Red is the colour of our guilt, our yarn, our time-space fabric

After returning to Vancouver from Poole’s Land, doing a mountain of laundry, running the hot water cold, scrubbing our dirty feet and so on, we were all set and super anxious to cross the border, bound for Portland, Oregon and Doom Squad’s first American tour date the following evening. Getting into the USA was causing us almost as much stress as finding and purchasing our tour vehicle did. The band was supposed to have VISAs as they were technically working in the US, playing shows and selling band merch, even though there never really was any expectation to make any money. But the process to get a VISA is lengthy and labyrinthine; their tour itinerary would have had to be set in stone months before, and any changes to it would have to go through US customs. And since the itinerary was and is still pretty much tentative, any hopes of crossing the border according to the big fat American books were gone like yesterday’s ganja. Plan B: split up the band gear between a couple vehicles and pretend there never was any band tour. This also entailed mailing the band merch to Portland (which we soon learned wouldn’t make it there until after the show) and wiping clean the internet of any sign of Doom Squad or the WigWam tour’s existence, just in case they found the band’s name while searching the vehicle and googled it. We knew not to underestimate the US border patrol.

Che, a good friend of the Doom Squad family’s had offered to drive WigWam’s keyboards and the Ghost Prom DJ equipment across the border, going with the alibi of an afternoon playing music with friends on her grandparents’ boat on the American coast. Her and Wolf had left a bit earlier than we had, and were already on the US side, news we happily received via text message from Wolf, by the time we pulled up to the American border in White Rock, BC. After waiting in line for about an hour, we pulled up to the border patrol booth and were greeted by the tired border patrol agent with an identifiably American drawl, Lamb in the driver’s seat and myself in the passenger’s with a pile of passports on the dash, and another pile of fallback documentation – flight confirmations, burning man tickets, proof of enrolment and class timetables at our respective universities in Toronto, Montreal, Halifax and Ottawa, to which we all had to return right after the Burn. The agent proceeded through the same questions he had been asking all day, probably all summer to motorists like us and nothing like us, which we answered with honest smiles hiding our anxious thoughts. Five minutes of standardized questions later, the agent slapped an orange slip on our windshield.
“Pull over there to the secondary inspection area, please”

We weren’t in the clear yet, but we had anticipated this; an RV full of Burn-bound hippies and artists has got to raise a few flags, especially at the United States border. We anticipated the worst, actually. In the past, Treymor was stopped at the border on route to LA where he used to study. He had to wait eight hours after the border patrol agents found some promo copies of recordings he did with his Toronto band Corduroy, considered commercial merchandise by the border, and was still turned away at the end of the day. Border patrol guards have more power than American or Canadian cops, and are under homeland security jurisdiction to shatter any sense of the “inalienable rights” to liberty that you thought you had; they searched Treymor’s email and text messages among other things, finding one he had sent to a friend waiting for him in LA about these asshole border patrol agents that were giving him such a hard time. You can bet the times got harder after that.

So we pulled up to the secondary inspection area, surrendered our keys to the agent there and went to answer more questions in the huge sterile American inspection building. But, it must be said, as much as we expected hell from these border patrol agents, they were actually quite friendly and accommodating, more concerned about any fresh produce we might be smuggling across rather than band gear, commercial merchandise or residual fun from our weekend at Poole’s Land.

After about an hour of anxiety in the waiting area, we were given the okay by the border patrol guards, and piled back onto our RV. We waited until we were absolutely and completely over the border, now in the town of Blaine, Washington, before howling and hollering with joy. We pulled up to a strip mall where Wolf was waiting, smoking a cigarette beside the pile of gear, grinning a big gratifying grin as we rapped on the windows and howled in his direction. We loaded up and hit the I-5, Oregon-bound.

We didn’t really intend on making it to Portland that evening, and almost didn’t when at dusk we realized that our taillights had burnt out somewhere between the border and Tacoma. But after a quick, and pretty clever patch up job by Rye Toast with reflectors, battery powered lights and duct tape, we were back on the road, weary but eager to make it to Portland so we could have the whole following day there to enjoy before the Doom Squad show. We finally arrived at about 1 am, glued to the RV’s windows and digging everything in sight: cool looking industrial bars and restaurants, closed cafés, street art, funky store fronts and record shops, colourful residential homes with huge front porches, ornamented with planters, hammocks and benches, and the words KEEP PORTLAND WEIRD painted in yellow on the back wall of a rock venue.
“We’ve been driving trough this city for five minutes, and in the dark, and I’m already certain I could live in Portland!”

We pulled up to Nick’s residential home, sandwiched in between Hawthorne and Belmont, and parked our home in the street. Doom Squad met Nick a few summers earlier at the Peppermill music festival in BC, a Portland born and raised folk-turned-rock musician who fronts Gratitillium, also on the bill for the show the following evening. We all sat around his spacious living room, met his roommates and chatted over a few beers, catching up before crashing.

The next evening, after a day spent enjoying Portland’s various sights and attractions, Nick and Doom Squad were on their way to sound check at the Someday Lounge in downtown Portland while Soleil, Lamb, Wolf and I went to the airport to pick up Rohto Vee, another friend from Toronto who would be joining us from there onwards, down to the Burn and everywhere in between. We found her in the airport lost and found office.
“They lost my bag!” Poor Rohto was having a rough go. She had almost missed her flight from New York City that morning, and lost her bag somewhere between Pheonix and Portland. She hurriedly filled out the frustrating airline baggage forms, and we left bound for the show, which we were getting close to missing.

We arrived at the Someday Lounge luckily just as Gratitillium were going on. We quickly set up the merch stand and started grooving to Nick’s colourful brand of rock-pop music. As young Portland filed in the door, we called them over to the merch table, handing out handbills and spreading the word about the show Doom Squad and Nick were going to play the following evening at some to-be-determined location, taking down numbers to inform interested parties the following day when we figured it all out. We wanted to throw another bush rave in the forest somewhere, the likes of the Poole’s Land show, but still had to figure it all out, a location to find, gear to rent and people to invite.

Doom Squad went on soon after and tore into the night, putting us in the audience into the usual trance, dancing, arms swinging, feet stomping, our individual tones now all harmonizing with the musicians’, with Aloe’s singing bowl bong-bonging with the beat, all falling into step now. Local kids, more hip than hippie, got into it too, closing their eyes like the rest of us and letting the music do the work. Real tribal power, taking over, taking its toll. So this is what they’re into in the Great White North. This is what Canadians dig, huh? Tribal trance, I dig it too.

Van Go Lion picked up the baton to close the night, a two-piece electro dance-pop group voted Portland’s favourite band in some forgotten publication, to a shrinking audience composed now only of some of us courteous Doom Squad tribe members and a handful of girls dancing in flip flops and chandelier earrings. Call me biased, but I think most of us there would agree. Doom Squad stole the show that night, they made an impression on that city.

The next day, tired, hungover and under prepared, we resolved to throw the party that night in Nick’s basement instead of in a forest. Free power and borrowing gear from Nick had it’s appeal of course, plus we were told time and time again that Portland doesn’t go anywhere they can’t bike to, and the only forest we could fathom throwing a rave in without interference from the cops would have to be out of the city limits. We hit the town to spread the word with a location finally in mind and to check out the downtown in the light of day. Thrift shops and arty boutiques, voodoo doughnuts, beer on tap, fruit stands -- it dawned on us pounding the pavement in the downtown core: Portland loooooooves Portland. The 100% local obsession, from jewellery and clothing to the grain-fed chicken breast on their plates, Portland-themed street art and graffiti on every turn, the headline in the street rag: WHY BROOKLYN WISHES IT WAS PORTLAND. Oh yeah, Portland loves Portland alright.

