you have to spend a load of money getting a room. If anything, the breakfast costs "1 hotel room".
On this particular morning in Merritt, BC, it seemed the hotel we picked wasn't offering us breakfast on that morning - instead, when we checked in, the guy at the front desk handed over a six pack of Lemon Cranberry muffins. Seriously.
Not being particularly satisfied with this version of free breakfast, we decided to go somewhere else for it. Specifically, another hotel. The Ramada looked good.
See, all you have to do is walk in, act like you just woke up (in that particular hotel), and go about eating the continental breakfast like it was in your own kitchen. Nobody will suspect a thing. We even sold some CD's. Moving on.
Bellies full, we were determined not to let the "Bad Mobile" destroy our aspirations of finishing this tour. We pushed the 'ol girl on towards Kelowna.
Awesome drive, the Okanogan is beautiful, and the sun bouncing off of it damn near blinded us as we drove into the city.
We took the van to Wal-Mart for new tires, where I learned that Wal-Mart does not allow videos or photos to be taken inside the store. This immediatly made me think of that "people of Wal-Mart" website. Google it.
To try and keep this blog short, sweet and not all about our '95 GM Safari getting fixed, I'll just say that the tires, leaks and brakes were all fixed, free of charge thanks to the waranty.
We all headed to the bar where our friend Kimber works, and met up with her sister Brooke and her boy Scotty. We had hours to kill before our gig, so we had an afternoon beverage in the sun.
We took a brief visit to one of Kelowna's awesome beaches, where we jumped into the lake and froze our asses off before finally heading to the gig at The Grateful Fed.
At first glance, the bar was incredibly tiny and made us wonder how we were going to play that night.
We quickly found out that the rooms small size made for an intense, in-your-face performance, 2making a smaller crowd feel huge. Sauce Funky got the show started with some instrumental grooves, warming up the audience for the real thing.
Easily the best show we've played since Tofino, the house got its roof rocked off in true MLSF fashion. With two crowds to play to (indoor crowd, and the ever-growing crowd on the street behind us), it was a hell of a lot of fun.
We had old friends from Windsor in attendancem and a bunch of new friends from Kelowna, all of whom were jumping and sweating and yelling as much as we were. Thanks to the Ryan, Christian and the rest of the staff at The Fed.
Afterwards we hit up Cheetah's, a local nightclub, where we went with the sizeable entourage of party animals we had aquired since we finished playing. There were lot's of bikers and strippers at Cheetah's, which was fine with us.
When the club shut down and it was time to crash, most of us made our way back to Brooke and Kimbers place for some sleep, while Liam and Roge' partied onward with the entourage at a neighbours place
...neighbours, we soon found out, who were also from Windsor. The small world theory was proven for the millionth time since this tour began. All in a day's work.
Day 13
Given the luck that we've had throughout our tour so far, you'd figure that Day 13 would probably see us selling our van for parts, stuck in prison or caught up in some trouble with the bikers from Cheetah's.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. Day 13 was awesome. Breakfast in the morning for the troops at Brooke and Kimbers, while Liam and Roge' met up with the gang after lunch.
The whole crew, including some of our friends from the night before, hit the beach again. AWESOME! The playground at the beach had two zip-lines, one of which ran right into the water.
The little kids didn't get much of a chance to play because the big kids had basically taken over (MLSF = big kids). Free zip-lining? On the beach? Awesome.
We basically got an hour of good beach time. The clouds started to roll in pretyy heavy, so we did what everybody who gets rained out at the beach would do - head for the nearest Go-Kart track.
Go-Karts, Mini Golf and hundreds of awesome arcade games are what we found at Scandia, the best damn house of fun in the world (maybe).
Some raced, others golfed, while still others rocked some classic arcades (NBA Jam, Ninja Turtles, Daytona USA, etc etc). There was talk of the batting cages, but the rain kept them closed.
Like I said, MLSF = big kids. Kelowna, as far as we were concerned, was Disney Land. But the tour had to continue - we went back to the girl's house and packed our stuff.
A special thanks to our new friend Backyard Jeff for the parting gift he gave us, you rule dude! We piled once again into the van, and headed up the road to Revelstoke.
Some quick history: the very first MLSF show in history occured in November 2006, at Spicoli's Barley Bin, in Windsor, Ontario.
Spicoli's was owned by our friend and fan Joel Ascher, who had hosted many MLSF shows at Spicoli's back in the early days of the band.
