The National Post has a feature called the "Diary". Each week,
excerpts from a selected personage's diary (likely kept specifically at
the Post's request) are published from Monday to Friday. Today my
boyfriend informed me that last week's diarist was Luke Doucet!
Unfortunately, boyfriend dearest did not think to actually save any of these articles for me, but I did manage to find all but Friday's article online. Enjoy!
Monday, April 14, 2008
My wife, Melissa, drove me into Toronto's Pearson International
Airport from our new (old) home in Hamilton. In the back of our beat-up
2000 GM Safari is my beloved Gretsch White Falcon guitar, which I will
need for my gig in Calgary.
It is the weekend of the Juno awards
and I have accepted a solo gig to help cover the cost of getting to the
Juno Cup hockey game, which is truly what excites me about the upcoming
weekend. Also in the back of our van sits my massive, 100-pound bag of
goaltending equipment. While not so beloved as the Falcon, the pads
& sticks are responsible for the butterflies I am carrying in my
guts. See, I only play hockey once or twice a year and yet will have
the ridiculous honour of sharing the bench (and the ice) with some of
my childhood heroes, both from my own community of Canadian musicians
but also a gathering of elite NHL alumni
for whom I am charged with
protecting the net -- a task I have not really embraced since I played
for the North Winnipeg Suns when I was 11.
While this day began
leisurely enough (a 3 p.m. departure is so civilized and rare in my
world), just as I step onto the gangplank of the shiny Boeing 767, the
tranquility of my nervous daydreams of hockey heroism is rudely
interrupted by the vibrations in my breast pocket. My BlackBerry needs
attention: Maybe a bottle or a diaper change. A flurry of email
activity pours into my hand.
It turns out that upon my arrival in
Calgary, instead of having dinner with my cousins Julia and Sylvia, I
will now be rushing to the Jubilee Auditorium to open a concert for my
punk-rocker-turned-country-star buddy Corb Lund. It appears the
scheduled opener got hung up at the border. While a high-profile gig is
always good news, the thought of performing solo in front of 3,000
people is a bit daunting
especially when they are die hard fans of
someone like Corby, whose legions are loyal to an almost Tragically
Hip-like degree, making the task of warming them up all the more
delicate.
Upon landing in Calgary, I dump my stuff into a taxi
and head to the theatre where I'm told I have five minutes to set up my
gear and do a brief soundcheck before the doors will open. I am the
world's fastest soundcheck (they are often overblown and unnecessary
affairs) and thus am ready to play in no time. "Check, check
one two
tisk tisk" and a few "clangs" on my trusty White Falcon and I'm
satisfied. Just enough time for a warm can of Molson Canadian before
it's curtain time .
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Last night's gig turned out to be easier than expected. Corb Lund's
fans are good folk. Since they are stuck in their seats and can't
really chit-chat in the theatre setting, I was able to gently lure them
in with a minimal dose of smartassed banter and a few of my little
country rock songs
a delicate balancing act that can fail at the first
murmurs of "we want Corb!" which thankfully never overtook my set.
After
the show we all climbed onto the tour bus for the three-hour journey to
Corb's adopted hometown of Edmonton, where it turns out my band will be
flying in so we can play the massive Rexall Centre with the full
firepower of The White Falcon (yes
I named my band after my beloved
Gretsch guitar). After a few beers, I finally manage to fall asleep
somewhere between Calgary and Red Deer. I have a decade-old history
with insomnia that rock 'n' roll tour buses only exacerbate. For some
people, the bus rocks them to sleep much like a fetus in the womb. For
me, a 45-foot-long torpedo full of musicians is still just a
45-foot-long torpedo full of musicians. The very minute the driver even
touches the brake, I brace myself in my coffin-like bunk for the crunch
of twisting steel and exploding glass that would signal an abrupt end
to the night's travels --if not our very lives
I know that is a
macabre way of looking at things, but think about it:We sleep on the
freeway --at 120 kilometres per hour. Does beat the hell out of driving
in a van though, I will say that.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
The Edmonton show is a big deal. Corb is a star in these parts, and
his fans have been waiting to see their hero in the house Gretzky built
for a very long time. I'm sure I wasn't the only one thinking, "Holy
s--t
the bass player of the seminal punk rock band the Smalls is
headlining the Rexall Centre as a country singer!" My fear, upon
glancing out at the endless expanse of rural Alberta might not care
much for this rock 'n' roll city boy from out east (I can only wave my
Winnipeg banner for so long before people point out that I haven't
lived there in 15 years).
It's showtime. Once again, I may have
been hasty in my assessment of this crowd. They are a pretty diverse
bunch. Both the urban artsy folk and dyed-in-the-cowboy hats and big
belt buckles, is that the good ol' boys from wool Alberta cowhands seem
well represented. We turn up our guitars and see how much Crazy Horse
they will tolerate from the White Falcon.
After 45 minutes and no
real casualties, we salute the people of northern Alberta and head deep
into the annals of Oiler headquarters, satisfied that we'd honoured
both the tradition of excellence in that building, and that of the band
who were about to grace the same stage.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Last
night's post-gig after-party was a classic one. Is the Canadian punk
rock/dirty hippy house party strictly a prairie thing? Just when I
think they are extinct (or I have outgrown them) I find myself in
Winnipeg at Christmastime (or Edmonton on tour), and its as if the same
20 people have been sitting in the same smoky kitchen listening to Neil
Young for the last 15 years.
This morning, after brunch at
Edmonton's Cafe Mozaic, I get a lift back to Calgary from my buddy
Gravy, the drummer from Shout Out Out Out Out. We are both playing in
this evening's Juno Cup charity hockey game. Strangely, I am the
veteran here, having played the event three times in a row. Once at the
arena, I head almost straight to the dressing room, skipping most of
the pre-game fanfare. It will take me almost an hour to get into my
goalie pads, and a few weeks back Jim Cuddy made a point of berating me
for my tardiness at another event. Since my only stated objective is to
keep Blue Rodeo's taller front man off the scoreboard, I figure I
should at least attempt to show that I mean business by being on the
ice on time.
The dressing room culture is something to behold.
This is one of those fly-on-the-wall moments that I could retire off of
if only I could bottle it. Paul Coffee, Mark Napier, Geoff Courtnall,
Lanny MacDonald, Doug Gilmore, Bob Probert, Brad Delgarno
all
exchanging pre-game (and most importantly: post-career) barbs and jabs
about the flaws in one another's pending game.
The game itself
was a blur. It may be because my hair was dangling in my eyes the whole
time but regardless of my excuses, Jim Cuddy did eventually sneak one
little garbage goal past me. That I stuffed him good a few minutes
earlier is the story I plan to recycle when the weekend fades into my
selective memory.
"There's the shirt that I like!"
"It was nice singing with you this evening."