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Off we go...
in a cloud of dust and french fry fumes.
Our Fall 2007 is an experimental low-emissions tour in our newly converted Mitsubishi van, Moriarty.
All of us being committed to lowering GHG emissions, and involved in respecting ecology in some form or another, the idea of driving across the country whilst belching old dinosaur fumes was as unpleasant as it sounds. With the help of Adam's supportive family, and our commmunity here in Victoria (thanks everyone for coming out to our fundraisers!), we bought a diesel Japanese import van and had it converted in Salmon Arm at Plant Drive. Now we're getting ready to find fuel at fryers across Canada as we make our way to Newfoundland and back!
We hope to share info as we learn more about lowering emissions as we drive along on the fat of society.
Check out our tour schedule to see if we'll be in a town near you!
Local folks can see us off on September 6th at our Tour Kickoff and CD Release Party at the Orange Hall.
Doors open at 7pm. General madness and fun will ensue with performances by local musicians such as The Gruff, Oliver Rueben Swain (of Outlaw Social), and Roof Rabbit. This is an all ages event, non-alcoholic refreshments will be available.
Come on out, get your freshly grown copy of our new CD "Tin Can Phone" and hear a whole lot of great music!
September 10, 2007
somewhere on the highway in SaskatchewanWe're finally out on the road, body and soul.
We started off Crabby-Appletons for sure. 
It took us awhile to really accept we were moving, the lower mainland tried to ensnare us
in traffic and trains, we burned our way up the Coquihalla and crashed exhausted at the Vivian's in Salmon Arm. Jude and
Adam have been wrassling with the veggie oil filter system, which has been leaking smelly rancid french fry smells
in the back of the van. Yum. Nothin like feeling hungry and nauseated at the same time.
But so far, we've been driving on veggie oil as much as possible. A good portion of the drive from Vancouver to Mortlach was fueled by golden grease.
Our first gig at Carrie and Don's wedding was magical. We played tunes in a windy mountain valley with a jewelled turquoise Blaeberry river rushing by and a rainbow behind the lovers as they exchanged vows. Romantic. Saw a lot of old friends and had hugs and laughter. Slept in tipis with refreshing and nippy mountain air around us.
And then there was driving. Driving and driving and driving. 
From Golden almost to Moosejaw in one day. To a place called Mortlach,
Saskatchewan, which Adam assured us was real. Though after 10 hours of virtual nonstop driving, we were starting to wonder.
But we found it. There's a candy shop in Mortlach, SK that stays open till 11pm. Derek and Theresa own that there candy shop, and it's cute as a button. Licorice jawbreakers! Taffy! We played at the Wagons West Cookhouse across the street. In a town of 250, it's pretty darned awesome when your hosts pack the venue, especially when it's with sweet small town people. Mortlach is going places. They're gonna have a new tea house soon, and the Wagons West and the Candy Shop are great places to visit. There are artsy things to see there too. We're excited to visit them again.
Missing all of you at home, but we're having fun too!
Picked up some awesome, cheap filtered oil in Winnipeg!
September 14, 2007
Ottawa, ON
We've passed the same guy hitchiking on the highway three times... and we haven't picked him up once. Every time I feel frustrated about being in the van for so long,
I think, well, at least we're not hitchiking with all of our gear!
We've been driving straight for a week... I desperately wanted to make this blog entry interesting, so I went to look at the kinds of things that The Gruff
wrote in their blog, and I realized that I could either invent a story, or just tell you all what's really going on. All we've done is drive. Wake up, drive, maybe play, sleep for a few
hours DRIVE DRIVE DRIVE. 
We're all looking forward to getting to Halifax, where we'll only have to drive a few hours a day.
Our gig in Wawa at the Rock Island Lodge was really wonderful. 
We met some nice folks and loved playing in front of a window full of Lake Superior sunset.
Wish we had a picture of us playing to share! We don't, but we do have a sound clip, coughs, sneezes, baby squeals and all. Listen to us playing a Gram Parsons tune at the Rock Island Lodge.
September 16, 2007
Halifax, NS - About that Highway to HellOne thing that people always say about driving in New Brunswick is that you should never drive through it at night.
Well, guess what we did.
We deliberately decided that we'd spend the day in Ottawa. We trucked on down to the Ottawa Folklore Centre, a homegrown music store with fiddles, mandos, banjos and guitars galore. We made a big racket there. Then we headed out to arrive in Montreal around 7pm so we could miss rush hour. Picked up some veggie oil from a nice fella named Marc (sp? could've been Mark). He has a blooming WVO (Waste Veggie Oil) business happening in his garage, a giant tank o' stinky deep fryer goodness, and a hand pump - his other pump was broken. By the end of it, we filled up our tank twice over, bought 100 litres of fuel for $27 and were covered in grease - Marc had a really sore arm.
So we made it from Montreal to Fredericton on veggie oil. Covered in grease. Smellin' like french fries and fish batter.
