Okay, I've been delinquent in blogging lately and I blame it mostly on Guitar Hero II. For those of you, who don't know "Guitar Hero" is a popular video game which features a small fisher-price looking "my first guitar" with which you play rock tunes.

Now some of you have pointed out, "um... don't you already play rock tunes and a real guitar?" and the answer is "yes." BUT, for some reason this is still a pretty awesome game.

This morning I finished the game on medium level an am celebrating by blogging. I'll cover a bunch of shows including a Margaritaville-themed Insurance Broker convention, an empty pool hall, a sort-of CD release, and a totally sick show. Pretty exciting stuff.

HARVEST HUSTLE

But first, I wanted to thank John at the Moonshine Cafe in Oakville for having me out to play for the "Harvest Hustle" which for some reason I kept thinking was called "Happy Hoedown" or something like that. It's a celebration of Oakville that involves jogging somehow - I'm unclear on the details - but it was a lovely day in a park.

INSURANCE ROCK

Next I played at the IBAO convention (or Insurance Brokers Assocation of Ontario to those of you not in the know) at the Royal York hotel downtown. Each insurance company has a "hospitality room" with food, drinks and entertainment. There are a lot of comapnies, and a lot more insurance brokers, so for one night the hotel is FILLED with drunk insurance people. My company, Aviva, hired my band to played their "Margaritaville" themed night. I was told to "play a bunch of Jimmy Buffet tunes" and also to "make it a rocking dance party." I was also told to "keep it quiet enough for people to talk over" while "kicking the ass of the insurance company next door." Ummmmm...

I haven't played with a band in a bit, so I brought out some new folks to work with - Devrim Eleleki (who also plays with Blue Venus) and David Pontello (who plays with Swamperella) played guitar and drums. Both recently played on my Puretracks/Fastrax promo album and both rock. Multi-instrumentalist Jeff Daze played bass and Adlai Waxman played keys (son of Alan Waxman, but not THE "Al Waxman", although he also has a son named Adlai... it's confusing).

With only 1 rehearsal, we pulled off 3 Jimmy Buffet tunes (Margaritaville, Cheeseburger in Paradise, and Come Sunday... I hate Cheeseburger in Paradise), as well as a ton of new tunes - this was all a bit ambitious and stressful, but the boys were excellent. At the hotel we're given hawaiin shirts covered with parrots (a "polly" blend, as Dan points out later) - we setup and and start playing - a pretty cool show, actually - everyone digs the tunes ("China Grove" is particularly popular for some reason) and we get a good number of drunk brokers dancing.

Afterwards it takes 80 hours to load out, since every insurance company has a band, a design company, and full sets, and they are all loading out in the one working elevator. Parking costs $46, but all in all a pretty awesome insurance convention.

A SORT-OF RELEASE PARTY:

Next show was down at C'est What, for a sort-of CD release party for my Fastrax/Puretracks promo CD. Adlai & Jeff came along for the fun and Clark Allore joined us on drums. The audience of, apparently, insurance and theatre fans was excellent. Onstage we switched between 3 bass players, bringing on Rando of the Showflies and Eli from Flickershow. There were plenty of train wrecks, but no one seemed to notice and we had a ball. Flickershow played after us and played a great set.

POOL PARTY:

David, Jeff and I later rocked out Dooly's pool hall up in Vaughan. Dooly's is trying to open up Thursday's by bringing out live music - unfortunately, no one seemed to know this, and Dooly's is the size of a stadium. The few folks who did show up seemed to enjoy themselves - and, aside from having to drive all the way back to Woodine & Danforth to get the mixer which I'd forgotten, it was a pretty fun show.

SONGWRITERS UNITE:

Finally, I played a night at Russel Leon's Songwriter's Unite Night down in Graffiti's in Kensington Market - an awesome night that features some amazing songwriters monthly. I was sicker than sick, but still decided to play since I had some work friends coming out. Therese Texeira brought out her whole dragonboat racing team, a nice bunch of folks - who got rung out by the first performer for talking too much (although if I couldn't handle people talking during my sets, I would have stopped years ago... sheesh). My good friend Sam came in from Thunder Bay for the show and brought a friend from Hamilton. And my co-worker, Barry got loudly drunk and awesome. My set ended with random people dancing in the street behind me and kicking off their boots. Sweet!

Okay - enough blogging - back to Guitar Hero.