Joel left Windsor sometime ago and started up a new bar in Revelstoke, the Village idiot, where we were headed for our next gig - an acoustic show, performing classic acoustic tunes plus a few of our own.
Matte and C killed it for a while, then Mike and Matte did a few together. In between, the whole band got up to do two acoustic renditions of our own material, which the crowd recieved warmly.
Brooke, Kimber and Scotty drove up from Kelowna to spend a few more days with us, too. Scotty, being a Revelstoke local, called out a big crew of his friends to fill out the bar. The place was jammed all night.
We got a nice taste of home when Joel's staff hooked us up with some free pizza - Spicoili's, back in Windsor, was famous for it's pizza, and Joel made damn sure to bring the same recipe to Revelstoke with him.
An enourmous, huge and sincere thank you to Joel and his staff for treating us so well, it's good to have old friends across the country - it makes being in a touring band a whole lot easier. Big ups Joel.
The Village Idiot closed the doors at 12, and we followed the new entourage down the street to the Regent Hotel, where we continued the celebrations. Dancing occurred, some good, most of it very bad and inappropriate.
We didn't stay for too long though, most of us were pretty tired and wanted to get some sleep. We arrived at the Gateway Inn, and walked into the biggest damn hotel room most of us had ever seen.
Joel, did we say thank you yet?
There were like 10 beds in the room. Quite honestly, the way we've been cramming into hotel rooms, we probably could've slept our band and 20 other people in this room. It was a welcome change.
We crashed immediatly, looking forward to the next day. We would be playing another gig at The Village Idiot, and were hoping to enjoy some of the outdoor amenities in the Revelstoke region during the day.
However, continental breakfast comes first - always.
Day 14
Ok, so the great weather we were hoping for didn't arrive. The rain came instead, and with it came low-laying clouds and fog. We couldn't even really see much of the mountains. I actually had to google "Revelstoke" to see the scenery.
We had hoped to go hiking or swimming or cliff diving or something. It was the first real day we had nothing to do until the show that night, so we wanted to take advantage of it.
It didn't look like that was going to happen though, so we decided we'd switch hotels and find one with an indoor pool so we could at least pretend that we were outside.
Before switching, however, we got a call from Joel at the Village Idiot. Apparantly a minor flood at the bar had occurred over night.
This normally would not concern us, but since we were playing two nights in a row, we had left our gear set up from the night before. So our gear was in the bar. While it flooded. So now it concerned us.
Joel assured us everything was cool, but we just wanted to see ourself, so rolled into the Village Idiot to do damage control. Luckily, everything was jsut fine, nothing was damaged, or even wet.
That was a huge relief. A lot of unfortunate things can happen to a band on tour (see Day 1 - 13 of this blog) , but if you're instruments and equipment don't work, then you might as well pack up and go home. Thankfully, not in this case.
So, we switched hotels to one with a sweet hot tub and pool to keep us from going stir crazy in the hotel room all day. Basically we stuck inside and caught up on some inter-netting and some promotion.
lso, our new friend Morgan who helped us out in Vancouver contacted us to let us know he had hooked up a show for us in Banff, which was awesome.
We had tried to book in Banff for the tour in advance, but we didn't have any luck. Morgan's band Blacked Out has played the town about a million times, so he used his insider status to help us out. Thanks Morgan.
So our second day in Revelstoke was basically spent in the hotel, not doing anything worth writing about. We made it back to the Village Idiot and met up with Brooke, Kimber and Scotty for one last night with them.
We played from about 8 o'clock until around 12. The locals were awesome, and yet again made us feel right at home on a Monday night. We stopped when yet another flood started making it's way into the bar. Time to call it a night.
After saying goodbye to the girls and Scotty, we split. We headed back to the hotel and crashed - we wanted to be on the road by 8 the next morning, and wanted to get some z's. Banff tomorrow!!!!
Day 15
So we actually got up and left the hotel by 8 o'clock. We often say we're going to leave at a certain time, make that our goal, and try to hit the mark. We also often fail at making this deaparture deadline. But not today.
The weather didn't improve however, which is too bad because the drive from Revelstoke to Canmore is unreal. Sadly most of the breathtaking views were clouded over. Oh well. We'll live.
