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Tuesday March 11. Toronto Airport.
As Kent put it, the tour ended where it began. Well... not exactly but we all met up for one last breakfast at our current favourite Toronto breakfast place before calling it a tour, returning our trusty steed to the rental place and heading to the airport. Jenny, Terri and I are flying solo this time (well, as solo as you can when you're in a band...) as we've left both Kent and Adam in Toronto to join us on the West Coast later in the week. It was a good tour overall. We made more fun than money on this one but that doesn't mean it wasn't well worth it. I think I speak for everyone when I say we're looking forward to getting home. In my case that's because it means we're that much closer to waking up the sleepy Midnight Goose and hitting the road again for BC, Alberta and Saskatchewan at the end of the month.
I'd like to conclude this chapter in the life of The Gruff with this little photo of one of our newest fans. His name is Liam and he lives in Port Hope, Ontario. He likes to dance to The Gruff's new CD and is the proud owner of a brand new drum, courtesy of mum.

Monday March 10. Toronto, Ontario
Our friends Yan and Sherry have a bed and breakfast on a farm in Nipissing Village called Piebird. It's a beautiful little tin house in the country with two goats, two cats and plenty of loveliness. When I say tin I mean that all the walls and ceilings inside are covered in it (and then painted). The locals think it was simply an outrageous display of wealth as the house once was one of several of some rich person's summer cottages. Kind of silly maybe but it sure looks cool now. We arrived in time to clear a little figure eight skating rink in the snow on the creek and played around there until Adam fell down and hurt his elbow. Don't worry! He can still fiddle the eyes off a snake. Then went inside to warm up and eat a marvelous meal and play some music. We got to sleep in beds in quiet, dark rooms and although we had decided that we wanted to wake up early and go out and play, we all slept in.

As soon as everyone was up we  headed out for a snow adventure up the hill to the lake where we scrambled around writing stuff in the snow and practicing our snowball throws for a while before heading halfway back down the hill to visit our new friend Kris. Kris lives in a giant house on the hill. He's the youngest ship captain in Canada as well as an Alpaca farmer. We got to meet his lovely Alpacas and were treated to a lovely post snow feast before piling back into the old van for a seemingly short drive to Toronto where we are now awaiting our lift back to warm weather and blossoms.


Sunday March 9. Nipissing, Ontario.

I'm not really sure why and am slightly nervous to admit that despite all the bad stuff people say about it, and the very large smoke stack, and the terribly disappointing giant nickel, I actually really enjoy Sudbury. Yes, you can quote me on that. After a good meal of pizza at, yes, you know it.... The Laughing Buddha, we headed over to the Townehouse for some pre-sound check pool only to discover that the crazy snow storm that hit Southern Ontario today stopped the other band from making it to Sudbury. We were disappointed.. we'd been looking forward to checking them out. The show was super fun. The crowd was into it and got up and danced. Then they got totally rowdy right at the end and we just had to take a picture of them all swaying back and forth to Wagon Wheel. Yes, that's correct... I actually took my drum off in the middle of the breakdown to catch this on camera. It was awesome.

Rowdy Townehouse crowd in Sudbury. "Rock me baby like a wagon wheel!"
After the show we were granted access to the infamous "Townehouse Tavern Band Room" to unwind with a six pack of Labatt 50 Ontario's beer of choice (haha). Before we bundled up and went out onto the street where it was minus twenty but not snowing for a little stroll down the street to home where we ate leftover pizza before bed. And Jenny's toothbrush broke. Crap!

Gruff drinking 50 in the Townehouse basement.
And then up again and back to the Laughing Buddha for breakfast before we unloaded the gear from the bar and hit the road to our friends Yan and Sherry's place in Nipissing Village, a haven for weary Gruffs.

check out those boots!!
Saturday March 8. Sudbury, Ontario.

This is Jenny's fortune from last night. We felt that it was extremely appropriate... how often does that happen? (mine told me I am a very wise gentleman.....) Anyway, so far this fortune has basically described our entire tour.... or at least the entire tour until Northern Ontario. Our show last night at Loplops in Sault Ste Marie was super fun. And there were tons of people there. We're hoping that this fortune will also not apply to our show tonight in Sudbury as well as our house concert tomorrow in Nipissing Village, the last date on our tour. But, we're trying not to hope too hard just in case...

