Abbotsford, You Have Been Rocked

In the early days of my life as an actual paid musician, I started gigging with this guitar player named Quintin. He was a great fella, and a great player, we had some fine times together. Anyway, even though it was early days, The Clumsy Lovers were already pretty entrenched in our touring pattern. Which is to say, we headed south into America (as opposed to the typical Canadian band route of heading east and taking on our home and native land). Quintin had just quit a band that did the Canadian touring, so I asked him about it, curious if it was something we should start doing more. His short answer was 'hell no'.

His long answer, or I guess medium answer, was that while touring Canada they would often play packed bars and the whole place would basically ignore the band while they were playing and then on breaks the DJ would play the most predictable possible party tunes and the whole place would erupt, everyone would dance and go crazy. And the band would have to dejectedly retake the stage after stalling as long as possible backstage, just to have the party break up right as they started their next set. Talk about soul crushing.

Most of the Canadian touring we've done has not been at the type of venue where nothing gets the locals more excited than Bob Seger's "Old Time Rock And Roll", so while I have witnessed what Quintin described on one or two unfortunate occasions, for the most part it's been avoided. The Duke Of Dublin, in Abbotsford, however, does indeed have that particular type of clientele. We played six sets over two nights there last weekend. We're trying to play more in the general area, when possible, seeing Trevor's got a brand new baby boy and I'm soon to boast the same. And while it is an arduous journey and a long night out there, it's still pretty sweet to sleep in your own bed or have a Saturday afternoon seawall walk. But yeah. It's definitely a "Canadian" gig.

It's not all bad, tho. The staff, especially the manager Wendy, are very nice. As are the patrons, who while not wildly enthusiastic, do tap their toes and smile in our direction. Actually, we pander quite heavily coming out of the dance party breaks by going into like Brown Eyed Girl or whatever we think might keep them going at least for a little bit. So we bond with them there, even if band and audience alike probably know it's a tenuous bond at best.

I'm not sure why the lame-set, dance-party-on-break thing is specific to Canadian gigs. I just know it is. And I don't know why the purveyors of these establishments bother hiring bands. I just know they do. Oh, and I also know the songs they play for the set list dance party. It's always the same, here's a partial list.

"Sweet Home Alabama" -- Lynyrd Skynrd
"Shook Me All Night Long" -- AC/DC
"Here For A Good Time" -- Trooper
"Old Time Rock And Roll" -- Bob Seger
"Pour Some Sugar On Me" -- Def Leppard
"Home For A Rest" -- Spirit Of The West

I'm forgetting some of the standards. Seriously the same songs every night. Maybe Reba remembers some more.