The Phog Lounge rules. We love it there so much. It is one of those magical, mystical places you will tell your great  grandchildren about in the distant future and they will gasp in awe at the fact that wondrous musical establishments like the phog actually existed. Phog Tom is always up front, snapping pictures of the band and cheering them on. Poorfolk last played there far too long ago with Ryder’s old band Kids These Days. That was the night Maurakis (Poorfolk’s old drummer) fell asleep with his eyes open. 

Anyways we were so happy to be playing with both the Neins Circa and Young and Sexy, both from Vancouver and both fantastic. Once again it was an other-worldly evening, filled with big-wheeled trucks and shots of jameson.

The Neins Circa:

Poorfolk:

The Mohawk Lodge:

Somewhere in all the craziness we didn’t get any shots of Young and Sexy, who play wonderful pop music with unpredictable (yet magnificent) key changes and bang-on harmonies. We’ll blame that on the Jameson (like so many other of life’s blunders) But we did get a nice group shot of the whole lot in front of the phog. And a great shot of some jocko’s sweet wheels. (small testicles)

Think this first picture is on the way to Guelph – if not, it’s from somewhere closeby. Plus there is a rainbow and dave looks like he plays in a grunge band. Try to find dave.

We didn’t take many pictures in Guelph – just an outside and inside shot – hopefully we can find more.  Nice place the Albion is though. Thanks to Spencer for having us.

There are another week of shows and diaries to be posted.     We’re in catch-up and recovery mode so bookmark this page and check back.    Thanks to everyone who came out to the shows and those who put us on their couch.    So many amazing people.    We’re very grateful.      

London was a blast. Thanks so much to Olenka for putting on the show. The Lava Lamps started the night off and were wonderful. More words to come.

After driving 7 hours from London, we played a house party in Ottawa.   It was a great party for a Sunday night with Collapsing Opposites, Bible Belts and Mount Royal.     Unfortunately, moments after this photo was taken and only 2.5 songs into The Mohawk Lodge set, the cops showed up… busted!    Poorfolk didn’t even get to play… Collapsing Opposites.    More blogness to come! 

We played a fun day show at the Friendship Cove with Collapsing Opposites, Bible Belts, The Clips, and Culture Reject…blog to come… Japandroids:  Clips, Japandroids, Poorfolk: Michael of Culture Reject and Matt:  Early in the day:Merch tables:  

 The Decarie is bumper to bumper in its typical fashion.  Those of us in the back slowly rise from awkward slumber and gaze at the Mount and observatory in the distance.  Most of us have called this place home before and while we never pass up an opportunity to return, our reunion is often heavy.  Between the parties and music we find ourselves having tender, nostalgic moments while, for example, pissing in an alley off The Main.  You can never go back home. 

We talk of car theft.  More specifically, van theft.  People recount nightmare stories of bands losing everything in the middle of a tour.  We vow to play our gear by the books.  We will never leave it alone and we will treat Shaniqua like the precious flower she is.   We see another van and try to guess which Pop Montreal act it is.

Festival headquarters is an old mansion on Sherbrook and offers, with registration, some much needed drinks and chocolate. (Dave later eats too many of these in the van and drives the rest of us crazy until he has a sugar crash and passes out.)  We fool around here for a while and then move on to the venue.  Matt does not look well.  He has been suppressing some kind of sickness for days now and it appears to have caught up with him.  Dave analyses his phlegm…diagnosis: bronchitis.  Prognosis: negative.  Dave takes him to get some soup while the rest of us set up. 

Festivals are tough.  When there is so much going on in such a small area you never know what to expect.  Most of our usual Montreal crowd has apologetically and understandably gone to Nick Cave; just one of the many talents performing at the same time we are.  We brace for an intimate audience. 

Shaniqua is parked right outside the club.  She is within view, but she is alone.  Jon goes out to retrieve something and finds her back- side door has been tampered with.  Someone has popped the lock casing off in an attempt to violate our baby, and make away with our lives.  Bastard.  Luckily a stupid bastard… but a bastard nonetheless.  Ryder enters the van to survey and finds his laptop – the central nervous system of the White Whale – just inches from the door.  We give thanks to incompetent car thieves.  Unfortunately, his skills may improve.  Beware the heartless.

Our nerves settle as the night begins.  A great audience fills up the club and Michael O’Connell, aka Culture Reject, has brought two extra players to add to his usual minimal line up of himself and his wife Karri North.  The addition of horns and percussion to his layered and catchy material has us mesmerized while singing along.  Seeing at least one other band a night, while on tour, can leave one feeling indifferent to other peoples music, and so it is relieving to find that we can still be sucked in to what got us started in the first place…good music.

 Poorfolk play next and we sweat it out on the cramped stage.  We play with energy and grit; a back beat behind us which belies Mat’s state.  The Lodge takes the stage and again we loose ourselves in the music like everyone is in top shape.  It isn’t until after we play, while we’re packing up the gear, that we find Matt hiding behind Shaniqua, hacking up a lung. 

Drumming takes energy and with our type of music if that energy isn’t there, the rest of the band suffers…there just isn’t anything to build on and this makes you feel naked.  Suddenly, all the affections we dawn, all our posturing, seems fake…and this is one of the worst feelings around.  We are, after all, a group of older guys still trying to live like we’re nineteen.  We cherish this for the most part, but it can sting when brought out in certain lights.

Not to be outdone, Octoberman, who have also relocated from Vancouver to Toronto, hit the stage with a new rhythm section.  With the rock turned up these guys played all the familiar songs with confidence and swagger, and the addition of Nathan Lawr on drums and Tavo Diaz on bass gave these tunes a slightly different feel.  The guitars were in our face while the backbeat kept us grounded…which makes for great rock.

We are all, but Matt, drunk and eager to party as we finish loading.  It takes forever to decide what to do with the gear and Matt, growing impatient waiting in the driver’s seat, finally barks out the plan.  It is augmented by the addition of more characters.  The bands, plus a number of guests pile into Shaniqua and we head off to drop the gear at Dave’s.  Over the laughing and obnoxious behavior in the van Matt asks for directions.  Ignored…he threatens to shank someone.  We go silent and guide our diseased chauffer.  He has played like a champ tonight and now his sobriety has left him babysitting us all.  We haul the gear up narrow stairs, then hit the street.  Matt crashes out in Shaniqua…a badge of honor lays across his pain ridden and congested chest.

  We are all happy to be back on the road today.  Spending a day off in our home town was surreal and un-nerving for most of us.  Scott is figity and as we pack he repeats the same line over and over…”just get me the fuck out of here.” When we get to the show we find a mess of a sound system and Ryan Kemp the promoter trying desperately to fix it.  Dave goes to work with him and within an hour they have fixed many of the glitches.  We have one working moniter and two P.A. speakers.  All we need.   We are treated to a very small but appreciative audience at the Montreal House.  We play like the house is packed because we are so happy to be on stage again and suddenly the night before seems like ages ago.  Our fans buy us beer and shoot the breeze after the show.  Thanks to Mike, who is a “Crime and trauma scene cleaner”, for the praise and beer.  If anyone has any homicide or suicide related messes to clean up, contact us for more information on this young professional…perhaps the Townhouse in Sudbury? 

I’ll take this rare moment to write in first person. I am sitting in my living room right now – and for the first time in two weeks I have not played a set with either of the bands touring with me now. I am here because we had a day off today and found ourselves close to home. The decision was somewhat reluctant as we woke at the Blair Itch Project because of our determination to stay in the delicate mode we’ve assumed as a group. We deal with it pragmatically…we estimate the cost of driving to Peterborough and catching up with chores: laundry, press, e-vites etc (a moment: leaving a parking lot in Sault st. Marie Ryder started the van and rolled out with his laptop in his arm out the window…trying to find a signal.) and decide that it makes more “sense” to go back to Ottawa, where we have beds and laundry for free. We take a while to admit that we want to be pampered for a night…it seems weak. We joked as we rolled into this city about separation anxiety. We tell each other, “it’s okay to call me tonight for anything”. Then there is a sudden scrap over the light controls… “Go fuck yourself shit wad!” then the usual brief silence…then we laugh.