K-Mac - the king of text messages at Loplops.
Our show at Loplops was our third show there and by far the best. It certainly knocked last summer's show out of the park! There were lots of people that had never seen us before, and quite a few people who had seen us the first time we played there came out again. I'm pretty sure none of the four people that were at our show there last summer came back but we don't really blame them. Anyway, we redeemed ourselves nicely. We also managed to get out of there before we got convinced to sit at the bar while Pat the lovely bartender made us fancy drinks and said funny things until the extremely early hours of the morning which I think will be a large help to our disposition for the show tonight. Then it was back to the hotel for a nice sleep that was gently interrupted by the fire bell going off twice in the morning (oh, and by a charming performance of "We Saw Logs" by Adam and Kent in the middle of the night. I think it might have even been louder than the fire bell....) After the second fire alarm we thought it best to head over to the only place in Sault Ste Marie you can get breakfast after noon (thank goodness it's Saturday today) before piling into the van once again.

"this isn't the Laughing Buddha..."

Friday March 7. Sault Ste Marie, Ontario.
Today we're as far West on this tour as we'll get. It's colder up here in Sault Ste Marie than it was in Toronto for sure and even colder than it was in Sudbury yesterday. We spent the afternoon yesterday at our favourite  place in Sudbury (and maybe most of Ontario...) The Laughing Buddha eating sandwiches and drinking tea. We then headed over to the house our house concert was at to chill out until show time. The concert was great. The place was packed with people and everyone had a great time. It was a refreshing change from the sparsely attended shows we've so far on this tour. And to top it all off, all 40 or so people at the concert sang along with us while we played Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah to end the night. Here they are.


Our trip from Sudbury to Sault Ste Marie today was quite relaxed. We napped and watched some episodes of The Office. Stopped a few times to pee and then missed the turn in the number 17 and ended up way out in the middle of some suburbs while trying to find our hotel. Now we're all taking turns having much  needed showers, catching up on the emails and eating Chinese delivery food.... all of which are very important parts of getting ready for a show.

Terri at the Laughing Buddha.
Thursday March 6. Highway 400 to Sudbury

Today marks the beginning of the third, final and northern leg of our wintery Ontario adventure. We're looking forward to the next few days for a few different reasons... Although the part of Ontario we're heading for is often considered slightly... dismal.. we usually have a pretty good time. Plus we get to eat at the Laughing Buddha. We're also hoping that it'll be a little colder up here. I know, I know, that probably sounds silly but it's true. Things are getting warm and sloppy down in the Toronto area and only one of us has water proof boots. Now we have permanently wet feet and the only chance there is of drying our boots is in front of the van heater making a steamy, damp socks sort of atmosphere in here. But all is good. Dwight Yoakam is on the stereo and although we're all feeling the tour burn today, we're in reasonable spirits.

Last night we played at the Tranzac in Toronto and had a great time. We were all feeling pretty tired and worn out (especially Kent who had to go home early to bed) but had a really great time. Kent's band in Vancouver is called The Iron Choir and since they're not here we've been working up a few of his tunes with us gruffs as the backup band. We like to call ourselves the Iron Gruff and last night was our debut. Then Corbin Murdoch sang us to tears with the heart melting help of Tim Tweedale. We managed to recover ourselves and played what so far was probably our best show of the tour (at least according to me). New friends came down to check things out and old friends came out of the woodwork, through the slush, and crammed into the tiny (and very warm!) bar for what was an intimate and happy time.
I love my job.

Wednesday March 5. Toronto, Ontario
We're back in the big stink. After a wonderful little house concert in Aylmer and a day off in Ottawa at my brother's house during which we didn't get up until after noon, and played music and Wii all day long we decided to make the trek to Toronto a day early to catch the Deep Dark Woods and Schuyler Jansen at the Dakota Tavern. (unfortunately I forgot the camera at the house so don't have any pictures. You'll have to use your imagination.) This turned out to be a pretty good idea I think as it's been snowing fairly heavily ever since we got to the city and we had a really great time at the bar. Due to the snow, and an extremely late night, we're going to hibernate for the rest of the day until our show at the Tranzac. We're excited about the show because it's going to be a West Coast reunion show. Our friend Corbin Murdoch from Vancouver is playing with us and Tim Tweedale who is Kent's slide player (and a guest on our new CD) just happens to be visiting Toronto as well and is going to join us on stage.

