I believe the fateful words

January 12, 2004

I believe the fateful words were, "my back is sore so I’ll just ride three runs and call it a day". On the fifth run I took a weird spill and thanks to Robaxacet and old fashioned Scottish anesthetic elixirs I made it through the three sets of the second night on Mt. Washington. Snowboarding 101. Don't push it.
In my humble opinion I thought the two Craig Northey shows were some of the loosest and most guitar happy of the “Giddy Up” era. We had no extra technical candy, in-ear monitors or acoustic guitars so it was full-on simplicity and unbridled riffage. We felt like we rode the “flow”. No song surprises. We did all of the “Giddy Up” CD and a dusting of Odds favourites.
“the Vipers” hit the stage after the CN show each night for their debut run. This "musical club" includes Pat Steward, Doug Elliott, Colin James & myself. I think the phrase “Rock n’ Roll Party All Night” would have been fitting. Colin had been talking about this idea of a band that was half record club and half nonstop garage R&B machine. We wanted to dig out the more offbeat R&B & roots records from record bins and old friends collections and rock them up with a furious garage approach. Its sort of like Oprah’s book club only different. To get into the mood we tore into our initial repertoire of “Rockpile”, Dave Edmunds , “the Sonics”, Ike Turner, George Jones, Freddie King, Otis, “the Miracles”, Irma Thomas, Etta James and kept going. It came as little surprise that if you fuel up and pound out those tunes at a decent pace then people will dance, drink and go crazy. What an obvious and beautiful formula. The songs weren’t familiar to the audience but the vibe was a surefire hit. So on we will go combing for weird and funky songs that seem like the right fit for this treatment. Maybe we’ll change our name for every gig. Oh geez my back hurts. We were hosted so well by Rob Robertson and the people on the mountain that we wish to send out a big “thank you”. I would personally like to thank the ski patrol for taking a risk and chaperoning me onto the downloading chair thus honouring my request to not go down on the toboggan and risk public humiliation. I’m feeling much better now and hope to have this back back on the ice by Thursday . . .hmm. Don't push it?

Check out colinjames.com to get the dates for the next little while. We’ll be in Seattle on Friday & Portland on Saturday and then its two dates in Surrey at the Central City Brewing Company -- Jan 22nd with Sharkskin & guest. Jan 23rd with Colin.

Jan 24th we’re in Montreal with Colin, then Buffalo, Detroit, London (with Bryan Adams) on the 28th, and then Parry Sound on the 30th.

I start the Bluebird North Tour in Montreal Feb 1st and work my way to Toronto:

February 1 - MONTREAL - UPSTAIRS JAZZ CLUB

February 2 - OTTAWA (WAKEFIELD) - BLACK SHEEP INN

February 3 - OTTAWA - NAC

February 4 OTTAWA - NAC

February 5 - KINGSTON THE PRINCESS COURT THEATRE

February 6 - GUELPH GUELPH YOUTH MUSIC CENTRE

February 07 - TORONTO - HUGH‚S ROOM