***note: Evidence of group mode is seen in my apparent lack of ability to write for more than a few lines in first person…I have become the group.

So, I am sitting surrounded by our gear, and a friend of mine is chatting with my roommate in the next room.They are somewhat alien to me right now.

When I got home I showered for about an hour and walked in to my room to find that my creative roommate, Cynthia, rearranged what was a design and sanitary disaster when I left. Everything clean and orderly; a warm and natural feel. I burst into her room and yell at her “Stop Making My Life Better!” She laughs and tells me to fuck myself. I lie on my bed. After a while I go down the street to my old place of employment, the clocktower brew pub, and find myself in a familiar place, with ‘other’ friends surrounding me. I am uncomfortable. I love those people and yet found myself rushing through my beer and perogies. I tell a few stories…shaking and figiting like my four year old nephew…and try to analyze my nerves. There are consequences here. That could be it. I think up some reason to call Jon: “we should get some strings and picks tomorrow.” Whatever. I go home and stall outside my place where we’ve left the empty u-haul. I check its tires and gaze at it for a while. Jon texts me. “Party?” He and Ryder are thinking of going out…similar restlessness, but I have to do laundry. I tell him I plan on assuming the fetal possition in the corner of my room and shaking until we leave.

Dave, I believe, is two hours deep into a four hour bath. He treaded lightly in the Blair Itch Project and slept in the van. On the drive home I promised to not even brush his person with anything that entered that hole. I failed immediately. My feet are on his lap as soon as I fall asleep beside him. I woke to him methodically wrapping them up with my leather jacket…retreaved with his usual precision from the intricate packing of Shaniqua’s rear.

Matt I think has taken inventory of his items and begins planing out the priming of Shaniqua set for the next day: oil change, diagnostic, break fluid, and a picture of her with his boys at the garage. He lies with Andrea and holds a silly grin as he recalls the last few weeks. He will collect us at two o’clock tomorrow or we will suffer.

I listen to the dryer and peer out the window. The U-Haul is safe. I wait for Shaniqua.

Ryder and Scott have been here before.  As the bartender at the Townhouse slips us the keys to the band room in the basement the memories come back to them.  Flashes of last September with the Lodge at the townhouse:  many strangers arm in arm singing, dancing ankle deep in cans of beer spilt over the couches and carpets we will later sleep on. C.L. (of Octoberman) getting punched in the face trying to break up a fight.  Arch doing a casual tour of the party in only his ‘tighty whities’…including a stint on the exercise bike… and playing our sets somewhere in there.

The ‘Blair Itch Project’ is not the Townhouse, but the basement of this fine establishment.  It looks like, and we believe must be, a murder sight.  A free room in which the bands can come and go, drink or sleep or warm up before going on stage is always appreciated in theory.  The only problem lies in the fact that we often use these rooms.  They leave with you the next day, even if not in reality, your mind cannot get rid of the sensation of sleeping and waking in a dank, dark, and smelly hole.  We subconsciously scratch our arms and scalps when they are mentioned and start considering which of our personal effects should be burnt.

Despite the itching, we have a great night.  We start with a great meal at the Laughing Buddha next door to the townhouse and get to the Townhouse to find a few friends from last year and a couple other Birthday celebrations going on.  We play our sets back to back and wind up with enough courage to brave the basement once again.  We laugh and drink until it doesn’t itch anymore.  Matt and Dave call dibs on sleeping in the van and disappear for the night…uninfected.  Bastards.