Sunday March 2. Highway 40, Ontario
According to us one of the most beautiful stretches of highway in our vast and generally awe inspiring country is the one between Montreal and Ottawa. It's quite early (for us) on Sunday morning and I'm sitting in the very back of our little rental minivan completely surrounded by instruments, backpacks, clothes and Tim Hortons tea cups gazing out at beautiful snow covered fields listening to The Deep Dark Woods. Jenny and Kent are watching TV on their respective lap tops and Terri and Adam are in the front chatting about something that I can't quite hear. It's early, we're really tired and I'm feeling sentimental. There's nowhere else I'd rather be. Last night we played a sweet little show in Montreal. The audience was small but appreciative and awesome. We never get to stay very long in Montreal...  I think we set a record this time with about 17 hours in the city into which we crammed a show, a late night poutine run and some sleep.

It's early in Montreal.
Speaking of The Deep Dark Woods... Friday night's show in Ottawa was super fun. Since Kent's birthday is on Feb 28th and it's a leap year, we decided to celebrate it until March 1st came around which meant we got to have another party. There was cake (and whiskey... and beer.... and rum... oh my...) and we all had a great time. Our show was at Irene's Pub and as we were looking the venue up on the internet we noticed that The Deep Dark Woods and Schuyler Jansen were playing there the night after us and that we are in fact following each other all over Ontario. We're big fans of these guys and although they don't know us yet, we're hoping they'll be our band friends soon. haha. We thought it would be best to let them know how great we think they are so we wrote them a letter and stuck it to a post in Irene's Pub where they would see it upon arriving to play there.
On the way from Ottawa to Montreal we stopped at our friend Tim's place for tea and bagels and noticed this license plate on a large truck as we pulled into the parking lot.

Thinking we were pretty much the most awesome thing ever we decided to ticket the country loving truck with our CDs and stuck both our new CD and Kent's CD under the windshield wipers of the truck. We then proceeded to giggle in the line up trying to guess who owned the truck and what they would think upon returning to it. We guessed right and watched as the driver, looking slightly perplexed, took the CDs off the windshield, looked at them for a little while, put them on the passenger seat and drove away. We think we're so clever and are now wondering if we'll ever hear anything about those CDs again.

Friday Feb 28. Highway 401, Ontario
We're on our way from Port Hope to Ottawa today. Everyone agrees that it feels good to be making some ground... covering some distance. We set up a little computer lab in the crowded van and watched Return of the King and some Sex And the City (at the same time!).

The coziest computer lab ever!
Let's see... where did I leave off. Our show in Hamilton was sparsely attended but fun. We played a few games of pool and had some little naps, and got all hooped up on tea that tasted like it was brewed in a coffee carafe before the show which was before the weekly open mic at the Pepper Jack Cafe. It's a pretty cool little bar in what seems to be an old mall... it sorta seemed like most things in Hamilton either used to be or still are malls. The staff was super cool as was Doug the soundman once we played for him and he warmed up a little, like most soundmen we seem to meet. After watching a few open mic performers (including our very own K-Mac) we headed back to the home of the Dances in Burlington, where we recently had a house concert, to catch some zzz's. After a birthday breakfast for Kent we loaded up the van and drove to Port Hope for another house concert complete with a two year old to entertain us and a home cooked dinner! After the concert Jenny and Kent introduced Adam and Phaedra to Robot Chicken a simply hilarious and sometimes awe inspiring offensive cartoon of sorts (I have a feeling that it will come up a few more times on this tour...) before we drifted off to sleep. The pancake alarm woke us up and now we're on our way again!

Kent at the Pepper Jack Cafe in Hamilton

Wednesday Feb 27. Toronto, Ontario

It's snowing in Toronto!
Tuesday was a night off and even though we started out with big city plans of walking in the snow, dinner and movie theatres, we ended up back at home watching movies. Something exciting and scary happened in the kitchen but we're not going to tell you what it is yet. This morning, well.. afternoon I guess we headed out past the burnt down block on Queens St and all of the dirty big city snow onto the highway headed south with all the other winter dirty cars to Hamilton.

Tuesday Feb 26. Toronto, Ontario
Today it's snowing in Toronto. Apparently a snow fall record has already been broken this month here in Toronto and they've been taking trucks full of the white stuff out of the city all winter long. It's nice to see the new white snow covering up the dirty gross snow along side the streets here. It makes it look a lot more like the Ontario winter in our heads and a lot less like gross. What do you think we're doing in the pretty snow today? You got it! We're hanging out at the cafe with tea, coffee, internet and drawing.
We had a really great time at our show at C'est What last night here in Toronto.