We arrived in Canmore and immediatly rolled to the Hotel - not to check in, but to pick up our long time partner in Miclordz crime, Jay
Jay has been a supporter and a friend of the group since day 1, and may be the only person on the planet who actually has every single rare, unrealesed, and alternate versions of Miclordz songs ever made. He's basically a member of the group.
Anyways we linked up with Jay and then proceeded to see Mike's sister and nephew, Jude. Mike is kind of a scary guy to have as an uncle so Jude was a little bit shy, but he warmed up to his rocker uncle before too long.
We proceeded back to Jay's condo, where we had ourselves a midday pizza and beer party. Jay's crib is awesome, with a breathtaking view of the mountains...not that we could actually see these mountains.
A great time was had by all though, thanks to Jay and Carli for having us in thier home and hooking us up!
Pretty much all of us got really tired in the late afternoon. You could argue that the pizza and beer were responsible, but more realistically I think that life on the road was starting to catch up with us.
Naps were in order. We crashed on the floor at Jay's place like a bunch of cats for a much needed power charge. 20 minutes folks...no more, no less. It makes all the difference. Afterwards, we packed ourselves up and headed for Banff.
It was a pleasent surprise to see how many people we managed to draw out to the Banff show, especially considering we only booked the show the day before.
The Devil's Gap is an awesome venue too. Cheap beer and good tunes, located smack in the middle of town with a pizza joint right downstairs. My kind of place.
I'm going to take a moment to just kind of generally inquire as to why so many nightclubs/bars/venues tend to take the doors off thier bathroom stalls. I'm sure you've all seen this before, and if not, you're lucky.
What the hell is that all about? It makes very little sense to me, and is incredibly frusturating when you need to use that stall to get down to business.
Nobody wants to be interuptted in that kind of situation, especially by drunk strangers. Anyway if somebody knows some practical reasoning for this, please drop a line on the message board and explain it to me. Moving on.
It was easily the best tuesday night show we've ever played. Sauce Funky warmed the crowd up with a short set of some instrumental funky jams, to get our people feeling the ryhthms.
The response was awesome, and we were selling merch before the real show even got started. Things were looking good as we took the stage for our full set.
It felt like New Year's eve up in that joint, people were jumping, yelling, pouring beer down our throats, falling over, and just generally losing thier minds. Exactly the kind of show we thrive on.
A little over an hour later, the floor was wet and sticky with beer, the crowd was wet and sticky with sweat, and we were too. Banff, you rocked us. Can't wait to come back.
Morgan, if you're reading this, thanks again brother. We know that you're the only reason we got that gig, and know a lot of those people came because of you. You're the shit!
Luckily, the management liked us enough that they said we could come back whenever we choose, an offer we will definitely be taking them up on in the future.
See you in Calagary tomorrow kids.
Day 16
The morning came, and found us waking up to loud curse words in Jay's living room, back at his condo.
Boots woke up several hours before everybody to watch Serbia knock defending champs Spain out of the World Basketball Championships.
Boots, for those who know him, is not one of these quiet, uninspired sport spectators. He is very vocal, much like he is on stage. He yells, hoots, swears, and hits things, especially when his team wins.
Happy with the Serbian victory, he enjoyed a cold beer before the rest of us were even standing, not doubt along with thousands of his countrymen across the globe.
Carli made us breakfast (those eggs were unreal, btw), and afterwards Jay took us back into Banff, to be tourists and check out Banff springs. If you haven't been there, figure it out. Absolutly stunning views, even with the cloud cover.
We even headed to the Mountain Choclate store (we really were being tourists), where the guys bought Murtles, which are basically gigantic turtles made with walnuts. They cost seven dollars, which at first I thought was ridiculous.
Then we tried one. Instantly we realized that 7 bucks is a pretty good deal for the best damn chocolate that we'd ever tried.
Finally, we made tracks for Calgary. Checked into the hotel, which we got made cheap thanks to Jay's connection to Comfort Inn suites (thanks buddy).
Then we headed into Vern's, which is another one of these gnarly rock bars that we're right at home in.
We've got to thank Clint, the awesome guy who was running the place single-handedly - literally. I mean this guy was working the door, bartending, doing the sound....everything! Hat's off to you Clint.
Again, we drew a pretty impressive number of people to the gig, especially considering it was our first time in Calgary. You know you've got awesome fans when they'll come out on a Wednesday in Septemeber to party thier asses off.
Ofcourse, we had some help with drawing the crowd from our friends in Bell Tower and our main man Ricca Razor Sharp & The BRC!! Thanks to you guys for playing, both acts were excellent and I suggest our readers check them out!
We had a few sound issues on stage at the begining of our set, but the bugs got worked out and by the end of the show, we had the regular crazy-ass crowd that we've been coming to expect on this tour.
I can't be certain, but I think there's something about having your van break down like 400 times in a week that gives you a lot of fuel for the onstage show. We've been tearing our stages up pretty fiercely as of late. Vern's was no different.
Jay, who is also an accomplished film-maker on the side, brought his camera equipment with him to document our two nights in Calgary. Huge thanks to you man, hopefully you got some good shots of our ugly mugs!
Ricca RazorSharp took the stage after us, and totally slayed it. An incredibly versatile and witty MC, it was refreshing to see that Calgary's hip-hop scene has definitely got some heavy talent.
Sauce Funky had the distinct pleasure of getting onstage with Ricca and the BRC as they closed out thier set at the end of the night. They proceeded to pump out some very heavy, very funky freestyle hip-hop jams that was really just the a perfect way to finish off the show.
It's was a real pleasure playing with you guys, thanks for letting us kick it with you! Also a big thanks to all the ex Windsorites who came to the show, it really felt like a little taste of home.
Again, back to the hotel after the trailer was packed, where we ordered pizza and let Jay make us laugh for about 3 hours. All-in-all another great night, thanks to everyone who was a part of it.
Tomorrow we do another gig in Calgary at The Dicken's Pub. See you there.
PS Please, take a moment to keep requesting us on the radio back in Detroit - send an e-mail and tell 'em you want to hear Miclordz & Sauce Funky's "Drop" at homeboy@89xradio.com (89X) and info@canadasrock.ca (The Rock).
Day 17
Calgary has the best damn waterslides in the world. While this is a somewhat controversial, highly debateable, and likely untrue statement, MLSF stands by it firmly. Our hotel had this giant, yellow, amazing waterslide.
We had some good, clean fun on that thing for hours, sliding frontwards, backwards, sideways, tandum, with emergency donuts and towels. Nothing like a pool and waterslide to make you feel 10 years old again.
Ofcourse, 10 year olds don't get to tour around the country with a rock band, so we soon resumed our position as full-legal musicians. Our gig at the Dicken's Pub was coming up.
Liam, during the day, made a detour and bought not one, but TWO pairs of real leather cowboy boots, I'm talking real shit-kcikers here. Bad ass. We were definitely in Cow town.
So Dikens pub turned out to be an unreal venue. Fantastic stage, great lights, great sound, very professional staff and a really great Pub atmosphere pulled it alltogether. We were stoked.
Our level of stoke went up another 10 notches when about 50 of our friends and followers showed up to the Thursday night gig. Even stranger were the number of coincidences that continued to pop up between our fans.
"Oh, this chick is my cousin, what is she doing here?" or "Hey your friends friend is like my old best friend" and so on and so forth. The small world theory. There's something to it folks. And it likes MicLordz & Sauce Funky.
Come to our show in a city you've never been to, and chances are good thar your second cousin twice removed will be there with your 9th grade French teacher and your Dad.
Another killer show took shape in the Dickens Pub, again with Jay behind the video camera lens to document the legacy. The crowd was hungry, I think we played 3 encores, it was a great feeling.
Big shout outs to every single person who came out, we owe you guys! We stopped off at our friends party briefly before returning to the Hotel. We didn't get back until almost 4, it was going to be an early morning.
The Estimated time of Departure was 8:00 PM the next morning, when we would finally say goodbye to Jay after having him with us for the last 4 days. Then the real fun - 1 show in the Beer Gardens at University Of Alberta around 4.
Then we were to pack up and play another show in Leduc at around 10:30. It was going to be a long day.
Day 18
These days are dropping off the map so fast, it's crazy. In the band, it still feels like August for us because that's when we left "real life" behind. We have to remind ourselves that it's September, in fact.
Early morning rise, and holy smokes, the breakfast at our hotel had CINNAMONN TOAST CRUNCH on a dispenser. This is a gold mine, generally you get cheerios and maybe fruit loops of you're lucky.
The day was off to a good start. We would be needing all the good starts we could get too, because we were underslept and about to play two shows in one day, which any band will tell you is very draining. Especially on 3 hours sleep.
