Duncan Garage Showroom, Duncan BC

It's a short run south from Cedar to Duncan, so I take what backroads I can. Kind of a mute, rainy day. There's a hush over the land. Just the hissing of the wheels on the damp pavement.

In Duncan I locate the Post Office and get to work. I've got to mail posters to the last few venues on the list. I've packaged them over the last couple of days. Now I need to look up some missing postal codes, and get these things on their way!

Behind the Duncan Garage Showroom, and just off to the side, is a rather remarkable bicycle graveyard. There's a little shop behind it where you can fix your bike. If you need a part, I guess you scrounge around until you find it. This stuff would last about five minutes in Toronto.

I'm pretty early, but I run into Duncan Garagemaster Longevity John, and he lets me into the theatre to unpack and set up. I do lunch and then spend a pleasant couple of hours playing songs in various states of completion. That's a treat. I do enjoy a chance to be alone to work on things. But soon enough staff are arriving, coffee is being made. The buzz of evening is beginning.
John has me set up in about three minutes. I forget how many shows he said he's done here now— nearly 2000, I think. Great gear, and a talent for hearing how an artist should sound. The Duncan Garage Showroom is one of Canada's very best small music rooms. I think this is perhaps my fourth show here, and I look forward to every one of them. People will be driving up from Victoria, down from Nanaimo. It's that kind of venue.

I've had excellent advance press on the show, with stories in all the local papers, so I'm hopeful that we'll have a exceptional house tonight.

It's intermission, but there are still more empty seats in the house than I like to see. But the show is going great, and we are all having fun. The new crackdown here on drinking and driving has had a major impact on even coffeehouses. It's kind of a zero tolerance thing here in British Columbia, and the police are stopping traffic all over the place, and towing people's cars away. So, many folks who have a glass of wine with dinner are deciding not to venture out to a show. Clearly there are going to be some real changes on the ground in regard to the entertainment industry. This will definitely impact the ways in which we deliver and develop live music.

The other problem tonight—maybe— is that Saturday's show in Nanaimo has been advertised at less than half the price of this one. I guess I'll see tomorrow what happens. Anyway, the crowd tonight is pretty good— enough to make the place seem busy. And there are quite a few happy fans out. We'll be alright tonight. We are fine tonight! Hey!

This guy also won the jacket two years ago! Go figure! But he does look sharp in it, and knows when to wear it! You need to buy lottery tickets, dude!! Congrats!

I encore tonight with "Winter Moon," a piece I've been trying to get into the show for a while now. I guess it's as much from the blues root as anything else, but it also touches a racial nerve across the west. When three percent of the population form twenty-two percent of the prison population— numbers I recently heard on the CBC— there continues to be a real problem in Canadian society. I am, of course, talking about our First Nations peoples. I'll talk about this again soon as I'll be doing a free show in a couple of weeks time at the Vancouver Native Health Centre, in beautiful downtown east Vancouver.