We returned home, tired, still sick with head colds, and pretty unmotivated. The poor Doom Squad siblings were all feeling under the weather. WigWam was shivering with a fever, and Aloe close to tears with a sore throat. But they pulled it together, those troopers, hung sheets to hide the basement-yness of the basement, the boiler and washer dryer, weaved sound-sensitive L-wire around the ceiling and set up the gear. Aloe and I stapled L-wire to a huge piece of white drywall, looping it around to spell the word GUILTY in Aloe’s cursive handwriting, inspired by a surrealist art piece that WigWam had made last summer for her London art show. The GUILTY sign pulsed with the music, a big red throbbing glow.
GUILTY
GUILTY
GUILTY
It looked super rad and had a real dreaded effect. We managed to turn Nick’s basement into a formidable rave venue, and by the time it was ready, tons of people were already on the front porch cracking beers and chatting, wondering what these crazy Canadian hippies had in store for them.

Nick opened the evening with a few folk songs, self-penned as well as covered. A really talented entertainer, his solo set really shone compared to his also-impressive set with Gratitillium, and not just because of the L-wire. Honest quality folk music like his didn’t need all the fringes that we had adorned the basement with, but the intergalactic vibe was a pretty cool contrast nonetheless. Ghost Prom went on next, now with Rohto behind the wheel too, a stark shift from folk to electro trance, but no one minded much. Dancing harder and harder, the temperature rose as more and more attendees joined us in the basement, greeted by the throbbing GUILTY sign at the back of the room. Doom Squad took over and conducted the energy, reverberating all over our subterranean rave den now. No one would have noticed they weren’t feeling tip top, everyone in their trance. Ghost Prom picked it up again after Doom Squad closed with “Land of the Silver Birch (Home of the Beiber)”, not letting the energy hit the floor, as we decompressed, some dropping out and others falling deeper into the trance. We had done it again, thrown another amazing rave, and even when none of us were feeling our best.
“Guys, we’re making impressions. We’re leaving our marks on people. Portland isn’t going to forget this.” Yeah, I really don’t think they will.

After waking up in our various positions, packing up and fuelling up, bidding farewell to Nick and his roommates, to Portland, we hit the road once again, now bound for the Oregon coast and the sand dunes Wolf couldn’t stop talking about, having visited them a lot as a kid. As we drove, WigWam and I sat in the back of the RV, myself scribbling in my notebook and WigWam braiding a long piece of red yarn. She had applied months earlier to exhibit an art piece at the Burning Man centre camp café, and had heard that it had been accepted via email when we were in Vancouver. Her original fantasy was to knit the whole way down the coast for the duration of the tour, the pieces of red yarn weaving through one another and each other like the interdependent time-space fabric itself that keeps us hurtling forwards, a break-neck speed it often seems, towards the desert, the burn.

Well, it turned out WigWam overestimated her capacity to knit, and when her project was crawling along even slower than our maxed-at-60 mph vehicle, she started braiding the yarn instead to catch up on the elapsed time. Three long pieces of red yarn, one end wrapped around her big toe, and the other being choreographed by her quick determined fingers, left over centre, right over centre that day as we drove towards the dunes on the Oregon coast, the next as we drove through the redwood forest in Northern California, and finally yesterday, as we drove across the Golden Gate bridge into San Francisco. Despite our climactic destination, the Burn, the flash of blazes that will close this chapter of self-discovery, we all have intentions and expectations for this journey, the means to that glorious end. WigWam’s art piece, Treymor’s film and my own quill-driving, we all had creative investments in this trip, as well as personal investments, spiritual investments. We were all sitting around talking about the Burn in the RV yesterday, Soleil and I always hungry for more inexplicable explanations on the progression of events at Burning Man, the essence, the point, the punctuation mark the end of this chapter. Soleil mused.
“I really think it will answer some questions I have”
“Well, I don’t think it will. I think if anything it will invoke more questions,” WigWam replied. “But that’s okay. They’ll be questions you never knew you were supposed to ask.”

WigWam brought out the ever-lengthening braids at every stop along the way. She lay it out end over end on the dunes at the Oregon Cosat, coiled it around stones on the bank of a river we dipped in and picnicked beside near Eureka, and wrapped it around a huge redwood tree trunk in Northern California.
“It’s funny, it was actually the perfect size to fit around that redwood trunk.”
Every time we move forward, we change the space we fill, and the space changes us. We’re all growing and evolving every day, premeditating and reflecting, looking forward and looking back. The road runs both ways. No questions being answered, only new ones being posed. We’re headed for the Burn, but we have no real destination. Only the road, in front of us and behind us, and our ever-expanding list of questions.
“What is to become of us when all of this is over?”


http://www.doomsquadmusic.com/
http://www.myspace.com/doomsquadtunes

WigWam Tour Schedule

TONIGHT: House show on SE Taylor St. in Portland, Oregon with Ghost Prom, Roto and Gratitilium

TOMORROW: Camping on Oregon Coast

SATURDAY: Camping in Redwood Forest, Northern California

SUNDAY-MONDAY: San Francisco

TUESDAY: Santa Cruz

WEDNESDAY: L.A. - Decompression

THURSDAY: L.A. at Freak City with Ghost Prom, Roto and DJ Dirty D

FRIDAY: TreeJay party in Venice Beach with Ghost Prom and Roto

SATURDAY: Camping in Yosemite National Park, California

SUNDAY: Driving to and lining up for Burning Man

MONDAY-MONDAY: BURNING MAN

Assorted lunatics at the tidal rave

It was a few days of waiting waiting waiting to get our RV, our new home back from the mechanic and move into it, start our adventure. When it was brought into the mechanic for an inspection the day after we purchased it, we were informed by Lamb and WigWam that it would cost about $1800 to fix the brakes and the steering, the same amount we bought it for. Deflating our bargain price pride a bit, and exhausting our budget totally, we comforted ourselves in knowing that our only available A-to-B would be road-ready.

But if you’re sleeping outside every night, you know when it rains it pours. Money worries from the cost of the repairs and some last minute camping and travelling supplies were intoxicating the group with tension and unease. Planning, packing and purchasing was putting everyone on edge, which is bound to happen when a transient nomadic pack, consumed with wanderlust and some light anxiety, was sitting around, day after day, thinking about what was to come and try to make sense of it. I can’t even imagine how Doom Squad et al, cooped up in their Toronto house before the tour, coped with the immense planning required for this trip. I’m told the group bickered over inane tour details until they couldn’t talk to each other anymore, until the tour was at risk of being cancelled. Lamb told me, as we were sitting on the Balsam front porch waiting for the arrival of the RV, that before they left home in Toronto, our extended Doom Squad family resolved to have a ceremony to let go of all their pre-tour tribulations. WigWam made a large white flag and painted the word Mistakes on it. They all got up on the roof of the house and waved the flag around, waving their mistakes away. Lamb frowned.
“I was downstairs when it happened. I didn’t even want to be a part of it. I wasn’t ready to let go of our mistakes, my mistakes and the mistakes of others”.

Agency and WigWam finally arrived from the mechanic’s with our RV, and only an hour before we had to leave for Vancouver Island. Any past mistakes were out of mind, at least for the time being, as we hurriedly staple gunned Indian saris and hung up strings of flowers to the interior of the vehicle. Colourfully patterned material covered every un-flowery service, fairy wings were posted above the back door, and a children’s costume Native headdress was stapled to the back of the cabin. The gear was piled into the RV’s out-of-order bathroom, our packs crammed into the top bunk above the driver’s seat, and our bodies into any available corner. Soon we were off, racing towards the ferry to Victoria before the last one left at 9 pm, WigWam behind the wheel.

The ferry was as beautiful as everyone said it would be. When we got on the top deck, the sun was setting and the bright waxing moon was glowing in that blue-violet sky and trailing light across the ocean. We howled at it and cheered for our RV’s maiden voyage.

