April 12th, 2002 - Backdraught, Saskatoon, SK:

This is virgin territory for Doug and the Slugs... never played this room before... what'd you think I meant? It's a great little room with some real atmosphere and great food! (the best portabello mushroom burger I've ever had... seriously!) Michelle is the manager here and makes us feel right at home and absolutely none of us notice how great looking she is... really... we're playing with a very small sound system tonight, so again Mike has his hands full making us sound like the gods we think we are... and again, it sounds great... this place might be small, but it's full and the people there rock! (except for the old, cranky, lounge piano guy who seems quite miffed that we have to interrupt his noodling for a soundcheck, but we won't talk about him)...

there are a couple of girls from Inuvik(?) here and they've already heard that we're playing there soon... so you people actually pay attention! - I'm going to have to watch what I write... and there are some real singers in Saskatoon as well; during 'I'm So Happy' we have a couple of people onstage telling us why they love living in Saskatoon - good job people!...

AND THEN!

Then, is when all hell breaks loose... Chris puts his foot right through his kick drum skin - I don't know if I mentioned it before, but Doug is pretty much confined to a stool onstage tonight, because after the gig last night he was outside kicking the hell out of the bass drum after drinking wa-a-a-ay too much Jack Daniels, and he hurt his feet. Honestly. Good thing we already had the crutches with us - just incase. That's why I don't drink the stuff... it's really hard on drums... anyway, the skin was quite worn afterwards, but trusting souls as we are, we didn't think to check how much damage was done... so the monitor/production guy, Joel, gets quite a workout tonight; running up to the stage every couple of songs with some more duct tape to tape over the hole... after which Chris would go through that too; the tape sticking to the beater and holding it against the skin doesn't help either...

but that isn't enough for Chris - his snare is still okay... so he breaks the snare drum stand too! Somehow Joel fixes that as well, which is kind of too bad (sounds like a good title for a song), because I really want to see Chris wear the snare around his neck like those guys in marching bands...

Not everyone in Saskatoon can sing obviously... Doug pulls one of the more obnoxious guys up onstage during 'Making it Work' and this guy is just awful; hopefully he has better timing in some of the other aspects of his life, but if not, he's in trouble and his wife will be very unhappy (oops! did I say that out loud?)

After the show we meet quite a few of the people, signing cds etc., and one wallet - I've never signed a wallet before, that's a first... and inside the wallet are two tickets from a 1985 Doug and the Slugs show! These tickets have never been out of the wallet apparently... pretty cool. We're back at Red's in Edmonton tomorrow night... Cya there!

Marc.