Late September 2005
Frankie said that he would die in a year if he worked at a chocolate factory. That is the first scribble on my 6 pages of summer scribbles, and I believe it.

Wow, am I behind in these road reports! Ya Ya. I get up extra early these early fall days to spend the mornings practicing piano, and a couple other instruments that I am experimenting with, for fun. Gotta get yer kicks. I can think way sharper in the morning. At night I am junk. Is everyone like that?

So I start to type this out, and already, there is someone at the studio door. Tap Tap, and then a guy’s voice, great, won’t go away no matter how long I let him tap tap. And now a visitor. Yap Yap Yap. Problem with having a studio at home. When you have your own schedule, people think you have no schedule. On road trips, and during summer, time happily does not exist. When autumn sets in, days are subdivided into hours. Time to get stuff done. And now a visitor. How lovely, back in a flash. Oh yes, I know that piece, I’ll play it, ya Bach, nutty………….fumble………..

Ok, back again, I won’t yet write about the Chilliwack concert in Nanaimo tomorrow, and the following trip that we are making to Protection Island with Bill Henderson, cos that hasn’t happened yet. How about I start on these horrible, old, shaky, van-written road notes?:

NOTES ON THE PLANE……

Ok, 7am flight, Air Canada Vancouver – Winnipeg. Scott Brown, Dave Hampshire, Gogo, truck, ferry to Vancouver, tea, sleep, shuttle from funny Swiss-Country Hotel (with free apples) to Vancouver International airport. Long security line, big bag of lunch, corny music, sit down with a copy of ELLE pinched from the 1st class magazine stash as I walk by. I always store my carry on bag near the front of the plane as well, easier to depart that way. Nice orange-shirted gramma beside me. Always disappointed when I ask real life questions to elderly people and get “oh we had a TV!” answers. I wanna hear how people were amazed at the inception of abstract expressionism in this country, not, “Oh, we made do.” Baby crying behind me. Craig (stage manager) is looking sleepy with his new short hair-do. I could use a plane trip. I love when the thing drives really fast on the ground. People still getting seated, Frankie, formally, “Gogo,” and sticks his butt in my face. Last flight he playfully humped the top of Scott’s seat. This was his mild, mild entrance.

Frankie is not shy. Oh Man can he read drum charts. When I get to sit next to him on planes, he sight-reads drum music charts in real-time. Total city boy. When he was a kid, he would go into Vancouver with a tape deck, record the traffic and city noise. He played it at home as background music. I had the same fascination with hardcore MUZAK for a while when I was a kid. I wanted to UNDERSTAND muzak, so I cranked it up all day, which is the first mistake. (All they do is play vocal melodies on piano bass notes and dick with the phrasing.) Our poor mothers.

What a gas! Out for 3 Trooper shows in 2 days. Going to a reserve town up North.  A 9-seat plane  for us and all of the gear. Gotta leave some stuff behind, I am told. All I need is stage clothes, keyboard, snacks, and packaged food, cos you never know what you are gonna run into when you don’t know where you are going.

“No thanks” to the newspaper being offered, I am organizing the road notes and scribbles that I have saved so far. Front desk hotel guy this morning gave me a stack of beautiful white paper. I am excited about folding it all into little books for drawing cartoons. That is why I never get anything done. According to my notes, I do not carry a computer on the road. I bring the odd acoustic instrument, or electronic video or audio recording machine with me, but no typing machine, ever. My studio time at home gets eaten with music (imagine that!) and my typing skills are slow and sloppy at best. And my vocabulary is abysmal. (I just started my conversation with Grandma Orange by asking her what movie from the ’30s I saw her in, and what rock band she plays for, she is laughing, har har).

Scott passes me a huge stack of promo Trooper shots to sign and I do each one with a different hat and funny ears. Silly, but  what the heck. People around me on the plane are telling Trooper stories. Everyone knows this band, even Grandma-Orange. She asks if I have another job as well, and I tell her that I have never had a conventional job, except for splitting firewood with my dad years ago, and she assures me that what I do is very important, and that musicians DO work hard. Super nice. Truth is, our road crew works hard. Splitting and delivering firewood is hard work. I tell her about the set of 1920s encyclopedias I just inherited from my grandma. The artwork is awesome and so ripp-off-able. Nice idea: talk to an old lady about my Grandma dying.