Later on, sipping coffee in the ferry’s cafeteria, a late-20 something tanned man sitting nearby struck up a conversation with us. He had honest green eyes and wore earth tones. His motorhome was parked behind our own in the ferry’s bottom, and he asked us if we were coming from Shambhala, the hippie electronic music festival in Vernon, BC like he was. We shook our heads, told him what we were up to and that we were heading to play a show at Poole’s Land in Tofino. I had heard only a bit about Poole’s Land from Doom Squad, but so far everything had sounded utterly Utopian. Michael Poole, the owner of 17 acres a few kilometres away from the town of Tofino, opened up Poole’s land 25 years ago as a commune for surfers and hippies alike. Tucked into the beautiful rainforest a few minutes from the beach, it was the ideal patch of land for a bunch of free people to live love and lie together in harmony with nature. Over the years it turned into more of a campsite, asking visitors to pay or work for their stay.

Our affable new friend, an organic farmer who lives on Salt Spring Island and owns an organic food store, as a matter of fact knows Michael Poole, has been to Poole’s Land and knows people living there. Cameras rolling now, we were all excited to hear this, not knowing much about Poole, and asked him if he could come out to the show. He told us he couldn’t take anymore time off from work to go to Tofino, but instead invited Doom Squad to play a show on his farm on Salt Spring Island. We were thrilled for the invitation, so exchanged information with the organic farmer and resolved to meet the next day for coffee to try to organize the show the night after we left Tofino, and maybe get some more information on the infamous Michael Poole and his Land.

In the morning, Treymor, Aloe and I met the farmer at café Habit in downtown Victoria. Treymor’s cameras were rolling as we chatted about the possibility of a show in the barn, which would require generators and more rental equipment. After going over our budget a bit more, we realized it would be too expensive to rent generators and equipment for a last minute show on Salt Spring, but resolved to try to make it to his farm to just hang out for a night anyway. Treymor lead the conversation, asking the farmer about organics and his store. He then changed the topic to Poole’s Land and Michael Poole himself, asking what the organic farmer thought of Poole.
“You’ll have to turn off your cameras before I answer that,” he laughed loudly.
“No, but seriously.”
Treymor did. The farmer started telling us about Poole, that he was a bit of a showman and knew a handful of buzz words that attracted young people like us. He picks up on what gets you off and works with it, drawing you in, the farmer told us. More youth filter in their every summer, and Poole always has the same tour, the same speech to deliver.

Poole’s land visitors are required to work four hours a day if they want to stay for free, the organic farmer told us. But it’s not a farm, it’s a campground, and although they do have some gardens to maintain and general work to keep up on, there isn’t exactly enough work to keep 30 or so hippies busy for four hours a day. So most of the time they are charged with some menial task, usually pulling and straightening nails or something like that. Though sometimes they do produce. Poole once ordered the labourers to build a wooden shelter after a female resident’s tent burnt down. He then started charging her rent to live in it. Not long after, the shed burnt down too after someone tried to light a fire in it no doubt.
“And that’s the way it goes at Poole’s land, that’s the cycle. They straighten nails. They build a shed, the shed burns down. And they straighten more nails.”

We said goodbye to the organic farmer a while later, agreeing to try to meet on Salt Spring if it was possible. After picking up the rental gear and generators for the Poole’s Land show, we got on the road towards Tofino, stopping on the way for a stroll through Cathedral Grove to dig some of the tallest and oldest trees in the country, and check our egos in the shadows of some of Canada’s natural majesty.

We pulled into Poole’s Land that night after dark when our headlights shone into the small cabin near the road and woke up the gruff campground manager Peter, who was sleeping inside with a head cold. Poole’s number two, the one in charge when he wasn’t around, and probably the only bummer about this magical place, the grumpy manager enforced inconsistent and dogmatic rules that seemed to be pulled out of the air and wouldn’t hear an idea that wasn’t first his own, unless of course it was coming from Poole. He gave us a short moonlit tour of the grounds, showed us to the kitchen where there was a large deck we could pitch our tent on that night, as well as a ladder leaning up to an out-of-order rooftop greenhouse and loads of vegetable gardens that were communally available for planting and harvesting. He then showed us the back pond and stage where the show would be the night of the full moon, a large clearing in the forest where past visitors had nailed asymmetrical lumber to logs lining the width of the pond, so the stage both overlooked the water on one side, and the road on the other. It was Lamb who had been in contact with Poole back in Toronto, and so was eager to meet the man in person.
“So when is Michael coming back?” she asked. “I think he said tomorrow.”
“Ah, yeah it could be tomorrow. Or sometime in 2011.”
Does he know it is 2011?

All of the hippie residents we met the next morning at the pond had been waiting for Poole for the past five days, and were growing bored and disenchanted with Peter’s seizure of rule. Rent for staying at Poole’s Land was either $20 a night, $10 a night with two hours of work, or six hours of work to stay for free. But under Peter’s authority both pay and hours were inconsistent and kept changing, it would seem according to his mood. That morning we met a group of kids from Coquitlam, musicians in a folk-pop group called Community Trees staying in a three-tiered tent structure on a neighbouring site, who were especially annoyed with Peter’s charge and especially anxious for Poole’s return.
“I heard he was supposed to come two days ago, then I heard he was supposed to come today.”
“Yeah, I heard tomorrow.”

While Lamb, Wolf and Soleil went into Tofino to poster and spread the word about the show, and Treymor and Rye Toast charged the RV’s dead battery, WigWam and I helped with some of the days work, which that day entailed hauling logs around, lining them up horizontally on a slope close to the stage to make a set of organic bleachers for people to chill out on during the show. In order to do this, though, a lot of piles of firewood and lumber had to be rearranged and moved and appropriate logs selected from a heaping haphazard pile on the top of the hill. Occasionally I would take breaks to hike around a bit and explore the grounds. Behind the pond is a garden growing fresh kale, and beyond that, following a path five minutes away from the pond, a tall overhanging rock face they call “The Cliff” rigged up with a levy system and a tarp for shelter.
Returning from my walk, Lamb had returned from postering the town and joined in on the work. She was moving a pile of firewood from one spot in the clearing to another, the same pile of firewood WigWam and I had moved earlier that morning. Other visitors continued to line the logs up in a row on the hill. I joined Soleil and Aloe just as Peter was ordering them to move and organize a pile of lumber I had already moved twice that morning with other people. Rolling my eyes, I turned around to see some other workers straightening nails with a hammer. Wow: disenchantment achieved. It didn’t take long.

I ditched the work scene after that, decided to head into town and get some writing in as well as a shower at the laundromat. Walking towards the main road, I noticed the blue bird watching me from a branch above. It wasn’t the first time myself or other Doom Squad tribers noticed the blue bird, the gatekeeper of Poole’s Land. He circulated the grounds, constantly checking things out and singing his tune at visitors and residents. The more and more I saw him, I began to think the blue bird was a spirit or divinity, or maybe Michael Poole incarnate, keeping an eye on his land. Our friend David named him Jimmy, but that name didn’t strike me as an appropriate one for an avian rainforest spirit. My eyes lowered as I passed Pat, a 40-something strung out female resident.
“Hey, what’s up?”
“Oh, y’know. Just waiting for Poole.”
“Yeah. Right.”

When I returned to camp a few hours later, the work day was over and everyone was in good spirits, uncorking bottles and sitting around the old woodstove that we had dragged out of a bush and installed at the stage’s edge earlier that day. Doom Squad had strung up fishing net on posts around the edge of the stage and splattered paint on an old metal door that was found in the area. They painted the words FULL MOON on the door, and leaned it against the front of the stage. I approached the RV and saw a pretty blond girl smiling and laughing with some of our tribe. Her green wide-eyed gaze met mine as I arrived there, and I noticed the feathers tied into her hair. She drew me in and greeted me warmly, introducing herself as Lily Poole, Michael’s daughter, the heiress of Poole’s Land. We chatted about the show, and she told us how everyone in town was excited for the full moon trance party in the rainforest the following night. We soon learned she had once attended high school in London, Ontario, the same hometown as Doom Squad, Soleil and myself. The now fully-waxed moon seemed enormous compared to our ever-shrinking worlds. She left shortly after, bidding farewell until the following evening, her own bright smile reflecting ours’.

