How our Feelings Make us Feel

Apologies for the lack of updates, internet, for this final leg of the tour. Heading for the third time in one summer in the same direction has started to make us apathetic to the sites of the Maritimes. No offense intended to the east coast, of course.

This entry finds us stranded (yes, hoorah! Stranded! What a lovely word.) at the PEI ferry (on the mainland side), after spending the night in Cape Breton after our gig in Port Hawkesbury. Camping is great and all…unless there’s a storm caused by an offshore hurricane to contend with. We are soggy and pretty tired. Ah yes, the glamourous rock star existence. Jealous?

Let’s see, highlights of this tour so far… Last week found us in Amherst again with our friends Nicknameless. Loading into the venue proved to be extremely memorable, completely due to the greeting I received as soon as I walked in:

“Hey! It’s Tanya Tucker! Handjob! Handjob! Give me a handjob!”

Folks, if you ever want me to remember you forever, simply greet me with those words.

If you actually want a handjob, though, you might have to think of something else.

We were all quick to note that it’s interesting that the fellow aimed relatively low. I guess that sometimes people from small towns have to pare down their goals.

Also, if you are not famililar with Tanya Tucker, she looks like this now:

And she looked like this in her earlier days:

So yeah, I’m not sure which version this gentleman had in mind at that moment.

I am mostly familiar with Tanya thanks to a dance song I quite enjoyed when I was very young, by some weird group called KLF. Upon viewing it again after all this time, I am once again reminded how one can accept the weirdest images when you’re young as completely normal.  This shit is effed.  Country Star.  African Tribes.  Hooded People with horns.  Ricardo Da Force.  WTF?:

**EDIT:  apparently that is Tammy Wynette, not Tanya Tucker.  It’s still an effed up video, though.**

Suffice it to say, we had to change our name to Tanya Tucker and the Handjobs for the remainder of the evening, which turned into a pre-emptive fundraiser for the impending Hurricane Bill. Bill obviously turned out to be quite the bust (especially where we ended up during the supposed heart of the storm – St. Andrews NB was mild and sunny by Sunday afternoon), so we ended up embezzling all of the funds raised on luxuries such as ‘food’ and ‘gas’. It’s funny to think that the life of a struggling touring musician is similar to that of a storm refugee. Nomadic, living out of a vehicle, surviving on takeout food and the kindness of strangers, sleeping on floors or in tents. Like I said people, GLAMOUR.

It is also important to note that at our show in St. Andrews, a fan of ours showed up with a severed finger…he had accidentally cut it off THAT MORNING.  He hung around till the morphine wore off.  I am still regretting that I forgot my camera that night to document him forever.

I should probably stop there for now cuz our current storm swept, ferry-cancelled, tired frame of mind is not so conducive to coherent blog entries. We will conclude this broadcast with a taste of how we killed the afternoon a few of days ago waiting to play our show in Saint John. Hold on to your hats folks. It’s a wild tale that shall be shared as a legendary road story for years to come: