Canada tour, late 2003

Friday, November 28, 2003

Wednesday, the night before Thanksgiving here in the United States, we headed out with an overstuffed car and hearts filled with ambition and dreams.

We were hoping not to hit too much traffic around Seattle. Which, indeed, we didn't -- all went smoothly, and we zipped up to the border, crossed it without incident, and found ourselves in Canada. We found a hotel room, spent far too long looking for a quick drink to help us get to sleep (we ended up at this place called Boston Pizza, which we laughed at -- since when is Boston known for its pizza? -- and which turned out to be a chain that popped up in every single city, sometimes every few blocks in big cities), and packed it in for the night.

In Canada!

The next day we drove for much longer than we thought through British Columbia, which is mountainous, snowy, stunning, and slippery when wet:

Late that night we arrived in Edmonton, where we were greeted by Anthony and his roommates with hugs and warmth. The next day we went to the biggest tourist attraction in those parts, the West Edmonton Mall, the largest mall in the world!

Our mission was to go bowling.

We accomplished this mission with style and grace, and then wandered around the rest of the mall for a while. We did not see the whole thing: We didn't see the indoor roller coaster or the aquarium or several other bizarre and phenomenal things, but we did see the scale replica of the Santa Maria filled with Toys for Tots:

Eventually we headed off to Remedy, a coffee shop near the University, which was cute. We set up in the corner and began to play, la la la. There were nearly a billion shows happening in Edmonton that night, including several local bands having their CD release parties, so despite a nice article in the free weekly paper (scroll down the page) we didn't have a terrific turnout. But it was fun nonetheless, and the people who listened had a good time.

Afterwards we went back to Anthony's and had pizza and drank and met some of his friends, who were cool. We talked about art and music and poetry and drank and ate and it was a great time.

The next morning, before we headed out, Ryan got out his fancy old-school camera and took a picture of Anthony and his roommates. (Anthony is the one with the beard and the tuque that Charlotte knitted; Ryan is the one behind the camera.)

And we headed off towards Saskatoon... But first, here's the setlist for Edmonton:

Saturday, November 29, 2003

Saturday morning we drove down to Saskatoon, which is in Saskatchewan, which of course is very exciting. I mean, you know? This was the big day, the day we'd finally set eyes on the promised land.

Before we hit Saskatchewan, though, we made a stop in Vegreville, Alberta, to look at their giant Ukrainian Easter Egg (or "pysanka"), which is actually far cooler than you'd think. Here's Chris with the egg:

Apparently the construction of the egg involved a lot of engineering "firsts", and the Queen visited the egg on Chris's third birthday: Rah! There's also a nice statue of an elk and a rather spiffy sign that says "Vegreville" in a great 70s font with the Canadian flag, the Alberta flag, and two pysanka flags. Anyway, it's worth a stop.

We drove on until we hit Lloydminster, which is a town that straddles the Alberta and Saskatchewan border. Here is Chris standing just on the other side of that border, which is marked by two big red poles sticking up in the sky:

While in Lloydminster, we saw a used CD store, and we had to check it out. What unholy treasures would we find here, marked at ridiculously low prices? Well, we got a Loren MazzaCane Connors and Alan Licht CD for $6 Canadian, as well as some Astor Piazolla tangos. So that worked out well.

We also finally caved in and checked out Tim Hortons, which is a chain of doughnut shops scattered across canada like so many sprinkles on a vanilla dip. So many. So very, very many. We eventually started to refer to small but not-dead towns as being "one-Tim Hortons towns", and were sometimes amazed at how some small-seeming burgs managed to boast two or three Tim Hortons. (We also figured it took about two or three Tim Hortons before you earned your first Boston Pizza.) Anyway:

On the one hand, we had heard a lot of hype about Tim Hortons before we arrived in Canada, and were disappointed to discover they were really just a glorified Dunkin Donuts-type joint (although much better than Dunkin Donuts). Then again, we ate more doughnuts on the trip than we would normally eat in, say, a year.

Onward into Saskatchewan!

The drive was beautiful, and just as we expected: Desolate, empty, except for the occasional roll of hay:

...and the occasional grain silo, both new-school:

...and the old-school prairie sentinals, the grain elevators:

We didn't know anybody in Saskatoon, and hadn't been able to get a show there. But after spending the night in the Riviera Motel (whoo!) we poked around the town a bit, and took pictures of odd sculptures, Ukrainian churches, and the waterfront park with its famous bridges.

