| GRAYLINE TOUR STORIES |
| grayline tour stories |
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| Tuesday July 10, 2001 Fredericton, New Brunswick |
| As I woke up Tuesday morning I found myself cuddling with a drum stick. It was a quick rise and just in time to find a greasy spoon for our morning fix, and then straight to the highway. We had become quite accustomed to having a big breakfast to get our day started before the many hours of driving, and it seemed to be working well for my system. Pete ensured that I got my feedings and I ate healthy. I was good for my system but they really hammered on me when I would try to sneak something by. It wasn't all bad, after all, I was rewarded with ice cream the night before. A few hundred kilometres into our day we saw a sign that read - 'Hartland, Home of the World's Longest Covered Bridge'. Time for a quick detour, and some rock and roll destiny to take place. We drove through the long bridge and it was pretty cool. I wouldn't ever make the trip just to see it but we happend to stumble across it so it was alright. We parked at the tourist information centre and walked through the bridge for a while. Leading up to the roof there were big support beams, and at the top of certain ones, before the rugged ceiling were small maintence perches. Darren the DareDevil decided to climb up to the top so we could get him posing as a gargoyle. The first step was a bit high and he tried a few times before actually reaching it, and then shimmying up the none too stable support steps. A father and his three kids also stopped to watch the action. The kids looked quite excited but old Daddy-O wasn't too impressed. My first thought was of Darren taking a huge spill, cracking his skull half way down, flipping over in mid air and crashing hard on to the road! Only to then be run over by a truck which would completely sever his right leg off! The children and other tourists would look on with horror and scream in terror. Pete and Randy would then grab the leg and beat it against this famous bridge while blood would poor like rain everywhere... SNAP OUT OF IT NICK! What the hell is wrong with me, and what's with all of these fucked up, demented thoughts I keep having. Anyway, he made it to the top and struck a few poses for the masses. He came back down safely and in one piece. We decided to make our trip here official with a $2 certificate to say that Grayline had crossed the bridge. We checked out the gift shop which was was the begining of ribbing at my expense for the rest of the tour. You see, I made the mistake of letting the boys know I thought the young lady working there was rather cute. Her name was Hayley. She kind of reminded me of the love of my life, Krissie who is my loving girlfriend. I was really starting to miss Krissie only after 4 days. You see, living in a van with 3 other guys can get to you even after a few days. I guess Hayley, an innocent looking small town cutie pie, was a sight for sore eyes, not to mention young enough to be... well... I guess maybe not even old enough to vote. She actually talked us into trying some pickelled fiddle heads. The gift shop had a shelf full of these things. I normally do not like to try anything that starts with the word pickelled but the way she asked was just too much to refuse. I guess she didn't ask in any special way, but if you saw how sweet this girl was you'd be eating it too. Just to ease the curiosity, pickelled fiddle heads taste like, well... pickels. We chatted with Hayley for a while and were trying to sell her a CD. She didn't have the cash but our good looks (who the fuck are you trying to kid?-Pete) and powers of persuasion must of paid off because she borrowed the cash from her manager. As we were leaving the gift shop she came running out to the van. Hayley bought another CD for her friend and asked us to sign both of them. Now I felt like a rock star! She also helped us out by showing the way to the skate park which would be the destiny I was talking about earlier. Once we got there, we saw what looked like and arena, and some skateboard ramps set up on a tennis court, so Darren got out of the van to check it out. We pulled around to where there was a some climbing equipment and a public pool. This guy came up to us who was working in the arena that Darren had just popped into. "Hey, you guys are that band Grayline," he said. "I was just on you site, which one of you is Pete" WHOA! Where the hell did that come from? Talk about coinsidence. Turns out this is one of the guys that Pete was talking to about trying to set up a show for us. His name was BJ. We sold him and a few of his friends CD's which made a total of 6 in a town we pulled into as a fluke. He said he would've been able to get us a show after all and if we still wanted, he could set up a show for the following Monday, which was only 6 days away. We were into it since we had nothing set up for that night anyway. Not bad for a detour eh, 6 CD sales and a show on an off night! With all that excitement settled, we were off to Fredricton. We pulled into town and it was really cool. Very Maritimes. I'm not really sure what that means but there were lots of Pubs and Patios playing Celtic music. We found The Capital (our venue for the evening) and headed up to the bar. It reminded us of a neat and clean Whippit Lounge from our hometown London. All we had to do was move a Foozeball table and the stage was created. Seeing as we were early we decided to check out the town a bit and stumbeld upon a music store. Considering how much fire we were on this day already, we had to go for the sale. The guitar guy bought our disc and set Randy up to try out an axe through a nice new Marshall stack. Besides the music store we checked out a skate shop and tried to distract