Community Trees, a pack of eleven young subterraneans and adept musicians, so beautifully tuned into nature and each other that their vocal harmonies flowed through one and out the other like the tide, joined us at the pond and proposed heading to the Pyramid. En masse, we headed down the road and off into the forest, uphill along a path and finally up a rope on a steep slope. There we arrived at the Pyramid, a prism-shaped treehouse tucked in among the treetops, cozy with couches and hammocks on the first floor and ornamented with painted signs and images, words like “People Not Profits” scrawled on the weathered wood. Ropes hung from branches all around, ropes for swinging to other ropes swings, slack lines for scurrying from treetop to treetop, and a huge old fishing net suspended between trees that one could, with a bit of difficulty, shimmy up to, swing by a rope and slide into to lay in comfortably above countless branches and a 20 foot drop to the rainforest floor. Climbing a spiral staircase to the second floor of the Pyramid, a four foot wide boardwalk of plywood around a little room with a sliding glass door, the extended Doom Squad family sat up there giddy with happiness and altitude, watching the other ape-like hippie residents swing from tree to tree.

We all hung out in the Pyramid for a while, drinking beer and shooting shit. Peter was there too, loudly recounting stories even we had already heard before earlier that day. Westing Crow joined us soon after, reporting he had found a beautiful spot up the path a bit further. So we all followed him to the top of the hill where we were greeted with a beautiful coral sunset and blue ridge mountains. We all sat closely together on the slope, our Doom Squad tribe, which now included some other friends who drove up from Vancouver, and the Community Trees tribe, plus some other loose campers here and there, and gazed out at the sunset, breathing it all in. One Tree behind me starting playing the guitar, and without notice, all of the Community Trees started harmonizing, pitch perfect and with unearthly ease, all tuned in and falling into their vocal patterns. It was so beautiful; we all smiled and gushed to them.

Someone proposed the beach, and rallied everyone to head down. Dusk now, we returned to our camp for some warmer clothes and strolled down the main road to Mackenzie Beach, marching and playing acoustic music along the way. After walking through a dingy campsite, we arrived on the beach to behold the setting solar spectacle, a purple-blue bruise smeared across the sky, with the bright, near full moon peeking out behind backlit clouds. Campfires peppered the beach. We spun and danced and tripped on the beauty of the world, falling to the powder-fine sand, unlike any sand I’ve ever felt before, and made sand angels. Some of us dipped in the water. We howled and marvelled at the incredible moon. It was all so beautiful. Some collected firewood and built a campfire; we all gathered around it and started playing more music, singing more songs, songs we all knew and songs we made up along the way, all harmonizing together. One of the Trees started playing the blues on the guitar, and Treymor and I went with it, started scatting, singing the Michael Poole blues.
“Bin’ waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting/
For Michael Poole, the Michael Poole bluuuuues”

Someone had brought glow sticks, and Lamb would take one, put one end in the fire until it melted and broke off, and then wave it around in the air, covering everyone with the neon Day-Glo yellow-green. We all became vibrant Jackson Pollocks, galaxies designed across our bodies as we danced around the fire. Day-Glo speckled the sand too, and we fell to our knees and manipulated the neon constellations with our hands like we were gods. We felt like gods, howling at the moon every time it would come out from behind a cloud. Until eventually two disgruntled campers showed up and said they called the cops, and that we had better get the hell out of there and back to Poole’s Land. Grounded now, we collected our things and marched back to our tents, still singing along the way.

The following day, Doom Squad was sound-checking by the pond as a few of us sat around the stage. Nick, Echo’s friend from Vancouver, was wrapping two sewing needles around a twig with black thread while I thought of which design I wanted to get tattooed on my arm. I had been thinking about getting a stick and poke for a while, and after the previous night, I felt as if Poole’s Land was the perfect place for the memory to be infused into my skin with needles and India ink. It’s not like I would ever forget this place anyway, even if I tried. I decided finally on a crystal shape, modelled off of a Lumurian crystal I’ve been carrying around for a few weeks, inspired by the natural beauty and energy of this place, this province. We headed up to the Pyramid and sat cross-legged on the wooden floor. Nate, another friend from Vancouver, had done stick and pokes a handful of times before and started sketching out the design on a wooden post. We decided on one and started applying it while one of the Community Trees, fondly remembered as le bébé écureuil, strummed the guitar and sang sweetly. After the image was permanently stained on my upper right arm, we all headed back down to base camp to get ready for the show, to make more permanent memories.

Wolf, onstage known as Ghost Prom, started DJing his set as some local kids, surfers and ravers, started arriving, including Lily Poole, dressed vibrantly in Day-Glo and fairy wings. Treymor and WigWam had weaved solar powered L-wire through the fishing net around the stage that pulsed a blue-green glow with the sound of the bass. The sun was setting and the full moon rising. We were all rising ecstatically now, dancing to the music. Peter had lined the side of the road with recycling bins, and tarps were hung from a rope for emergency shelter from the sporadic Tofino rain. A few locals were perusing WigWam’s handmade silk-screened tshirts, running their hands over the multi-coloured design: WIGWAM GETS WHAT WIGWAM WANTS. The rest of us were all shaking in the twilight now, ripping into the night as Ghost Prom choreographed the flow and conducted our malleable bodies. Community Trees joined us then and started dancing too, waving incense in the air above their heads.

The crowd of hippies and party-goers grew, and those of us dancing were hanging on tight to every pulse, every drop. Doom Squad came on when the full moon was perfectly centred in the clearing of trees, beating down on us lunatics like the midday sun, our blood boiling now with ecstasy. Treymor, Aloe and WigWam rocked back and forth, stomping, beams of light from their headlamps waving through the air and following the progression. The sisters and brother looked extra extraterrestrial that night, outer-dimensional big dippers, locking us in their dark trance draw. The trees melted around us as the whirlpool of glowsticks swallowed us whole on stage. The scene was so utterly surreal. Soleil rolled around with the camera, filming with only the light from her headlamp spotlighting what was in her gaze; hypnotized dancers, incense smoke trails, and the three Doom Squad musicians filled the frame. A group of teetering dudes pulled a canoe into the small pond and floated around below the stage, barely visible other than the red glow of cigarettes and a glowstick or two.

Doom Squad drove through their set and closed with “Land of the Silver Birch (Home of the Beiber)” when a friend from Vancouver lit and set off a hot-air lantern into the sky, lifting off and disappearing behind treetops. Sparklers were lit and handed out, waved about. The spectacle was brilliant, and closed with a flash of blazes.

Ghost Prom launched into his second set and kept us pulsing to the beat. We were all reverberating, expelling our energy and sacrificing it to Wolf, now resembling a witch doctor, waving his arms around, conducting our energy into sound, noise and light. It continued like that, the energy flowing in and out of us like the tide, reigned over by the lunar god in the sky. We had all lost our minds now, all stark raving lunatics. Behind Ghost Prom, I noticed our Doom Squad family was huddled in a circle beside the RV. I approached and was drawn into the circle.
“Rocky! It’s him! He’s here!”

Michael Poole had arrived. Treymor told me later on that it was Lily who was the first to realize it.
“I can feel him! My dad is here, I can feel his energy!” she had said. She ran off towards the main road and sure enough returned minutes later with a tall ethereal-looking man, dressed in neutral colours, with white hair and maybe 60-something years behind him, but without a wrinkle on his tanned face. His eyes were green like Lily’s, clear and magnetic, drawing us in like Narcissus to the pool. When I entered the circle of my friends and loved ones, wide-eyed and mouth agape, grinning like a fool, Poole lowered to one knee and took my hand, raised it above his head and made me feel like the only person left in the universe. The youniverse, Poole would have said. All of our arms were around each other, rubbing circles on each other’s backs and laughing. Poole was utterly otherworldly. We breathed in his energy and got high on his aura, until he told us he had to go, had been travelling all day and was beat, needed rest, rejuvenation. He ran off to his modest cabin behind the kitchen with Lily on his back, but we could still feel him. We felt it, the shift in energy. Poole had arrived at Poole’s Land, and most people pulsing to the music didn’t even know it yet. But he had affected something, affected us.

