trapped in toronto.

well hello again. we are stil here in hogtown. starting to get itchy feet now. it doesn't really feel like touring when you are holed up in one place for this long.....dont get me wrong, we are having a blast but i think we are all ready to get on the open road......

so the last few days have been quite something. a nice sunday led us to bbqs and beers. great day off! on monday we hit one of our fav spots to east here. its a place called nirvana. its cheap and tasty just like we like 'em. after luch we strolled to kensigton market to chill for a bit. we found a neat little cafe called the hot box cafe. they are pretty liberal there...seemed to be a lot of people enjoying the weird-o space contraptions that were on every table. we had a smoothy and enjoyed watching the staff try and remembner who ordered what. hilarious! needless to say our walk back to the apartment was out of the ordinary. we saw many strange sights. in toronto you can see crazy just about any direction you look. sometimes its fun. sometimes its not.

monday night we bbqed again. then had a couple pops at home before hitting the orbit room. the orbit room, for those that dont know, is a small club on college st that is owned by alex lifeson from rush. on mondays a band called sisters euclid perform. in this band is one dude named kevin breit. kevin is a guitar master. actually all the musicians in this band are masters of their craft. me and the bastards agreed that if we lived in tdot we would be there every monday. this band is simply amazing. i dare you to show me something more awesome that these four guys. they rip it up on so many levels its just sick! i had seen them before so i knew what to expect but they still didnt dissapoint. it was fun watching the bastards see them for the first time. we all agreed that we had our asses blown out! we are still thinking about how wicked they were. right now. this very moment.

yesterday we drove to burlington to play the slye foxe. we have played burlington before but it was nothing like this. the slye foxe has a blues night about once a month or so. on a tuesday from 8-11. good crowd of people and true blues lovers. we're always nervous how aficianadoes will respond to us as we are what i would call the new age of modern blues blending trad with modern. some of the trad lovers dont take to kindly to that. it was evident though after our first tune that these folks were gonna dig it. by the end of the night we had won large. big thatnks to kirsten and m for treating us so well. we had a ball. we also recorded the show and our next podcast will have some of that in it. podcast you say? well thats a nice segue ross. .....

the pod cast is up and you can stream or download it here... http://www.cyberears.com/podcasts/podcast_5518.xml big thanks to tradroots.com for helping us with this. looking like we'll have one of these every week so keep on the look out.

well i gotta go now cause we are hopping in the van to go take over st catherines. looking forward to it. i'll try and post again tomorrow.

also i noticed i haven't used capitals or proper spelling in this note and i'm ok with it.

cheers,
mb

do's and dont's of 7-11ing

Hi all,

Its Sunday. its our first day off since last tuesday. to celebrate we went to the Lakeview diner for breakfast. Its just down the street and it has $3 mimosas! Yup. thats right. Delicious. Now we are chilling at my sisters and waiting to be hungry again so we can fire up the BBQ!

In the meantime i figured i'd recap the last few days......lets see...

Friday April 24th: We went to Barrie to perform at the pub, Sticky Fingers. We played here last summer to a very small but appreciative crowd. This time there was a decent size crowd who were again very kind to us. When we got there we got to eat at the  "tongue" table.  If you are  not a huge Rolling Stones fan then you may not know that the pub is named for that amazing album they put out i n 1971. Sticky Fingers, is part of what i refer to as the holy trinity of stones albums..."Get Yer Ya Ya's out, "Sticky Fingers" and "Exile on Mainstreet".... Anyway.....so they have a table shaped like the Stones logo. I thought this was a good sign right away. We had burgers. They we good. We set up our gear after we ate and waited for the sound system to arrive. The P.A. system was provided, and set up, by a fella named Kelly. Nice guy. So nice, in fact, he sold cd's for us. This guy was hardcore. he went to EVERY single person in the room. Sold lots of discs as a result. Just plain awesome.  We celebrated our Barrie victory with a beer after we loaded Ruby. When we got back to Toronto we continued celebrating for a few hours. Saturday we had breaky at Musa's. Without a doubt one of my favorite breakfast spots in Toronto. Everything is good here. It was back in the van to hit Orillia. I hadn't played here since i did The Mariposa Fest back in 2007. Unfortunately it was poorly attended but we, as always, had fun. The folks that did come were awesome and i think they all had a good time too! Big thanks to Amy Mangan for having us up there. The show was real civilized in the sense that it went from 8-11. Because of this great timing we got home around 12.30am and thought we should hit up my favorite Dundas street bar, The Magpie. They have a great selection of beer. We spent an hour there enjoying whiskey and beer. If you are ever have a drink at this place with me you are in luck. For some reason, that i can't explain, when i am at the Magpie i can't help but buy rounds for friends who are with me. Its just that kind of place.

