Saturday, April 30, 2005
Back Home: Hello Everyone. We are all back home now in our respective cities of Toronto, Ottawa, Dublin and Vancouver. I have slept a good part of today and have just been going through the piles of tour photos' taken by Dave Allen, Kathleen and myself. I have collected many of these on my computer and was just editing some of them out (like a few of Kathleens' hundred cat photos' she takes). I seemed like such a long time ago that we all took off for Europe with the tall man kicking the back of Colins' seat all the way there. Time does fly though and yesterday Charlie got the brunt of a drunk guys' knees while in flight. He is a photo of the whole touring troupe (minus the Bruntnell who had left the week before). The Viking hats were part of an end of tour awards ceremony which took place at 5am in front of the airport in Stockholm, Sweden. As it turned, we were dropped off about a half mile walk from the terminal we needed to be at. A late tour gag by Graham, our computer savy British bus driver? Some say yes. Anyhow the order of the photo is as such: Dave Allen(guitar tech), Colin, Paddy McPoland(Tour Manager), c'est moi, Joel, Sound Gent. Charlie Ferguson, Kevin, Kathleen and driver Graham. Happy Birthday: Bazil, Brendan, Leigh, Karen, Wicca, CV and Willie.... 
Thursday, April 28, 2005
Greeting All: We are in Sweeden and very tired with one more show to go. Everything is well here and Stockholm is an amazing and beautiful city to end such a great trip on. Tomorrow we fly all day and then home for a short rest and for me, tax crunch time. Just a quick hello, thanks for checking in...
Sunday, April 24, 2005
 Today We "Broke Down" Waiting outside a crazy three room venue in Tillburg, Holland, sitting in the lot writing this. We had a great two days in Belgium, and played a really amazing old theatre there last night. Jeff Kainz made his way to the show and missed his train back to Brussels and spent most of the night with us in an "irish" bar in the Ghent. "When in Ghent" as Jeff says. Oh yeah, today we "broke down" on the highway in a spot already experiencing lane reductions. Horns were going all around us as we just sat there. As it turns out our gas gauge was not entirely acurate and we waited for a while and AAA brought us some deisel and we were off our on way again. So far away from home and strange to think that in a week I will be back in Ottawa again getting ready for the US Cracker Barrel tour. Well off to play now, over, rovers... oh yeah, the potato in my hand in this photo was given to me by a bride to be on her stag party. Aparantly it is a custom of some sort, but none the less, she gave us all potatoes. Any assistance with this would be helpful, cause we are all just confused. I am not sure if poorly excecuted slam dancing to Rage Against the Machine is custom as well, but that is what they all did next.
Friday, April 22, 2005
 Hello: The weather at last is wonderful here at the travel stop. We are waiting for Kathleens' tardy manager to come meet us and then we are off to Ghenst, Belgium, to play a festival with Martha Wainwright. All is well, although I must confess that navigating the BT wireless this morning has been troubling. I have brain lapses which make even the easiest www negotiations a train wreck for me. I will tell you this: I have been going to bed on the bus and sleeping until near noon most days, which means I wake up in a different place ever day (our bus either leaves in the middle of the night or very early) and somedays, like today, the arrangement of order takes me awhile. For instance, I really have no idea where we are and I have not asked anyone, I honestly only know that I am in the UK. Interesting? Probably not, but it is what I have been thinking about in the last few minutes. Spelling. I rarely spell check and try to type fast, so as pointed out by Lisa several times, my blog is a mess on many days. I do occasionally spell check but often as I do, I edit content and then alas, more spelling problems gone unchecked. Anyhow, that is my day today, we had a great time in London last night and sadly said goodbye to Peter Bruntnell. We loved his songs and loved his humour, and we will all greatly miss him. I am sad to not be home tonight and seeing Howe Gelb. Say hello for me if you see him there. Over, rovers....