the guard outfront of the city hall. It was after 6pm now and time to head back to the bar. Randy was searching his pockets for a smoke but could only find spare change. As we walked back passed the music store, which was now closed, he peeked in only to see the smokes sitting nicely atop the Marshall right where he left them. Lets just say, Randy has a tendency to get a bit distracted at times. This however really pissed him off. He did eventually shake it and find some humour in it. When we got back to the bar we met Mike from the Scapegoatz, and the rest of his band. A few of his friends informed us that Mike wasn't exactly organized with the whole promotion thing which led up to the evening. More specifically, there were no posters made or subsequently put up. Uh-oh. We also noticed Mike panic a bit when people were coming into the bar and nobody was taking any cover. Oh well, punk rock I guess. To our delight the turnout was actually not that bad. The bar wasn't very big so a few people went a long way here. The show began as Abolishit took to the stage and explained that their singer had just quit a few minutes ago because his ex-girlfriend was at the bar with one of his best friends. Talk about drama, eh? They decided to play anyway with guest vocalists appearing to help in their punk rock cause. It wasn't bad considering the circumstances. Scapegoatz were up next with a loud old school punk set. I thought they were good at what they were doing but the guitars were so deafeningly painful!! I rember telling Mike that he shouldn't go past 3 on my amp as it is 200 watts on a 4x12 cabinet and is fucking loud. He obviously has suffered hearing damage in the past since when I looked at the settings he was well past 5 and destroying the ear drums of anyone who stood in his path. Bruno, their other guitar player had also cranked up Randy's amp and needless to say, it was a bit more than a wall of sound. Grayline time had arrived and we were ready to rock once again. Unfortunately, some of the people had cleared as they were friends with the first two bands. The general rule of thumb is to never play after the hometown band as their friends always leave when they are done. It didn't matter to us anyway, we were ready to rock for whoever was willing to experience the Grayline phenomenon. As soon as we broke out into "E-Retro", the small crowd all gathered right up front. I've got to hand it to the Fredericton punks because they really know how to DRINK er... I mean ROCK!! The set was going great. Loud, intense and full of energy. Well that is until about 3/4 through the set. I started feeling my body begin to weaken and my head get drowsy. The sound turned into fuzz and all I could make out was the bass drum and snare. It was cloudy and hazy and the last thing I remember is stumbling through "Kill The Donnelly's". The next thing I can honestly remember is sitting outside on a chair with Randy staring into my eyes while slapping my face. "Nick, Nick, you alright buddy?" he questioned. He was standing with some guy I have never seen before and I was feeling like I had been hit by a truck. "Nick, do you need some more sugar or something to drink?" the stranger asked. "No man, thanks. Randy, what the hell happened?" I reverted back to Randy. "You started to fade during 'Walking Clothes' and kinda fell on your amp after the set," he answered. To be perfectly honest, I was scared shitless. Randy, Pete and Darren had all remained calm and handled the situation perfectly. After all, I was feeling fine and I hadn't gone to emergency. I am sure that they had planned what they would do if this type of thing happened since they were flawless. I try not to feel sorry for myself because of the Diabetes thing. Four needles a day sucks huge but it could be worse. The good thing about what happened was my worst fear for the tour happened, and the boys took care of business. Now if I could just remember when the hell we played "Walking Clothes"... We loaded up the van and had some laughs with the very drunk members of the other bands. After all, it was $2 draft night. We were lucky enough to score a place to shower and sleep that night when Bruno's (Scapegoatz) girlfriend Jess, let us crash at her place. These guys were great. Jess was more hospitable than we could have even imagined. She was stirring up a pancake mix at 2:30 in the morning so it would be ready to go for breakfast the next day. Pete decided to give her a Grayline shirt and an Amp Records CD for everything they had done for us. Bruno put in a movie and watched with Darren and Randy. My body was feeling just horrible so I closed my eyes to try and sleep it off. I did eventually fall asleep to the sound of Randy and a very drunk Bruno discussing who knows what. Had I not felt like a pile of shit, I would have loved to stay awake and listen to the slurring conversation but my body needed rest. Most rock star memory lapses are caused by excessive drug use, alcohol abuse, and too many groupies. Mine was confined to the lame ass low blood sugar. Oh well, I'm sure it is still worth some punk points. After all, Bruno was drunk, Randy was stoned, and the first bands singers' girlfriend was having sex with his best friend... and I was the one that passed out! |
| We all had a blast playing in Fredericton. We were kind of worried when we arrived because there was nobody around and we didn't see any posters anywhere. The city has a certain vibe to it that is very inviting. The turn out at the show ended up being pretty good and everybody had a good time. We played one of our longest sets ever until Nick couldn't go anymore. A shame about Abolishit, but one year later we found out how good they really were with their proper singer. Pete |
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