C'est What is a cool little bar (actually it's pretty big) in what one of the other musicians there last night called "condo-ville Toronto" (it all looks like downtown to me though...). They brew their own beer and broadcast the shows on their very own live broadcast website (www.whatsnext.ca). Our friend Dave Newberry asked us to join the bill with his band, Newberry vs Newberry and another musician named Donovon Woods and his band. The show was really fun and we promptly fell in love with both other bands. You should check them out. (www.myspace.com/boynewberry)(www.myspace.com/donovonwoods) We also had a delightful sound man named Adam who trained Flipper! Wait. What? Oh... no he didn't, we've just been playing loud acoustic roots music for so long that we've lost our hearing.

C'est What Toronto ON

Monday Feb 25. Toronto, Ontario
After a good sleep and a nice four hour breakfast at our local hang out we took a tour of Honest Ed's where none of us have been before! It wasn't as cool as we thought but we did manage to find some REALLY cheap towels which will help a lot. We didn't have room in our tiny suitcases for towels but realized quickly that towels are nice to have on the road. Then we went to our surrogate home and promptly had showers.

Honest Ed's

Sunday Feb 24. Toronto, Ontario
There's nothing better than a hotel room when you're on the road. Especially a fancy hotel room when you're on the road with five people. Our show in Kitchener was at The Boathouse which is a great little room in the middle of the park and they generously provided us with a hotel room in a fancy pants hotel downtown. We checked in the afternoon and didn't move much from there until it was time to head down to the venue (when Terri and Phaedra had to make a quick return trip to Jimmy Jazz in Guelph where Phaedra conveniently left her cell phone the night before.... good thing cities in Southern Ontario are close together...) There was wireless internet at the hotel and Terminator 2 was on TV so we couldn't really want for much. Sunday morning started with a quick stop at your friendly neighbourhood T-Hos on the way to Burlington where we were welcomed with open arms and a home made lunch at our house concert there. We spent the afternoon there eating brownies and playing music. After the concert it was back to the big TO where Phaedra, Terri and Kent dropped Adam and Jenny off at Hugh's Room to see Dervish, one of their favourite Irish super bands, and headed directly to our newest Toronto hang out for dinner.

pdawg at the Boathouse in Kitchener

Saturday Feb 23. Kitchener, Ontario
When The Gruff goes on tour we have a habit of finding places we like in towns we go to and never going anywhere else when we visit that town again. It didn't take us long to find said place in this trip's Toronto neighbourhood where we probably spent about 8 hours of our time in Toronto so far. In Guelph that place is the Cornerstone Cafe (which unfortunately doesn't have wireless internet so we actually had to go somewhere else for a couple of hours in the afternoon). When our tummies told us it was dinner time we didn't hesitate to promptly return to the Cornerstone for some delicious food and were lucky enough to score the table with the giant bucket of crayons. Our show was at Jimmy Jazz and was super fun. It was our very first show with our brand new CD and we were going to post a picture of the very first person to buy it on the journal but she left before we could. We couldn't find a hotel we could afford in Guelph (where are all the motels?) so we decided to come to Kitchener in the middle of the night. Good thing cities in Southern Ontario are close together. After waking up in the nick of time to make our extended check out time we headed downtown in search of breakfast where we ran into one of the few people we know in Ontario (who actually lives in Toronto.)
 Small world.

Jenny has fun with crayons while Kent watches at the Cornerstone Cafe in Guelph

 Thursday Feb 21. Toronto, Ontario
Brrrr! We're here! Yay! We landed yesterday later on in the day all tuckered out from watching countless episodes of Star Trek and hours of Animal Planet on the plane and promptly fell fast asleep. So far we've spent most of our time over heated because we planned oh so well for the cold by wearing everything we own but have spent most of our time lugging all of our belongings in and out of airports and the hotel room which came complete with a heater that we couldn't turn off... We aren't fooling ourselves though and have long johns at the ready. Tomorrow is the first date of our CD release tour and yesterday when we left Victoria the CDs were still being printed....ha......ha.... Fortunately the lovely people at Canada Disc and Tape assembled a bunch of them and sent our little babies on a trip to Ontario as soon as they were ready where they were met this morning by our friend Kent McAlister who will be accompanying us on this newest adventure. After once again conquering the obstacle of vehicle rental we were re-united with Kent and united for the first time with the newest member of The Gruff CD family.