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
 Greeting: Just a quick hello. We are on another day off, the second in three days and for this one we are on the outskirts of Manchester, so close you can see the downtown heading for the sky with a sea of cranes eveywhere. Plan is to walk downtown for dinner and maybe a movie (note: by the time of posting, we will have been to dinner and the movie and most will have all gone to bed). Just out of two wonderful days in Scotland in the rain. We had an amazing Sunday off in the town of Callandar where we all got out and saw some local music and I even got some dancing in. And the Glasgow show was great fun as well, King Tuts' Wah Wah Hut is one of the Uks' truely great places to play. Lots of news coming in about all the great weather being missed, with everyone back in Ontario running around in shorts and greeting a few days of summer in April. My dad is apparantly loving early mini-summer, and with in mind, we were by the gates of the Granada TV studios today in Manchester and I took a couple fo photos' of Joel and Kevin, so here is one of those. It is here were Pauls' beloved Cornation Street is shot. Listenning to some internet baseball tonight for some reason and writing this from my bunk in "Helen", our double decker tour bus. I will get a photo of everyone infront of "Helen" and post it soon. I keep thinking about it. Ok, over, rovers...
Friday, April 15, 2005
 I borrowed and umbrella and it did not want to help. I finally got it fixed just as it stopped raining so I carried it around all morning with me. Where are we? In Liverpool in the rain sitting on our recently aquired double decker tour bus. I will take a photo of it, but not now, we are hiding from the rain upstairs. Peter Bruntnell is along with us and we both slept our first night ever on a tour bus. He entertained us last night in to the wee hours. Here are some photos' from the tour thus far, not many cause my limited Flickr account allows only so much. Click on the photo or HERE and it should take you there. Take care....
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
From Bristol, Where I Have Never Been Before:Good evening all, first post since the first day in Dublin and well, we are in Ireland no more. Woke at 6:30am and made our way to the Dublin/Hollyhead ferry. Spared from the often choppy seas, I slept almost the entire time. Now, just shy of 10 minutes to midnight, we finished off our travel day with an evening off here in Bristol. I think I can speak for all on this trip when I say that Ireland was a marvelous time. All the shows were so much fun and we were treated so well by everyone in all the cities. I am going to have to get a little more elaborate at some point regarding these shows, cause I feel I may be slipping into a bit of a rudimentary daily show description pattern (ie: so much fun, we loved it, had a great time). And to be honest, I have enough time in the van every single day add some form of variety to the mix. This I will say, it is an wonderful thing for me to watch from the stage how people react to Kathleens songs. I am so very proud for her , proud of her and I am just thrilled to be singing and playing in her band again. Thanks for checking in, and Gabe, I will see you in Manchester... Oh yeah, go right now and look this great Blog art project site, Post a Secret. It is... right... HERE. Graham passed on the link, and I really do think this is an extraordinary site.  Also, maybe someone could go give Lisa hug for me at work, I miss her....
Saturday, April 09, 2005
Hello All: We have arrived safe and sound here in Dublin and are just waiting to get into our rooms. We are all tired, but most of us are going to stick it out and not go to bed and wait and tough it out. Better to try to adjust the brain and body now then over the course of a few days. Not much, just a quick hello before checking in...
Wednesday, April 06, 2005
After Awhile: Awhile it had been, I understand that , since I last posted. While home this week I generally worked on my taxes, went to a few shows, avoided taxes and then after a while, returned once again to some taxes. Tis' the season to be calculating. I have been thinking of writing for the last couple of hours, but the internet here is not so hot, so it was tough to get this up and running tonight. Lisa and I are in Toronto tonight for a visit before the Mod Club tomorrow. We went out to see Josh Rouse and without being critical, it was a bit of an unremarkable evening. No spark or tension or inspirational moments, but a good show still. Feeling a bit tired right now to write too much, just a quick hello I guess this will be. I am very excited about going to Ireland on Friday and equally thrilled to head through all the countries I am fortunate to be seeing this month. Hmmmm, photo? I will take a look and see if I can find something relevant. I hope you are all enjoying a bit of the slightly spring like weather (if that is what you are even experiencing where you are). Reagarding the photo, I looked through some, but nothing struck me as needed, so no photo, sorry. I will post from Ireland when we arrive when I get a chance. Over, rovers.... PS: While spell checking, blogger reccomended replacing Hmmmm with "Whammy"....
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