We haven’t been in any one place long enough for the tires on the Blue Whale to cool down. At some point, one of the stops we’ll make will be home. The van is eating the white lines on the highway like Pac Man. Chasing us through the maze are the ghosts of many restless travelers… snake-oil salesmen, sad country singers, freaks, geeks and malnourished carnies. Our love affair with Saskatoon felt as fleeting as ever. I awoke on Gramma’s sofa at the farm after a 2 hour dance with unconsciousness. Winnipeg Beckoned. Not even enough time for a quick “whore-bath” (as my wife April is fond of saying) in the sink to freshen up before heading out again. We were the definition of haggard as we made our way East. Some of Steve’s kin were waiting in Winnipeg to greet us upon arrival. Blood is thicker than water. Something in the air at the Royal Albert made us want to Kill Everyone Now. Steve broke his kick pedal. I broke a string. Joey and Rob broke hearts with their good looks and charm. Slept in a hotel room and dreamt of canned revolvers and an armed confrontation with Method Man on horseback. Keith Moon allegedly was a man of refined tastes. He liked to peel the wallpaper from the walls in hotel rooms to reveal the pencil markings left by the contractors. Every time we get a room, I think of the hidden hieroglyphs that might be waiting just under that thin veil of decorative paper. We rose and had a quick breakfast with Steve’s parents. The next stretch would be a long drive homeward interrupted only by brief bouts of primal screaming and volume abuse in the towns of Thunder Bay and Ajax. For anyone not in the know, the drive to T-Bay from Winnipeg is about 8 hours. The drive to Ajax after that is about 18 Hours. Our sets each night are a tidy 30 minutes. Halloween weekend was upon us. There were a lot of costumed party people at the Black Pirate Pub in Thunder Bay. They screamed and jumped and fought and bared their terrible teeth at us while we played. It was hard to leave our friends there behind but we had to get going so we could make it through the void of Western Ontario in time for the next show. The last time we tried this we failed (march 2008) due to a jack-knifed truck somewhere near Marathon… we did not make it to our gig in Peterborough. But this time those ancient Gods of Rock kept our path clear. We arrived only slightly behind schedule in Ajax on Halloween night. We played our set with as much fury as we could muster. By some miracle of self restraint, Steve and I did not break anything. Steve parted ways with us then, probably to partake in some carnal ritual back in Cambridge. There was a hell-hound on our trail though, and we had to continue moving East. The van was eating the lines on the highway like Pac Man. At some point, one of the stops we’d make would be home. We hadn’t been in any one place long enough for the tires on the Blue Whale to cool down….

To experience some other random moments from this tour, please visit the Thinking Man’s Idiot.

Gratitude must be expressed to Exclaim, all the bands we played with, most of the promoters, everyone who came out to the shows, all of our friends, old and new, from across this strange continent, and to Dodge for making a cargo van of such epic fortitude. Thank you and good night,

Sean Sabatini

We crossed the invisible line back into our huge back yard. Somewhere in the vastness of it all a dinner bell is ringing faintly. We will pretend to not hear mom for a while longer. There are friends yet to play with on the way back to the house. A good many of them had come to welcome us back from the wilds in the south.

Old man winter is creeping in. He sent grey clouds to rain on our sad parade but the triumph of our return to home turf and subsequent reunion with Joey Sabatini and our B.C friends made that evening’s proceedings seem monumental. Our dear friend Joe AKA Kypes came bearing the gift that has haunted my dreams during the latter part of our trek. He has built me a new baritone guitar to weaponize sound with. After a few minor adjustments it was ready for action. The swamp-ash wood he used to construct the body resonates in time with my spiritual energy. It is a conduit for raw soul power and electricity, channeling both through it’s atoms and sending them back into the world as a pure tone, the voice of man’s primordial anguish. I am psyched as fuck to have this guitar in my arsenal. Rob had a similarly religious experience with a particular divining rod that spoke in secret tongues to him so he made a purchase of his own during our stay in Vancouver. Steve paid a visit to the Alchemy Cymbals HQ and added some new pieces to his array of irons. We stayed with friends on Saturday evening and Sunday as well. The warmth of our extended family in the west, the good food and rest, and our new weapons all made us feel ready to face the next and last stretch of battles.

