[in which I meet a tailless pig, play in an old school hall for an internet show, meet the queen of the smurfs, and buy a cowboy shirt at "midnight madness"]

I roll into Olds around 5, employing my normal arrival style of driving past the house several times before finally pulling into the correct driveway. This is partly due to the fact that I keep arriving after dark and directions like "look for the big shiny barn" don't do much for you without any shininess.

I'm greeted by a nice, old dog and am welcomed into Sharyl and Warren's farmhouse - somewhat newly rebuilt after a horrific hail storm earlier this year. Sharyl and Warren are awesome folks and we take to each other immediately - their two kids, Joshy and Ryan are totally cute, showing me their bloody halloween costume and plastic katanas and throwing stars during an excellent home-cooked dinner. Sharyl was actually just in Toronto - she came out for the Tina Turner concert and threatens me with bodily harm if I don't go when she comes back to Toronto in December. The dog who met me at the door is Stanley Firetruck Cosco - named by Ryan, I think. Sharyl & Warren have been missing two other dogs for a couple days and they're worried that coyotes may have got them. Coyotes are apparently a regular problem out here - a while ago their basset hound got chased for miles by a pack of coyotes and recently their pet pig, Beulah, (yes, they have a pet pig and yes, she has a Jewish name) had her tail and a chunk of flank bitten off by them (she's okay). Warren, sad about his pups, wasn't sure if he was coming to show, but we get along so well that he agrees.

The show is being held in an old school house/community centre-esque place. It's fantastic - paint peeling and old wood - one of the most memorable places I've played - and inside, the piano and the wood chairs bring to mind Little House on the Prairie. Inside, a friendly guy named dave is setting up a camera for OldsTV.com - apparently the place to go for all your Olds info needs (who knew?) - and theoretically my show should be posted up there soon.

I get the kitchen as my warm-up room where I can go if I need to "get all zen" as Sheryl puts it. I tune up and play a bit with Josh and the uber-adorable 2-year old Annabelle on piano. Soon enough, a crowd comes in made up of friends, family and neighbours. Sheryl claims she didn't do much advertising, but apparently a poster on a local post box goes a long way. One family brings in 7 children. It's a pretty good crowd, considering I have competition - it's "Midnight Madness" in Olds - where all the stores stay open till midnight and there are sales and free hotdogs outside the bank.

For the first time, I get to see the package that was sent to the concert organizers - it includes a quick bio on all the artists - mine is mostly lifted from my website but mysteriously has the added line, "David looks normal enough, but beware - he has a creative mind and that makes him dangerous." I love it and make Sheryl say it in my introduction.

The show goes well - my voice is still a bit rough, but it's getting better - I try out a new tune called Victoria - a love song to Canadian cities - which features an improvised 3rd verse - tonight it goes:

Well, they say Calgary's a cool one
But it's nothing compared to Olds
It's just a little North and I'm sorry folks
But your city rhymes with "cold"

The kids get antsy quickly - Josh and Ryan run around a bit till Sheryl shoos them outside - but the 7 kids on the side bench sit nicely and listen, even though I can tell a couple are bored. Otherwise, it's a great show - people laugh in all the right places and sing along. I end the set with Dear Aunty Emm and immediately feel bad for Warren when I sing the song "I'm taking your little dog too" - but he seems alright when I apologize afterwards. I sell some CDs at and meet everyone - including Sheryl's boss, the local MLA and the mennonite family - who are totally nice. After the show all the kids amuse themselves by jumping out at people and screaming - I do it right back to them, which I think buys me more cred than any of my songs. I try to take a picture of them, but it ends up looking totally creepy - like something out of children of the corn.

Sheryl takes me into town for Midnight Madness - which is a little less "madness" than I expected - but maybe it's the cold. We stop into a cowboy store (I don't know what these are called, but they sell cowboy things...). I pick out a bunch of cowboy shirts and find a nice little green number - clearly this will make me fit into Alberta crowds as if I was born here. We check out cowboy boots as well, but I'm not quite ready for that level of cowboy lifestyle - plus, I don't know how I'd even decide - who knew they came in all shapes and sizes? Sheryl sports some pretty funky pink ones.

On the way home, we narrowly miss hitting a gigantic porcupine - Sheryl informs me sagely that "they can flip your car" and I believe her since she's had experience hitting animals - a while back she and her family hit a moose and survived thanks to being in a gigantic vehicle. My little Suzuki Swift seems very small all of a sudden.

The next morning, I give a quick guitar lesson to Joshy (who's the most musical kid I've met). We make up some songs and he plays ukelele - admittedly he hasn't totally mastered it at 3-years old, but I'm confident he'll pick it up.

Sheryl, her boys and I go for a walk in a "coulee" which, to those of you not in the know, is a "valley." I've never heard this term because I grew up in Saskatchewan - where a "hoody" is called "bunny hug."

This land has been with Sheryl's family for over 100 years - beautiful land, with well-worn paths, patches of trees, and deer running across the plains. We meet a pack of their family's horses who trot over happily to get their noses rubbed. Sheryl gives me a tour of local natural disasters - where the trees were all blown down, where the hail destroyed house and house. We stop at "the sand pit" and I try to teach Josh about geology and why there are striations in the rocks, but my 5th grade geography is showing. Sheryl says it's fine: "making up stuff is what you do when you're a parent."

We head back for lunch, and take one more trip to Sheryl's parents place to see her fine smurf collection. We also have a smurf collection at home, but Sheryl's is clearly superior - she has every smurf from Ugly Smurfette to the masked super-smurf. Apparently she had a cousin who worked at a toy store and only found out much later that many of her smurfs, um, "followed her cousin home." Awesome.

I say goodbye to everyone and head out of the farm, past Buella the pig, the fields of horses, and the woods filled with coyotes towards the big city of Calgary.