We said goodbye to Jay, who would be staying at the hotel before making his way back to Canmore, and hit the road. We had a blast Calgary, can't wait to see you again.
The ride to Edmonton from Calgary was a little dry. Most of us slept, but the Miclordz hats go off to the navigational efforts of Boots and Matte, who got us there in one piece.
They stayed up and handled the road while the other 4 of us caught up on some rest. That is a noble, and incredibly honorable sacrifice. Thanks dudes.
We pulled into the University of Alberta at around 12:00, and the program director Jennifer instantly handed us about 15 free drink tickets We love Frosh Week.
In fact, Miclordz & Sauce Funky have been doing frosh week shows at different schools since the begining of thier career, and we were happy to still get to participate at a University so far from home.
These types of shows are awesome, generally because the Universities pay well, and the kids are in party mode, which makes for a awesome crowd.
In addition to that, the stage they had set up was a fully professional, all-in-one rock stage, with a front of house sound guy and an on stage sound tech as well.
Big props to the band that played directly before us, The BeArthurs. Picture two Ukelale players, a drummer, and all of them singing, playing cover songs. Everything from Queen to Beyonce to OutKast.
Very talented, very hilarious, and very good performers. Check them out! Our show was the usual rock fest, and what do you know, the sun came out right as we started playing. We hadn't seen sun since Kelowna!
Just as we finished playing, however, the sun got the hell out of there. In fact, about 60 seconds after the last note, a torrential downpour soaked the entire stage and audience. We were hasty in moving our gear to a safe place.
We were having a great time at the U, whart with the free beer and burgers and good music, but we had to get moving - we still had a show in Leduc to play. We hit the road again (with a sober driver, people. Always designate).
You know, we hadn't really had any van trouble for about a week. I guess the universe figured it was about time to test us again.
A freak accident involving a curb and our low-riding trailer caused the trailer to rip right off the van. We heard a loud "crunch" and turned around, and saw our trailer sitting behind us about 30 feet. On a curb.
You can't make this stuff up.
We determined that to make the show, we would have to get someone with a trailer hitch to come and get the trailer and haul it to the show. We didn't have time to fix it.
Mike put in a call to Jeff, his longtime friend who we would be staying with that night. As luck would have it, he and his wife Kim were just done the street, with a badass new truck.
While we waited for them to come and save us, we did what we normally do when we break down - sell CD's to strangers.
Matte met the incredibly generous (and gorgeuous, I might add) Victoria, with our young friends Nicole and Arianna who generously bought a huge stack of our albums. We were very thankful, so we played a song just for them.
It's people like you who keep us alive, thanks so much girls. We are in your debt.
With Jeff and Kim's arrival, we set to work putting the trailer back on. 20 minutes later we were back on the road to Leduc.
It's kind of an odd feeling going from a huge show with professional staging, sound, and a 500+ audience at a major university, to an all-ages show at an event hall in small town Alberta. In the same day.
But we have always been dedicated to playing the same for every audience, no matter how big or small. We feel genuinely honored to play in front of anyone at all, so we give it 100% of our energy everytime.
All-ages shows are fun because the kids are there to see a band play - not to drink beer or to pick up chicks (or maybe they are, who knows). Either way, the kids in Leduc were awesome and really showed us some love.
Thanks to everybody who attended either show. We were completely exhausted when we finished playing, especially Roge', who experienced a nasty electric shock during the last song. It actually dimmed the lights in the room (it hurt).
Finally, we left Leduc and headed for Jeff and Kim's place. Two shows and little sleep from the night before will do a band in, but we still decided to have a beer with Kim and Jeff. Thanks to the both of you, honestly you saved us!
Looking forward to a good show in St Albert tomorrow, after a good night's sleep.
Day 19
Kim woke us up in with quite possibly the greatest sight a Canadian musician can lay his eyes upon in the morning - fresh, steaming Tim Hortons coffee. Could our hosts possibly make our lives any easier?
It turned out that yes, they could. Kim made us a hell of a breakfast, and then asked us if we needed any laundry done. Amazing. Thanks again Kim.
The order of the day would be to install a new trailer hitch and reciever, which Liam was certain he could do. He and Matte drove off to get the gear, while Jeff even borrowed a few tools from his work.
Roge' spent the day with some of his fellow Scotian's who had driven in from various destinations to catch the St.Albert show, thanks to Al, Dylan and Watts for keeping our bass player alive in E Town.
