Penticton is a beautiful small town between Calgary and Vancouver. It has a gorgeous beach surrounded by mountains and the most amazing used bookstore. For Sloan’s purposes it has a place to play to help take care of expenses during what might otherwise be a night off. They treated like kings and fed us amazing food. Kevin “Lamps” Hilliard and I went for a nice bike ride around the town. I spent well over $100 on kids’ books at the amazing used bookstore.
We played here once before at the same venue (hotel) but the configuration of the room was different. The show was fun for weirdness value. Sound test was like a matinee for a handful of seniors who were trying to have a nice lunch. At least one seemed to leave a new convert. At the show, people were right up to the tiny stage and one woman thought nothing of coming up and trying to take my glasses off me while I was playing. I could have handled her myself but security intervened before I had to do anything. Another guy brought his yo-yo and proceeded to whip it around. A first, and hopefully a last.
There were a few people who had driven all the way from Vancouver, who came again to the Vancouver show and I’ve got to hand it to those people. But don’t come to too many shows then I feel bad that we’re doing essentially the same show every night.
My high school friend Scott Kennedy came to the bus for a visit. I probably wouldn’t have invited him because I had some stuff to do and I would have felt bad dragging him around to that but because he came of his own accord I didn’t feel bad about it. He came with us to a radio station, which was mercifully close to the bus. Jay, Gregory and I played Your Daddy Will Do and Shadow of Love.
I dragged poor Scott to the hotel where I showered and then he watched sound test. We eventually had some free time so we went to the bookstore and had a nice dinner together. It’s June and hockey is still going. Game 1 of the Stanley Cup finals was on that night but Scott is very uninterested in hockey so we didn’t watch it. I am not up on the NHL but the finals are a big deal with the gang on the bus and part of me was getting sucked into wanting to watch. I’m glad I hung out with my old friend. Traveling the way I do enables me to see people I wouldn’t otherwise see, which is nice. I guess that’s what facebook does for the rest of the world. Maybe I should get on that.
As mentioned earlier, we played the Republik in 1992 on our first trip through town with Jerry Jerry and the Sons of Rhythm Orchestra. The show this time was pretty wild. The crowd was pretty rowdy and I had a good time. Kevin “Lamps” Hilliard had a couple quibbles with the food vendor selling “east coast style” donairs outside the club after the show. We are traveling with a few experts who took issue with the use of extra ingredients including mozzarella. Donairs have meat, (very specific) sauce, onions and maybe tomatoes. This guy’s credentials included one trip to Moncton. Kevin was incensed.
We had a mini bus party with a few people including a brief appearance of the donair guy but the star was a young woman (name withheld and maybe even forgotten) who was apprenticing to do sound at the club. There was some dancing. She did a bit of “crunking” and insisted we blast Search and Destroy and scream along like a bunch of fools. Cheers to young cool kids coming to our shows (even if they are required to be) but be careful out there.
It has just been announced that Sloan will be performing at this year's Hillside festival. We will be closing out the festival with our performance on July 24th. Apparently weekend passes are already sold out, but single day tickets are still available.
There was a 5-pin bowling tournament in Edmonton on our first day off. About half of us are Maritimers and we’re used to 10-pin (candlepin) bowling where it seems you can knock something down even if you hit the gutter. This bowling also kept score for you, which is fun but as Jay commented to me, he missed the score sheets and giant pencils. I am both a terrible bowler and a sore loser. You know who’s good is Jay Ferguson. After bowling we all went out to dinner to the only place that Kevin has eaten for his last 5 times through town. I asked our Russian hosts to change the (goddamn) channel of the (unnecessary) TV from UFC. What it changed to was the dance drama Step Up and just in time for one of its many fight scenes.
EDMONTON Tuesday, May 31st
Jay, Gregory and I went way out to the suburbs to play a few songs on the radio. I made Gregory drag his keyboard out there and made the technicians line him in but in the end we switched songs and he didn’t use it. Sorry Gregory and technicians.
Kevin “Lamps” Hilliard brought his bocce set and we had a fun little tournament in the hours before load in. My cousin John does security at the University and he came around and cuffed me for the camera.
The show was great! We used our pre-recorded drum intro to Follow The Leader as our walk on music. I think it’s pretty effective. The lights are lower until Andrew comes in with real drums and then the lights really come on. It may seem a little Vegas to some people but I don’t think we’re in danger of being approached by Cirque du Soliel. I just looked up CDS for spelling and saw how they are doing a show based on the spirit of Michael Jackson. Cripes almighty!
For us, the American venues are often places we’ve never played before but the western Canadian venues have been the same places we have been playing for 20 years. Winnipeg is The Pyramid, which used to be The Spectrum. I know we played there as early as 1993. Saskatoon is still Louie’s Pub, a place I swore I’d never play again at least 10 years ago but we’ve played about 6 times since. There is nothing wrong with it but by 1999 I figured we should be moving up and was frustrated when we weren’t. I have updated those feelings of frustration to feelings of gratitude that we are playing together at all. I know a lot of talented people that can’t get their act together. Anyway, Edmonton is The Starlite room, which used to be the Rev and The Bronx before that or the other way around. I believe we were there in 1993. Calgary is the Rebublik and Vancouver is the Commodore both of which we played for sure in 1992. Plus ca change…
We did an interview with a woman named Barb Abney for MPR (Minnesota Public Radio) and recorded 3 songs from The Double Cross – She’s Slowing Down Again, Beverly Terrace and Laying So Low. I was happy to record Laying So Low because it looks like it will be getting cut from our set and I’d like to think we didn’t learn it for nothing. Our esteemed colleague Jay Coyle videoed the proceedings.
The SLOAN XX CREW purple satin jackets arrived at the venue and the crew were finally able to make sense of their head to toe yellow ensemble. To be clear, these outfits are a crew initiative. It was a great surprise to us and they look upstagingly amazing, although I am sure that we are going to have to pay for them in the end. The show in Chicago was great. I don’t know if it was the satin jackets or the fact that we were that much more rehearsed or the fact that there was not a tornado that night. Admittedly, the Cleveland show had been a little sleepy and was perhaps not the best place to take stock and ask ourselves why we’re still doing this. Chicago made it all seem worthwhile. We shortened our set after Cleveland but we could have played longer in Chicago as we could feel we had the audience's interest. There is something to be said for leaving them wanting more. We would like to come back soon and have people see that show too. Thank-you Chicago for your enthusiasm!
We participated in the Onion AV Club’s Undercover series, which features a bunch of bands recording covers of songs that the AV Club deem worthy/interesting/funny in a little round former storage room in the AV Club office. There are a bunch of songs from which we could choose and if we didn’t act fast the good ones would get snatched up. We chose “Cars” by Gary Newman, which we like but I can think of songs we would have preferred to cover but they weren’t on the list. Anyway, it was fun for us and we were happy to be asked to do it. Enjoy Strangers by The Kinks Wye Oak!
