The Stills Day 5, Drive home

So the weekend is done, just have to head home now. We got out of the hotel on time and went over to the Golden Griddle for breakfast. It was definitely a step down from the last couple days, but it's Grey Cup Sunday and we saw that there were tables available so we jumped all over it. It was also entertaining to see the ultimate Temple of Mediocrity across the street, Maple Leaf Gardens. It was kind of funny to see all the people in football jerseys standing in the middle of the street to get their pictures taken in front of the building. I don't get it. Nothing good happened there. It's a (former) home of losers, but whatever... we got a good laugh out of it...

After eating, we hopped in the van but it took us forever to get out of town. If you remember from a couple days ago, we had to switch hotels and some of the guys went to crash at friends places... We had to make a couple stops to pick people up, and they were pretty far out. Eventually we were all set and we started a pretty uneventful drive home. The weather was much more cooperative this time around.

One more Stills show next month in Vancouver and that's it for a bit. The guys start the new record this winter, but hopefully they'll be touring again early in the spring. Keep your ears open for a new single sometime in the very near future...

The Stills Day 4, Toronto, ON

So after starting the day so well yesterday, we definitely didn't want to take a step down, so we did the exact same thing right after we switched hotels (see yesterday...). I Deal Coffee and Aunties & Uncles. Great waffles by the way... Yesterday we (me and our LD) went with Liam and his brother, today Mr. Fletcher joined us for a wonderful meal. Great way to start the day...

We didn't really know what to do for the rest of the afternoon, so we brought the van to the club to get a good parking spot for load out and explored the neighbourhood a little. Saw a few cool things, but for the most part we were pretty bored, so when soundcheck time rolled around we couldn't wait to get in to the club. We spent some time fine-tuning a few things in the show, then had dinner, watched some hockey and show time eventually crept up on us.

Tonight's show was even better than last night, the club was packed again, but strangely, there was nothing happening afterwards. It was really kind of confusing; we expected a long night but who knows... sometimes the vibe just isn't there. It took forever, but we finally got out of the club and headed back to the hotel. And stopped at The Big Slice.

Just to be clear, there's absolutely nothing great about The Big Slice, except that the slice is gigantic. It doesn't taste all that good and there's always a bunch of drunken students there, but the place is open til 5am, and so many people go through that whatever you get is usually right out of the oven. Definitely not a lunch or dinner wheel, but at 3am it's pretty damn good.

That was pretty much it for the night. We didn't stay up too late because we have to be out of the hotel at noon tomorrow, and then we have a drive home...

The Stills Day 3, Toronto, ON

Today started with a cab ride to I Deal Coffee, home of the best coffee in the country. No better way to start a day. Then we took it up a notch and walked over to Auntie & Uncles, an amazing breakfast joint 2 minutes away. Simply fantastic. And then, to make things even better, we went back to I Deal Coffee after breakfast (which for us is at about 1pm). Amazing.

When we got back to the hotel, we had to do a little shuffling of the rooms. It just happened to be Grey Cup weekend in Toronto (the Canadian Superbowl for those who don't know...), and it was pretty wild the last couple nights and it's only going to get crazier. Part of this wonderful attraction is that hotels get to raise their prices through the roof for the weekend, and we fell victim to that. The short version is that we couldn't even keep our rooms for the weekend because the hotel was oversold. We managed to hang on to a couple rooms for one more night, but the next day we had to find another hotel, which eventually worked out... So anyways, we moved a few things around and those who were not staying at the hotel (and went to crash with friends) got their stuff out and we headed to Lee's Palace for the first of two shows there this weekend.

Lee's is kind of a classic place, and I was pretty disappointed to see that they took out the old dressing room walls that were signed by every band that ever played there. There might have been a couple you've heard of, like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Stone Temple Pilots (who wrote Interstate Love Song sitting in their van in front of the club), Tea Party, etc... and even a band I played in called The Prototype. It was the site of the 3rd club show I'd ever played, and the first one in Toronto. I really wanted to find the name on the wall, but alas...

