Touring in Canada is always an adventure; whether it's multiple mountain ranges, extreme weather or just the endless stretches of highway between civilized outposts, there is much peril en route.
I did a tour with Sandybone and the Breakdown about six years ago this September. We had to travel from the interior of British Columbia, through the Rocky Mountains to Calgary, Alberta, which should have taken about eleven hours. As it happens, we began to have alternator problems in our van on the western side of the mountains and that evening, by the time we were on the eastern descent, we had lost our windshield wipers, heat and headlights. Oh, and it was the first blizzard of the year on roads oil-slicked from months of summer weather with little precipitation.
We strung twine through our wipers to clear the windshield and held a flashlight up for a pathetic excuse for a headlight. We stayed as close as was safe to the vehicles ahead of us to guide us down the steep mountainside.
When we got through the twists and turns of the high mountain road onto a relatively flat stretch, we had a bit of serendipity: we were parked right next to a billboard which featured a young lady's shapely bikinied bottom. We called the auto club for a tow truck and were able to use the billboard as a landmark for the driver, who knew immediately (natch) where we were stranded.
Ill prepared for such inclement weather, we huddled in whatever clothing we had (for me, a raggedy old dressing-gown, over my thin jacket) and awaited our tow. Thankfully, the driver arrived in about twenty minutes, had us loaded on the flat-bed in ten, and we were on our way again, the whole ordeal only costing us about four hours of travel time at that point. Not only that, but the driver (like all of us) was a cigarette smoker and his warm truck was a smoke-friendly environment. We lit up, cracked beers and prepared to enjoy the ride into Calgary.
Except that two tractor-trailers had jack-knifed a little ways up the highway. After ten whole minutes of driving in the tow truck we found ourselves in a two-mile long traffic jam. We parked there on the highway for five hours and twenty six minutes.
And then we were on our way again. When we finally arrived in Calgary we were ten hours behind schedule and absolutely sleep deprived. The boys in the band managed to get three or four hours of rest, but our fearless leader Sandybone headed out immediately upon our arrival to find a new alternator and ended up installing it in the parking lot of the Great White North's favourite retail establishment, Canadian Tire. He managed to get about a half hour's shut eye before we had to make our gig, a benefit that began pretty early in the afternoon and ran till midnight.
When we arrived at the venue, just in time to be late, it became apparent that our drummer (a local boy) was a no-show. So we grabbed some guy in the bar who supposedly played drums (uh, not so much...) and our exhausted and brain-dead bandleader led us into an epic trainwreck. We finally broke our set down to two guitars and piano and salvaged the show.
That evening, for our second show, we moved into a larger ballroom in the venue, recruited a real drummer and drank enough to function in our compromised state. As is often the case when you are beyond exhaustion, instinct and intuition took over; we had a killer set that evening, but all of us fell ill in the next couple of days, which would lead to some interesting shenanigans, as well (involving Buckley's cough syrup, and Buckley's #2, which tasted remarkably like Jameson's Irish Whiskey).
The night that tour ended, we managed to smack into a parked car, inadvertently steal a full tank of gas, and get hopelessly lost (kind of a blessing, given the unpaid-for gas and the gas attendant who knew exactly where we were headed. Hey, she forgot to ask us for the money). Oh yeah, and a biker-affilliated stripper managed to talk us into giving her a ride back to Vancouver (about nineteen hours drive). I got out of the van on the Vancouver side, slipped on a work shirt and started an eight hour shift at the barbecue restaurant I worked at, culminating in a pinched sciatic nerve, and several months of constant pain (and pain-killers).
It was a great tour!! Seriously!!
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Strange Gig Stories
