well i guess i did okay with this blog right?

like i almost kept it pretty updated?

and i only really slipped at the end?

maybe cause home was in my sights? maybe it was all the thunder bay saunas and beers?

let me try and pick this up where we left off…

played a cool show at this little artspace on albert st. in winnipeg called Freud’s Bathhouse and Diner, which was neither a bathhouse or a diner.  it was a very hot, very rad space. we played sandwiched between a bunch of really different, experimental films. my favorite was leslie supnet .  check out the link there… pretty radness! thanks to jonah from ghost town, mb for hooking up the show for us, and michael elves from UMFM for putting me in touch with michael. also thanks to the gang at freud’s for having us.

here’s some video of us performing history books at freud’s:

after the show we hit up the LoPub for a couple suds and watched ohbijou.

they were totally awesome and it was good to see them. i miss them.

michael elves, baseball fan extraordinaire:

after this we went home to michael’s house and hung out a bit… felt good to catch up with a friend.

slept like a log then up too early for thunder bay to play 2 shows with forest city lovers.

the three of us hit kanga’s sauna again before the show to unwind and get our heads together.

then we went to the apollo to set up for two nights of playing.

thanks to sheila for having us for two nights and puttin’ us up! love this place!!!

pre-show:

only one way to turn these frowns upside downs:

CHANGEFACE!!!

i believe that was all the change from joe’s pocket.

sylvie got a temporary tattoo from some random:

and then we after the show we stayed up really late playing jeopardy, under the influence. pretty challenging and fun.

the morning, or well, afternoon… was a great time to go to the hoito to eat breakfast. they were celebrating their 100th anniversary. i am making it official saying this was my favorite breakfast of tour. very close runner-ups would be the bent fork in nelson, bc and the park cafe in saskatoon, sk.  maybe i should just make it a 3-way tie? anyways, the finnish pancakes were amazing…

and then we followed this up with a real long sauna at kanga’s again. this one was extra special cause we got christian and kyle to join us and we cooked a couple real gems in there. not to mention we had bought some new soap and loofahs and we all left feelin’ squeaky clean! one of my favorite places to stop on tour for sure!

no picture from the show that night at the apollo. i got a little topsy-turvy and played a heavy version of mtn. song that was really fun for me.

post-show consisted of more jeopardy, under the influence.

slept amongst the gulls of red river street and then up and out in the a.m. for the drive to sault ste. marie.

thanks to alex from the apollo for waking up early to let us into the venue to load our gear out.

we stopped on the drive to snap a cliche band photo beside lake superior:

here’s a couple randoms from the show at loplops:

oh good times! hit up a hotel in the soo for tour finale/party!!! pretty good times.

the next day we drove to sudbury for pizza hut with fcl and we got to see this on the way:

totally badass!!!!

and then we ate delicious pizza and hit the road home.

farewell fcl…

hit peterborough around midnite and snapped one last tour pic.

i’ll send this one out to my fellow comrades Joe and Sylvie. thanks you two for playing my songs with me and coming along on the adventure. you both made it such a pleasant journey!!! love ya!

those eyes are sparkling cause it was a joyous farewell, albeit a touch emotional…

and now i must sign off on my tour blog… thanks for reading, and thanks to all of those who opened their homes, beds, venues, hearts, wallets, etc. for us!

this tour was a huge success for us. cannot wait to come visit you all again.

all the best until then….

xo

jb

bruno, sk

http://www.allcitizens.org/

wow.

drove from saskatoon to bruno. in short, (cause it’s an amazing long story), this wonderful gent moved to bruno, sk (population a few hundred) and bought this house on main street that has a little storefront that he uses as a consignment shop and espresso bar and as canada’s smallest venue! tyler cooked us an amazing pasta dinner and after the show we stayed up super late gettin’ inspired by his story and his ideas for bruno.  he just recently bought the royal bank building a few doors up from him for $25 and he is converting it into a bigger space for arts/live music. tyler awarded us with an engraved plate with our name on it and an etching of all citzens on it for making it out to bruno, sk (see picture above!)can’t wait to come back and visit and play again! thanks to tyson from slow down molasses for making the trek with his friends out to see us! we also convinced him to play a couple songs and he did a sweet version of new partner by will oldham.

host with the most:

the weirdest part was when we were packing our car this dude kept driving by in his truck.  he literally drove by 50 times… probably more actually, playing loud music and staring at us. pretty funny:

also, as we were loading our car this pleasant lady walked by and said hello and said “it must be hard to sleep in that car” cause i guess she had read our blog and recognized us and saw that we had slept in the car. we thought that was pretty rad. hi nice lady from bruno, sk if you’re still reading this!!!!

from bruno we drove to riding mountain national park and camped out, had a fire, sipped coldies.

beautiful spot but man oh man, to camp one night, with a bundle of firewood, came to $55!!!! same price as a motel. what gives?

glad we did it… but that kind of fee makes a broke, touring musician contemplate the walmart parking lot solution a lot more!!!

woke up and had a nice brekkie at uncle toms.

hit winnipeg and played an instore at music traders.

here is a picture from the perspective of our friend Archer:

then we went and had a campfire at michael and michelle’s beautiful house and stayed up late playing wii baseball after. i hurt my arm a bit and my ego, as michael crushed the jays with his almighty twins.

woke up in the morning and went to mondragon for brekkie.