I think all my Grandparents died as millionaires (in assets anyway) and so far I inherited a hankie (handy if I ever get another cold.) And some wisdom, right?

WEST COAST SUMMER HOLIDAY ADVENTURES………….

Scott Brown is reading about music theory, and I am telling funny camping stories on the plane……….. blab……. Everyone likes the one about my trip to Hornby Island.  Lucianno Pavarotti has a summer place there. Would love to camp next to him and decide to learn the violin, and drive him nuts.) We (Tracy-Lyn, our friend Olena´and her 5-year old son) had a night time summer bar-b-que on the huge beach at Tribune Bay. I was playing bongos when were asked to join in with 40 teenagers at a beach fire. I was surrounded by these cats and got them all singing HAPPY TOGETHER, with me on acoustic guitar. They had no other music. Not a maracca between all of them. Looked like rich kids too. All perfect teeth and happy. I played some songs (they didn’t know HONEY TONK MAN), and I then handed the guitar to another guy (Mr. Angry Boy) who played: “GET DRUNK GET DRUNK TONIGHT” and also his own composition: “GET FUCKED GET FUCKED TONIGHT.” I don’t like to use such language in this family-oriented road report, but at the same time, I can not compromise MR. Angry Boy’s artistic vision.

We made our graceful exit from the teenage beach party, and I heard a teen tell his teen girlfriend: “That guy with the guitar and bongos was COOL!”, when we walked out. I like being cool. Hadn’t rocked out at a teenage beach party for years. Absolutely perfect white sandy beach there, warm water. Like a ’50s beach movie, today-style.

There was also a clothing-optional beach next to that one. I had never been to a nude beach before, never really thought about it. I thought every beach was a nude beach. This one had 2 old men standing in the water up to their knees, with arms folded, like old Roman guards, with their old wieners pointing at the people they stared at. Stupid old men.  A bunch of young people showed up and the stupid old men left. I don’t wear glasses while trying to go swimming, so I can just assume that this was the action on the big nude beach that day. I would rather go where nobody’s around. Any day.

I also told my fellow airplane passengers the story about the 10-year-old girl at Horne Lake Provincial Park who was too prissy, (or stupid) to use the nice clean pit toilets, so she decided to try to take a poo right beside the road. Feet on the ground, hands on the ground, back arched up in the air. We drove right by her when we left, and of course you have to look at something so weird, and she was Ok with that. Not even embarrassed. If this is the future of the entertainment industry, I will have to pass on attending live shows.

We have earned this summer season of fun fun. All winter, Tracy and I managed to sift, seed, fertilize and grow some grass on the ex-jungle lot on Protection Island. Ever wonder how many big bags of grass seed it takes to make a lawn? A lot. Tricky thing about building anything on an Island is the huge obstacle of having to bring everything over, of course. Thank God I have a 5 acre park next door to steal dirt from. Ever wonder how much dirt it takes to make a lawn? We set a deadline of Bathtub Weekend (Nanaimo’s Summer Marine festival) as the date to have our amazing 100′-long sandstone wall finished. (I will save you scanning the report; we made the deadline!) If I had charged myself $ for all of the work I’m doing on this Protection Island lot, I’d be rich. I also built a wooden platform for a nice little outdoor inflatable swimming pool, a steam sauna and an outdoor shower stall. Last year I hung a solar water bag from a big old fir tree. That was the spa; a water bag hanging from a tree. Tracy said that I really should set up a shower stall cos some people are shy about showering outdoors. Who’s looking? The Lord? The birds?

Everyone is telling me that we bought West Coast property just at the right time. Cool. Land values went nuts on our little Island. I always thought that it was all seriously under-valued. Mr. scientist-dude who bought same time as us, 2 lots away, just sold. Tripled his dough. He has lots of money for science now. I could sell our place now and hire a vegi-hot-dog cart to follow me around this summer.

BIKES AND BAR-B-QUES…………..