The show in Kamloops had been canceled. However, Hand Of The Horsewitch saved the day and got a show booked at the last minute. They found a clearing deep in the woods and we made a bonfire from a pile of trophies claimed on the road since our first tour in 2008; splintered drum sticks, a pair of dirty panties from Thunder Bay, demos from other bands, countless empty Tim Horton’s cups, all of our gas money, a paperback collection of works written by Lester Bangs, a milk crate full of canned goods and other van food. After our set we completed the burnt offering by throwing all of our unwashed clothes into the flames, then danced bare-assed under the moonlight to honor the Great Provider, his Royal Low-ness, the Big Man Downstairs. Then he came to us as a tramp walking down some lonely rail-road tracks, and tied himself off with a broken guitar string. I gave him a vial of a fine powder which was in fact the dust from a demolished office building in Illinois which had settled on the van. He cooked it up and put it in his arm and said to us then, “you turn to me in all your worldly greed and pride, but will you turn to me when it’s your time to die?”. Then he changed into a raven and flew off into the night.

It was cold in Calgary. California was a distant memory. I have noticed that the difference in sound-man attitude between the U.S. and Canada is very much like the difference in climate. Not once have we been asked to turn our amplifiers down while South of the border, even when p.a. systems were plainly no match for the crushing sonic superiority of our gear. However, almost every date in Canada thus far has provided a sound-man with an outspoken opinion of our (consciously) unreasonable volume levels. While our choice to be loud and proud has been warmly accepted in the States, we receive a chilly reception from every Canadian with his mittened hands on a fader. We are not a bar-rock band. Get over it dudes.

Fierce volume peddlers Mares Of Thrace graced our Calgary gig with their awesome presence, as did some of our other excellent friends in the area. We drank from skulls and gnashed our teeth and then said our goodbyes. Despite being a fearsome warrior descended from a long line of hard-asses, I have a cat allergy which prevented me from having a warm place to sleep that night. While the other Sabatinis slept in the cozy confines of our buddy Nate’s house, I squeezed out a few more chest hairs in the van. I pulled another blanket over my frozen limbs and wondered why we weren’t doing this in July. It seemed like a good idea at the time… Old Man Winter is catching up to us.

2 shows in Edmonton in one day. We’ve done this before (Saint John, february 2010) but this time seemed harder, for me in particular. Both sets, one at an all ages venue and another at a pub, went off pretty well. However, by the time we were half done the second set, my brains were starting to leak out of my ears. I had an “I Scream Headache”, bad. Had to back off the mic a bit during the last 2 songs, in order to avoid blacking out. Still, running around Edmonton and rocking 2 very different crowds was a blast. It almost felt like a job. The best fucking job in the universe.

It was uncomfortably hot in Glendale, Arizona, even after the sun went down. It was a party in the parking lot behind Incision Tattoo. We ate hamburgers and chips and watched an Arizona band jam on a plywood stage out in the heat. By the time they finished up we had to move the show inside so the cops wouldn’t break up the fun. We played in the reception area and soon enough it was hot as hell in there too. Everyone was packed like sardines into that room. The energy kept rising but the set ended before combustion could occur. Despite not being a mosh kinda band, bodies were thrown around, including mine. Somehow nothing got broken.

Getting to sleep that night in the Blue Whale was difficult even though we were all exhausted. I was told that it had cooled off in Arizona of late but sleep came in short, restless bursts. By the time daylight had arrived, it was like trying to nap on the surface of the sun. We arrived in Needles, California very tired, hungry and dirty.

We pulled up to the venue in Needles, an outdoor stage in a courtyard, and hauled our gear out to play right away. We jammed under the stars, which was a nice change, for a bunch of young kids who just needed a little volume to get their mosh going. Sleep came easy this time with a cool breeze lulling us into the inkwell of unconsciousness in yet another Walmart parking lot.

Our buddies from Des Moines, Iowa, called An Airbag Saved My Life, have joined us for a few shows in California and Oregon. The Gods of Rock have kindly woven our paths together… this was an unplanned but fortunate happening. We played in a squalid punk house in Fresno that has just started doing shows. Airbag’s epically psychedelic doom warmed my heart as I watched them play. We exchanged war stories after the show and crashed out all together at the venue. We went for cheap tacos in the morning before heading out to the next show.

The police shut down the show in Chico, but not before 3 bands, ourselves included, could deliver our contraband sounds to a room full of very stoned kids and one 3 legged dog. Sadly, the local bands never got to play.

