After waking up in Oswego (great TV movie starring Jamie Farr by the way), we were on our way back home to warm and sunny Canada.  Well that was true until we reached Oshawa on the way to Port Perry.  Then things got a bit slippery.

After some white-knuckle driving we were all safe and sound in the beautiful winter wonderland of Port Perry.   After a quick soundcheck we went off to pub for dinner featuring large portions.  Chris came up with a new dish by combining his chili and perogies to form chilogies.   A dazzling combination of flavours.  This was our third visit to the fine Town Hall theatre and sadly the weather did prevent some of our audience from attending.  The hearty souls who were there were awesome and we had a great night.  Maybe we’ll try to come back when it’s nice out.  Just a thought.

Oswego is one of those towns in the great United States where we keep getting invited back.  Which is great because it’s way closer than, say, Phoenix – where we’ve never been.  So a return to Oswego was greeted with gusto by your Arrogant Worms.  We arrived in town a little early and checked in to our hotel to find a drop box for Toys for Tots.  How nice.

After our lesson in gift-giving, we were off to our big show at the Oswego Music Hall, a fine old building on the banks of Lake Ontario.   Our dressing room usually houses a lot of bridge players so the party atmosphere was pungent.  The show itself was a lot of fun.  Somehow Mike actually picked a “water” boy who worked at the town’s waterworks.  Hilarity ensued.  The biggest laugh of the night belonged a kid who outed his Mom who was in charge of the fine baked goods they sold at intermission.  It was revealed to the capacity crowd that she bought a pie instead of baked it.  One lump of coal is in that kid’s future.  Lots of fun throughout the show talking about Christmas and just generally rocking them senseless.  Thanks, Oswego.  We await the next invitation.

Every once in a while we get to play somewhere completely new to us.  Cayuga is one of those places.  For another first, we were playing our first birding festival.  Life is full of new and fun adventures.  We had a great time, though Mike and Trevor had some trouble getting there with what Toronto traffic reporters were calling “a pretty bad day out there.”

Once we were all present, we did a sound check with our intrepid soundguy Brian and then went off to a wonderful dinner at The Twisted Lemon in Cayuga.  Then it was time for the big show at 7pm.  We love early starts.  The birders were a great crowd and sat in a V formation which was a little odd.  If the first person laughed or clapped then everyone followed suit.  Luckily that first person was really into it!   There were vacationing Australians in the audience who were likely still a bit jetlagged.  Add in our wacky accents and it makes for a confusing evening.  We think they liked it though.

We finished big and got free t-shirts at the end of the show.  We got paid with money too.  It was a big day.  Worms and birders – not as scary as one might think.

PS:  On a side note, The Arrogant Worms are now forever linked to Pink Floyd.  On Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday, Chris took a choir from The Regent Park School of Music to the Air Canada Centre to sing Another Brick in the Wall with Roger Waters.  He recreated the entire Pink Floyd album and it was a huge thrill for the kids and for Chris to be part of something so awesome.  Mr. Waters was pretty impressed about the Worm thing too, we’re sure.

We’re not certain how many times we’ve performed at Musikfest, but we sure do love going back there.  At Musikfest there are eight stages going all day long with all sorts of music.  Our first show was at Liederplatz (there’s a bit of a German theme at the festival so instead of calling it a stage they call it a “platz” which we assume means something similar, but could mean “mongoose” for all we know) which is where we perform every year, although it’s never been the same since the large protective hedge disappeared. It was wet and drizzly so there weren’t as many people as usual, but the ones who were there were the truly dedicated. There was even one furry young man who did some impressive head-banging to our songs–even the slow ones. He also head-banged during some of our banter. In his mind he might have been at another show.

At Musikfest there are also lots of places to eat and drink. Most of the food is meat. Here is Chris with his. The piece of bread at the end is to make sure you don’t poke anyone’s eye out.

Chris eat meat

The next day we performed at The Morning Call Plaza Tropical, which we called “Tropical Platz.” What made it so tropical? Well, there were two plastic Palm trees on the stage that lit up! Yes, the rare Pennsyvania Palm! The audience was loud, appreciative and sweaty (it was a little humid) and a good time was had by all.

Another fun show at Hugh’s Room in Toronto just occurred on Sunday night.  We found out just before we went on that it was our 20th show at this great venue.  Zoiks!  That seems excessive.  And we are entering our 20th year as a band too.  We are a bit freaked out to say the least.  Try and think of anything that you’ve done 20 times.  Okay, maybe don’t.

The audience was primed for fun and we’re pretty sure fun happened.  It was a pretty loose show.  Many references were made to the area around Hugh’s Room which is under major construction right now.  There is a large moat dug in the middle of the street so attendance was a bonus.  And most highways into Toronto were closed for maintenance.  It’s still okay to blame the G20 for everything -  not to worry.

Mike was a Toronto tourist for a couple of days with visits to the Bowmanville Zoo, the Harry Potter exhibit at the Science Centre and the CN Tower.

Not sure if he bought this puzzle or not.  But he was puzzled during the show as he forgot the beginning of the second verse of I Ran Away.  Chris noticed Mike’s pained expression of confusion and enjoyed it for a while before rescuing him with the correct lyric.  The hilarity continued as Chris and Trevor looked back on 20 shows and Mike wasn’t able to.  In fact, he may have forgotten this one already.

It was good times all around though and we love coming back to Hugh’s Room.  Everyone there is great to work with and they have been kind enough to ask us back for our 21st show on December 22nd.  You should come.  The Christmas spirit will be nearly sapped from your soul already so you’ll be in good company.