Liam and Matte returned with everything needed to do the job, and set about trying to re-unite trailer with van. If there's anything Liam can't fix on our van, we haven't seen it. And we've seen that thing break all over the damn place!
That's a good tip to offer to any other musicians reading these blogs. Bring a mechanic on tour with you! They will save your ass, especially if you drive a 95 GM Safari. But you can't take Liam. Get your own guy!
With the van fixed (for now), all parties headed for the The Taphouse in St. Albert. The show was a success, and despite some issues with sound, it had all the ingredients of a classic MLSF rock show. We also hit a new record regarding merchandise - we sold out. Everything. All we have left are CD's!
T-Shirts, Shred Gloves, signed drum skins, etc etc. Our merch box and board are both empty. Thanks Canada for buying us out!
The turn-out was awesome, thanks very much to everybody who shared the night with us, especially our hosts Kim and Jeff, and the unusally large number of Scotians who attended. You guys are awesome.
MLSF would be making thier debut in Saskatchewan the very next day. Were the praries ready for us? Were we ready for the praries? Are these questions a predictable way to sign off on a blog?
Nobody knows. But while you ponder these questions, make sure you keep requesting us on the radio back in Detroit. Please e-mail in, even if you don't live in the Detroit/Windsor area!
Send an e-mail and tell 'em you want to hear Miclordz & Sauce Funky's "Drop" at homeboy@89xradio.com (89X) and info@canadasrock.ca (The Rock).
Day 20
Another early morning. An early SUNDAY morning. Another 600+ kilometres to drive. Another show (that'll be 10 in a row) And another new province for MLSF to terrrorize....err, visit, rather.
After a night with his countrymen, the Scotians ADHDJ and 1000 Watts dropped Roge' off at Jeff and Kim's place to meet up again with the band.
A very special thanks and shout-out to our old friend 1000 Watts who hooked us up with a little parting gift. Thanks bro, your undying support for our music is cherished, we can't wait to see you again.
Before leaving the city, we drove to Home Depot to get some new chains for our trailer.
Chains are good for a lot of things. For one, as Liam proved coming out of the store, they look pretty badass when they're draped around your neck.
Two, in a street fight, everybody knows you don't mess with the guy wielding the chain. It's a very intimidating piece of metal.
And for three, it really helps to have chains as a secondary lifeline between your trailer and your van.
We have learned that if (or when, in our case) your trailer decides to detatch itself, you'd better have some big ass chains on there.
Otherwise, your trailer will be seen sitting alone on the highway, which is an incredibly depressing sight, especially if said trailer is full of all your weapons. And by weapons, I mean musical instruments.
Either way, our last set of chains were wimpy and rusted and snapped right the hell off when our trailer detatched. We weren't making the same mistake twice.
We bought the biggest, gnarliest, Rambo-looking death chains we could find. They're huge. And they could probably tow your house. So don't mess with our chains.
Moving on, our time in Alberta was at an end. One Banff show, two in Calgary, and 3 in the general area of Edmonton had made for an awesome week. We'd like to thank the province and people for being kick ass every day of the week.
Enter MLSF into Saskatchewan. It was pretty flat, but we were happy to be there.
On our way into Moose Jaw, we met a police check point, just on the city limits. They let us through. Then, as we were nearing Chiller's, the venue, we hit yet ANOTHER police check point, which after some deliberation, let us through too.
Ofcourse we hadn't been drinking. It was 8 o'clock on sunday night. Yet for some reason Moose Jaw had several checkpoints on the lookout for DUI's.
This suggested a few things to me. The first was the unlikely possibility that there was an escaped, semi dangerous lunatic loose in the Moose Jaw area, and the police were looking to nab this crazy person.
The second, more likely scenario was that maybe people in Moose Jaw are just that awesome and they party harder on sunday afternoon than most other people do on friday and saturday night.
If that was the case, then this might be our kind of town.
Unfortunately, it was a rather timid show and turn-out, although our friends Tom and Liz showed up from Regina. It was a really cool venue - Chiller's Brewing Company and Grill/Bar. A brewhouse, bar and restauraunt all in one.
It was a huge place though, and there was only a handful of locals inside, playing poker and slanging beer. There hadn't appeared to have been any real promotion on the venues end. I did notice a few leaflets on the tables with the words "Live Band, Sept 12th" scribbled in marker.