To be perfectly honest, before I met Poole I was beginning to think he didn’t exist, that he was perhaps a figurehead imagined into existence by hopeful, blissful hippies. Maybe he really was the blue bird gatekeeper. Or maybe he was the land itself. But I met him, we all did. We met his gaze, touched his hands, heard his voice, and were all a bit different because of it. A paradigm shift, and not necessarily one for the better. The music kept pulsing but the spectacle was over, the mystery disintegrated, the curtain pulled back to reveal the Wizard of Oz to be just a man. An extraordinary man, yes, but until then hidden behind a smoke and mirror show that intoxicated our sense of wonder and mysticism. But even though some of the grandiosity was unavoidably deflated when we met the man behind the mirrors, it was nevertheless evident that he was a generous, sage, compassionate, spiritual man who had blindly welcomed us onto this amazing land. And his energy was undoubtedly powerful, we all felt that. With some reflection on the whole event, I’ve come to realize that it didn’t take the Wizard of Poole’s Land, or a pair of ruby slippers, to make me feel right at home on this land, in this rainforest, with all of these beautiful people, with Doom Squad, with each other, with the ocean, trees, dirt, sand, waves.

Ghost Prom kept spinning and we clicked our heels to the beat.
There’s no place like Poole’s Land.
There’s no place like Poole’s Land.

In the end, Treymor decided to not shoot any footage of Michael Poole for the movie, and I fully support that decision. He wanted to keep the man himself alive for our memories only, put on the smoke and mirror show for viewers, keep the mystery alive.

Ghost Prom’s set finished and the equipment was quickly packed into the RV. Community Trees grabbed their acoustic instruments and started playing, weaving their sweet harmonies into the silence. Hippie attendees weren’t at all jolted by the shift in sound, the almost immediate decompression of abrasive trance to smooth folk-pop, and we all sat cross-legged on the stage once again around the woodstove, singing along.

Late that night, when everyone had left or gone to sleep, myself and three other amazing beings climbed into the net, throwing our sleeping bags in first, to sleep in the rainforest suspended between treetops. Not that we slept at all, we were too happy to sleep, to tired to move. Jimmy the blue bird flew over, whistled to announce his presence, and moments later flitted off, apparently content enough with what was going on. So we just lay there and laughed until the sun rose and the rain started to fall. We stared straight up into the oncoming rain, not sheltered and not giving a damn. Until we did.

So now, a few days later, in Portland, Oregon for a show tonight at the Someday Lounge, followed by a bush bash the following night at some yet to be defined location in the greater Portland area, Doom Squad and I sit in the Stumptown Café, a variable symphony of sniffles, heads more full of mucus than music, and I am finally able to articulate what happened this past weekend in Tofino and put it to the page. The rest of Doom Squad are as sick as I am; I’m positive WigWam will not likely forget a fly for the tent the next time we camp in the rainforest. Also positive we won’t likely ever forget that magical weekend at Poole’s Land. I know I never will. It’s more a part of me than the ink in my arm.

http://www.doomsquadmusic.com/
http://www.myspace.com/doomsquadtunes

Directing the movie, writing the script

The earliest ones awake are usually the ones charged with some sort of responsibility for the day. In Wolf's case, running lines for a couple of auditions he had later that day for parts in TV shows. Treymor wanted to tighten some screws on the Machine before the evening. But also he slept on the front porch, and construction on the house across the street starts at 7am.

I also slept on the porch, and so was sitting cross legged in the living room, drinking my first cup of joe and going over my excuse to quit my job that morning before I'd have to go in for the dinner shift I had been scheduled for that night during Doom Squad's first show at the Electric Owl in Vancouver.

This was officially the start of Doom Squad's West Coast tour. Treymor had begun shooting his documentary, so the camera's were rolling, and we all had to play our parts in the great movie. Manifest our roles, write our own scripts, direct the movie and drive the narrative forward. Once directing your own movie, you're able write anything you want into your script. It's on you to make it a thriller, a comedy, or a tragedy. You can bring in your cast of characters. Beautiful visuals, incredible plot twists, surprise cameos - you can bring it all together in your own script.

But we did have to keep reminding Treymor to charge his batteries and have a camera on hand to pick up everything. Things just keep happening.

Treymor paces through the room, on the phone with yet another vehicle owner, this time a 28 foot old army training bus turned camper, with a hardwood interior, loads of space, stove, fridge and a 6 CD changer. We went and met the old hippie who owned it, a super friendly dude who, because of an accident which left him somewhat disabled, mostly used the bus for a hotbox, save for the odd weekend camping trip. Treymor, Rye Toast, WigWam, Westing Crow and myself sat in the roomy back area of the bus while he took us for a bumpy ride around the block. The brakes needed work, the windshield was cracked and the tires in the back needed re-grooving, but all-in-all the bus seemed like our dreamboat as we bounced around a Richmond suburb. The old hippie called it the Magic Bus, and we could feel it - the magic was real. Plus it would be perfect for the film, a real live modern day "Furthur" bus like Ken Kesey's in the '70s. We talked the merciful hippie down $1500 below his asking price but the bus was still over our budget and kind of canceled out any room for emergencies and repairs on the road. And although the diesel engine was built for army training, we couldn't exactly guarantee it wouldn't break down on the road - and we couldn't afford to wait two weeks in some bum town to wait for obscure military bus parts when the band had dates to play - the next one, let us remind ourselves, was a week and a half away in Tofino on Vancouver Island and we needed a way to get there.

That evening before the Doom Squad show, we were all sitting around drinking wine on the porch when WigWam reminded us the band needed to be at the venue in 45 minutes. It was an early show, starting at 9 pm. Doom Squad was headlining with local group Red Hot Icicles Burning On Fire, but they were supposed to go on at 10:30 pm. The Vancouver by-law thing or whatever it is that says live music cannot go past midnight on weekdays is a frustrating phenomena for Ontarians. I volunteered to work the door for the show, so got in the cab with the band to head down to East Hastings.

When the group went on about two hours later, the rest of our friends had shown up with bells on, twirling on the dancefloor and swinging limbs. Electric Owl is an impressive venue for a sushi restaurant that moonlights concert hall. Doom Squad came on stage commanding attention, drawing us in and setting the pace. Aloe on the left, in rhinestoned denim trousers, a short black top and dark purple lips, pounding a drum and harmonizing, moving to the beat of her own drum. The lovely WigWam on the right, on keys, wearing a long skirt, a gold shawl, and with her long chestnut hair around her shoulders. Treymor centered the stage, with slim pants and a mop of curly dark hair on the top of his head, manipulated sounds with the Machine and on the guitar. They kept all of us in the audience under their spell, their siren song, an energy drawing us all in, myself ecstatically included when Rye Toast would sit at my post at the cover table, which he ended up doing for most of their set, thank him.

That night after the show, we headed back to Kistilano and sat on the beach for a while, smoked and drank and shot the shit with our happy trance afterglow. Lights in North Van peppered the mountain side across the strait. I breathed happy free breaths, unemployed and uninhibited, I felt and feel liberated and inspired, my opportunism able to reach its fullest potential and the whole road yet ahead.