We had some time Sunday morning on our drive to Winnipeg, so we made a lot of stops during the brief daylight period and took pictures. Ryan brought his old-school camera, and the prairie winds (which are FREAKIN' COLD! and SHARP!) threatened to swipe his blanket away from him a few times:

We made a stop in this incredibly small town called Kandahar, trying to gain access to the Big Quill Lake. It's an International Bird Sanctuary, or something, but the birds are mostly there during the summer, I suppose. We pulled into what turned out to be someone's driveway, and they had all these immaculately painted birdhouses on their fence and some great details in their yard. Anyway, here's Kandahar and the Big Quill Lake:

Saskatchewan stretched out, nearly forever.

Late Sunday evening, we arrived in Winnipeg.

Monday, December 1, 2003

Sunday night we arrived in Winnipeg, and were warmly greeted by our friend Bryan, who was hosting us and acting as tour guide. We didn't get much touring done that night, of course, since it was nearing midnight, but we did grab a drink (the local brew is the Fort Garry Dark, which is recommended), and conk out. The next day we had a whirlwind tour of Winnipeg!

Winnipeg is a somewhat sprawled but vibrant city. We chowed down at a great vegan restaurant called Mondragon and wandered around a bunch of different neighborhoods, from the hoity-toity to the seedy. We also stopped in at the Forks, which is the tourist trap posh shopping area (and which has a few other functions in the non-winter months). It had a spiffy section where you could find out all about Manitoba, which, you know, is an interesting province even if it's not the one we chose to become fanatically obsessed about. Here, look, they have hot rodeo action:

We also saw the ugly and disfigured statue of Louis Riel, which was just as hideous as we'd been led to believe. This photo might only give you a hint of its twisted unpleasant blobbiness, but you'll notice that they added big concrete shields to prevent people who aren't in the university parking lot (where we took the picture) from seeing it.

Later we met up with a bunch of folks for dinner, where we told lots of stories and exchanged vocabulary words. ("Booter" = stepping in water so deep it goes over the top of your boot and into it, soaking your feet.) Everyone was terrific and the collection of accents was phenomenal.

It was somewhere around this point of the tour where we finally got the hang of asking for "rye on the rocks" rather than "whiskey on the rocks".

Then we headed off to the Acadamy Coffee Cafe and Lounge for our show, which went splendidly. The crowd seemed to have a good time with the songs, and especially loved that chicken song -- Bryan's roommate went home after the show and drew a small children's book based on the first verse, which is brilliant and amazing and which we'll scan and post in the near future. Thanks, Dianne!

Bryan joined us on stage for the set finale, "Alex P. Keaton...", and shoegazed his way through the song. It was lots of fun to play, and we made a happy noise, like this (that's Bryan on lead guitar, obviously):

The next day we had lunch at a Ukrainian joint and I still can't believe we don't have pictures of this stuff, the decor was, well, what you'd hope a Ukrainian joint would be, and the food was greasy and delightful. Then we wandered around the city some more and saw the flood ditch, which was immense and which was officially the furthest east we got on this trip.

And yet I don't seem to have any pictures of that yet either! Crazy!

Then we did a show at Music Trader, a record shop. The town was oddly empty that night and we never quite figured out why. But there were some people listening to our silly and vengeful songs. The shop gave us each some store credit, and Chris got a polka anthology and Ryan got Ol' Dirty Bastard and some Mountain Goats. It was all good.

Setlists for the Academy show and the Music Trader in-store:

Thursday, December 4, 2003

Wednesday morning we made a late start, and started heading back west. We headed back to Saskatchewan, making a stop at the border.

Saskatchewan, as you'll recall, looks like this:

And after a few soothing hours of that, we arrived in Regina, the capital of Saskatchewan. We met up with our friend Horace and, after a quick bite at a really nice local vegetarian restaurant, we went over to the community radio station, CJTR, and helped Horace DJ his show. Here's an increasingly scruffy Ryan in the studio:

See that poster on the bulletin board for the rally? The local library board had decided, in the face of budget shortages, to up and close several libraries (mostly inner city) and their art gallery. They made this decision without proposing it to the community first, which is rarely a good idea. So we tagged along the next day to the protest.

