Canadian Tour - Day 11

(18/03/18)

Peterborough, The Garnet. Good thing running into Em first thing on arrival. Snow globe queen of Ontario. Sort of slightly shaky start, testing the grounds, an almost surreal little thing to start this tour with, sharing stage with Bird City and Wax Mannequin. Wax being the thing on this night with an irritatingly beautiful set. I will be back in a thousand years, a thousand years, a thousand… Crashed at Sean Conway’s place, socializing until the wee hours. Felt good to be back in this magic little place. Off to Ottawa next day to play Pressed. Very well attended, very good performances of all of us I guess. Haven’t seen Wax’ set that night though as leaving early to stay at my friend James Oh’s place and listen to his new recordings. Great material like expected. Third show, Musiikki Cafe in Kingston. A cafe/bar with a Finnish name in Ontario, so what can go wrong? A surprising lot in fact. I loved the Musiikki from the moment we walked in on. Cosy place, small but lovely acoustics. For some mysterious reason we had a constant buzz on the pa which got us to perform totally acoustic which turned out exactly the right thing to do. What an amazing evening. Travelling with Wax car worked out just about with the three of us. Three acoustic guitars, One electric, one banjo, one irish bouzouki, one amplifier plus some bags was pretty much testing the limits of capacity. Having a lot of people helping us to load in did what it always does — you’ll be losing track of what’s there and what’s not. Looked good though when we left to stay at Jenny’s cousin who by the way owns an impressive collection of various unicorns. This tour’s shock moment and also wakeup call (always keep track of your gear) came when we dropped off Jenny the next day to discover her brand-new electric four string wasn’t in the car. Not good. I know how this feels. That same thing happened to me a long time ago on that last punk rock tour in Finland with my 12-string guitar in Turku. Reading this actually makes me wonder how 12-string guitar and punk rock do match. Not very well I suppose. Fortunately Jenny’s instrument, other than my guitar back then, reappeared. We just forgot to load it in and left it at the bar.

Even though all the shows in Ontario were most enjoyable I will not go into all the details here. Grateful this all worked out and for performing with so many wonderful people. I think one of the best shows with that Wax Mannequin-Bird City-Mäkkelä bill we did was The Piston in Toronto. At least Bird City’s and Wax’ were stunning performances. The house shows in Kitchener (with Heather Valley and JoJo Worthington) & Hamilton (w/ Richard Garvey and Heather Valley) were heart-warming evenings in cosy places with generous hosts. The Hamilton one culminating in us hanging out passing around the guitar and playing songs to each other. Maybe a few words about St Catherines, Detour Music Hall and Guelph, ANAF. Both places radiating with a very special, unique atmosphere which matched in a way perfectly with that slightly weird, gloomy, bizarre kind of stuff I reckon we’re doing. St Catherines on a Tuesday night. That’s not really a guarantee for a packed show. And it wasn’t. Fortunately. Would have ruined the evening I suppose. The Detour Music Hall looks like a place that seen its best days long time ago but it’s that feel of faded rock'n'roll glamour that made it an especially beautiful show. Edwin Conroy jr. opening, me on second and Wax Mannequin last was just the right thing to have that snowy night in southern Ontario. The ANAF was a new thing to me. As I’ve been told later they were established after the war to provide a place for the returning Canadian soldiers to hang out, drink beer and smoke while killing time until the national economy would find a job for them. Wallpapers showing Canadian worldwar II aircrafts, war ships and — in Guelph — a line of marching soldiers in fading day light behind the performers. With the red pepper fairy lights Richard decorated the stage with the place was breathing a somewhat sombre atmosphere. Just perfect for what was happening on stage.