And speaking of Christmas, next stop Bethlehem.

Sorry for the delay but it took a while to process all the fun we had in Perth.  Most of you don’t know how big that statement is.  Many many many years ago, Perth was the scene of perhaps one of our most poorly-enjoyed show.  There were many people in our audience who weren’t really ready for our musical comedy assault on the senses and just as many of them didn’t like that we started with Jesus’ Brother Bob.  That was our error.  However, there were plenty of good seats available after intermission for the people who enjoyed it.

The Stewart Park Festival wipes away any bad memories though because it is awesome.  It’s a fairly small festival but it feels big because the crew, the volunteers and the audience are so great.  We had a very fun mainstage on Friday evening.  It was hot, hot, hot.  Chris bravely went with the sweater vest, honouring his commitment to 1985.

You can kind of see some foliage in front of the stage in that photo.  There were giant potted plants and flowers to protect us from people rushing the stage.  Perennials of doom!  It was a fun set that Mike was better dressed for in shorts and t-shirt.

Trevor also went with long sleeves so he wouldn’t scare the Perth-erts with his huge pipes.  He decided to scare them with his face instead.

All the photos by the way are by Greg Scace.  Thanks, Greg.

We also did an after-hours show at the Legion on Friday which was fun and racy.  Okay, just fun.  Saturday was a late morning workshop called This Might Get Loud with our good friends James Keelaghan and Suzie Vinnick.  It got a bit loud.  Sunday was a kids concert by Chris and then that was a wrap on Perth.  Thanks to everyone for being there and celebrating the 20th year of the festival.

Next stop is Hugh’s Room in Toronto followed by Musikfest in Bethlehem, PA where beer and strudel are the food groups.

We had never been to the Canterbury Folk Festival before, which was really too bad because it was delightful. A completely free event (which made it easy for us to give people their money’s worth) in a lovely park, with an enthusiastic bunch of volunteers. How enthusiastic?

Can’t miss them! We had an early workshop in the sweltering heat, where we got to meet JP Hoe a talented singer/songwriter from Winnipeg.

That’s Mike talking to him. Mike is always stylish no matter what the season!  I think JP thinks Mike’s going to try to steal one of his water bottles.

There were several thousand people present for our mainstage performance where, at one point, Chris mentioned the “Chips on a Stick” that were available at the festival. Trevor misheard this as “Chimps on a Stick” and much hilarity and repetition ensued. This seems to be our summer of potato-based humour.

Join us next weekend in Perth for the Stewart Park Festival!

Pennsylvania is a lovely place. One of the best things about it is that they are so very good at naming things. Instead of giving their towns useless names that tell you nothing about what they are, they label them clearly with names like Mechanicsburg (where you get your car fixed), Hollidaysburg (where you take your vacation) and, of course, Intercourse (which we will not elaborate on). Where were we going? State College. Can you guess what’s there? Can you? Can you?

Times up. In State College is Pennsylvania State University!

We were playing there at the Schwab Auditorium as part of the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts.  Of course,  before we went to play we had to have something to eat. Both Chris and Trevor got the burger that came with pulled pork as a topping.

It’s hard to make out, but on that burger is pulled pork, deep fried onions and cheese, and instead of a bun it has two pieces of fried cheese toast! Mmmmmmmm delicious!

The burgers, however, proved to be almost completely immune to the powers of digestion and Chris and Trevor spent the show with barely enough space left inside their bodies to breathe. They struggled mightily but, troopers that they are, managed to complete the show without the use of a stomach pump.

Mike had the soup.

Our first big festival of the summer was Stanfest in lovely Canso, Nova Scotia. One of the great things about this festival is that the people attending it don’t just happen to be passing by, no, they are committed to getting there. Perhaps a map would be helpful.

It’s the “A” is Canso. If you drive past it the next stop is Europe.

Our first show was a workshop called “On the Lighter Side”, which was really too bad because we had a lot of dark introspective songs that we wanted to try out.  One of the other performers doing the workshop was none other than Jimmy Flynn. Here is a picture of Chris and him together to show that we’re not just making stuff up.

Of course there were many wonderful acts there, including recent Juno award winners the Good Lovelies, who were good and lovely enough to be seen in public with us even though we have never won a Juno. Or been nominated. Or were ever even invited to any of the parties.

Well, it’s a picture of them with Chris anyway. And Mike’s disembodied hand.  The hand has a solo album coming out in the fall.

That night we had our big main stage show. For some reason most of our stage banter revolved around the saying “Bum Spuds.” It may seem kind of weird now, but trust us, it was hilarious at the time. Bum Spuds. See, funnier already. Bum Spuds.

The last show of our Alberta  tour was in Winnipeg. Winnipeg, of course, in not in Alberta and that meant that we had to fly there. So we did. We landed at the airport and got our stuff. Here is Mike pushing his luggage on his way to get the rental car.

Touring is exciting!

It had been seven years since our last concert in town… although we’re not exactly sure why it took us so long to go back. But, then again, we’re not exactly sure about a lot of things.

We were playing the West End Cultural Centre, a place we’d performed at many times in the past, but as we tried to pull into the alley we always took into the parking lot we were surprised to discover that it had been replaced by a building. A building which was, in fact, the West End Cultural Centre–in the intervening years it had grown to twice its former size! (We worms, however, had only grown five or ten pounds each in the same period.)

The entire back half was new!

Seeing how we had been away for so long we had no idea if anyone would remember us. But they did! The place was sold out, and the audience sang along to almost all the songs. At the end of the show we met some of the fine people of Winnipeg who look very much like this:

Another tour over, we packed our bags and headed home.