April 10 - Edmonton

We are about 200 kms from Jasper and we have a night off!. Our intention was to head to Jasper for our night off and hit up some hot springs. The hot water would feel so nice on my hurting rocker arms and shoulders... but I don't think they are open :( Damn! We will see when we get there though... maybe if we stop in at a hostel they will give us the DL on where we can visit a hot spring thats actually open and preferably free... but thats tomorrows blog.

Last night we played at the DV8 Tavern and holy cow, it was awesome!!! Edmonton, and more specifially the DV8 really know how to treat a band. Like they treated us so nice that it felt like we were swindling them somehow. Rod, who does the show promotion among many other things, is a wealth of knowledge and experience on the punk scene. He could talk for hours about all the cool punk legends he knows and he's got an entertaining story about all of them. Rod also plays in a band called Kroovy Rookers. They opened up the night. They play a cool punk/oi mix. I would definitely recommend checking them out. Second up, our friends from Calgary (whom we played with in Saskatoon) Off The Rails. The third band, Bastards Son (Edmonton locals) ruled! In fact they rocked so hard the drummer passed out... totally unconscious... during the last song. It was crazy! But these guys play a sort of early Metallica/punk loads of technical fills and time changes... They also take no breaks during their set. I think I would have passed out too. He came to shortly after though and was feeling better. We later found out that (from the mouth of the lead singer Morgan),
“we are the laziest band in the world. Like we only practice when we have a show coming up. I guess we should practice more so the drummer doesn't tire so easily.” Hahaha.
Morgan was awesome!

We went up and played our set. The crowd was awesome! The other bands were awesome! The staff was awesome! The venue was awesome!

After the show Morgan (Bastards Son) offered us a place to stay. He said he and his room mates share an old group home. They had loads of spare beds and lots of extra space. We made a quick stop at the liquor store (open until 2am in Edmonton!!) and headed to his place. He wasn't lying, it was this massive house with a million bedrooms and livingrooms. We each got a bed (or futon couch bed) to sleep on and we all slept like babies through the whole night.

We LOVE Edmonton! In fact we love it so much we are going to play the DV8 again on our way back through on April 19th. Can't wait to hang out with that crew again.

Since we have the day off today we took this opportunity to sleep in even though Morgan had to be up and out of the house by 6:30am... ouch! We met up with Rod again and went out for breakfast at a greasy spoon close to the venue called Route 99. Yummy egg, homefries and toast breakfast.

After breakfast we stopped off at a music store to pick up an input jack for Will's bass since his is only working now when its reefed over and taped down to the bass body. I thought since I was at a music store I would also try to get my bass pedal fixed.. finally! The problem was that the wing-nut bolt thing was too short so I could never tighten my pedal to the bass drum. The guys at the music store fixed it by epoxy gluing a nickel to reduce he size of the gap. Genius! I don't know why I never thought of doing something like that.

Our last stop before heading out of town was The West Edmonton Mall. It was pretty cool and gigantic. We got some video and pics of it. They have a full size pirate ship right in the mall! And a huge wave pool! Crazy. There is also a roller coaster that we were going to ride but decided to skip it when we found out it costs $10.50 each. Geez, we are a punk band on tour... We don't have that kind of money! We didn't go in any stores but we did make a wish at the wishing well. Lets hope they all come true! Oh yeah! Also there is a shooting range in the mall but it was too expensive to try. But seriously... a shooting range?

I am really looking forward to spending the night chilling out in Jasper then off to Prince George in the morning!