This is at a gig at the Newman’s Wine Vault in St. John’s, Newfoundland.

Newman’s is a legendary NL port wine that my dad enjoyed on very very rare occasions. I remember him showing me how to take it with walnuts and dark chocolate. It seemed so civilized, so classy, so of another time. And the conversation would go one of 2 ways: it would either elevate or stop entirely. We’d just sit and enjoy.

This is what happens when Geri and Andrew drink it.

Almost…

I think about the weather a lot. A lot. Most of the time I’m awake and speaking, something weather related is going through my brain and spilling out of my mouth. And since I live on the Avalon Peninsula, it’s rarely positive. Why would someone who loves skiing and motorcycling as much as i do move to the coldest, rainiest, least mountainy part of their province? Because although I think about the weather a lot, I could not know any less about it. Had no idea the weather over here was crap until the fall I moved here 10 years ago and it rained for 6 straight weeks and it hasn’t gotten much better since.

I know about as much about weather as weather knows about me.

So as I’m sitting here in the control room of the studio making a new record and looking out the window and seeing the first buds on the trees I’ve seen this spring, I’m thinking about the weather. Please enjoy a video shot one night in February after barely making to or from a poker game.

Phil

…and then it snowed today and covered all the tree buds.

14 days
12 shows
180 songs
48 stand-up sets (courtesy of John Sheehan)
3 flights
and 2600 kms driving later, we’re heading home.

Pretty standard numbers for the Newfoundland and Labrador tour.

It’s been done by most of the bands you’ve heard of from here and a few that you haven’t. It’s got a nice mix of urban and isolated; mundane and ‘mazing. You can always count on it for some descent screw ups so it will remain unconquerable. At any given stop on the itinerary, you may be the only one that knows you’re coming on the 2nd and not the 8th. Or at all. Or the only one that knows you’re planning on sleeping indoors. Or the only one that knows you need microphones. Or that humans need fruits and vegetables to survive.

Hear that light tapping on the door to your immune system? That’s scurvy. IT knows you’re on tour.

But like most tours, it’s most interesting if you grew up there.

Then the van is like a time machine for rent at $45 a day. And it has windows which is a nice perk for a time machine in that price range.

So it’s back to that MacDonald’s in Corner Brook to watch yourself snap your hand off your arm on a skateboard doing the grass gap that separated the drive-thru from the parking lot 3 days after getting your licence.

Back to that exit ramp in Grand Falls/Windsor to watch yourself and 2 others in the group mix an empty belly with fizzy vitamin C tabs and bolt from the van over the median to throw up in a snowbank shoulder to shoulder at EXACTLY same time. EXACTLY.

And back to that Walmart you worked at for a couple of weeks in that town you kinda lived in after college. The one that gave you a job even though you spelled “college” wrong on your resume (Sir Wilfred Grenfell Collage. Amazing). You can sit shotgun on a coffee run, glance in the rearview and see yourself 15 years ago, lumbering past, clearing the lot of shopping carts; a task you remember was expected to be completed every 30 minutes, even though it took 45. You know that soon you’ll be inside by the back wall stacking detergent from a ladder 25 feet off the floor. You listen as that passing Trina asks how it’s going up there. You hear yourself quip “well, the Tide is high, but I’m holding on”. You see her not get it. Along with everyone else in the break room you relentlessly recounted the encounter for. So you quit.

This was nice.

If you have the means, I would highly recommend growing up here. Then touring it.

p

I’m still blown away that we made a record.

It’s been a little over a year since the grey mid-morning when the 3 of us shared a quiet moment at the snowed in control room of a farmstead studio in St. John’s. Things were going well. We’d cut the right stuff, added the right stuff, morale was high. A perfect opportunity for me to pose the least helpful question that can be posed in a recording situation:

Ahem.

“What if nobody likes it?”

Silence. So I helpfully added, “or buys it?”

I believe that fears are for sharing.

But we made it and now it’s almost time to make another one. I’m pretty excited about this and I look forward to the opportunity to share more of my in studio insights with the group. And I’ve already started. Why, just the other day I commented to Geraldine that “the second album is where you try 3 times as hard, spend twice the money and people like half as much.” I could see the tension draining from her as her head dropped to her chest and the smile slid off of her face to reveal the blank visage of one at peace.

So as we head into the last months of the tours supporting this record, I’d like to include you all in the inspiration that until now, I have only bestowed on Andrew and Geraldine. I’m sure they will be only too happy to share the weight that I bring.

Here’s to dropping Blogs to lighten the load.

Phil