Toronto, Ontario @ The Opera House
Today was our first show without our tour manager Alan in ages (He’s back home in England for the holidays). We’ve spoiled ourselves for a long time, paying the extra cash to have somebody hold our hand through our would be tour obligations and do the things we don’t have time for and don’t want to do, for example: advancing shows, printing maps, renting vehicles, loading in, loading out, getting our riders, getting paid, parking, herding our hung over bodies into the van and getting us on the road in time, booking flights, counting merchandise at the end of the night while we’re at the pub, taking care of our gear, booking hotels, driving, financial organization, setting up our equipment and packing it up, organizing and getting us to interviews in time + a ton of administrative stuff you don’t even want to hear about, and on, and on.... There are two HUGE advantages to having one. 1. All we have to worry about is the music!! 2. A tour manager is a filter. We don’t get pissed or annoyed at each other, because if anything goes wrong, chances are it has nothing to do with the three of us……it’s the tour manager. We just float around all day. Anyways, to tonights show…. Our dressing room floor was soaked. I don’t know why? Packed show…must’ve been sold out. We had a great set, one of our best in my opinion. As an encore, The Trews, The Waking Eyes and Brad went on stage to do “The Weight” and “Sgt. Pepper’s” in “we are the world” fashion. The best part of this was, Brad was already tanked at this point and kept standing like the Rocky statue at the front of the stage with his arms up (think Olympic podium). Classic! After the show, there was a huge party in the back stage area, Porter and all. I was the sober guy for this trip, so I experienced, first hand, the no fun end of pretending to be the tour manager after a show, including returning the rental van at 4:30am. Brad was apologizing on the way home for being “that guy”. Cute little fella. –Adam.