Writing from the van, we've now been driving for 24 hours.
Adventures of overnight driving include: Deciding at 11:30pm to take a detour through Old Quebec City, thinking for some stupid reason that we'd find a place to park. We wandered cobblestone streets at midnight and took about 1/2 an hour trying to get the hell out of that old bastion. Meanwhile, we've renamed our van "Camion de Poubelle" or "Boite de Peu". Pulling over to switch drivers and watching Adam scramble out of the bed in the back as a cop pulled in behind us to check up on us. WIND WIND WIND. CONSTRUCTION, MORE BLOODY CONSTRUCTION THAN YOU CAN SHAKE A STICK AT!!! The saving grace of organic, fair trade espresso chocolate. Granola bars and nasty muffins. Grease everywhere. 6am on the road just south of Grand Falls, getting completely turned around by shitty construction signs and ending up on a highway that was closed and under construction. The darkest hour is just before dawn, they say, and that was indeed our darkest hour. We knew we were going the wrong way when the road suddenly turned to gravel without warning and we ended up face to face with bulldozers and a giant gravel pile. Rachelle woke up in the back and asked, "Where the hell are we?". Jude pulled us out of that one, driving the wrong way on the divided highway-that-didn't-really-exist till we could get to the other side that didn't exist. Did I mention there's grease everywhere? Even in Jude's beard. Bags under all of our eyes. Right now, we feel like the hottest band in the country for sure. And we're not really sure if our van stinks anymore, cause we're just used to it.
Sunrise on the St. John River looks great on any normal day, I'm sure, but I'll betcha it looked 10 times better to us this morning, after our harrowing misadventure on the Highway to Hell near Grand Falls. Finally in Fredericton, Rachelle slept the sleep of the dead in the van in Fredericton, Jude, Adam and I staggered our way to breakfast at Cora's, where happy faces adorn the napkins.
And if we ever again have line up (again) to pee (again) at another Snot Rohmit (Tim Hortons) (again), I'm sure we're going to lose it (again).
But, we sure are having fun!
And we miss Sticky, our band hound.
September 23, 2007
Charlottetown, PEIOops, our blog is getting flaky...
Tonight we're at Baba's Lounge in Charlottetown, but we've been so many places over the last week.
Wolfville: So much fun. Jude and Adam have lots of lovely friends there we got to spend time with... folks from t@b and so many fabulous local musicians. We had a great time at the session at Paddy's Pub, and the Monday night open mic too. Happy times! We are lucky to have Adam's folks Jen and Peter with us for our travels round these parts, and we're also thrilled that our sound goddess and dancer Holly Vivian has joined us till St. John's. Even her Mom, Joanne, came along. What fun! Good people, good music, beautiful places.
South Shore: LeHave, West Dublin and Liverpool. 
Spent time with Jude's friends and family, and had a really special time at the farm where Jude
grew up. Played lots of music with Jude's Dad and friends, and just so everyone knows, even though Adam has been through a long haul of touring, he's
having a good time!
Things with the van just keep getting better. Adam scored us a whole bunch of oil from a local veggie-oil enthusiast named Jessi. He runs his VW Rabbit on oil and has a filter going in his garage in Carousetown. Jude has built us a fancy new filter too. Moriarty got some happy time in the shop and we're ready to rock another 7000K or so now.
Played at the Mersey House too. That day, at his Dad's place, Jude rifled through his old clothes and found some choice items. Things got, um, a little silly.
Other than that, we've been really enjoying Nova Scotia, and we're now it's bravely forward to NFLD, and boldly tackling Baba's Lounge here in PEI!
Friday, October 6, 2007
From Port-Aux-Basques to St. John's to Port-Aux-Basques to MontrealIt's been awhile, and the Eastern-most leg of the journey is now over, as we drive and drive and drive again to Montreal.
Everyone's always asking us what we thought of Newfoundland. 
The collective response is: fell in love with it, found it mysterious,
not quite sure it really exists, and there are no words for it. We met some wonderful people there, had two great gigs that lifted our spirits.
One at the folk night at the Ship Inn, where we got a chance to hear lots of amazing local music too, including the fabulous Dardinelles, watch out for
them, they're rockin' the trad tunes and they're coming up fast. 
Heard some mega-accordion too with local legend Art Stoyles. We also had a fabulous
house concert with our friend Sue, who treated us like family. Thanks so much Sue. It was a magical night, and we got to share the stage with Dave
Panting, which was a special treat for all of us. Dave's original tunes and renditions of traditional Newfoundland songs left us glowing.
It's been a week reminiscent of the great Figgy Duff, as we met lots of people who remembered Jude's dad Derek as well as lots of former members of the band. It was really amazing to connect with the recent history of traditional music in NFLD as well as with Jude's family history.
