Mon, January 12, 2004 08:56

Hello everyone,

Welcome back to my Unicorns tour diary. Just as before, anyone who want's
to be removed from the list should contact me here, or at my other e-mail
(sticks_twirler@hotmail.com)

It's been a while since I wrote an update, I think I was in the US the
last time. As it turns out I'm in the states again, at a hotel in
Plattsburg. We crossed the border last night, and we're headed towards
Boston where we will play this evening. This is the beggining of our new
US tour which will takes us first down to Miami, Where we'll stay for a
while before heading west, eventually making our way back to Canada in
April.

The cast of characters is mostly the same with myself, Alden and Nick,
plus Max Groadie (the roadie, aka Bill). But we've added a new face to the
team in the form of Mark Lawson, who will be doing our sound for us (Mark
recorded our album and is a good friend as well as a fantastic sound guy).
We also have Dan and Noel (the manager(s)) and Deanna (Alden girlfriend)
for the next couple of days.

After the HHH tour finished up, we took some much needed time off (over
the hollidays) and returned with fresh faces and good attitudes. Most of
the time I had in Montreal was taken up by recording (we did two songs for
a 7" which comes out in march). We also played what might be our best show
to date at "the party club" also knows as "the grey room" on Maguire
street. We absolutely sold the place out (I was told it was the most
people ever at that venue) and played as well as we ever have. It was one
of the best night's I've had in a while.

The next day consisted of a lot of preparations for leaving (we are gone
for several months, after all) and helping clean up the venue. We left to
cross the border at around 9:00, got across fine, and got a hotel in
Plattsburg.

Which I guess brings this update full-circle. Here I am, you're caught up.

Stay tuned for further updates in the next couple of days. Tuesday we play
the vice magazine party in NYC and that should make for some good update
material.

Until then, everybody stay clean and be good to one another.

I recently tracked down a series of tour diary emails I sent out on the first unicorns us tour, I present them unedited, so get ready for some hefty spelling mistakes (read below for instructions on dealing with them). Also, I shit talk a couple people who don't deserve it. Sorry guys.

I heard that Alex Chow from islands is looking for love, any interested ladies should seek him out.

Last night it rained in athens georgia. I was in a really great mood after a long conversation with Jules. One of the less important things I learned in that conversation is that the guy from the black crowes really dug my playing. The important stuff that I learned I'm going to keep to myself. We stopped at a waffle house at about 3 am because a few of the guys were starving. It turned out to be one of the original waffle houses from way back in the 50's or whenever these things started. I was hoping for a lot of old classics on the jukebox but besides one or two 60's hits it was mostly bad rock hits from today and the whole new black eyed peas album for some reason. I decided to get some cheese grits in honor of a girl I know from Atlanta who showed me the pleasures of cheese grits before.

I'm sitting at "hot corner's" in Athens, GA. We're on the second show of our mini "hot indie scene cities" tour, which hit Chapel Hill, NC yesterday. Both cities are effing great and I can endorse them fully. Last night a rapper named L who works at the cat's craddle club did whalebone with us and did a pretty darn good job of it. I'm getting a flood of memories as we drive further and further south. It's been a long time since I've been in this part of the world and I'm just now remembering how much I love it here. I'm looking forward to catfish, and Nick and I have both decided to try boiled peanuts which we were both too wussy to try before.

The next thing we need is to find one of those fireworks warehouses to really bring back the old feeling.

Tonight is the last show with "men, women and children" opening. They have been really nice to us, and I'm sure we'll be seeing more of them.

I've decided to only write updates from the tour in single sittings, I think it's more fun. It's also more spelling errors because I just write it all the way through and post it. Deal with the spelling errors. Embrace them.

Right now I'm at Jimmy Shaw's place in Toronto with Jimmy and Josh and Jules, we all hung out last night after the show and I ended up sleeping here. We got food from a pakistani place at like 3 am and Jules ordered something made out of testicles. Me and Josh each had a bite, I thought it was pretty bad, Josh almost vomitted. I was going to stay on the couch at our label guys' hotel, then they left early so I was going to stay at Brian from holy fuck's place. We were going to go see an after hours show, but it got too late and I ended up on the couch in Jimmy's studio.

I have to take off, but I have to say that Jimmy has the best apartment I've ever seen.

I'm just now watching the election results. We officially have a conservative government in Canada. I mean sure, it's a minority government and their every single action can be shot down by the Liberals and the Bloc should they decide to do so, but it's still very very frightening. This can't last.

I have a tendency, I guess, to sign up for blogging services and then promptly forget about them. I found this out today when I tried to sign up for a blog under my usual name and found that it had been taken. Turns out it had been taken by me. I'm pretty happy to get to read my little note from the summer, even if I was at the end of my rope.

Over the next few weeks or so I'm going to try to put a bit of time into this place to try to get it ready for when we go out on tour again. When the unicorns toured I used to write a sort of a newsletter to all my friends (in the form of a mass e-mail, blogs were beyond me at that point) and I would like to get back into that habit with Islands. I found it was a good way to process the experiences I was having, as well as a good way to share my thoughts with my friends and family.

But it's 2006 now, and as usual I want to be no more than 2 years or so behind the times, so here we go. the blog.