February 12th, 2003 - The Duffer Pub, The Tamarack Inn,
Rocky Mountain House, Alberta:

Yawn... stretch... yawn... okay, so Mike comes through in the keyboard stand department with flying colours as you're about to read, BUT! sharing a room with him is hell... I get absolutely no sleep on the first night out... you know how snoring is sometimes referred to as 'sawing logs'? Well, Mike's got the entire lumberyard going...

seriously... initially I put my walkman on and try to fall asleep to my favourite Nine Inch Nails cd - believe me, this is much easier than it sounds, especially faced with the alternative... but between songs I can hear him snoring loud and proud in the next bed... so I 'load up' - this is a technique I learned from Doug Grant (previous drummer for the Slugs) - if he was rooming with Elio, he would put 'things' next to his bed within easy reach: a towel, then a pillow, then maybe a shoe, a book etc... when the snoring started, he would throw one of the things, starting small with the towel and working his way up to the shoe and the book etc... but with Mike it doesn't work... that lumberyard is going strong... the only thing that seems to work is when I slam the spine of my book down hard on the night table between us... and that only works momentarily... and in the morning when we get up, he's complaining that he didn't get much sleep because of me slamming down the book... hmmm... isn't that kind of like spilling coffee on someone's clothing, and then complaining about their appearance?

Mike drives the entire way to Rocky Mountain House though, so I catch up on a little sleep in the van... he also makes a call to his brother, Ed, in Edmonton... Ed works at Axe Music and the two of them arrange to have a keyboard stand waiting for me in Red Deer, which is tomorrow night's gig, (I left mine at home, in case you didn't read the last road diary entry)... and even better than that - Edmonton is the last stop on this swing and Ed is coming down to the show that night, so I can just hand over the stand to him after the gig, and he'll take care of it from there... major thanks go out to Ed and Mike for making this happen! Now I only have to worry about tonight's gig... my dreams are seasoned with bizarre visions of strange keyboard setups on a stage I haven't seen yet...

The production team here is Jeff and Adam... they'll be with us in Red Deer as well... and they help out a lot with the keyboard stand situation tonight... between us we rig up a bunch of cases, held together with duct tape, and position my keyboards on top of them... and there you have it! It's... it's... it's a batcave! Well, it kind of looks like it... or some weird kind of cockpit that I almost have to polevault into... but it works! Quick, Robin, to the batcave! The show comes off very well, especially considering it's Steve's first night with the band on this swing... Steve plays great! It's been awhile since he's played any of these songs - he played the parts on the actual CDs of course, but that was a long time ago...

There's a bit of a new twist in 'Day By Day'... Doug's affinity for politics rears its ugly head and finds its way into the show: he picks out two people from the audience to join us onstage... one of these is 'Ralph Klein' and the other is 'Gordon Campbell'... 'Gordon Campbell' is female on this particular night, but at least she has grey hair... after making fun of 'Gordon's' drinking habits, Doug places them at the front of the stage and gets them to turn around so they're facing us... he then picks out two more people from the audience to slap the 'politician's' asses in time to the music... it's a bum solo! And in the 'Twist' contest: I'm pretty sure this is the first time that the winning 'couple' have both been male... hmmm... a little strange, but hey, this is Rocky Mountain House... the usual rules don't apply! Seriously, we have a great time here, the show works out well, the staff is genuinely friendly and even the batcave makes it through the night... we're off to Red Deer tomorrow... See you there! Marc.