There is a large chunk of wood and wires waiting for me in Victoria, B.C. It is dreaming of my hands on it’s curves, somewhere in the dark right now. I have been dreaming of a time in the not so distant future, when sweat will run down my arms and be absorbed into it during a ritual of chaos and electricity. After this baptism, the object and I will achieve symbiosis. The blacksmith who has forged this Hammer of the Gods is one Joseph P. Egan, a friend and veteran of the noodle-fed, showerless days of tours past. The solemn beauty of Northern California rolling past and the 49th parallel that is slowly approaching day by day have only served to make the anticipation constant and increasingly difficult to suppress.

We parted ways temporarily with An Airbag Saved My Life and made our way on a day off towards Portland, Oregon. Days off have thankfully been very sparse thus far. Of course it’s nice to be relieved of duty for a short time but we’re getting tighter as a band every night and I can feel the edge dulling whenever we’ve spent too much time relaxing. Every night on tour so far has blended together… a day off feels right at first but soon enough it’s like an uncomfortable patch of radio silence is interrupting the flow. We itch collectively to get back in the saddle.

We met up with the Airbag guys for one last show in Portland before going our separate ways. Familiar faces in unfamiliar places. Some friends from Calgary who are staying in Portland surprised us at the show. For a few fleeting moments we’re not so alone in the U.S.

The gig in Seattle at the Funhouse was as fitting a farewell to the USA as we could have asked for. To honor us with his disapproval of the event, God struck the Seattle Space Needle with a bolt of lightning, which traveled down it’s towering shaft to the parking lot across the street, and into the Blue Whale as we were unloading the equipment into the venue. Thankfully, a blood ritual had been completed just moments before in the bathroom of the McDonalds just next door. The souls of the martyred squirrels must have appeased The Great King Yama enough to grant us protection from any trifling gesture from a lower deity. We played with such a burning intensity that our corpse paint was washed away under torrents of sweat. Even though the promoter hadn’t provided the animal parts or the correct controlled substances that were on our rider we took it all in stride and enjoyed the adulation that Seattle’s huddled masses threw at us in the wake of our fierce ceremonial excesses. Later we went to Luke’s place to sleep before heading back into Canada. His band, called “Sean” was one of the most stunning things we’ve come across. He muttered something about Kenny Loggins and hand-jobs before crashing out on the sofa. We slept on the floor in a spare room and hit the highway to the danger zone early the next morning.

The gig in Dallas went alright. It’s getting easier to play like we mean it despite low attendance or lack of enthusiasm from those present. The fury of our Rock is top priority… The most important thing is to maintain the purity of what it is we’re selling. The Great Sabatini’s All Purpose High Wattage Medicine Show will be traveling to your town with a potent blend of corporeal liquids and tube-driven fortitude! Come and witness the miracle of man and machine existing for a few brief moments every night in complete and horrifying accord! Destroy your t.v set! Throw away your laptops and your data-plan phones! Come on down and get saved!

The real show happened in the parking lot at the Walmart just outside Dallas city limits. A carnival of misery unfolded before us through the bird-shit splattered windows of what we have now dubbed the “Blue Whale”. Garbage was littered everywhere. The wind blew empty cans around the feet of a coyote looking for a meal in between 2 cars parked twenty feet in front of us. Beggars slouched like the undead in a sad spiral through the mess unhindered by the security van with one broken headlight that drove in circles on a spare tire again and again. The master of ceremonies had to be the armed guard standing next to the greeter in the lobby of the Walmart. Everyone in and out of the building was moving with a dull awareness of his presence. I said to the greeter, “there’s a wild dog in the parking lot”. He pointed to a thuggish looking 20 year old eating McDonalds and said “who, him?”. The greeter was old and tired looking, with an equally old and tired looking wig on his head. I looked at Steve. Steve said, “no, a coyote”. The greeter’s reply was a whispered “oh”. Despite being almost 2am the Walmart was full of young people who shared the same scavenging demeanor as the prowling coyote outside. I washed up in the bathroom and went back out to the parking lot, where a lady asked me for 7$. I made it another thirty or forty feet before a man leading his blind wife by the arm asked me for money as well. Apparently many of Dallas’s lost souls are fallout from Katrina who are still just as fucked now as they were when they lost their homes and were relocated to Texas in 2005. Just to be on the safe side, we drove 20 minutes to another Walmart parking lot to sleep uneasily until the sun would start to cook us in the belly of the Blue Whale.