Either way, it seemed evident that this place was not used to hosting stage-thrashing funk rockers with long hair and leather pants. We decided it would be better to play it safe, and offer the bar a more relaxed, un-obtrusive evening of acoustic covers.
Thanks to Matte and C-Mack for stepping up to the plate for the majoirty of the songs played that night. We were all tired, but they delivered.
We did get the whole band up to do some acoustic versions of our original tunes, at one point, and a few instrumental funk jams.
But for the most part our gracious guitar player and percussionist serenated the small crowd in such a way that we were still able to deliver a performance, sell a few albums, and then head to Regina for the night.
Mostly we were just tired and lacking real energy for the full-blown show, our personal fuel tanks were running a little low. Ten rocking shows in a row will do that to a guy.
My hat goes off to other bands and musicians who tour for extensive amounts of time, playing dozens of shows on end. Clearly, we still have a lot to learn.
We packed up and did the drive to Regina, which turned out to be only about 40 minutes. My good friends Tom and Liz put us up graciously in thier new place, only having moved to Regina two months previous.
The others headed to bed while a motley crew made up of C-Mack, Roge' and Tom dined on some late night bottles of beer and played a very sloppy game of Crazy Eights. Wild times!
Sleep came soon, and we were relieved to be able to rest the next day, as we had no show, but a hefty drive to Jamestown, North Dakota.
Rest was definitely needed too, because the road, late nights, early mornings, climate and altitude changes and the general constat running around had started to catch up with some of us.
We hoped that the mild symtoms of sore throat and runny nose affecting two of us were just the beginnings of a common head cold, and not Van Fever, Scurvy or The Plague. You never know.
By the way...what the hell is Scurvy? Does anybody really know? I think it's what pirates used to get when they drank too much rum and not enough Orange juice. If anybody knows, please refer to our Message Boards.
Back to the good ol' US of A for the last leg of our tour tomorrow. Thanks for an amazing 12 days Canada. See you when we get home.
Day 21
The 21st day of the tour was relatively uneventful. Really, all we did was drive from Regina to Jamestown, North Dakota. There was an incident at the border crossing, where they detained us for about 2 hours.
While waiting, we closely analyzed all the "WANTED BY THE FBI" posters, and determined that a number of them looked like friends of ours.
When we finally got back in the van, we were under the suspicion that they had taken the new can of Tim Horton's coffe grind Matte had gotten only hours before. But it turned up later.
We also stopped at a mall in some other town, where we had Subway. Here's the thing about Subway and our band - we love it. It's our fast food franchise of choice, and you can find them damn near anywhere.
The Five dollar footlong is bang for your buck, and it's a hell of a lot better for you than eating a double big mac and large fries everyday.
However, the poor girl at the counter must have been new to the sandwich game, because she was spilling our sub contents all over the damn place.
In MLSF, we refer to this spilling as "the Fallsberry Flop ".
We appreciate the sandwich artists that Subway typically employs, as they are talented and capable of taking the large number of toppings we require and making them fit snuggly inside the bun.
No "flop" is a good thing. When the ingredients get spilled out the side before the sandwich is wrapped, it gets ten times worse when the consumer unwraps it.
The sauce, the ingredients, everything gets seperated, and the sandwich experience suffers. It's messy, complicated and unprofessional.
We have been spoiled by the sandwich artists of most Subways, and now we expect this standard everytime. If we wanted sloppy-ass sandwichs, we could make them our damn selves.
So we are a little dissapointed when we have to eat anything from subway beneath our standards. We really, really hate the flop show. And this was what we were getting.
We kind of moaned about it, not keeping our dissapointment to ourselves. The girl was clearly distressed by the 6 judging dudes before her, critizing her technique. I hope she gets better at the sandwich folding.
Although, I must say, it was nice to have the 5 dollar footlong again. Nowhere in BC or Alberta had we seen this legendary deal.
Either way, you can probably tell this was a slow day for developments, because I've just designated a large portion of the blog to writing about Subway. We finally pulled into Jamestown, North Dakota at around midnight.
Mike and Liam tried to get some beer from the gas station next to the Hotel, but no dice, they didn't have any. So we all basically hung out on our laptop's until we fell asleep.
What can I say. We had a boring day! Sue me. Tomorrow we report from Fargo, ND. I know nothing about this city except that there's a pretty good movie that shares the same name. Check it out sometime!
