4 am. Well, that's when the alarm goes off. I get up at 4:45am and leave the house by 5. Wish I could have spent more time with John Dufort, my lovely host, but time waits for no man and I have an Aviva appointment in Edmonton at 3pm, a 9 hour drive away.


My "no fast food" rule is rapidly running out - I hit McDonald's for breakfast and head into the darkness of the prairie towards Saskatoon. Regina fades behind me again as the land is swallowed under a heavy blanket of darkness. As the morning comes, the pitch blackness slowly fades, almost as if your eyes are adapting and what emerges are rolling waves of crops, like a seabed. In fact the black-blue pre-dawn prairie world looks like you're underwater... or maybe I'm just sleepy.

I am ridiculously tired. I shouldn't have gone out last night. I shouldn't have scheduled a meeting 9 hours away. I'm not falling asleep quite, but I'm having enough eye closed moments that I'm a bit worried. After enough of them I pull into a Shell station, just past Saskatoon. I crank the heat, set my alarm and have a delicious 45 minute cat nap. I wake up and head into the station, stocking up on Brisk ice tea (I don't drink tea or coffee...). Back in the car I down my caffeine and sugar supplement and chug a pack of Raisinettes. I am WIRED.

Somewhere along the road, the land is suddenly covered with snow - there'd been snow before, patches and ditchfulls, but this is different and sneaks up on me - the countryside is white, the lakes are frozen, and there is no denial, it is winter. I see flocks of geese everywhere preparing to leave, practicing their formations or just assembling on masses of thousands in what open water is left. The down from the inside of my new coat (donated by Sheila at The Apollo in Thunder Bay) has been slowly working it's way out of a small rip - the side of the passenger seat is covered in feathers and now it looks like small feathers are forcing themselves out between the seams. My theory is that the down wants to fly south as well.

Haybales covered in snow. Bisons covered in snow. I take pictures, always happy about snow before it become freezing or brown slush. Which doesn't take long.





I hit the outskirts of Edmonton in just over 8 hours - plenty of time to find my meeting at Aviva's Edmonton office. I follow my Google Map directions around and around, heading toward what I assume will be a similar giant office building.




Instead, I end up in a nice little suburb at someone's house. Clearly, something has gone terribly wrong. Luckily, I'm early - I have an hour and a half to find the office. I head to a strip mall I passed and try to find a pay phone (more difficult than you think in our new cell phone crazed days). The receptionist at Aviva laughs at me when I tell him where I am, but gives me directions. Edmonton is theoretically laid out on a grid, numbered avenues by numbered streets - theoretically easy to find everything, but in practice there are enough exceptions and twists and turns (100A Avenue! What?!) to get you plenty confused. I find the corner it's supposed to be on and then spend half an hour looking for parking. Finally I just pick a random parking garage, go up seven stories to the roof to get a spot and find that I've picked the garage right next to Aviva's building. I am a genius.

I have a bit of extra time and head to an art store across the street, filled with dogs and beautiful, expensive things. In the back I find Eva Zeisel vases. I assisted Eva for a while in New York - a wonderfully tough old woman who has been designing beautifully curved vases, teapots, and salt & pepper shakers (I love them - they look like Barba Poppas) all her life. She spent time in prison in Europe during World War II and, when I knew her, her vision was going, but her mind was still active. She is tough and scrappy and occasionally hard to deal with and I am glad to see that she's still designing (although I think she'd hate the "still" in that sentence). She just put out a fountain pen which is pretty cool.

The meeting at Aviva goes well. We already play nicely with the Edmonton branch so I tell them about my tour. Charlene, the head of the branch, says she'll come down to the show.

Afterwards I wander around, waiting for my friend Ayla to get back from Calgary where he played last night. I suddenly am tired of getting into new towns every day, getting lost, getting confused, and having to figure it out. It's exhausting. I talk to Irene for a bit. She can't come out to meet me in Kansas City - there's too much she'd have to give up and I tell her it doesn't make sense, even though I wish it did. I wish I was home.

