Artist Blog: Octoberman

This year, I spent my Christmas holidays in Hong Kong, visiting my girlfriend's parents, who had moved there 3 years ago.  Her dad decided to help set me up with a show at a bar in Central HK and I had no idea what to expect.  I had only been in Hong Kong for one full day and was quite jet-lagged when we showed up for the absurdly early 4pm soundcheck.  The first thing we noticed was a massive poster of my face out on the busy street outside!  My girlfriend found this hilarious, but at the time I found it slightly creepy...  We went inside and twenty minutes later, I was done soundchecking so we decided to check out the neighbourhood to try to kill some time.  Heading back in later for dinner, I noticed that we were pretty much the only ones there.  All of a sudden, it was 10pm and I was supposed to go on at 10:30.  I then learned that the venue had only been open for 6 weeks.  Thinking the night was a bust, I went to the backroom to strum some chords and try to relax.  When I came out a few minutes later, the room had completely filled up.  The club owners told me to play two 45 minute sets, but I decided to just do one longish one.  They also asked me to throw in some covers, so I threw in a Rolling Stones and Townes Van Zandt ditty here and there, and since it was December 21st, a Christmas carol was mandatory (I went with Little Drummer Boy).  The audience was amazing, clapping along and listening closely.  After finishing my set, I was shocked to see the merch table being stormed by the Chinese audience members, and even the bar's staff members!  I wasn't sure what to charge, but was told that 100 Hong Kong Dollars was normal, so I went with that.  I quickly learned that in Asia, buying a cd also includes getting an autograph and a picture with the performer!  I pretended that this was a normal occurence when playing shows in Canada and tried to play it cool.  The bar owners generously offered me another gig the following week and a local promoter told me he could get me into some bigger venues the next time I was in Hong Kong.  I'll have to keep this in mind the next time our van breaks down in the Rockies...

Here we are at a house in Waterloo with an extremely rare 20 minutes of downtime. I don't want to repeat our tourmates in The Mohawk Lodge's last blog post, so I'll pick up where they left off. I've been nursing a mangled shoulder -- torn rotator cuff -- and have played the last seven shows sitting down, with a healthy dose of prescription drugs to get me through. The good news is that I've gotten out of gear-hauling duties. The bad news is that Leah now calls me 'gimpy'.

The Toronto show at The Boat was a hoot, with a surprising amount of familiar faces from Vancouver and Seattle in attendance. Afterwards, we had a solid three hour nap before we picked up Michael O'connell (Culture Reject) and hit the long Southbound road to NYC. Needless to say, navigating through Manhattan at rush hour in a van with a trailer was a tad stressful but two tunnels (Holland + Lincoln) later, Robbie was able to get us there on time for our CMJ Showcase. The Knitting Factory began to fill up during Michael's set which was mind-blowing (as always). Before we were about to go on, Graham met some rad kids from New Hampshire and Philadelphia who'd come all the way to see us play!

The next two shows were on the weekend in Ottawa and Montreal with our labelmates and close friends in Poorfolk. Both nights turned into crazy parties but we still managed to squeeze in a recording session at Little Bullhorn studios to lay down some gang-vocals on a new Poorfolk hit. "Cannot stop this march of the regulars!!" Indeed.

We've been truly inspired by how many amazing hosts we've met on the road recently. Last night in Kingston, Ryder got a last-minute invitation for all of us to crash with a couple of ex-Vancouver musicians that had recently moved there. As we walked into Dan and Jamie from Buffalo Swans / The Rub's character home (built by prisoners in 1840), we were greeted by Planet Waves on the turntable plus a fridge-full of beer and a fine spread of sweet and savoury snacks. Does it get any better?

This finally brings us to this house in the middle of downtown Waterloo, where we just finished playing a show. Tonight, Leah did a solo opening set that left jaws on the floor. We almost forgot how good her own songs were. Leah is the one who had originally told us about this place. Jeff Woods and his roommates regularly invite Canadian Indie Bands to perform in their living room, no matter what night of the week. They do it because they love music. No other reason.

M.