The next morning, feeling crusty and hungover after another night on the front porch, Westing Crow and I sat around and sang one of the songs he wrote as he strummed the guitar.
"The sky surrounds us/
space-time allows us/
to find reality/
because mind is fantasy"
WigWam was on the phone with Phil working out a way to get us all onto the boat camping trip that night. Phil owned a beautiful big boat he kept on Granville Island, and after some last minute last-night drunk plans and some hurried daytime planning and packing, we were all going on the boat and heading to beautiful Gambier Island that afternoon. Take them as they come, and keep the plot going. Let's bring our movie to the ocean, let's bring it onto a boat and over to an island, decompress and connect to one another. Understand fully what we all want out of this trip, and the vehicle that will take us there.

We hauled our packs and gear through Kits to Granville Island where Phil's boat was docked, gassed up, and set off, sailing past snow-capped mountains and shining sea while the sun swam over our hot skin. Rye Toast was especially dazzled, being from Australia originally and never having seen the Rocky Mountains. But I've said it before Rye Toast, there's nothing quite like Canadian wilderness on this whole planet my friend.
Treymor and Phil consulted the GPS.
"Whoa, that island is called Finnisterra"
Treymor told us that means the end of the world, also the name of the village where the Camino de Santiago that he did last summer terminated.

We pulled up to a public dock on Gambier and brought our stuff over the short walk around the bay to a campsite. Treymor had found a perfect one right on the water across from an island in the middle of the bay. We set up camp, ate quinoa salad and swam in the ocean. We drank when the sun went down, me my preferred bottles of La Fin Du Monde beer from Quebec to start, and cheap tequila to drive the plot forward.

The next morning, waking up late and hungover, we called the mechanic's back in Vancouver. We had taken in the Magic Bus that we had seen two days earlier for an inspection before we purchased it. The news wasn't good, the price of the repairs for even the most necessary maladies on our dreambus, the A to B non-negotiables, was, well, massive. That plus the price of the vehicle would blow our budget out of the high tide. We had to look at our other options and make a decision - remember, Tofino, now one week away. Time crunch. Our alternative, the best one we saw, was the well-running, fit to haul RV owned by the angry Eastern-European . It surely wasn't as glamourous as the Magic Bus, and some of us wanted to proceed with the bus, see if we could get a really good price from the old hippie who sympathized with us nomads in a way that the Eastern European man never would.

"Look, guys, we have to remember that this vehicle wasn't supposed to be the thing. This tour is about music and the film. That's primary. Transportation is secondary, really."
WigWam, you're totally right. As much as the journey is as important as the destination, we were taking about a month to cover a distance by vehicle that would take three days directly. So we wouldn't be spending a hell of a lot of time in the thing anyway. And, hey, our destination is Burning Man. As much as we wanted that Magic Bus to take us on a trip, we had to stay grounded in our budget.

We voted. Twice. And decided to proceed instead with the RV.

After spending the whole sunny day on the rocky beach at low tide, and resolving that we wouldn't be able to see a mechanic until Monday anyway, we decided to stay another night on Gambier Island, and boat over to Bowen Island for a few more supplies, booze and dinner.

After eating a comparatively lavish dinner to our dirty ass selves on the touristy Bowen Island, we boated back to Gambier as the sun was setting. Westing Crow had stayed back to hike the island, scavenge for water, and build a fire, thank him, so we sat around the embers and had some more libations. We tuned into nature and dropped out of society again. We sat around the fire all night and shot the shit, talked shit, saw shit. Some of us dropped out and found a place to lay their heads on the grassy knoll. I was falling asleep on Lamb's shoulder, curled around the fire in the dirt below the bank of the shore, happy as a barnacle on a rock in the sun, when the most surreal thing happened to us.

Low tide, and getting lower. I was sitting beside Aloe, with the fire in front of us and the bay beyond that. We were tucked in between a big log and the high tide line, singing blues songs a capella, covered in dirt and ash. Looking out at the bay, we saw the boat come in. The men were shouting, singing stupid songs at the top of their lungs, the sound of their drunkenness echoing across the glassy lake and reverberating off the mountains. Their boat had three lights on it in a pyramid shape, a white one at the top, a red one on the bottom right, and a green one on the bottom left. The colour and light reflected beams all along the distance of the water between the boat and the shoreline. The voices got louder and the lights got closer, the beams across the bay bigger still. Phil shined his flashlight out and we faintly saw the large cedar boat, not much further than the island in the bay. The lights kept approaching and the beams bigger and brighter, now auras, paths of energy that were drawing this boast closer to our site like they were under of a spell of a siren song. Phil shone his light at the boat when the sputtering of the boat's motor got louder, as it powered towards the piece of the shore we had called home for the past two nights.

"It's coming right for us!"
Lamb scrambled up the bank and away from the shore. Aloe and I gaped at the lights. Finally the sputtering got really loud, the intensity plateauing now, the boat had stopped advancing and wouldn't budge. Voices were loud and close, we were still freaking out about what was happening. Phil kept shining his flashlight at the huge cedar boat, but it was us who were caught in the headlights, moths in a trance by the pyramid of light on the boat.

Finally, Phil went down to the shore and called out to the voices.
"Uh, hey, can we help you?"
"Well yeah, you can get out here and push if you want."
So out we went into the ocean at around 2am. Phil and five of us girls, WigWam, Lamb, Aloe, Soleil and myself stripped off some of our warm clothes and went to the boat's base, wedged in the rocks and shells and barnacles in the bay as the tide went down fast. We lifted and pushed, but of course the boat didn't move. It had arrived in the movie, twisted it's way into the plot, and now was wedged in our narrative.

After several futile efforts, we all went ashore to get dry by the fire. The boat's pissed-drunk owner included, he felt right at home perched on a rock by our fire, uncorked himself with characteristic ease and practice, and started telling us his stories. He started with stories of the varoius times he got his boat stuck somewhere (something he's no stranger to evidently) but then about ex-girlfriends and affairs in Hawaii, fornicating with girls younger than his own daughters and even with-holding from his own unknowing son that he had conceived a child with an old lover, lying to that lover about his ability to conceive. Blaming us for mooring his boat, he said he was he following the light of Phil's flashlight when he got stuck, thinking that this was his buddy's signal from another boat (even though we had a fire, and he had a GPS). It was incredible how deep he delved within moments of approaching, laughing at everything he said like it wasn't as black as it was humour. But what a jolly raconteur he was, if you ignored the miserable content.

"I've always said, y'know guys, that life's a movie and you can write the script and direct it for yourself and, y'know what guys, I'm making mine a comedy."
"Ohhhh man, you don't know how right you are."
We couldn't stop giggling at this strange raconteur, until we got sleepy from that and started singing our lullaby until he left to his slanted boat. He had made his bed, and wasn't going to be lying in our camp.
"Go to sleep ya little babe/
Go to sleep ya pretty baby"
We went to sleep knowing that this crazy dream, that crazy boat, was going to be pretty real in the light of day.

We woke up, packed up and boated back to Granville Island, passing the beached ship, now completely on dry land at the tide's lowest. Exhausted, hungover and unable to fully enjoy the incredible view with a crick in my neck, the return trip wasn't quite as hopeful as the way there. But we had to go see that RV, and resolve to purchase.

WigWam, Lamb and Phil, who's an adept enough mechanic to know more about the durability and longevity of a used RV than all of us amateurs, all went to look at the RV as we walked back to Balsam Ave to clean ourselves up, rest up a bit, and wait for the good news.

It came a few hours later when WigWam called Aloe. The RV owned by the Eastern European man checked out according to Phil, and he talked down the owner to $1800, $700 below the asking price. After insuring it, WigWam and Phil drove it back to Balsam, welcomed by cheering and applauding porch potatoes.

We piled on and checked out our new home, some of us for the first time. Tons of space, shag carpet, sleeps 5, drives easily and smoothly. We quickly got ourselves together and set off for an early evening at Wreck Beach to celebrate with the sunset, hula hooping hippies, drinks and cheap festival clothes' shopping. Despite Rye Toast smacking a vehicle's side mirror on the narrow Kistilano roads within 10 seconds of our departure, we were on our way.