So, we put together a rock show, go for dinner across the street with the label owner, stop at a pub on the way back for a meet and greet, and finally get back in to the club for the sold out show. It was pretty crazy and the guys put on a great show, I even rated it a top 5 on our internal show rating scale. That says a lot. After it was done, there didn't seem to be a whole lot going on, so we headed out after a couple drinks at the club and went to the hotel. And, of course, we stopped by The Big Slice.

The Stills Day 2, Hamilton, ON

I had to get up early today to head over to the Mac store at the Eaton Centre to get some repairs done on my MacBook. Thankfully no one was at the store, so I got all my stuff done within a half hour. I tried to get it done in NYC a few days ago at the SoHo store, but I waited in line for almost 90 mins, and then they didn't even have the parts I needed, so this was a bit of a relief. With nothing else to worry about, I sat down at Eggspectations for breakfast, then one of the guys came over to meet me and we just wandered in the Eaton Centre til we had to go to Hamilton for the show tonight.

The drive was painless; we left a little early to beat the traffic out of town. When we got to the club we were actually a little early (which is a monumental achievement for this group of people) but after a few minutes someone showed up to let us in.

The Casbah is a smaller place, but still kind of cool. A few things needed to get fixed up and we kind of pushed everything to the limit, but it worked out in the end and everyone had a good time. There's a great mediterranean place next door too, which definitely made the night worthwhile.

After the show we drove back to Toronto, it was too late to go out, but we were able to hit up The Big Slice, so all was good.

The Stills Day 1, Drive to Toronto

Some people like touring Canada in winter. Most don't. I certainly don't, and today was a prime example of why, and winter isn't really here yet...

Thankfully we only had to drive to Toronto, anything else would've been a disaster. The bad weather has started, and we saw it in all forms on the drive down. It started with a little snow, turned to freezing rain, included some black ice, some ice pellets, back to snow, etc... Gave the brakes a little test at one point. They worked but we found out that the tires don't grip very well. That was fun.

The drive lasted a little longer than usual, but we made it in one piece and we were staying at a nice hotel, so we were able to relax a little once we got there. We hooked up with one of the guys from VHS or Beta, who were staying at the same hotel, made the mandatory trip over to The Big Slice and headed back to sample some bourbon. The night turned out ok...

The Stills Day 4, Back to Montreal

We didn't have much time to wander around today before we had to leave. We had breakfast at the hotel, a quick stroll down the riverwalk, and we slowly made our way to the airport. Today was significantly less dramatic than Thursday, but the thing about small airports like JAX is that they don't really know how to handle band gear so there were a couple minor headaches sorting that out... Funny how for one person the 50lb limit can only be stretched to 51lbs, but the girl right beside her throws on a tag without weighing anything... Whatever. Chalk it up to the joys of traveling.

Anyways, we get to Miami on time, which was great because we had time to eat during the stopover. The other thing that's great about Miami International is that the whole terminal is licensed, so you can buy beer at a stand by the gate and walk all over with it. How could we say no? So we strolled around the terminal, beers in hand, found some food for dinner and made our way back for the flight home. After a few delays, we got off the ground, had a smooth flight and finally landed a little after midnight. By the time we got all the gear back to the rehearsal space, we had time for an end-of-tour drink before last call and that wrapped it up. Alright, so it wasn't a real tour, but a few days surrounded by palm trees is worth celebrating.

Next week we have a show in Hamilton and 2 nights in Toronto, then we're off the road til late December. Stay tuned for more...

The Stills Day 3, Jacksonville, FL

We headed out at 11am for the 2hr + drive to Jacksonville. We got around all the parade stuff, which was pretty nuts. Lots of military vehicles, guns, tanks, etc... Not stuff you really see up north. The drive was good, perfect driving weather too. Scenery included a trailer park fire, countless SUV's and the Daytona 500 Speedway.