met up with these dorks:

then we bid them farewell, they’re off to play brandon, mb tonite and then we re-unite tomorrow night in thunder bay for a couple more shows before we’re home. myspace.com/forestcitylovers

sylvie and i put josephine down for a wee nap in the afternoon and then drove over to our friend neil’s house. he did the artwork for the evening hymns t-shirts so we wanted to drop a couple off to him. he was getting his next show ready for switzerland. i want all of these:

here’s some of his incredible work: http://www.royalartlodge.com/

after this we went for argentinian gelato and then home to beagle HQ:

gave this little dude a quick belly rub to get him gigglin’ and we were out the door to freud’s bathhouse and diner for our show tonite!

here’s the invite:

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=102649656456795&ref=ts

oh and that brown hat i’m wearing in all those pictures is my new hat. i’ve been searching for that hat for over a year. happy to finally have found it in winnipeg.

okay, soundcheck time and then sleep, and then thunder bay for more saunas and coldies.

be well,

jb

just got wifi.

here’s our last two days.

we hit up the west edmonton mall. i almost puked on the roller coaster.

after the mall we hit up the venue… haven social club.

such a nice space.  brian the sound guy was super rad.

didn’t get any photos from inside but we did get this one from across the street:

we were offered a space to stay with a real nice girl named Jill but we decided to push east a bit and stay at elk island national park but when we got there, at 2am, it was all full and we couldn’t pitch a tent so we decided to keep trucking, eventually settling for a walmart parking lot in vegreville, sask. 3 little hymnsters tucked into balls in hotel honda. slept beside a tim hortons though so that was handy for crappy road breakfast.

our humble abode:

we actually slept pretty well… for 5 hours.

we hit saskatoon around 4pm and hooked up with our main man Phil Greer from vive music!

him and rich taylor, the minds behind vive music, put on an amazing show for us at their new venue, which remains without a name right now, and it’s a real beauty spot. it’s connected to this wonderful cafe called caffe sola and is a real nice sounding room.  here are some pictures of the show/space. they don’t really do the room justice. it’s been a definite highlight of playing on this tour. i think we maybe sounded our best in that room last night.

will robbins opened with a real nice set.

followed by husband/wife duo economics!!!

find me a happier looking group of people then this one above. that’s us making a joke about taking a smash at sneaky dees.

that’s rich satisfying his pizza tooth with us.

this is me elongatin’ my jam before hittin’ the hay.

thanks phil and rich for a rad show! can’t wait to come back to saskatoon.

on to bruno, saskatchewan!!!!

stay tuned.

day off in calgary.

why not go to a food and wine?

after this feast of fancy foods and beautiful brews we headed back to Casa Kent to order some slichays and pils.

wayne’s world finally is watched in it’s entirety and we continue on our beer crushing odyssey.

a good nights sleep, kent coffee in the morning and some max brand on the balcony.

now we’re packing up from our little calgary vacation and heading to edmonton. it’s a rare thing to find time on tour to relax with old friends and i feel fortunate to have had some time with both james in calgary and julie in banff to catch up and just have some good hangs. this whole tour has been a real trip for us full of open-hearted people and wonderful, pleasant surprises and these last couple days have been so mellow and relaxing. now we are re-charged for our return journey across the prairies and home with plenty of shows left to kick out the jams.

on to edmonton…

jb

here we are in calgary.

just to recap:

after a great sleep in banff, my friend julie, who we were staying with, and I decided to head downtown to the farmer’s market truck that drives from the okanagan valley every wedensday to sell fresh fruits and vegetables to banffers. we got a ton of fresh fruits and julie whipped up these amazing parfaits for our breakfast. the most amazing ones we’ve ever had. julie is a special needs eater and happens to be the greatest cook, or i guess the greatest non-cook as she is a raw foodist. here is her blog:

http://www.glowfood.blogspot.com/

check out her blog. it’s pretty amazing! she made these parfaits with cashew cream as opposed to yoghurt, which i’d never had and it was mind-shatteringly delicious, and the granola was bought from Wild Flour Bakery which is right below their apartment. oh by the way, here is the view from their place:

julie accompanied the amazing parfaits with fresh watermelon and cucumber juice that she made us. a great little breakfast to start our day and prepare us for a mountain climb:

we went for a hike up tunnel mtn. in banff… it’s a mellow jam. here’s some photos from the hike:

that’s me and julie and michael. our wonderful hosts. michael taught us many lessons of mountain climbing before disappearing into the woods and sending us on our way.

you can pretty much just walk right up to these little champions.

here’s josephine infront of rundle mtn. his buddy cam climbed this wildabeast we hear…

the sherpas:

here we are riding trees and sylvie looks likes she should be on the side of a beer bottle. look at that hair. mountain hair:

after banff we drove to calgary and played a nice show at dicken’s pub with heart failure research unit and field museum.

great sets by both and we played a short set to a nice little crowd. thanks calgary. that was a treat.

we headed back to james and mary’s place to stay. we ended up sitting out on their balcony sippin’ pils and staring out at the city skyline. calgary is gorgeous at night.

after the balcony we moved inside and we were about to go to sleep and then conversation exploded into talk about playing music and then the city of peterborough and how those two things are connected. it was a really good talk. next thing ya know it was 4:30am and james was retiring to bed. sylvie, joe and i ended up staying up until 6am talking about touring and playing music and life goals and the usual 6am epiphanies. good grief.

good times.

now we are heading downtown to meet up with james at one of his wine and cheeses.

planning on watching wayne’s world tonite.

we are excited.

then we’re off to edmonton for tomorrow night.

over and out.

jb