ryan somers - brazilian faith healer: peterborough...

i'm writing this in the car. tim's driving. we're on our way from montreal to peterborough. just hit the highway. it's been a crazy few days. i've got a story on outkast due for inside entertainment magazine. they wanted it this morning. i'm procrastinating a bit, writing to you all, but i will get working on it again soon, then send it off from an internet cafe or something when i get to peterborough. hopefully my laptop battery will last a while. so the bus to saint john from charlottetown took about six hours. got in a bit after eight, and walked around until i found elwood's. chris, heather, and phil were already there, they had stayed over in saint john at phil's parents house the night before. saint john is the only maritime city i'd been to before, a few years back, in january of 2002. i came out here for the ecma's, when i was an a&r rep for universal. it was shitty winter, freezing cold, too much snow and slush, but we had a good time and saw a bunch of bands. i barely remember it, but i do remember the people being friendly. so we kicked it for a while, then i played my show, it was a good time. wax mannequin seems to have a really strong following here. he had some people bring him a customized red jacket. cool shit. my bus was to leave for montreal at 9:30 am, and i was not looking forward to the twelve hour or more bus ride. phil and i got to talking, and he hadn't been to montreal for a while, so he decided to drive up with me and play the show. i think we spent about 11 1/2 hours in his car that day. one of the longest drives i've ever done, but the scenery kept me interested. we pulled up to the club, vinyl, around 10 pm. it felt pretty strange being back in montreal. i hadn't been there in nine months, when i rented a van and went back to pick up my belongings. that was an emotional weekend. this city will forever in my mind be tied to one of the most difficult times in my life, and as much as i love it here, as many friends as i have here, as beautiful as it is, it will always break me. the show was awesome. a/v rocked a wicked set to get things going. check out his music, he's pretty crazy. it was the first time so far on this tour that tim and i have gotten to play together, which was rad. a boatload of our friends showed up, and we rocked it right in the middle of the room, on the floor, no stage. i ended up back at the place where i used to live, puking into the toilet and passing out, possibly on drugs, definitely whiskeyed out, not entirely sure what happened or how i got there. the combination i think of lack of sleep, exhaustion, nerves, excitement, booze, no food, and trying to drown myself in an effort to avoid thinking about... i just did myself in. but fuck it. had a blast. i love my friends. the next day we got off to a bit of a slow start... said goodbye to phil, who was going to hook up with some other friends before heading back out east. tim was in a hurry to get going, but i asked him to give me some time to take a walk down the main. so many memories here, good and bad, i needed a calm, slow, walk down st. laurent on a sunny day to let a lot of it go. we then picked up our rental car, packed up, made a quick stop at my old apartment to pick up a few things i had left there (some records, my 1976 golden-swooshed nike basketball shoes, and my smoke machine), and hit the highway for the short trip to ottawa. i hadn't been to ottawa in probably over ten years. not since i played a show there in high school with my old group - the stone groove trio - opening up for shades of culture. got to the venue, cafe dekcuf, met up with this cat devin from the group atherton & sire, who hooked up the show for us, and played to a small but cool crowd. met some cool cats who said they'd like to get us back there again, so hopefully in the early fall we'll give the capital city another go. drove back to tim's place in montreal after the show, had a decent sleep, and now we're in the car on the way to peterborough. seven shows in a row for me. seven cities. what an experience. i'm exhausted, but loving every moment of it. tomorrow we actually have the day off, so we'll drive into london and chill out. i've got to pack and organize some things for the coming weeks on the road heading out west and back.