When we got to town, we checked in to the hotel and went to the venue right away. It was an outdoor show, part of the Talleyrand Festival in Metropolitan Park, and it was a great day for a show. We were supposed to be on the massive main stage, but because we had to use the festival backline (drums, guitar amps, etc...), they moved us to the 2nd stage, which was essentially a truck whose side panel flipped down to make a stage. And it had a killer Jagermeister logo on it. There were a couple punks bands before us, including the brilliantly named "Whole Wheat Bread", and when our time came, we just threw everything up and went for it... No soundchecks at the festival after all. Everything actually ended up going really well though and before we knew it, the show was done. While we were loading out, we saw a little bit of the band after us, which was Arrested Development, which was kind of cool, and then it was back to the hotel for some of us and the rest hung out at the festival.

Later on in the evening, a few of us met up again for a drink at the hotel sports bar, but overall it was a pretty laid back evening. Tomorrow we go to the airport and leave the warm weather and palm trees... sigh...

The Stills Day 2, Orlando, FL

The day started with a phone call from the airport that our gear made it in, so after getting suitably caffeinated, a couple of us made the 30 min drive back to the airport to pick everything up. It was fairly painless, happened fast enough and we were back at the hotel for lunch, which we got at a sidewalk cafe few blocks away. We had a few minutes to walk around after, but had to head over to the club pretty fast.

Things were running slightly late, so by the time our soundcheck was done, we didn't really have time for dinner. We just hung around the club til show time. We opened for Spoon tonight, which was kind of cool. The place was packed, about 1300 people, and they loved it. For the rest of the night people were coming up to the guys everywhere we went saying what a great show it was.

Right after we were done, I brought the gear back to the hotel, where the valets looked at the cases and ran away (they said they were scared they'd break the big, heavy duty, indestructable road cases. Quite lame). So I got everything up to the room and went back out. We went to a handful of different places as all this was part of the Anti-Pop Festival. I have no idea which bands I saw, but a couple of them were ok.

After sampling a few local beverages and varieties of street meat, we made our way back to crash. We had to get up early to head to Jacksonville, which was a little complicated because most of the downtown streets were going to be closed for the Veteran's Day parade.

The Stills Day 1, Going to Florida

We were all looking forward to spending a few days in Florida. Who wouldn't want to escape the cold for a little while? We made it, but we definitely had our share of headaches on the way down...

I drove to Montreal to meet the guys in the afternoon, got all the gear to the airport, checked it, all was good. The plane left a few minutes late, but whatever, it happens...

The first flight was to Philadelphia. We got there on time, we could even see the skyline when the pilot announced that it would be another 30-40 minutes before we would land, so we circled. A lot. Finally, about 45 mins later, we hit the runway. We were a little worried because this severely cut into our stopover time to make it to the next flight, but we still had an hour to go, so we figured it would be fine.

Then the plane stopped at the end of the runway. We waited there for a few minutes, then we taxied over to the cargo gates. We waited some more. Then the pilot makes the announcement that we can't park the plane anywhere because there aren't any available gates. It's been about 25 mins now, we're starting to sweat a little... A few minutes later, we started moving towards a terminal, then we stopped. The pilot made another announcement to say there were no gates available for us, meanwhile there were planes coming and going all around us. He must've said something that pissed off the air traffic controller, because it took an hour to get a gate.

Obviously, this killed our stopover time. I was the furthest up front in the plane, so as soon as I got out, I ran to the next gate to try and hold the plane and make sure our gear would make it. The guy at the gate was really cool, held the plane for us and said he would send a baggage cart to get our gear off the first plane and bring it directly to our new plane. All seemed good. It took about 20 mins before the plane left the gate, more than enough time to get the gear over.

So, we relax, enjoy the flight, and a few hours later we landed in Orlando. We landed. The gear didn't. It seems our friend at the gate was just trying to get us on the plane and out of there, which we sort of expected but were hoping wasn't the case. We tracked the gear, still sitting in Philly, made arrangements to pick it up the next morning, grabbed our rental van and headed to the hotel.

We were planning to eat dinner in Philly during our stopover, but since that didn't happen, as soon as we got to the hotel we went out in search of food. We found a cool little pub like place called the Crooked Bayou that had the best hot sauce, tater tots and wings. A pretty good score for 1:30am. We didn't stay out too long cause we were kind of beat, so after eating we headed back and crashed.