On the way home we stopped at an ever too conveniently located 7-11. Shawn and i happen to be suckers for the taquitos here. The cheese and jalapeno one kicks ass. When we were in the night before we noticed they had some weird new meat product, that looked like a turd,  on the ole roaster. I vowed that we would try it even if it killed us. We got the old standby, taquitos but I also loaded up on what was called a cheese burger dog or something like that. The dude at the counter said it was filled with cheese. Turns out it wasn't. I also picked up some other flavored dogs and we headed home for our 7-11 hot dog buffet. I dont exactly remember what the taste of them was like (probably a good thing) but i do remember being disappointed by them. especially the turd-y looking one. We have some pretty funny video of the taste test that we'll post somewhere later this week. We just need to edit them a bit if you know what i mean.

Well that pretty much gets y'all up to speed. Tomorrow is another day off  and then we're off to Burlington to play the Slye Foxe. Im really stoked for this gig so i'll be sure to update y'all on how it goes.

Till then,

MB

Friday in hogtown

Hey all

well here is a quick lil recap of the last few days for ya.....

Wed. april 22 - we had a great time at the Oasis in Cobourg. This is a smaller place to play but it is always a fun time. they have great food nice folks. people really seem to enjoy the band there and they always take some cd's home! what more can you ask for?

Thursday april 23 - we had some time to kill before we left for the boathouse in kitchener so after we had a killer and cheap breaky at Dapps Family Restaurant in Trenton we hit the Canadian Air Force Museum. Well let me tell ya....this place kicks ass. as far as having quality things to look at, it is over the top. loads of cool things to check out in the first room. the SECOND room is full of a great big ass restoration plane. the plane is the Halifax NA337, a great big f'n bomber type plane that was shot down in WW II . it was so cool to be able to walk all around it and check it out. after we oogled this baby for a while we went outside where they have an array of planes set up. very cool. all around the walk way are little stones with airmen's names engraved (folks who died serving). Very very heavy place all in all. a must stop if you are traveling near Trenton. Thursday night we hit The Boathouse in Kitchener. It was a little anti climactic but sometimes thats just the way it goes ya know? After the gig we wanted to check the Perpetrators from Winnipeg but ended up splitting for Toronto before they hit the stage. Again,just  the way it goes.

Friday April 24th - thats today, as in right now....well prolly not right now by the time y'all read this but its right now for me....today we had a great breaky at the ole Lakeview Diner on Dundas. decent food and real funny staff. i 'spect we'll do that again while we are hear for a few days. After breaky we started putting our podcast together for the monday show. stay tuned for more on that baby!

well, we are about to hop in Ruby and head to Barrie where we'll eat, drink and rock the night away at Sticky Fingers.....tomorrow we head for the Thrilla in Orillia! yep thats right. just what it sounds like. Orillia, Us and good times...aka...thrills.  I can smell it already.....

talk soon, 

MB

day off at Uncle Pats & Aunt D's

Well we had a typically perfect day yesterday in Trenton. we arrived at a bright and shiny 6am after a breakfast stop at the ole ten acre in belleville! yum.  once we had rested up we were treated to a nice lunch by auntie D and some quality hangout time in front of the ole big screen. if you can find it check out the documentary about humans disappearing from the earth. very cool.

after some shopping at the LCBO we listened to some of the recordings we did at the rainbow room in ottawa. for a "one mic kinda set up" it turned out decent. we'll be airing some of that show on our first podcast next week. After an amazing supper of some wicked chicken concoction from the one and only Auntie D we got out the recorder and did some "interviewing" for the Podcast. again, this stuff will be on our first P-cast next week! stay tuned. 