It is the middle of summer as I write this (I will backtrack) and we just had 4 days off from the Trooper Ontario tour. My buddy Jim Survis (and his wife Cheryl), former Trooper roadie (now with Cheap Trick and Aerosmith), hosted a bar-b-que in his fancy corner of Nanaimo. A cool old dude from across the street (Howie James!) played every acoustic guitar song ever written, while Jim did rock lead with a tiny amp in the back yard. I walked into the back garden, Howie was sitting, strumming, and Jim was rocking out with bald head, signed GRETSCH electric and sunglasses. I played acoustic dulcimer and space-jammed all evening, sat on the summer lawn in my seafaring day outfit and made experimental music with all the bar-b-que people. There was a headband guy there who didn’t like me, and some other wonderful salads at this jam and I deal with the last overcooked vegi-burgers.

On these little summer tour breaks I don’t even bother falling out of road mode. I stay psychologically silly. I just act as if Frankie is still around.

The next day, same deal is swung (outdoor party) on the other side of town where my 17 year-old nephew Jacob has a send-off (moving to Vancouver) where I ate chips and made a fool of myself on a trampoline. Another 17 year-old rock guy played semi-hacky acoustic guitar, (and almost died in a car crash a couple weeks later  -  drunk driver hit his car). Jacob never did move to Vancouver this year. As I type, Tracy is re-upholstering some chairs for his new ghetto apartment, 2 blocks from here. (Maybe he can help eat some of the salmon in our freezer over the winter.)

I am trying to get Tracy to re-upholster the black banana seat for a ’70s mustang bike. I am collecting and restoring old bikes this summer, as a new hobby.

So I finally got freed-up from the summer lawn parties enough to take a couple friends on a camping adventure to Horne Lake. With the 12′ Zodiac on the roof of the Toyota, we drove down the Island highway, tent set up on a sandy beach, warm lake, nobody around, good food, lots of swimming. I was actually a bit sore from swimming so much. That is A LOT of swimming. It is the peak of summer, hot, festive.  Watched the sunrise over the lake. Magical. Stand on the side of the Zodiac and dive in. Quite a contrast from the screaming rock shows a few days ago.

Our white cedar-shingle studio in Nanaimo stays cool in the hot summer, and I am barely there. Not much piano practising. Wow, it is HOT out. I LOVE IT. Zodiac goes on the ocean, I stand on the edge and dive right into the harbour. Doesn’t matter who I am taking over to Protection Island, I always stop and dive in, and I’m not the only one. Can’t believe how warm the sea is this year.

Ate too much curry, though.

I spent the summer Trooper tour looking for old mustang banana-seat bikes in very town. No finds. You know the ones with the sissy bars that everyone grew up with, grew out of and sent to the dumps all across this great land. Guys in bike shops laugh at me when I ask if there are any still around. Quite rude. I have been looking for over 10 years, finally I decide to ask a local guy I know who restores old motorbikes. He has a few acres of  ”take what you want” and I found the EXACT type of frame that I had when I was a kid.  AMAZING.  Choked me up. I have wept at Van Gough’s Irises, but never at a rusty old bike frame, so I didn’t. The thing was seized right up, and bit-by-bit I get it loose. At that point, suddenly, in my life, bikes started to appear, and the Protection Collection started to grow. Have 9 banana bikes now.  Am currently working on mountain bikes. There is a local bike tech who does the real re$toration, and I just tinker and paint bikes for fun. We had more people than bikes (as guests) on Protection Island this year, so I need more bikes yet. Everyone forms a bike gang and goes to the lighthouse. This is my dream. Simple dreams of Gulf Island fun. The bikes are very clean and colourful when I am finished with them. Groovy bikes, oh ya!

I CAN’T STOP THIS SUMMER HOLIDAY TALK……………….

You know, a person could spend their whole life exploring the west coast of Canada and not see it all. I am starting with Islands and Provincial Parks. The Provincial Parks all have decent outhouses and are always at spectacular locations. All of the best beaches on the coast are at Provincial Parks (other than White Rock and Parksville, I guess). All this stuff is so accessible if you are into exploring it. I am totally into this. There was an era when I would hippy-out (to the best of my ability), go to remote places all summer, never pay camping fees and hope that the raccoons don’t eat the cheezies. One summer, when I was 14, I decided to learn the French Horn by going camping with one. I made Moose noises and am lucky that it didn’t attract a mate. These days, I put them in a plastic cooler, (the cheezies), pay the fees, drive the car, drive the boat. Easy and just as much fun, and equally private (just go to popular spots on Tuesdays and Wednesdays). We have camping down to a system now. Little bar-b-que, lights, dry soups, kava kava to get high on. This is a way of life in the summer. I love it.

