Wide Mouth Mason

Have you ever read about Karl Bushby? He’s in the middle of the Goliath Expedition, an attempt to walk around the entire planet in unbroken footsteps, including hopping ice floes across the Bering Strait. He loaded all his supplies on a two-wheeled trailer called the beast and set out on his historic journey. Then, a few steps into his trip a wheel fell off the beast. Great start.

The Big & Wide tour experienced something like that at the beginning of our only slightly less epic trip (I mean, is Karl playing 3.5 hours a night at each stop? I don’t think so) from Victoria to St. John’s: After a couple of euphoric nights in Vancouver and a swing through the always-awesome island, we met the bus that was to take us across the rest of the country. It had shepherded another band for weeks without incident before we boarded it. We loaded in and set off, reveling in the turtle-like self-containment that is bus touring. And then an alarm started going off in unison with our driver’s cussing and we pulled over… A couple hours later we were back in a couple vans and a gear truck, racing away from our incapacitated home-on-wheels towards Kamloops. Our indestructible crew did a three hour set-up in 40 minutes and both bands had great sets. We’re getting in that groove that only happens when you’ve played a bunch of shows in a row. Voices get bullet-proof. Fingers are tempered to diamond-grade hardness. Things get looser and tighter at the same time. Anything you can imagine comes out of your fingers and mouth so you start stretching your imagination to dare yourself to go to new places. It helps that I’m happier than ever with the tone of my guitars and amps right now. For the gear nerds: I’m using my 1968 Fender Super Reverb, as well as two Fender Pro Jrs powering a 4’12 cabinet each. A Union More pedal as a pre-amp and the Fuzz-wah. Two Strats, a Tele and my trusty Nighthawk. For the Big Sugar set I use just the Super and add a Moog phase shifter for skanking on the reggae songs.

The now-healthy bus met us in Kelowna just in time for a long, overnight haul to Grande Prairie. It was there that Halloweek began. Every one of the four nights since, people have come in costume and the combination of anonymity and alcohol has resulted in some pretty excitable, bacchanalian crowds. Makes me wish people always came in costume to rock shows… High points go to our merch guy Andrew for doing such a spot-on Gordie Johnson impression that he was signing autographs… As Gordie was on-stage playing.

Today we arrived in Fernie to what looked like a white-out. It took a minute for us to realize that the snow was a mix of fabric and styrofoam for a movie shoot. We scoped out a couple possibilities for guerrilla filming for the Big & Wide Xmas song If Santa Don’t Bring You No Funk, but sadly it wasn’t to be. Not funky enough. The fake snow was surely a sign of things to come though.

Stay tuned and in tune. More to come.