Oh Canada!

We are currently driving through butt-fuck Nebraska, 10 hours in to a 30 hour cross country drive to a largely unplanned but convenient show in San Francisco. This is the first down time we’ve had in days so we finally have time to update all y’all about the last fews days we have spent here in The USA.

After the brief but exciting time we spent in NYC, we were on the road again to play the second of our dates with Tarja and her super band, in the beautiful french canadian city of Montreal. First priority was making it across the boarder though. It seems as though the Canadians are quite careful about who or what crosses their boarder from their neighbors to the south and understandably so. After some feat of organisational magic our faithful american friend Dom was able to convince the suspecting Canadian boarder officials that letting through a van full of rock musicians without so much as a sniffer dog or BCS, into their country, was a good idea.

shortly after clearing the boarder we were in Montreal checking into our motel and venturing out to find nutrition and celebratory beers in the city centre. It was nice for us Eternal boys to unwind, drink some beer and relax for 5 minutes. After some well earned rest, we loaded in to Le Medley venue in downtown Montreal, a beautiful rock venue which was to bring good things for us. After a decent sound check and some getting to know Tarja’s monster of a drummer Mike Terrana, doors opened and people started rolling in.

We had the first billing tonight which ordinarily is a little tougher but in the case of this 700-800 strong French Canadian crowd, it was ideal. When the lights went down and Marty started the Kartika intro, the crowd literally roared. By the time Mark and I took the stage they were going crazy and it seemed that everything we did for the next 30 minutes found favour with them. After the set we went to the merch desk and proceeded to meet some great people, takes picture and sign autographs at a rate we could have not expected, selling nearly all of our cds we had set aside for the entire Canadian trip.

After the show we drove as far as we could towards the next show in Toronto, and after hours of drunken molestation of each other and our american travel buddies we found a motel somewhere along the highway.

We arrived in Toronto mid afternoon to find the area in which we were playing to be quite like some of the inner suburbs of Melbourne. We ventured out to find the first decent espresso we had had since arriving here and felt at home if only for a moment. The Opera House in Toronto was a beautiful venue with friendly staff that were very kind to us. Once again, we seemed to find favour with the Canadian crowd and sold out our few remaining cds early in the evening. After a fun evening of catching up with old friends and making plenty of new ones we were on the road again to stay at one of Dom’s fiends house in preparation for our marathon bus trip back to the USA the next day. That bus trip is a blog unto itself though so stay tuned.

A big thanks to all the staff and crew at Le Medley and the Opera House, The Urn and Tarja bands, Shy, Liz, and everyone else that made us feel so at home in Canada. We had a great time and will hopefully return someday, sooner rather than later.