So, we take mini-trips, alternating between the ocean and fresh water. Island, lake, Island, river…….Go to a different place each time. These are summer road trips to take a break from the Trooper summer road trips. A holiday inside a holiday. I just buy food for the carcasses, gas for the car and 2-hp Honda 4-stroke, the odd ferry boat fee, and sunscreen. Lay around, swim, eat, tell stories. Road stories.

Where did the last road report end?

You know I have never gone back and read any of the old ones. I just assume they are excellent, and I look at the pictures. Had we played Sunshine Village in Banff yet? Had our tour manager of 7 years (Mike Pacholuk) left yet? He went off on tour with Willy Nelson, and we negotiated another Mike to replace him. The new guy, Mike Sutcliffe, is also from Vancouver Island, and an excellent sound man. From one Mike to the next, Huge boots to fill. Hope he has FUN.

Banff had the BEST gourmet deli food back stage, and a nice guy brought more when it ran low. We had luxury hotel rooms both in Banff and up the ski hill as well, I recall. We played twice right? The second show was a bit delayed because some instruments got left behind, or something, and the gondola takes 20 minutes to breeze its way up the mountain. I had more backstage time than I needed and I ate accordingly. There was a set of Troopette girls ready to sing onstage, and I had new polarized sunglasses from Scott (my birthday present). Do not play a ski hill without sunglasses.

I spent the previous day in Nanaimo, a whole day, filling over sixty 5-gallon buckets with navy-jac. Shovel to bucket, lifting buckets onto a truck, driving to the wharf, carrying the buckets down the dock, onto a barge, over to Protection, up the dock, onto a truck, into the lot. Each bucket weighs 50 to 75 pounds. It took me ALL DAY. All by  myself. This is going to be one excellent rock wall !!!!!!   I got to drive the totally overloaded barge. That was the most fun I had all week (until the Sunshine Village ski gig, of course!)  The skipper told me (Gilligan) to start throwing buckets off if the sea starts to get choppy. If you ever get to drive a barge, go for it. FUN! Especially small aluminium ones with decent motors! They GLIDE! Wow! Bottom line was that I was waaaaaaaaay too sore to ski at the Banff gig.

Smitty and Dave (new lighting guy) and I took the big alpine chair-lift to the top, on the morning of gig day, and my body was junk. I could barely stand. Is it just me, or are the green runs REALLY steep? Muscles were rubber. I fell down right away, rolled around and down the hill a bit, and told the guys to go on ahead. I slooowly walked back up the ski hill to the chair-lift (refused a skidoo ride) and spent the rest of the beautiful morning zenning-out on the chair-lifts. I had to BS the operators each time, cos you are really supposed to be out skiing, not just zoning in on the scenery. But what’s wrong with just riding chair-lifts and looking at the beautiful mountains? THE HILLS ARE ALIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!

You know, Frankie is an adrenaline person. I’m not. He won’t ski on tour cos he goes too crazy, and he knows it. He could get seriously injured. He will drive for 2 days to try a new roller coaster, and that is Ok cos that is during his time off. I like slow stuff. I like to meditate on warm beaches in the raw all summer with water on my toes. Herbal tea is also quite nice. Being bound-up in plastic boots flying down a cold mountain is too scary for me. I CAN ski, just isn’t my thing, I guess.

That is all I can tell you about Banff.
The gigs were solid, too many beautiful people to count. Didn’t look like a welfare crowd. The hippest lids and whitest teeth in the land.