Doom Squad arrives || Search for a recreational spacecraft

Two days ago when WigWam, Alla and Treymor, along with Rhy and Lamb and Lamb's pretty blond friend, climbed the eight-feet wide wooden steps up to the magnificent linen-draped, dreamcatcher- and windchime-clad front porch on Balsam St. in Vancouver's Kistilano, Echo and I were sitting in the living room, bouncing in our seats like it was Christmas morning. A group of our favourite people, the extended Doom Squad family, were arriving after a train trip across the country from Toronto on which they have packed and moved all of their gear for a band tour, camping and most scrupulously for Burning Man, a week-long festival in the Nevada desert and our group's ultimate destination.

For months we've been planning this trip - you could call it a quest - touring around BC, down through Washington, Oregon and California, filming a movie, playing some music, meeting lots of people and seeing, hearing, feeling lots of new things. Then finishing up climactically, beautifully, in a chaotic, catastrophic, radiant explosion, combustion and rebirth in the ashes of THE MAN.
But we have to have a way to get there.

Transportation is square one, and from day one there were anxieties about finding something good enough in time.

Some of the gang went out to Langley the day of their arrival to see an RV there, and it broke down twice on the test drive. Brother and sisters Treymor, WigWam and Alla, Doom Squad proper, with Wolf and Rhy, tour manager and accountant respectively who flew out from Toronto a couple days earlier, have been wading through RV potentials in Vancouver and the greater area for the past few days. There are dates in Tofino, Portland and L.A., with some shows in the works in Seattle and San Francisco. So there's a time crunch. And then on to Burning Man in Black Rock City, Nevada. That starts August 28th and goes until the 5th of September. So we will need a pretty formidable chariot; a big, mighty and cheap bus that can transport nine of us almost 3000 km this summer, plus maybe a camping trip before we leave for the tour.
"At this point it's getting down to the wire. I don't want to look for buses anymore, we've been looking at buses for three months. I'm getting disenchanted."

Again the next day, Alla and Treymor and some others went to check out an RV owned by a blunt Eastern-European man looking to get the thing off his hands for two grand. It was clean and ran well, automatic steering and handled easily. But the gruff owner won't let them take it to a mechanic or on a longer test drive before purchasing it, not without a deposit. Still we're not sure whether or not to chock it down, the rudeness and sketchiness of the Eastern-European owner trying to get this RV off his hands, to a difference in language and custom and to go with a good feeling and buy the thing.

Another option is a school bus owned by a church group in Penticton. We're waiting to hear if the other interested buyers, a private Christian high school, will get the money together in time before the owners go on to the next buyers, a pack of burning man-bound merry pranksters.

"We really need to nail something down, like today."
Treymor wants to leave at least four days for us to take the new RV, our home for the next five weeks in to a mechanic, get the oil changed and all the necessary grooming before we start towards Vancouver Island for a show in Tofino on August 13th.

Over the phone, he argues with the RV's owner for a few minutes on the front porch while we all sit around in the living room. He enters the room, raising his voice into the receiver.
"Well good luck selling it, it's never gonna sell!" the Eastern-European owner won't budge on letting us take it to a mechanic, and Treymor hangs up on him angrily. The pursuit continues.

Doom Squad calls a cab and heads to a rental studio space on West 7th to rehearse. Tomorrow is their first West Coast performance at the Electric Owl with local band Red Hot Icicles Burning On Fire. Echo, Sam and Wes head off to some other suburb of Vancouver to check out yet another potential spaceship for us subterraneans. Me, I'm going to work my last shift serving plates to rich country club members. Then I'm going to quit, but not before squeezing the last out of my juicy server's wage. I have a feeling I'll be needing every penny in a couple weeks.

We'll be crashing on Echo's front porch for another six days before we drive our home, wherever you are, to Vancouver Island, Victoria and Tofino, then onwards and downwards through the U.S. of A.
It's all happening.

http://www.doomsquadmusic.com/
http://www.myspace.com/doomsquadtunes

http://www.myspace.com/redhoticiclesburningonfire

Shad in Canada and beyond

This past Wednesday night found me in Berlin, trudging through foot-deep snow in an old train yard-turned-arts complex and skate park, being reminded of my home in more ways than the numbness in my toes. Shad was taking the stage that night at Casseopeia, not that I haven't seen him perform a handful of times on stages in and around London, Ontario. But clearly this was a unique opportunity to see my fellow Londoner, one that played our high school auditorium once upon four-or-so years ago, take an international platform.

Shad gave me this interview before I knew I would be able to make it to his show at Casseopeia on Wednesday, otherwise the questions would be less focused on what I've always considered his distinct "Canadianess" and more on his international success. Success I experienced first hand surrounded by packs of enthusiastic German fans.

At his past London shows, my friends and I would rock back and forth to his jams surrounded by everyone else we knew, all one fanatic being forged together by this glowing pride and enthusiasm for our hometown-hero. One massive life form with multiple heads, arms and legs, but moving them all in such uncanny synchronization like we shared one collective consciousness. Even up there behind the microphone he always felt like one of us, and as talented as we all knew he was, it felt good to have him as our little hometown secret. Well, I speak for myself, but that's how I always felt.

But Shad says it himself on TSOL: the cat's out of the bag. If I knew an equivalent for that expression in German, I would use it here.

Anyway, like I said, this interview is very much about his Canadianess, and his place in the country's burgeoning hip hop scene. Originally I was going to angle this story on Shad's status as Canadian media's hip hop darling, and how his unique voice and sound represented our country's industry compared to that of our neighbour's to the South. But this failed in two ways: (1) Shad is much to humble to go along with that sort of thing, and (2) obviously it's not just Canadians that are listening to our homeboy's albums.

***

The media love to put your name in headlines with "Canadian hip hop". How do you generally respond to your poster-boy status?

Well this is the country that I've been able to share my music with for the most part so i understand being associated with this scene. Given all the great things going on in hip hop in Canada lately its been an honour being sometimes mentioned with K'naan and K-OS, Drake and company. I think though that if you look at the artists I just mentioned, it speaks to how eclectic Canadian hip hop is, so I don't think anyone could really be a poster-boy for our scene. That's one of the best things about it.

You've been touring with K-OS, and many have compared your organic lyrical style to his. But in terms of themes and content, how would you say you differ from K-OS, and other Canadian contemporaries in the business today?

Well as I was saying I think the cool thing about Canadian hip hop artists is how different we all are. K-OS is so talented and creative, K'naan has a powerful and unique voice, etc... I think I'm still trying to find my own way of communicating too. I like to use humour here and there to keep things engaging and touch on a lot of different themes that I think are either important or just fun and entertaining.

Who would be your dream collaborator, living or dead, on the next Shad album?

Lauryn Hill.

You pay some lip service to your hometown on TSOL. What are some of your fondly remembered places/things/events from London, ON?

I have so many memories of London! Some of my best friends are there and I love seeing them. I think my best memories are with them growing up. Hanging with my sister and neighborhood friends as a kid playing in the creeks by Westminster high school. Swimming in Southcrest pool in the summer. listening to 1410 CKSL... I could go on forever!

***

Big thanks to Shadrach K for the interview! And Sophie Cooper for the photos

Olenka and I

The first time I ever saw and heard Olenka Krakus, frontwoman and chief songwriter of Olenka and the Autumn Lovers perform live was in a barn on my father's property in Arva, just north of the city of London, Ontario.

My friend and I were holding a benefit concert for a Costa Rican charity on my dad's property, and we invited Olenka and a couple of her Autumn Lovers to close the evening with their music. Though I had heard of Olenka as a musician, I hadn't yet been acquainted with her heartfelt music, low haunting vocals and the Autumn Lovers' contagiously-enthusiastic energy and sound. I remember Olenka stamping through her early repertoire on the makeshift stage, drawing in the entire audience and leading them by the hand through powerful chorus' on songs like "Soldier's Waltz" and "When We Were Children". We watched and hung wide-eyed and mouths dry onto every harmony and 1-2-3, even as an electrical storm raged on the other side of the thin aluminum walls.