(Last we heard, the library had decided to postpone the closings for a few months and see if they could come up with a better plan.)

Then we started exploring Regina, including seeing the legislative building (no, it's not actually called the "capitol building", you only say that if you're trying to explain it to a stupid American tourist, eh?) and some of the local wildlife.

That night, we played our show at the Easy Alibi. We were playing with a somewhat well-known band from Winnipeg called the Perms, and with a local band called the Very Talented Dalwinnie Sisters. The Dalwinnies were two men, guitar and drums, who were doing a blend of several different types of rock, mixed with the occasional vamping-guitar-plus-spoken-word-poetry—they were full of excitement and enthusiasm, and were fun. They also had one of those exercise machines—the Jiggler, or something like that?—that you've seen in cartoons, with a belt that vibrates as you jiggle the pounds away. They had it in front of the stage, and encouraged people to take turns with it during their set (and yes, they cajoled Chris into taking a turn with it, but thankfully no photographic evidence of this remains!) (as far as we know).

The Perms had apparently forgotten their drummer back in Winnipeg, so they seemed a little grumpy, which is understandable. They played their set without a drummer, though, and it didn't seem particularly lacking in drummerness. But this is coming from a band that doesn't have a drummer, so take it with a grain of salt.

Anyway, the show went well. Some people really seemed to be interested in what we were doing, and we met some excellent folks. Also Chris broke two strings during the show, which finally allowed Ryan to tell his polar bear joke during the restringing. Well, at least for the first string. We didn't have anything planned for the second restringing. Oops.

Here's the article about us from the daily paper, and here's the setlist!

Friday, December 5, 2003

Friday morning we headed off to Moose Jaw!

Where we sang "Moose Jaw"!

Do they have an enormous statue of a Moose next to that sign? Yes. Is it named "Mac"? It sure is. Did Chris try and take a picture of himself with that Moose? Oh yes.

The town is quaint. They have turned the tunnels that run beneath the town into this weird Disney-esque attraction that includes ACTING! as well as historical lessons about how poorly Canada treated their Chinese immigrants and a sort of dinner-theater-type comedy about bootlegging and Al Capone. (We're not going to write out the full and fascinating history of this town but surely you can find that info on the web.)

Anyway they are very much playing up the tourism angle, and near as I can tell it's the closest thing the prairies has to a tourist trap. But, as said before, it was cute—I'd recommend stopping there. It's about as cool as the giant egg.

We also scoped out Albert E. Peacock Collegiate, the high school where the song "Moose Jaw" takes place. Here's a picture; the pedestal reads "Man Of Industry".

After a day of exploring the city, we played at a very nice coffee shop called Coffee Encounters, which is right downtown. We did two sets, both of which were toned down from our usual manic frenzy, but the second set especially so, since there were very few people in the coffee shop at that point. (The people who were there for the first set went off to an open mic a block away—lots to do in Moose Jaw!) Also during the second set we played a bunch of songs that Ryan hadn't rehearsed, so most of the set was solo Chris action.

We also got an big article in the Moose Jaw Times-Herald with our picture in it, which I'll scan and type in soon, but which looked like this:

Then, after the show (well, and after sleeping) it was time to head home. We had our picture taken during the show and was told something might run in the Saturday edition of the newspaper (newspapers in Canada don't have Sunday editions, they have fat Saturday editions) but the paper comes out late in the day so we didn't get a chance to see it, and we haven't heard one way or the other yet.

We left Saskatchewan, and spent two days driving back across Canada, which was fairly uneventful (except for the vaguely icky vibe we got from Medicine Hat, Alberta, which perhaps is a lovely town once you get to know it, but, just trying to get dinner there, was not so appealing), and we made it home very, very late on Sunday.

So hurrah for Canada! We met a bunch of great people, saw some beautiful scenery, and managed to go when the Canadian dollar was at a 10-year high, so everything was much more expensive than it normally would be for a touring American! And we will have to go back someday and see what it's like in the non-winter months.

We leave you with the Moose Jaw setlists:

We are moved

The Minor Thirds HQ is now located in Toronto.

Farewell to Portland

Our "goodbye, Portland" EP, Your Eyes Will Adjust, is ready to be downloaded.

Nebraska From Afar, still available!

Released on Greydawn. Available on Amazon, iTunes, and your local record store.

Download an mp3 for Houston or watch a video for Adam And Eve On A Raft.