(2000 Canadian tour)

Day 1: Calgary to Saskatoon. For promotors who have gotten to know Chixdiggit, this comes as no surprise. We promised to arrive in Saskatoon at 3pm for load in, sound check and enough leisure time to check into our hotel and go for dinner. In order to achieve this ETA, we would need to leave at 8am. Fat chance. When you first leave for a 3 month tour, you need to turn off the stove, park your car somewhere good, get the neighbour girls to pick up your mail. In my case, drop a key to the place off with my mom so she can vacuum while I'm gone. Multiply this type of procrastination by 5 people and you've got a Calgary departure date of 12pm. Estimated ETA now 7pm. Set time 11pm.

That's all good until we break down 3 times, the third time failing to restart the van. Cam from Oyen Autobody picked us up 1 hour later to tow us into Hanna. Fuel filter gets replaced, and we're on the road. At 120 kph (70 mph) we make it to Saskatoon by 10.50pm. 10 Minutes to set up our junk, get the t-shirts out and we're off to a great start to the tour. Great attendance at the show, hung out with the Riff Randells, our tour mates for the next month.

This is Mutti, our driver for the Canadian tour. Mutti is German, and his nickname means "mommy". He is our booking agent at Destiny Tourbooking Europe, and he kicks ass. Last night we celebrated his birthday in Regina. The show was at the State, a cool little club that has rock and roll written all over it. A balcony directly above the stage is situated in a manner that keeps girls with skirts on the ground floor. The show went surprisingly well. We usually play all ages shows here, so the bar crowd is not as familiar with us.

We got word from James, our booking agent for Canada, that the Teen Idols won't be making the tour. They spent 3 days at the border below Thunder Bay trying to gain entry, but were turned back because they are still deemed a threat to Canadian citizens. Seems there's a weapons (a beer bottle or something) charge which was dropped, still showing on their record.

We're in the van on the way to Winnipeg now, we'll arrive several hours after the scheduled load in time. We're looking forward to watching the Riff Randalls again tonight.

10 September. Most people walking into Winnipeg's "The Zoo" told us they usually don't hang out there. We can't imagine why not. The place is huge, has pool tables, pretty bartenders, a collection of hundred's of metal-hair band glossies on the wall. Perfect setting for a night out. Over 400 people at the show, so the place was pretty packed. Every tour we stop in this town, and every time it gets better.

We slept in the bus that night, because even the best intentions of the owners of the Osbourne Village Inn can't make us crawl under the sheets in the rooms above ozzies. It appears that they have made a considerable effort to clean the place up, but to us the memory of how the rooms used to be could not be erased with a mop and some clean sheets.

At 9.30 am we started driving to Thunder Bay. Although the kids at the show there have always been great, we've always dealt with a bunch of crap in that town. The police once drove off with our drivers licences, returning 3 hours later with an apologetic "oops". One promotor has cancelled a show once because the band we were opening for was called Pansy Division, and rumoured to be queer. Other promotors put up shows in clubs that have been closed for years. They gave it nice names like :"Millennium", but didn't promote the show, weren't licenced and treated us like we weren't invited.

That all came to rest last night at the Appollo. We arrived a little late due to the long drive and the time change, but were greeted by a full room, an enthusiastic promotor and very friendly bar staff. The Randells got there a little late too, so they only pulled off 3 songs. The kids were into it and welcomed them with some merch purchases. After the show we all visited the local record store and a sports bar where we marvelled at how unfunny "Mad TV" can be sometimes. Not a thrilling night, but our first ever good time in T-Bay.

Chapeau, North Ontario. Mutti checks out how much further to Timmins. In the background you see an old mill or something, where we paused to take some press pictures. You'll see those appearing on our next cd we're sure. We look a little greasy. Last night was the first one without a shower.

Those weirdo kinky Ontarians... well, whatever you're into...

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Oh, and this picture of the cover of SOCAN magazine... we always wondered what Young Dave did before joining Chixdiggit.