Finale
Ok folks! We're gonna wrap thi blog up. We're gonna cover some events from the last two days of the tou (ie Day 22 and 23) and sigh off by thanking a few people. But first let's talk about our last couple of shows in Fargo, ND, and Madison, WI.
The venue in Fargo had a great sound system, and almost-great stage. I say "almost-great" because it was pretty broken and droopy in one particular section, thanks to the band Green Jelly who had smashed it several weeks before.
It was a tuesday night, and sometimes a touring band from out of town that no one has ever heard of does not get a great crowd to play in front of on a tuesday night. It's just the way it is.
However, there actually WAS a pretty decent tuesday crowd in Fargo. But as the night wore on, it started to become very obvious that this crowd was, for the most part, on drugs. Weird, hard, crazy drugs.
They seemed to be somewhat entertained by our performance, and we even sold a few albums, but it was clear that the crowd was there for the the two DJ's who played before and after we did. Kind of a weird night, for sure, but not a terrible one.
The next day we took a drive (8 hours, no big deal) to Madison, WI. Madison is a beautiful town, and we figured the last night of our tour we would spring for a nicer hotel, the Clarion. It's wasn't 5 star or anything but it was ahuge step-up from what we normally handle.
We didn't have much time to enjoy the amenities though, we had to get to the gig. We made quick tracks for The Frequency in downtown Madison.
MLSF had another "first time" experience at The Frequency. It only took a couple of minutes inside the venue while we were loading in our gear to realize that The Frequency was, in fact, an "alternative lifestyle" establishment.
That's right folks!!!! We were playing our first Gay Bar!!!!
MLSF is fully accepting of our fans and their choice of sexual preference, so we went about our usual business and absolutely rocked that joint. Fantastic sound in there thanks to Aubrey for working the board like a champ.
Speaking of boards, there were two Table Hockey games set up in the basement/backstage area. Awesome. There was also a sweet old-school skateboard deck with random electronics and circuit boards screwed to the bottom.
I figured it was a Marty Mcfly hover board proto-type, so we didn't mess with it. Either way it was a really fun show, awesome sound and a good crowd to finish off our tour. Thanks to the Frequency for having us.
And now, for a great big, long, thank you section! We will try our very hardest to remember EVERY SINGLE PERSON who has helped us and deserves thanks over the last month or so.
If your name is not on here, and you think it deserves to be, forward all hate-mail to john@miclordz.com. It's been an amazing trip folks, we couldn't have done it without you.
In no particular order, Thanks to:
Our readers (that's you). Jeff from Long Beach Radio. Cait Bait. Morgan Farrell from Blacked Out. Morgan's neighbour who bought our albums. Jeff and Kim. Rob Maceroni. Scotty, Brooke and Kimber. Eli for letting Roge and Liam crash. Davey O, Johnny K, and the Hippy chick. All the sound guys. Pat Ophee. Jay Hamilton, and Carli.
Jennifer at U of A. 1000 Watts, ADHDJ, and Al. All the Scotians. All the Windsorites. All the Canadians. All the Americans. All the citizens of the World. Our families - we love you. Our awesome girlfriends for putting up with us ;) All the bands we played with, especially Jared Smith and the Corry's from BloodList.
Ricca RazorSharp and The BRC. The BeArthurs. Everyone who bought a t-shirt, a CD, signed our mailing list, or just came to the show. Walkabout. Subway. Continental Breakfasts. All the places we ate breakfast when continental wasn't available.
Every bartender who gave us free drinks. Wal-Mart. Joel Ascher. The lady who gave us a $30 discount when we took the fairy from Nanaimo to Vancouver. Clint at Vern's. The two crazy guys from Timmins who terrorized Tofino. Tom Westol and Liz Stoll. Anybody who bought our CD in a parking lot or any other spot where you're not supposed to sell music. Backyard Jeff. The citizens of Craig Montana. Sean the tow-truck guy. Our fans.
Our trailer and the Bad Mobile. All the mechanics who worked on the bad mobile and helped keep it running, except for the guys at the Midas in Vancouver who completely messed up our brakes, screw them.
And a very, very special thank you to our good friend and road manager Liam MacNaughtan. You kept things together on this trip bro, and I don't just mean the van.
If it's true for any one person on this trip, we really could not have done this tour without you dude. Hat's off.