The road leading away from Dallas was one long advertisement for God, Oil and McDonalds. The thousands of giant wind-turbines were mostly motionless. The pastoral beauty of the landscape was offset by the stench of oil wells and the constant roadside reminders that God will let you burn in hell for eternity if you don’t accept Jesus as your savior. This land is awesome. This is surely God’s country. This is surely a reminder for the lost to follow the right path or suffer in oblivion… to rot in hell until your soul mutates into crude oil which will then be taken from the earth and refined into gasoline so that others may travel the same roads one day and read the same signs, smell the same putrid vapors of warning.

Diablo’s is a warehouse that has recently been converted to an underground music venue in Lubbock, Texas. We played our hearts out in that vast, almost empty room and then went out into the night to find the grave of Buddy Holley. The local cemetery was, of course, closed at 2 in the morning. We slept in the van and returned in the morning to pay our respects to the fallen forefather of Rock. The cemetery is huge. Eventually, and with a little help, we found Buddy’s grave. There were many large and ornate tombstones or tombs throughout the Lubbock bone-yard but Buddy Holley’s grave was marked only by a simple plaque. We gave our salutes and hit the road for New Mexico.

Our gig in Albuquerque had been canceled. But, there was still a faint hope that we might be able to play. We rolled up on an old-school thrash show and asked if we could play. This time it worked. We played 4 songs after the last band and managed to sell a few cd’s. Strangely, one of the touring bands on the bill, called Evil Survives, are from Winnipeg, and we will be playing with them in 2 weeks in that city. Their tour trajectory is sending them back the way we came.

Time to sleep now. Tomorrow the Blue Whale sets out into the ocean of madness otherwise known as the southern United States… Westward towards Arizona.

The final bit of proof that the tour would roll on unhindered arrived when we turned on our amps in a musty basement in Champaign Illinois. The last tiny miracle was that no tubes were broken nor solders loosened by the impact on the highway in Chicago. Like a million times before, kids piled into a small room in a house in the suburbs in America to let out all of their bottled up rage and youthful energy. Despite having played on stages of various sizes to larger crowds, there will always be more glory to me in playing on the floor to a handful of people who can smell the peanut butter sandwich I had for dinner when I scream in their faces.

Damon, the promoter in Colombia, Missouri, brought his wife and kids to the show. His young daughter was wearing a Danzig shirt. The warmth of his family hanging out while we loaded our gear into the venue set the mood for the evening. As is the case most nights, we are too loud for small p.a systems. But reducing volume simply isn’t an option. The further into this tour we get, the more my intolerance for subtle nuance grows. The dirtier I am, the hungrier and more fatigued I am as we haul our amps and drums out of the back of the van, the more I need to feel the decibels in the core of my chest. The only thing that’s getting me off now is the juggernaut of sound we’re unleashing each night. My voice sounds shredded, but it’s holding up nicely. I can still manage screams even if they aren’t being heard all that much through the din.

Batteries recharged in St. Louis, MO. We got a hotel room for our first day off of the tour thus far. Showers and clean laundry for all. Our next gig is in Joplin, MO but we had ordered some shirts to be picked up in St. Louis before heading out. The screen printing guy is a fucking joke. His house has fleas apprently and he hasn’t gotten to the shirts by the time we arrive to pick up the order. We kill an hour so he can finish them up. I approved the order once he was done but upon further inspection I regret doing so. The shirts are sub par at best. I should have asked for the money back but it’s all on the road behind now. We have some new shirts that aren’t the best. So it goes.

The Cesspool Castle in Joplin is exactly what it sounds like. Gene Cesspool lives in a massive house where he throws free shows in the basement several nights a week. He videotapes every band with an old cam-corder that uses VHS tapes. The kids mostly hang out outside smoking and trying to impress their girlfriends with their deathcore pig-squeal vocals. It was like a hot topic commercial out on the sidewalk. It was fun playing the Cesspool even though the mold and dust in that basement made us all wheeze. The show was over by 9:45 so we went to a McDonalds to get some very cheap grub and abuse their wifi signal. Relatively early lights out in the Walmart parking lot. Off to Oklahoma in the morning.