We caught up with the CBC finally in St. John's, where we got to plug the veggie oil thing and field some questions about what it's like to live at the other end of the continent. Here's a recording of our first CBC Radio interview:
Backyard String Band on "On The Go", September 26, 2007
Spent lots of time exploring Signal Hill, and got to spend time with Victoria friends Matthew and Holly!
The ride back we split into a few days, with time to dabble in Gros Morne Park.
This was so much fun, we felt like we were on vacation. We got to stay in a wonderful little cottage in Cormack, trekked out to West Brook Pond, as well
as a little village called Trout River, and we got to hike! Hiking is a novel thing when you spend most of your time crammed like a sardine into the van!
The sleep on the ferry on the way back was by far more peaceful than the way there, with the exception of the nefarious Snorey McSnorington who kept Rachelle, Adam and Jude gnashing their teeth through the night. Somehow (perhaps because of extreme exhaustion?) I slept through all of that.
Back on the South Shore, we had a chance to play a really intimate house concert at Jude's Dad's place. It's a really amazing old house, and it was great to play for Jude's people from home. Check out Moriarty, full of chairs from the local hall for the house concert!
It's hard to believe that we're heading back West, but here we are, almost in Montreal as we cruise along listening to 10th Century Greatest Hits. We've got a new filter situation going on that makes a lot more sense, and less work. Hooray for gravity! Acquiring oil hasn't always been easy, getting ahold of it in Eastern Canada proves difficult at times. In NFLD, where garbage disposal regulations are more lax, a lot of restaurants toss it in the trash. A lot of restaurant chains have people buying oil for furnaces, pig feed and all sort of other reasons (bear bait was one of the stranger ones). But with perserverence and I suppose a lot of luck too, we have been running on veggie oil for the entire trip from LeHave, NS to St. John's and back, and we're still running on it RIGHT NOW! An air leak in the filter seal bogged us down on hills a bit for a few days, but it's all fixed up now. You should of seen us stall out right in front of a gas station on that lonely Newfoundland highway and coast right into the Irving Station.
Speaking of Irving, they own everything in Eastern Canada! Gas stations, lumber operations, transport companies, restaurants, refineries, soda pop companies, you name it. So we're writng a song about it:
Everywhere we go there's an Irving
It really is a little bit unnerving
No matter what it is they are serving
They own everything around here (Round Here!)
Round here, Round here, They own everything around here!
The funny thing about running a veggie oil tour is that you see more of the seedy suburb box store side of towns than the nicer sides. We've become well acquainted with all of the fast food joints on the Trans-Canada (can you say "Trans-Canada Trans-Fatty Acid?"), as well as grease bins behind malls and desparate bulk oil purchases at StupidStore (read "SuperStore"). One thing that really strikes me about Canada, is that what we are hearing from all of the bioregional buffs and radical economists and community-builders everywhere is true. Canada is infected with MalWart and StupidStore and Costco and fast food and all sorts of bullshit that we don't need, except that maybe it will fuel our vehicles for a few good decades, before it all becomes impossible (disclaimer: this is all Moss' rant, but probably wouldn't be far off the mark for what Adam, Rachelle, Jude and probably even Stephanie think - you'll have to ask them yourself if you really want to know).
Ross and Machelle's Chicken List
Anyhow, Rachelle and I have been particularly inspired by fast food joints that focus on chicken. So we've come up with ROSS AND MACHELLE'S CHICKEN LIST to give you a sense of what's going on with fried chicken in our nation. Here's a list of awesome, appetizing chicken joints we've encountered along the way:
Lick-a-Chick, Florence, Cape Breton
Bob's Chicken Coop, Port-Aux-Basques, NL
Coq Roti, across French-speaking Eastern Canada
BBQ Rooster, the English equivalent of Coq Roti
Chubby Chicken, everywhere in Canada
Hot Dips and Chicken Strips!
Breakfast Special: Bucket O' Chicken
Doesn't that just make ya wanna go out for some fried chicken? Machelle and I have had a really hard time resisting fried chicken every time we stop to grease up.
Despite the nasty side of Canadian cities we see, the beautiful places that remain are the ones that we'll remember most vividly, come hell or highwater.
November 28, 2007
Rainy James Bay, Victoria, BC, Coast Salish TerritoryPost Tour Reflections
I can't believe we did that. I can't believe we did that.
But I'm so glad we did.
And I wanted to add to that last entry, is that what I remember most vividly, is playing music for people in small towns, small crowds, small communities. I remember some faces. I remember Pic River, ON, and St. John's, NF, hanging out in Ontario, Peterborough, Guelph, the house concert at my folks' place where my aunts, uncles, cousins and family friends came to hear us play and say hello. Mortlach, SK, where we visited the candy shop and stayed with the mayoral family, and ate more perogies and kielbasa and sausage and sauerkraut than we should've at the Welcome Wagon dinner. Salmon Arm house concert with the Viv's, again! Joan's garden, all of these wonderful people, places and times. And I'm only starting to remember them now...