Ayla phones and I head over to his place. Ayla's an old friend from Prince Albert - our moms were friends and we'd occasionally see eachother for very cool, albeit geeky, dungeon and dragon live events. Ayla and my lives seem to have run in parallel - he's done his stint as a theatre tech and has been in a number of bands - currently in AA sound system (Double-A... as in batteries... how cool a name is that?) - www.aasoundsystem.com. They just released their 2nd CD, produced by Danny Michel, one of my singer/songwriter heroes and an amazing act to catch (www.dannymichel.com) and an amazing producer. Ayla tells me stories about working with Danny and I'm pretty happy. We drink. We smoke. Ayla's girlfriend comes over and we talk for a while... but I am exhausted from the early start and head to bed.

The next day we head out for breakfast (tofu scramble! mmmmm!) and then have a nice day shopping around Edmonton - books stores, comic shops, bakeries, and awesome thrift shops - my favourite t-shirts are "french canadians" (with two mounties making out) and "I hate myself" (which features an Amish robot). Should have bought them... I comfort myself with the best sausage roll in the world.

We get back to Ayla's and all have a nap. This is how days should be spent.

I'm staying at another place after the show, so I head to Heather Boyd's place - a friend of a mother of an old schoolmate from Saskatoon. Heather's wonderful and totally takes care of me. Unfortunately there's not a ton of time to visit, so I head back downtown for dinner.

We eat quick and head over to the club - I'm antsy because we're late, but Ayla, typically, is calm - although he never plays this place and doesn't care much about making the booker happy. We're opening up for Moses Mayes, a local funk band with a big following - so we should have a big crowd, but it may not be my kind of audience. Plus, AA Sound System recently lost their drummer to a cult in BC (or love, whichever...), so they're planning on doing some more experimental stuff involving samplers, two computers and a recording of the history of Saskatchewan. I'm not sure how me and my folksy acoustic guitar fits in, but it should be an interesting night.

Turns out I had nothing to worry about. The booker wanted to soundcheck before 8, but the show doesn't start until 10 and we don't need much of a soundcheck. I phone Irene and we talk a while. I make friends with some girls who want to hitchhike to BC - no room in the bug though - and I hang out with Charlene from Aviva, who was nice enough to come, but had trouble finding the place (I'm playing at the Velvet Underground, but there's no sign outside for it - just one for the upstairs club, The Starlite Lounge... confusing enough? I find out later that my sponsor from Rent-a-wreck, who were also sponsoring a boxing fight that night... bizarre... tried to come by but couldn't find it... sheesh).

Finally the show starts - I play pretty well, but it's clear that half the audience just wants Moses Mayes. Still, the ones who do listen like it enough - I meet some very nice folks afterwards who sang and danced a bit. Bryan Bayley and the Circus (www.bbcircus.ca) ask me to come to Calgary to do a show with them. My favourite part is that Curtis, one of the loud, drunken train guys from Moose Jaw came to the show! How cool is that?! He was moving from one city to the other and saw on my tour schedule that he could come again. He's listened to my CD all the way up and loves it. That made my night. Curtis requests South Dakota and I play Dear Aunty Emm again for him, although the singalong parts will never be as good as Moose Jaw.

Ayla's set is great, if not mixed well enough. They have some amazingly good songs and the experimental stuff isn't off the deep end - just cool. Lane, his bass player does some sweet harmonies and considering they don't have a drummer, their sound is really full. They refer to their drum machines as Robot 1 and 2 . Both do a great job filling in.

Moses Mayes gets up and is pretty cool - Everyone jumps to their feet and starts dancing. They play mostly instrumental funk, with horns, sax, keys, turntables and drums. Fun stuff, but we're all exhausted. Lane says he can't believe how stuck in 1995 they are. I like them enough and would dance, but feel like sleeping - yesterday's drive is still wearing on me. We pack up and go, saying quick goodbyes.

I head to Heather's and sneak in, creaking across the floorboards to make myself some toast and then heading to bed. The next day Heather makes me eggs, does laundry for me and gets me on the internet. As all of my hosts do, she goes above and beyond.

I leave late but happy and looking forward to hitting the rockies.