Norman Oklahoma is a suburb of Oklahoma City, I think. We arrive at the venue, called the Red Room, and an employee tells us we can load in through the back in an hour. We kill some time at a local record store. We kill some more time behind the venue in the alley waiting for someone to show up and watch a homeless guy change into a suit next to a giant pile of all his earthly belongings. When nobody arrives, I inquire back at the front as to what the deal is. We are not slated to perform there that night. In fact, some nice people from the local Arts Council who are throwing a performance art event were busy organizing rows of chairs in front of the stage. They offered to let us play but we declined… it was so nice of them to offer that it would have been unfair of us to actually make them listen to us. Eventually we got in touch with the “promoter”. He had moved the “event” to another local bar called the Hidden Castle. The guys at the Castle were really sweet. They fed us pizza and informed us on the storied history of the Hidden Castle. Open for business since 1958, it seems that this was a tour stop for many old-school road warriors like BB King and Aretha Franklin. Jimi Hendrix stopped in and played one song while in the area a few days before his death. The room itself was rather large and the idea of moving our gear in and playing for the 2 dudes who ran the place was almost too much to bear. No money, no audience, no patience left. Promoter dude rolled up on his bike and we let him know we wouldn’t be playing. We went back downtown and rolled up to a small venue that was hosting the Electric Six (that band with the “Gay Bar” song?). The bar was packed. We asked if we could setup and play after the headliner for free… this tactic has worked before (Winnipeg 2008, thanks Mike) but didn’t this time. Punch in the coordinates for the nearest Walmart: ENGAGE. Watched “The Road” on Steve’s laptop in the van before crashing out. Viggo Mortenson’s character needs a bath almost as much as we do. Ok, so Oklahoma wasn’t the greatest day on tour so far. So be it. We roll up on Dallas tonight to see what the mighty state of Texas has to throw at us.

The last time we played the Sunstar Lounge in Saint John, New Brunswick, I had to pull locks of long blond hair out of the tuning heads on my guitar. The Mayor of Saint John, and also the proprieter of the Sunstar Lounge, is one Mike Rogers… our pirate cousin in the East. After our first visit to Saint John I fell in love with it, or at least the small corner of town occupied by the Sunstar. We slept in the unused rooms in the bar, amongst piles of amplifiers and retired karaoke machines. The Nymphets, touring with Jared’s elderly snot-nosed dog Mao, slept in their car with the dog. I dreamt of a tsunami of tube-driven static crushing the shores of Japan while a choir of off-pitch voices sang along to “Two Tickets To Paradise” by Eddie Money. I speculate that the Nymphets dreamt about torturing my naked flesh.

Metal Monday in Frederictin at the Capitol proved to a fruitful farewell to the Nymphets, the Maritimes and our bass player Joey. A rare instance of a decent turnout on a monday was a nice change but bittersweet nonetheless as we said our goodbyes to Jared and Johanna Nymphet. Their Rock and Roll souls provided us with a standard of fury onstage each night that we had a hard time matching. But they are neither cute nor identical twins.

Joey Sabatini’s status as President of Assholes International (a status we are fiercely proud of) prevents him from entering the United States due to diplomatic reasons (ie, jealousy from the U.S government). So, we dropped him off at the airport in Fredericton so he could fly back to Montreal. He will be meeting us again in Vancouver in a couple of weeks. Our modified equipment setup proved to work out very well during our last visit to the states in May. But there simply is no replacing Joe.

Despite acquiring work permits to play in the U.S, crossing the border was a hassle. But now we’re in the land of milk and honey and the road before us has spread it’s whorish legs, ready to take our money, standards in Hygiene, dignity and other assorted virtues. Of course, we were pleased as hell with ourselves to be over the line, even if we were a few hours behind schedule.

An old-timer who works at the Hotel Vernon wanted us to know that Babe Ruth, the Bambino himself, once lived in Worcester Massachusetts. Also that the pride of Worcester one Cornelius Kelley, was a war hero who came home from dubya-dubya one and is still celebrated today, mostly by drunk old dudes, I take it. The room we played in was dressed to look like the lower decks of a ship, hence the name, the “Ship Room”. the wheel on the wall behind the drums once steered a boat owned by Burl Ives, apparently. Doors are 3 bucks but nobody wants to pay. Patrons of the bar walk away when we let’em know what the cover charge is. A grand total of 12 bucks goes into the cash box by the end of the night, meaning 4 people actually paid. One of the local bands never shows up. It’s quiet enough in the Ship Room to hear the rain outside. We didn’t bother with being bummed out… we were too busy being triumphant to let any bad vibes ruin our chance to Rock. Hotel Walmart and “showers” in the sink let us know that we are in fact back in the U.S.

