Sunday, August 23rd/09, John’s Basement, Kitchener ONT

It is important to be well-rehearsed, to know what comes next, what to expect from yourself, to recognize your capabilities and weaknesses ahead of time. Like most things involving public speaking, entertainment, acting, being a musician, having a plan and a routine is never a bad idea. In this industry, especially, I have found that there is a difference between us bands that bring out 50-100 kids, and the bands that pack out halls and stadiums, and it has mostly to do with stage presence, but not always. Sure you could go up there and sound exactly like your album, have sampled everything, but the real entertainers want you to move and jump and react to everything transpiring on stage, it doesn’t matter what it is, a hand movement, a kick, a clap-sequence, call and answer singalongs, the inevitable breakdown. It’s all something that comes with time and experience, the ability to sound immaculate and still be able to scissor-kick off your amp, or something equally as bitchin’. Every band or artist moves through stages in their career, starts out somewhere small and grows into something else, whether it is natural or practiced a million times. But I will tell you this, from my short and limited experience, my attention to detail, coming from where I stand in this current state of things, there’s nothing like a good train-wreck every now and then, from anybody (not literally, of course) You have to keep some things interesting.

No show today. We were in Kitchener, with our friends John Maksym and Natalie. They had put us up once again, and taken care of us, with seemingly endless beverages, great food and since we had a day off, even “Breaching Vista’s” jam-space for the day! It was a rough morning. We had stayed up until 7:00am, making bad jokes, drinking PBR and swimming in a pool that was much too cold for our bodies, massive shrinkage, but we wore robes and gold chains and felt amazing afterward, it was worth it. It was raining again, but I didn’t mind it so much, the weather hat been so hot. Tyson might have, it started to down-pour as he was in the middle of his daily health routine. We loaded into John’s basement and created musical fusion for most of the day, working on every aspect of our set, songs and banter, tones and tempo, changes and dynamics, everything. We made progress, had a wonderful time in the process. That evening, Jon’s Dad and Stepmother had prepared and awesome dinner fashioned from Lasagna and an assortment of lovely, healthy things in which we all enjoyed. We talked about the music industry and hitting the line-up for Blink 182 at the Molson Amphitheatre and the slow and interesting evolution of Dan Ball, swapped band stories of being in strange places and doing strange things.  We also watched an AC-DC live dvd, I was a big fan of it, dancing and air guitar, the whole thing. On our way out, we thanked John and his whole family, again and again,  for what they have done for us, for their support in our endeavors, for the time and effort put into helping us be well and happy. We hope to come back here again soon, as I would like to believe, we are all now extended family, in some strange way.

I would like to think that when I am older, I will have some interesting stories to tell, like that time I was driving to Toronto through a tornado and almost died,or that time I was in Beardmore and met the whole town, or that time I jumped in a really frigid pool of water with friends in bands I made 1000 miles away, or the time I slept on the floor… for a month or two, and then repeated it. Like most stories told, they have an effect on you, some wisdom and technique handed down, and then you experience it yourself. You watch what other people do and do the same, but put your own spin on it, and rehearse until you have something all on your own, an original representation of something that influenced you, a copy of a copy, just how things work today I guess. It sounds a little dull, but us kids had to learn how to do it from somebody, had to take over for something that died out, had to take painstaking measures to ensure something new and exciting and interesting would be delivered to a new crowd, new faces watching your moves and watching what you do, and so on and so on, repeating. Most stories I’ve heard, from other bands, other musicians on different levels of the industry, I’ve listened to intently, taking notes, so I could know what was in store for what is quite possible in the near future. But there’s another part of me that doesn’t want to know, that wants figure it out on it’s own, wants it to come as surprise and let it be what it is, which is more often than not, an unscripted mess of things. Fun times.