Thursday, February 17, 2011

Working our way up the Island

Hello, folks and folkettes!

We're currently driving from Vancouver to Kelowna, so I'm racing my laptop battery, but thought we'd better get a little further caught up, before the brain hits "reset"!

A nice relaxing Sunday (Feb.6, aiyaiyai, I'm the Queen of "behind"!) at Sandra and Landon's house.  By Sunday, we had mastered their son's cappuccino maker (day one was a little less successful), so life was good.  Landon had to work once again, but the three humans and Amber spent most of the day chatting and puttering away at various chores and work.  Once Landon got home, we headed up early to our gig in Duncan.

Did I mention we were born in the wrong province???  The drive was absolutely gorgeous, despite the fog and rain that prevented us from viewing the scenery in all its glory.  Probably a good thing, or there may have been a call put in to our real estate agent...  Ocean, mountain and rainforest... followed by ocean, mountain and rainforest... followed by ocean, mountain and rainforest.  Do people who live here ever get blase about such beauty?

Sandra's mom lives in Duncan, so the four of us met up with her for dinner at... oy, this is why I should blog every day on tour -- I've completely forgotten the name of the pub!!!  So much for my restaurant report...  It was a lovely place, though, with a bunch of local brews on tap -- unfortunately, we couldn't partake as we still had to work that night!  I had a delicious vegetarian / mediterranean pizza (or rather, half of it -- the other half was taken home for lunch the next day), and Don had the BBQ chicken pizza (we had to take off early for sound check, but the other three had a much more leisurely meal).

Then we were off to the Duncan Garage Showroom.  What a beautiful little theatre it is -- nice and cosy, with great art all over the walls, and an eclectic collection of... well, collections!  From an old dentist's sink to a sculpture of the proprietor, Longevity John.  John and Georgia are such warm and generous hosts, we felt welcome immediately.  Georgia looks after the wee cafe, John looks after the music.

The venue has been put together with great care -- John says it was all done for his friend, Willie P. Bennett.  Quite the labour of love -- Willie P. would be happy to have inspired such a place.  When we arrived and started setting up, Don (being the technical geek) was practically drooling over all the equipment in the hall.  And John sure knows what he's doing on the board -- got our sounds up and sounding great in no time!

Did we mention that one of the most common comments we've heard on this tour was "I wish there were more people here to enjoy you"?  Well, this night was kind of the pinnacle of that one -- we'd have heard it a hundred times, if there had been a hundred people there.  Unfortunately, as we realized on our beautiful drive up, it was SuperBowl Sunday... AND there was a big dance happening right next door.  So our audience was... well, rather tiny.  Very enthusiastic, but... tiny.  Oh well, we had a fun evening, anyhow, and John and Georgia have given us a bunch of contacts for the next time we come out -- and we made a few new fans in the area, too.  We also got some fantastic quotes from John, so... we may not have made thousands of dollars at this gig, but we certainly would consider it a success.

The evening was videotaped as well, so as soon as we get home we'll transfer some of it on to our website so you can see us in all our lonely glory.  :-)

OK, the battery is getting low, and we still need to do a couple o' things, so we shall cover our Monday trip to Gabriola after some laptop rechargins.

Musically,
Alyssa (and Don, who's busy driving right now, and keeping an eye out for coffee shops!)

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