Every town we play is so different from the next. Some towns have all bad teeth. God Bless ‘em. Banff has people from all over the world, of course. I think rich people marry classically good-looking people and have beautiful kids, and after awhile it is all too beautiful. There is a scientific fact here. We played on an elevated stage, with a concrete overhang which I banged my head on, despite the warnings. People gracefully snowboarded down the hill and stopped by the stage. Like colourful birds landing in a fountain. Hundreds of people gather at the stage at the bottom of the ski hill. What a gas. I met people from wild countries, talked about old and new synthesizers.

That is all I remember. Let me guess, long drive back to Vancouver and Scott (and DAVE) and I race to catch the ferry home. I have 3 big cups of orange tea and the guys have squash curry soup and I rave about being back on the West Coast. I look around the Ferry-boat crowd to see if anyone is playing an acoustic guitar and check the pamphlet rack to see if any of the Island have new promo maps for me.

We then played a few more shows, and I lost all my notes.
This is what I remember:

April 7th 2005 REDCLIFF, AB

Tons of fried food backstage. 2 trays before the show, 2 after the show. Made new friends, talked at the T-Shirt booth, avoiding the second round of fried everythings. Played in a super old hotel, old restaurant used as dressing room with 2 nice old gals cooking fried food for the patrons. Old carpets going up old stairways to a backstage hotel room upstairs. I really like this, reminds me of the places I always played in small towns in the ’80s. We stayed that day at a decent hotel in Medicine Hat, down the road. A hot water hose was running into the pool. I sprayed hot water everywhere. Nobody there, had a sauna, sat around, swam all day. Read books. Didn’t work too hard.

April 8th,9th  2005    Regina, SK    Casino Regina

I wear a long green trench coat everywhere. I think it is cool, don’t know what anyone else thinks.  I forgot it at the casino where we were playing for 2 days. Asked the crew to try to find it, they couldn’t find it. I walked the skywalk link from the luxury hotel to the casino. The green trench coat was on a chair on the stage. Only thing on the stage. Trooper is using new in-ear monitors. I can hear everything, but organ is too loud, trying to get new Mike to show me how to adjust this. Working on this detail. Mike puts Smitty’s speaker cabinet backstage. Ra asks him to put it back onstage. There is a bad vibe, Mike gets mad. I listened to the drum solo up front. The staff were all saying how LOUD it is. I thought it was really quiet, cos I could hear them all talking about how LOUD it is. Rained for 2 days. I walked around Regina, bought some nice celtic knot patches for my BC Ferries jacket. Had visions of pirate jackets that I still haven’t acted on.

April 10th, 2005    Moose Jaw, SK    Cultural Centre

Totally cool theatre, right? Talked to piano student, long drive there and back……….

April 22nd, 2005    Yorkton, SK    Parkland Agriplex

Told everyone that my Grandmother played Church organ here in the 1920s, but as always, nobody cares…………..

April 23rd, 2005    Dauphin, MB    D.M.C.C. Arena

Talked about seeing Dwight Yokum last time we were there………….day before my birthday, made it home the next day and had a nice midnight dinner.

May 5th, 2005    Penticton, BC    Blue Mule

Ra took everyone to a wonderful seafood restaurant before the show. SALTYS.  Had coconut lime soup. Talked about Gilligan’s Island. Big funny picture of Chilliwack posed with a big blue mule backstage. Little sandwiches. Told the story about the staircase that someone left a beer bottle on when I played there in 1987, and I slid and landed at the bottom and went onstage in shock. Played with a big black drummer then, Vietnam vet, who got hopelessly hammered on beer and threw his sticks into the crowd. Someone must have been injured by that. I didn’t stick around to find out. RAN home from the gig. It was a bad vibe. That drummer scared me after a few days of him ranting, not sleeping. He ended every song the same way, big show ending da da da da da da da da da da da da!!!!!!!!!!!!!

May 6th, 2005    Black Diamond, AB    Black Diamond Hotel

Packed, packed dance hall, loud crowd. Stayed in a modern hotel in Okotoks. However you spell it. Tracy’s Mom lives there. Had a nice hang out, a few good laughs. Heather, our Promotions lady was also at the gig, and I played Amazing Grace poorly on the harmonica for her. Girls were barfing their brains out in the can. Constantly, or so I am told. Could be that way at every gig for all I know. Long drives, ……………

WHEW!
LET’S START THE SUMMER TOUR!!!!!!!!!