Long drive to Akron, Ohio. Last time we played at Annabell’s we had to hightail it outta there pretty fast… a brawl with the local shitty punk band and their fans was imminent and I heard that the police had been called. Keeping some idiot’s teeth as a trophy would have been little compensation for getting thrown in the slammer for the night. But our second visit was comfortably uneventful. Back to another Walmart Supercenter to sleep in the parking lot and dream of a place where we will get our guarantee and play to a crowd.

Industrial wastelands are the first signs that the lumbering giant Chicago is just around the corner. The sun was going down on stinking pools of water, abandoned neighborhoods, complex iron industrial architecture and smokestacks spewing filth as we made our approach to the windy city. The venue (Ronnies) was a cool spot, the band-folk were all really nice and a great time was had by all. We packed up and hit the road for the next Walmart Supercenter so we could crash and get some food in the morning. I put “Lift Your Skinny Fists…” on in the van and promptly fell into an easy sleep in the passenger seat while Steve drove us to our temporary evening residence. The dream was interrupted by a loud metallic smashing sound and the van lurching forward suddenly… we were in fact still driving at about 95 kph. In a fraction of a second I put it together that we had been hit. Steve made an attempt to pull over and assess the damage but the massive urban freeway didn’t give us much room to do so. The coward who smashed us disappeared quickly. Just as quickly we deduced that everyone was ok, the van appeared to still be running and that the damage might be minimal. Skeletor was the only one who sustained any injuries, having lost one of his arms. We pulled over at a gas station quite awake and high on adrenaline. The back bumper had been completely mashed in. The license plate pushed under the chassis. We borrowed a hammer from a stranger and tried in vane to smash the bumper back. We settled for taping the plate to the back window. Our guitars, the closest thing to the back door of the van, seem to be still perfectly functional. The only damage sustained was in the bumper. We eventually made our way back to the next fucking Walmart and settled in for the night, our heartbeats slowly recovering from the adrenaline overload. The only thing more exhilarating than being reminded so suddenly of our own mortality was the realization that we are indeed Odin’s fortunate Son’s. We really couldn’t be any luckier. The next morning Steve and I muse about our chance to continue this tour without looking back. Rob came strolling up to the van with his patented shit-eating grin, fresh from a sink-bath in the Walmart bathroom. “I feel like TEN BUCKS!”.

Everything almost went wrong in Quebec. For a few short minutes during setup it seemed like technical difficulties would kill any chances of a good show from the outset. The first song of the set was sloppy as hell. We are rank amateurs. The whole band stumbled for a moment. Implosion seemed imminent. We recovered quickly enough, but any kind of mojo in the performance was sorely lacking. Odin must have heard my silent prayer because the collective morale ramped up significantly by the end of the second song. We are fucking invincible Rock Gods.

Joey currently holds the high score in Tetris. He is also the second member of the band to wake up screaming on someone’s living room floor, the first being Rob “Scream Yourself To Sleep” Sabatini in the infamous Peterborough incident. It rained all the way to Moncton.

Met up with our maritime tour-mates the Nymphets at the Paramount in Moncton. I will be their acting bass player for these next 5 days as Benjamin Nymphet is busy being a Dad in Calgary. Even though I spent the last 5 days before tour cramming their setlist I was still nervous as hell about going in cold… but everything worked out ok. The Nymphets burn through their set as fast as possible but I managed to keep up with them. Tip o’ the hat to party animals/doom purveyors Bong Jovi.

Jared and Johanna Nymphet are cruel task masters who whipped me with an extension chord in the alley behind the bar after our set in Charlottetown. It seems they didn’t take kindly to me flubbing a few notes during their set. The part that stung the most was their laughter as they took turns lashing my naked back. Maybe tomorrow night I will play better.

Amplifiers once again won the battle for volume supremacy in Halifax. The P.A at Gus’ Pub declined to comment on it’s flacid performance. My voice has subsequently been shredded. The people of Halifax are rabid fans of metal. When they demanded “ONE MORE SONG” at the end of our set, we had a hard time declining… more out of some kind of vaudevillian fear of audience reprisal than any kind of masturbatory vanity reasons. I’ve read that in the early years of jazz, if someone came to a club and asked to sit in with the band, and played poorly, they would be taken out back and beaten by the angry audience members. When the frenzied people of Halifax demanded another number, it wasn’t hard to break our “no encore” rule, all exhaustion aside.

Back at Jared’s parent’s place after the show we cooked up some of the army rations that our Quebec buddies Mountains Unfold gave to us. How fitting. Tomorrow night the war on silence continues in Saint John NB.