TORONTO

Personal Tour Goals and a woman named AMAZON

Ok, now for the real tour. Kingston was so anticlimactic that I decide to lay down some personal tour goals. I inform everyone in the van that before the end of tour that I will not only make Kate cry and have Dave throw a punch at me, I’ll also get Mike to storm of the stage and quit in the band in the middle of a show. Steve I aint gonna mess with cause he has the keys for the whole tour, making him my personal hero.

We get to the venue (The Poor Alex) early and head over to the Green Room for dinner. Food was excellent, as always. We meet the support acts, Firehydrant and The Happy Apples who seem like cool shit. There is something about the Poor Alex that makes it absolutely impossible for me to play a good show there. I’m not sure if it’s the fact that the stage is too dark or that there is only one monitor for the front line, but I’m a little disappointed with how we/I played. During the show, Dave broke a string and in his effort to get off stage to fix it, he sent Kate’s laptop flying. This sent Dave into a shame spiral and I had my first button to push with Dave to complete the first of my tour goals. The rest of the show, although filled with energy, was sloppy as hell and mistake ridden.

But the room, which was bumpin, certainly didn’t seem to notice. Keith at the Poor Alex always treat us right and sets us up with good bands that draw good crowds. This night was no exception. Plus we go on to sell a butt load of merch, which is good. Also in the crowd was “metal guy” Rob. He was at our last show in TO and was very vocal about how much he like our band. Rob is from Kingston and was the singer in a metal band in the 80’s called FIST. You know the type of guy I’m talking about, around 41 years old, wearing a classic rock t-shirt with a 19 year old girlfriend in tow. He was super happy that we came back to Toronto and just wanted us to know how much we totally blew his mind! He then began to drool on Kate and slur his speech. While that might be slightly endearing in my eyes, it is totally inappropriate behaviour.

After the show, I’m outside with Dave and as we are saying our goodbyes to The Happy Apples, I am confronted by this six-foot tall punk woman who recognizes me from my bouncer days at the Dominion Tavern in Ottawa. She seems a little familiar so I ask her what her name is. She responds AMAZON and then shows me her matching belt buckle and lip tattoo, just in case I don’t believe her. About three minutes into the conversation she asks if I want to go home her with. I decline (again, not very rock and roll) and walk off into the night with Dave and his lady friend to the subway station so we can get to our respective crashing pads for the night.

I spend Friday morning having breakfast with my sisters and my new six month old nephew, Malcolm. The little bastard is amazing. I’ve never been into babies before, I’ve always kinda thought they were gross, but when one is actually genetically linked to you they become much cooler! After breakfast, we shoot over to the Apple store to meet Kate and Steve as they are nerding out over all the wonderful Macintosh products. After I say my goodbyes, we go for an outstanding dinner with Keith from the Poor Alex and hit the road for Oshawa.

Words spoken by Mike Rifkin on tour at this point: 16