Railway Club, Vancouver, BC

Great day for a couple of boat rides, and Dave and I were up and away early enough to make sure wed get to Vancouver in plenty of time. The ride from Saltspring was great, and, following instructions, we bought our ticket to Vancouver and turned around at the same terminal. We were lucky, and loaded right away- one of the last cars to make the boat. It was a nice ride, too. I stayed down with the truck and watched the ocean out of the side openings. No wind, and closer to the water than the passenger decks above. No whales today, but a breathtaking ride nonetheless.

Another map snafu! Just when I thought I had Vancouver figured out! The problem was that the ferry landed us at some other terminal- miles and miles south of where we thought we had landed. Surry or Delta or whatever aint anywhere near Horseshoe Bay! You note that Im still using the messed up keyboard- wont and cant do certain things. Anyway, coming through Vancouver in rush hour we managed to lose most of the time we had saved. Checked into our hotel in North Van, suited up, and headed back over the Lions Gate Bridge. Its a pretty great looking city by night-at least looking at it across the water over a great bridge like this.

The Railway Club was loud and friendly, and our start time was much later than anticipated. The bartender said the phone had been ringing all day with calls about us- so I took this to be a good sign. Local art-pop band played until mid evening, after which it was our turn to set up. Sound tech was no where to be seen, so we moved mics, stands, monitors about and had things nicely roughed in by the time he arrived. Very loud room by this time- a table of opera singers dead front and centre were destined to shout loudly all night.

Johnny, our sound tech, arrived and had us up and ready pretty quickly. Unfortunately, the monitors began behaving strangely right off the bat- leaving Dave and I struggling to sing and play. We thought at first that Johnny was riding the faders up and down! Not! Maybe some cap in the board going crazy... We had a pow-wow between sets, Johnny rigged up a bi-pass or two, and the next set sounded remarkably better. Meanwhile, this is definitely a bar gig, not a concert. The opera guys are shouting, people are clapping and having a good time. Its all loud, and its not sold out either. I guess we are spoiled, but this show was way more work, and way less fun than we might of hoped for. We felt bad for the folks who bought tickets in order to listen and hear the show.