A night off in Ottawa. Visited friends and cruised the parliament.

The French leg of the tour. Always fun. Montreal smoked meat, a walk along the boardwalk in Quebec City, couple of fun shows.

This picture purely inserted for those of you that have not yet had the pleasure of visiting Quebec City. It's quite lovely really. We're spending our next day off in Montreal, that's in a few days after the Maritime shows. Last night we played Fredericton, a great show full of college kids. Quite amazing how each city has a completely different crowd come out to our shows.

See?

19 September. We haven't taken any pictures for a while because we've played all these places before and to us it kinda all looks the same. The shows in the Maritimes were fantastic. The Marquis in Halifax, always a highlight of the tour, surpassed itself again. huge crowd, awesome to play a club that hosts a dance party after the live gig.

In St. John NB the venue got moved due to a wedding party that was feared to interfere with the all ages gig. They got the lounge, we got the study hall. Not a big problem till the thirsty Chixdiggits wanted some refreshments. A quick bolt across the parking lot and we were at the wedding reception, a little underdressed but looking good enough to dance with to the 50 something ladies in attendance. Unfortunately having to play our set interrupted the fun dance party. One kid at the show had this weird thing hanging from his neck. Turns out he was on a dialysis machine at the hospital nearby but shut the machine down to come check out the show. So he's got this tube hanging out of his neck, with what looked like a sock around it to keep dirt out, blood in.

Unbelievable, what the Quebecers refer to as food. I love the french with all my heart, so long as my heart can survive the grease onslaught that is their national diet. Yesterday on the drive from Moncton (great show, 500 kids in a skate park) to Montreal for our day off, a simple search for food... at 11am we pull into the town of Edmundston, in the French part of New Brunswick. 30 minutes of driving through town has yielded two restaurants. One served $35 lobster plates. Now what they do here is they make chinese or "Canadian" food (like lobster) and then they attempt to make it fancy by pouring spaghetti and meat sauce over the damn thing. Not a vegetable in sight in the whole area. Burgers: Spaghetti poured all over the thing. Want pizza? there's a big heap of spaghetti on that too. Poutine? Add to the goodness of fries, gravy and cheese curds a steaming pile of spaghetti.

Several hours later, after we've all done some laundry, it's time for another meal. We're on the south side of the St. Lawrence near Quebec city and on the lookout for a restaurant. Seems like a simple task. First sign of something that's not a Subway (where the italian meatball sandwich is a best seller I'm sure) ... a huge sign that reads "Restaurant". We pull over. It looks like a typical suburb family restaurant, like an earls, joey tomatos, jack astors, kelseys, moxies, keg, tgi fridays... inside: a fastfood counter in front of a kitchen in which the spaghetti cooker is running overtime trying to heap his tomatoey starch concoction on poutine, hot dogs on wonderbread, burgers, pizza. Damn we're pretty sure we even saw him dumping spaghetti on top of a plate of lasagna. We keep driving. A few miles down the road another "restaurant" sign. This one is even bigger. We turn off, drive right up to the sign and find, parked under it a poutine stand. We didn't stop long enough to find out if they also served spaghetti. The sign was bigger than the little shack that pays the electricity of all that neon blinking the word Restaurant into the dark night like a beacon for the hungry. Keep driving. Keep driving. On the side of the road up ahead: a huge building with the word "RESTAURANT" in white tiles on the roof. We're sure this time. It lookes like a restaurant. It's shaped like one.

The cuisine (funny how the only people in canada who shouldn't use that word are the restaurant owners of Quebec) is Chinese and Canadian. The french words on the left, english on the right and in the middle a column that allows you to calculate the price of your meal with spaghetti on it. The friendly waitress comes along and we order our meals, split pea soup (sans-sauce italienne / without pasta sauce, $1.75) and meat pie completely devoid of flavour for myself, other variations of not-a-vegetable-in-sight for the others. Mark's meal comes with a choice of desert.

