August 7th, 2004 - Rock'N August Festival, St. Albert, Alberta:

First off, I have to tell you that Larry is at this show... apparently I always neglect to mention when Larry is around... Larry is a good friend of Chris' - the Slugs drummer, and takes many of the pictures you've seen on the website... he even drives us around from time to time... a complete pain in the ass otherwise of course, but we feel bad for him because he doesn't have any friends...

A very short drive this morning from Red Deer, brings us to this town just outside of Edmonton... basically a suburb of Edmonton and a nice looking area... so we have a lot of time on our hands today as we're not onstage until midnight... Chris gets picked up by Larry - did I mention he was here?, and they spend some time at West Edmonton Mall... it's pretty hard to say "been there, done that" when speaking of the biggest mall in North America, but I feel like that just the same... maybe I'm just not always into hanging out at the mall...

We've been getting treated to some pretty awesome weather in Vancouver this summer, and Edmonton, um... hasn't... it's cold here... and what's more, the people living here have come to expect it as evidenced by the down-filled vests and jackets everywhere... AND it's an outdoor festival tonight, so you know that by midnight the crowd will be shivering in their boots and parkas...

Quite the line up tonight though... Ten Inch Men is the first band, then Lighthouse is on at around 9pm... followed by Chilliwack - always a treat to hear Bill sing, and just great songs... and then us... not quite sure why we're headlining this event, but hey, maybe Chilliwack had an early morning or something, who knows? Anyway, we're not complaining... the stage is huge, the gear is great sounding, and the crowd is, well, shivering... oh yeah, and Larry is there... actually quite a few friends of the band are out tonight; even some visiting from Vancouver... the stage has a cool feature I've never seen before; on either end there's a set of stairs leading up from the stage to a sort of scaffolding with seats above us... maybe enough room for 15 people per side... kind of cool to be looking up at people from the stage, and it's probably a great view from up there...

It's a fun event and kudos to those who braved the cold and stayed the entire night... not everyone did, but it was cold enough that I actually put on my half-gloves to play and kept them on for almost the entire set, so I can't blame some of the people for not sticking it out... hopefully next time we're here the weather will cooperate a bit more... I'm sure Larry will be here then too... until then, St. Albert, (and Larry), take care... Marc.