April 16th and 17th - Vancouver

We were lucky to have the chance to hang out in Vancouver for 3 days and play 3 shows! I fell in love with Vancouver when I was there. I just love everything about it, especially the people.

On Saturday we played at Pat's Pub with Loose Tooth and Raised by Apes. This was a full-out skater crowd and included some pro long-boarders. It was crazy fun! Loose Tooth and Raised by Apes put on an awesome show... they were hilarious! We were supposed to play a house keg party before the Pat's Pub show but everything got screwed up with that and the time-line. We opted to stay at Pat's Pub rather then risk missing our set time. After the Pat's Pub show just about everyone who was there went to the keg party... we of course went too. We were hoping to catch up with our good friend from back home, Cam, because his band Real Problems was playing at the party but we arrived too late to catch him. In fact we were so late that the kegs were empty when we got there. Dennis who lives at the house, let us stay over... People are so nice to touring bands :) Brando and Will stayed in the house and Jan and I stayed in the van... I'm really getting used to my gypsy lifestyle and I'm going to be sad to give it up when I get home. Brando said that just as they were trying to get to sleep there was this super drunk guy at the party and Dennis thought this guy might barf so he lead him to the toilet. Once at the toilet the guy pulled down his pants and starting pooping... in front of everyone... farting all slumped over. Brando said it was hilarious. Gonna be a while before that guy lives that one down. Jan and I woke up to banging on the van window... it was Dennis waking us up because there was a guy trying to give us a ticket for not parking on the right part of the street. Luckily Dennis talked him out of the ticket... and for the record I don't think there was anything wrong with where we parked. Dennis said that guy shows up every Sunday morning just to write tickets... GET A LIFE!

Our Sunday night show that was booked at a venue called Bully's was canceled... well it wasn't canceled but the venue backed out. Noelle, the promoter for that show, worked crazy hard trying to hook up another venue but nothing really panned out. Luckily Todd (The Rebel Spell) was able to hook us up with an existing bill at a place called The Railway Club. I was a little unsure about this show at first but since we were already in Vancouver might as well play as much as possible. We were on first at 8:15pm but surprisingly there were quite a few people there and people were really into it... I didn't think they were going to be into it at all, just a different kind of music and when we showed up there was an open jam going on full out blues. But our set was awesome and the show was awesome! Actually it was really cool... Loads of friends came out too. Noelle, Todd, Cam and Zack came out to show their support (Thanks guys!) but we also saw some old friends we haven't seen in as much as 8 years. The most surprising was the band Mongoose... We played with these guys about 8 years ago at this tiny venue at the University of Waterloo. The promoter was friends with Mongoose so when we were added to the bill she sent out a message that we were now playing. He said his jaw hit the floor when he figured out we were The Rotten from Ontario, the same Rotten from 8 years ago!!! It was really cool catching up with them... and learning that they opened, TWICE, for Steel Panther... I'm jealous

We stayed at Noelle's place in Surrey for the night. We spent all day today driving to Banff and right now I'm sitting in our hotel room with free wi-fi!! We opted not to stay in the van tonight as its -10 tonight! Oh, just as we were parking we were driving around the block to our spot and we saw about 5 deer grazing on the sidewalk! Can't wait to check out Banff tomorrow.