Hi.

So much has happened in the past 5 days that I’m going to break it down into three blog posts.  On Wed October 19, we departed (at 8 in the morning) for New York City to play our Canadian Blast showcase and be part of the CMJ Music Marathon 2011.

All these great photos were taken by photographer extraordinaire, Lesley Marino.

The car ride was 8 hours (maybe more).  We only got lost once.

We basically made it to Manhattan (Lower East Side) at around 7:30pm — just in time to locate Arlene’s Grocery, quickly drag our gear inside and onto the stage. The doors had been open since 7 and the club was already nearly packed.   The first act, Bikini was about to go on and were already set up.  Luckily, they are an electronic duo and so the excellent stage manager, named Danny Owen, was kind enough to let us put our gear up there before they went on. Danny was amazing.  He knew where the amps went and had already positioned them correctly.  He even remembered that Bobby plays drums left handed (reverse) and so the drum kit was already set that way.

We basically arrived, threw our gear on the stage.  Parked the van (which wasn’t easy), changed clothes and by the time all that was done it was our turn to play.  We played the best live version of complicate things to date! The sound system at Arlene’s is amazing.

The show was well attended and it was nice to see some familiar faces in the crowd — including our friends Matt Sweeney and Feurd from the Elwins, members of the Reason and Dinosaur Bones among other Canadian music movers and shakers.

Here we are hanging with our NYC peeps (the people who put us up for the night). There’s a great noodle bar across the street from Arlene’s at the corner of Orchard and Stanton.  I think it’s simply called Noodle Bar and it’s simply delicious — even though we were the last customers.

We spent the night in Brooklyn at Wendy’s brother’s place.  He lives in a converted industrial building full of wicked lofts.  Attached to the building is an amazing Taco bar which you can access by going through a maze of corridors and stairwells and then stepping outside for 3 seconds. We were contemplating taking that Vespa for a joy ride but opted for a group photo instead.  Time to hit the road (again) but not before some breakfast and legendary coffee from the Blue Bottle Coffee Company.

Our next gig was in Halifax, NS for HPX 2011! We drove for many hours — days in fact.  Passing through the gates of Bangor, Maine.  We made it all the way to St. John NB that night.

The next day we hit a little snag!  The beginnings of our (Van)adventures! Coming up: Part II: HPX or Die Trying!