Tour Blog 5: Here Comes the Kindness

Different people have different ways of being generous. This was no more apparent than in Kenora, where we had free hotel rooms, they kept the kitchen open late for us, they allowed us to play on very short notice, and we were offered cocaine and hookers by the bar patrons after our set.

Did you know that Kenora won the Staney Cup in 1907?

Incidentally, Shooter’s in Kenora is one of the most singularly awesome complexes in all of Canada. Contained within the Lake of the Woods complex is a giant bar (Shooters), a restaurant, a hotel, a strip club, virtual golf and lazer tag. We were fortunate to find a poster of a topless stripper on one of the tables in the bar, which we passed around amongst ourselves to much amusement and arousal. Imagine my surprise when it showed up in my keyboard case at our next gig, which happened to be on the altar of Crescent Fort Rouge United Church in Winnipeg.

I’m never quite sure how to decline an offer to do a couple of rails in the bathroom. I don’t want to make the offerer feel embarrassed, but at the same time I don’t want to do coke. Same goes for prostitutes. These people are just trying to be kind, because coke and prostitutes are expensive! It’s not like I can offer to accept something of equal or lesser value in kind; “No thanks on the cocaine sir, but if you have a hamburger platter, I will gladly take that.”

Speaking of hamburgers, our drummer Mr. Steph Duchesne eats more hamburgers than anyone I have ever seen. It’s not like he’ll eat ten hamburgers in one sitting; his is less of a brute force approach and more one of consistent and unwavering commitment. He’ll simply eat a hamburger for every single meal if given the opportunity. I’m worried he’s going to get scurvy!

For instance, we played the Fainting Goat in Regina, voted best restaurant in Regina for 2010. They were kind enough to offer us a free meal (manna from heaven for a touring band). Given the opportunity to choose a $24 Bison steak dinner for free, or any number of delicious and healthy entrees, Steph chose a bison burger platter despite having eaten approximately 30 hamburgers already on the tour. (For the record, I mean no offense to the Fainting Goat’s delicious bison burgers; I’m just incredulous as to the origin and persistence of Steph’s insatiable burger lust).

I know there’s a psychological principle that states that you’re supposed to satiate to a positive stimulus after a certain amount of exposure, but Steph seems to be something of an outlier to this principle. Maybe once he has 50 pounds of feces lodged in his colon like John Wayne he’ll change is ways…but I doubt it.