"You may 'ave de BAnaNA, de Blueberreee, de sugar pie, de rezin or the cock-nut."

"I'll have the apple pie please".

We spent last night in Montreal. Found a hotel right between the sexotheque and the tavern we like to visit here called the Biftek. The hotel is cool. it's an old house and we think the room we're in was the living roof. Our bathroom is down the hall so the choice is to get dressed before the morning pee or to creep out the other guests with our bellies hanging out, all bloated from the greasy food.

Chixdiggit wishes Anne-Marie of the Riff Randells a continued speedy recovery of her throat and lung condition that made her unable to sing for a few nights. A closer inspection of this photo reveals that the glottis appears to be healthy, teeth in good shape and not a trace of spaghetti sauce anywhere in the general oral cavity.

This photo, taken in bilingual New Brunswick shows the much healthier eating habits of the Maritimes. On every street corner is a Tim Horton's, and on every second corner is a franchise recruitment office for the donut merchant. Here we are offered the french and english breakfast choices.

September 19. The promotor in Cornwall Ontario has been MIA since last week. His last words were "I'm not sute if I can do the show". No biggie for us, we're in our cool 2 bedroom hotel with a little kitchen and a balcony over Rue Sherbrooke. Spent the day eating Montreal smoked meat and shopping for dinner. A great combination of stinky cheeses and prosciutto, some good bread and several bottles of wine. Kicked back, ate, drank. Now everyone's napping, getting ready to hit some bars again tonight. Tomorrow we're in Ottawa, this time to play a show and to hook up with All Systems Go, a great band with ex Doughboys and Big Drill Car members.

quick update: Great shows in London and Toronto. The toronto late night show was sold out. Nice way to end the first Canadian leg of the tour. Today a day off, did some laundry, get ready to drive to NYC tomorrow. Thanks to Mel Kaye from FAT Canada for a dinner for us and some friends and media folks. ....

New York Update: We arrived in Cortland, NY a little late after doing laundry, crossing the border and dealing with some van trouble. People on the street in Cortland giving us directions to the club reminded us of the movie "Gummo". People at the Railway club were super nice and not inbred. Walking down the street later in the evening we were greeted with a grunting sound when we asked a local where the nearest convenience store was. We simplified the question. "Beer?"...

A shrug and a vague indication that beer could be obtained in an easternly direction.

In the morning we had a sparkplug fixed and then made our way to NYC. The legendary CNGB's proved a bit disappointing. The place is a filthy mess, and it seemed like the promotors couldn't care less about anybody that's not Blondie or the Ramones. We were matched up with a metal band, and a freaky violin act. Our regulars from New York however made the show good fun. Time off was spent around Central Park and Times Square and a tavern in the Village.

Maxwells in Hoboken was a world of difference. Only a mile from Manhattan, and the place is spotless, the owners generous and the staff friendly. Nice folk from the New Jersey area populated the show and we even got a bunch of food and cookies to take on the road with us on the way home. Damn long drive to Green Bay, a brief stop in Indiana to catch a $1 movie (MI-2) and to buy a palm pilot to create some entertainment for the band's computer nerd for the rest of the drive. Green Bay was great as usual. Time Bomb Tom has created a scene that rivals New York, LA, SF and any other place where there's no shortage of entertainment.

The drive to Calgary was long and hard. More engine trouble, but we made it home after 36 hours. Tomorrow I'll insert some more pictures and then this journal will be moved over to the photo area to make room for updates from Europe, where we'll be heading in a week.

Edmonton and Red Deer treated us to sold out shows. Weird crowd in Red Deer. A few people thought it necessary to use their elbows in the "mosh pit". It's very distracting to see people getting the tar beat out of them right in front of you. Thanks to the front row for trying to keep stuff under control. Our van engine has finally bit it, so we're arranging to have a new 460 installed while we're gone.

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