well we just returned from a classic bastards breakfast at Stop 33 here in Trenton. possibly my favorite breakfast stop in Canada! at 7.99 the above average Joe is a killer plate of breaky! if you are in Trenton this is a MUST STOP diner. we are just chillin now waiting to head to Cobourg so we can deliver the goods to the Oasis tonight! talk at ya soon,

MB

ps....

its 4/20. smoke em if ya got em! and a happy b-day to carmen townsend, colepaugh, jess derrah and my old pal peter chow!

blogged down

Well hi all. here we are in Ottawa trying to get our blogg on. i guess i'm gonna start by recounting the past few days as we are a little behind....here goes:

Wednesday: we prepacked Ruby the van to make sure everything would fit. prolly the tightest pack ever and we got some extra noise makers in there too! very happy about this pack folks!

Thursday: we had our inaugural kick off for the 2009 Special Delivery Tour at the ole snooty fox in Fredtown. good times and thanks to all who came out. after the show we all slept up so we could hit the road nice and early in the AM

Friday: well we got outta town event free and were on the highway by 11.20am. our destination was to be the lovely Le Zaricot in St Hyacinthe Quebec. the drive was fairly ordinary except for the one spot where we saw thousands and thousands of Canadian Geese.  honkers as far as the eye could see!!! It was totally biblical folks! we arrived at the club without being smitted and set up for a night of rawk! We had a pleasant surprise as well..... Our pal,  Charlie A'Court was in the house and it was decided it would be fun for him to warm up the room! While Charlie did his thang we hit the samich (redneck word for sandwich) shop around the corner. decent food. Back to the Zaricot...We hit em with some nice New Orleans stuff to grease em up so we could insert the RAWK straight into the middle of their listenin' devices. All in all we had a good show and fun time as per usual at the Zaricot. After the show we hit the hotel to beer it up and chill as Seerdee (this is a redneck word for saturday if y'all dont parlez the redneck) was a day off. We got some great snore vids from drum guy . maybe i'll post the video when Gans ain't lookin'. we also devised a delicious idea to keep ourselves entertained on this trip....

Seerdee: we hung out in St H for a bit. did the ole Candian Tire right up. bought a thermos and some instant coffee. gotta keep the costs down ya know. we also purchased supplies for what is probably the greatest idea we have ever had....we decided to convert ole ruby into a kitchen with her innards being the cook stove. yes thats right folks, we are cooking on the engine of our van. RAWK! well to be honest the first try didn't go so well. we put the sausages on but by the time we hit montreal they were only warm. we decided to try again on monday. Saturday night we chilled with our friends Patty and hung out at his pal, Andy's house. I learned to lose at poker, as did the bastards. Pat rode a treadmill on a skateboard...video to follow....All in all it was a good time.

Sunday: we were so stoked to play on sunday. the pub is called smoked meat pete's. definetly the best smoked meat sandwich i have ever wrapped my chompers onto. The fries were so good. think mashed potatoes with a crispy shell giving them a big greazy hug! oh yeah! we started out gentle with some straight up blues and gradually slipped the rawk to 'em as the night got dark! by the end of the night we were fast friends with mr. smoked meat Pete hisself! Great guy and a real fun place!

Monday: well after our teary goodbyes (we have feelings too ya know) we decided to hit the grocery store to get supplies for engine kitchen part deux! we found some eggs and ham and green onion. we mixed it all up and threw it in a tinfoil tray, strapped her to the engine manifold and hit the raod with great eggspectations....sorry couldn't resist that pun. we checked the situation out an hour in and realized we needed more time. they were only a 1/3rd cooked when we got to Ottawa. we have made a few more modifications and plan to try again next long road time....stay tuned as we also have video of this momentous idea! as soon as i figure out how we'll start posting the goods! 

So that about brings y'all up to speed. we are killing time now and plan to go to the Rainbow here in Ottawa in a bit to load in and bleed some ears. stay tuned folks. more good times ahead!

stay tuned...

RNSB