That was three years ago. I didn't actually meet Olenka until maybe a year later at a house show or a party, the details aren't as clear. The setting was incontestable though; it was at the Yale St. Speakeasy, former home-venue and headquarters of the Open House Arts Collective and record label by the same name, of which Olenka was a founding member. I had been an admirer of her music since the aforementioned benefit show, but hadn't expected such a warm and genial woman to be the source of music so poignant and sophisticated. Olenka is a fellow Engish Literature major, music-lover and raconteur, and she's gained an enviable cache of musical history, theory and utmost appreciation working as a record store clerk at The Village Idiot. Watching her get as excited as she would over a particular piece of music, or while we sat around singing a McCartney or Dylan tune at a Speakeasy soirée could inspire and enchant even the most pretentious of party-goers.

So I think it's safe to say I've been an admirer of Olenka Krakus as a person and a performer since before we met, and of course ever since. At the risk of sounding like an obsequious fan, she has always upheld the role of a sort of hometown-hero for me, and I've always been really eager to see her and her group succeed. So much so that I used to fear that my admiration would blind, or rather deafen me from hearing or even thinking a sullied word about Olenka and the Autumn Lovers' music, which is a pretty poor quality in a music reviewer. Up until the release of their sophomore studio album And Now We Sing, I would hear the new roundup of O&AL songs at a performance and get so excited for their next set of recordings. I really really didn't want to be disappointed by And Now We Sing, or be the only cloth-eared closet fanatic of the album when no one else was. Fortunately for me and the rest of the listening public, my fears were irrational and my hopes exceeded.

And Now We Sing stomps gloriously past any sort of uniform genre categorization. Dipping toes in Eastern-European oomp-pa-pa, country-western, chamber-pop and americana, Olenka's influences are as broad and extensive as her record collection. While in some artists' cases this can risk delineating an album, And Now We Sing is grounded in Olenka's powerful lyrical themes and adept songwriting. What garners perhaps the most attention and praise for the album, and recently a nomination for a CBC Radio 3 Bucky Award for 'Best Vocals' is just that, the vocals, which move freely in between the lines of warbling, yodeling and crooning, adorned with pitch-perfect harmonies from backup vocalists Sara Froese and Kelly Wallraff.

You can catch Olenka's solo show in London on November 21 at Gigs, or in Toronto opening for the Wilderness of Manitoba and Leif Vollebekk on November 25 at the Horseshoe Tavern. For now and until then, read my solo interview with the Autumn Lovers' frontwoman on the group's recent East Coast tour and CD-release show in London, the time and effort put into And Now We Sing, and Olenka's many vocal influences.

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How was touring the East Coast? What were some of the bands/artists you enjoyed playing with in particular?

The east coast was a blast as always. We had some start-of-tour difficulties (van problems again), but once we were over that hurdle and travelling through the Maritimes again, we forgot all our problems... It's so easy to do that in the Maritimes, because the people are generous and kind and the sights are inspiring. The first town we played in after Montreal was Edmundston, and the folks who took care of us (all the staff and friends of the staff at Lotus Bleu) were incredible: they fed and housed and loved us, and all but adopted us! And the drive in and around Edmundston was probably the most beautiful of the whole tour: hills upon hills of turning leaves. As for bands, we had a really great time playing our two shows with North Lakes - they're out of Charlottetown and feature our dear friend Chris Francis on bass. All the guys in the band were lovely, but aside from being great people they played really catchy Lou Reed meets Ventures tunes. I also really enjoyed our show with Cousins and Jon McKiel in Halifax: melodic, lofi, Haligonian melancholy. And all our shows with Kite Hill in Southern Ontario were wonderful: Ryan Carley is a talented, humble, hilarious gent who runs an all-star orchestral ensemble of his own.

Who was the most interesting person you met on tour?

Well, in my case I had already met Mr. Jim Laracey last year when we toured through Saint John, NB and played a crazy house-show with Bruce Peninsula, Entire Cities, and Weather Station at his abode. But a bunch of my bandmates made his acquaintance for the first time this year. I think our sax player, Shawn Clarke, put it best in his tour musings: "Jim is... something out of a Hemingway novel: a large man with a full beard, boisterous voice, and a big heart." Did I mention that he gave Blair [Whatmore, guitarist] a semi-hollow-body? You know... just cuz... so that Blair would start playing bottleneck slide (which the aforementioned guitar would do much to help) on a more regular basis. He and his daughter, Leanne, and all the fine folks in Saint John always take good care of us when we come down to visit.

How was the CD release show at Aeolian Hall in London?

Let’s see... so much to recount. It was the largest collection of Autumn Lovers ever assembled I think... or at least in a long time, and it won't be that big again for a long while. Kevin [Brasier, bass] flew in from Sackville NB for the show (!!), Shawn caught a ride with Kite Hill from Toronto to attend, and we had local musicians Christian Hegele and Kelly Webb join in on piano/keys and trumpet respectively. There were ten of us on stage at some moments... it felt pretty momentous: I mean aside from the additional members, we were all aware that it was Blair's last show with us, which made things a bit more emotional. Kite Hill were impressive and rich sounding, and it was a treat to be able to share them with the hometown crowd. The audience was also incredible: for the whole night it felt like they were there to celebrate with us, and that we were all there supporting each other in something that's ultimately bigger than all of us. So yeah, I guess it was pretty unique and meaningful.

Can you give me a brief economic breakdown of what went into And Now We Sing? How many hours, days, weeks, months, years of preparation? How much sleep did you lose? How many memories did you gain? Ballpark figures, of course. Approx. how much blood sweat and tears went into it?

Well I won't reveal too much in the way of finances, but let's just say that my VISA is maxed. ;) In terms of hours, I think when we had finally settled on the songs and started rehearsing and were ready to go into Andy [Magoffin]'s studio (House of Miracles), we were at work on the album for about 8 months straight. I produced the album, so for me it was a case of almost constant work from start to finish, setting up schedules, working out arrangements, money, troubleshooting... etc. And a bulk of the work, on which Simon [Larochette] and I spent countless hours in that 8-month period, was made up of editing files and doing some preliminary mixing, in advance of passing files back to Andy and thereafter to Joao Carvalho (who mastered the album). Aside from album recording details, there was also the task of figuring out manufacturing... that was a whole other mountain of work. It all feels like a blur now... not sure if I'm fully (or even partially) recovered yet.

If O&AL's sound was an animal, what animal would it be?

Stravinsky's Firebird.

Congratulations on being nominated for a CBC Radio 3 Bucky Award for Best Vocals! Which vocalists do you admire? Which influence you? Which artist, living or dead, would you sing a duet with if you could?

Vocalists whom I admire, so many for so many different reasons: Julie London, Marlene Dietrich, Jeff Tweedy, Gillian Welch, Loretta Lynn, Kim Deal, Kim Gordon, Chan Marshall, Otis Redding, Elmore James, Billie Holiday, all the Dirty Projectors crew, Annie Clark (St. Vincent), Julie Doiron, Simone Fornow ($100), Roy Orbison, Patsy Cline, and um, obviously the Beatles. I'm sure I'm missing a tonne. As for a duet, I've been saying this for years, but I'd love to sing a song with Jeff Tweedy (living) and Gram Parsons (dead).

Photo by Rob Nelson.

You can read my review of And Now We Sing on Sticky Magazine.

Check out this fantastic video of Olenka, Sara Froese (violin) and Paterson Hodgson (cello) playing "No Coins" from And Now We Sing for www.southersouls.ca

OLENKA AND THE AUTUMN LOVERS - No Coins from Mitch Fillion (southernsouls.ca) on Vimeo.