Ottawa Tonite.com : Section Title
Posts Tagged ‘road blog’
Silver Creek – Recording a Colonial New Year
Silver Creek is a hard working band based out of Ottawa and is currently in studio tracking their third record. Sequestered at a little studio in a small town in Pennsylvania for the ten day session, these blogs chronicle their experience and provide a look inside what happens when a band makes a record.
We left Ottawa just two days into the new year. With the holidays still echoing in our minds, we piled once again into our faithful blue van and this time pointed it South. Our first goal for the new year is a relatively simple one: to record a new record. Our destination however unlikely, was a small town in the heart of Pennsylvania called Bellefonte.
Most of us tired, and half of us sick we made our way through a balmy and rainy January morning towards the Canada US border with high spirits. Expecting the worst from the fine folks who guard the line between our two nations, we were pleasantly surprised to have little to no trouble at all crossing into the States. After a few simple questions, and a high-tech scan of the van we were on our way South-West to Bellefonte.
Crossing into the land of the free.
Bellefonte is one of the oldest towns in Pennsylvania and is famous for its historic Victorian architecture, and popular by virtue of its proximity to its neighboring city State College which is home to Penn State University. While we may not get a really good chance to experience the town at its fullest, just the drive from our hotel to the studio is enough to gauge the history and beauty of this old part of the world, set in rolling hills and forests of Colonial America.
People have been asking us why we chose to record here. The answer is quite simply rooted in the desire to remove ourselves from the same old familiar things and places. Our band seems to work really well when we are isolated from everyday distractions and can achieve a feeling of purpose in an interesting place. Far away from home and things like regular house gigs we can focus on what matters most; getting in a creative zone, and making music.
Another reason for choosing Bellefonte was the studio. Long time friend and co-producer on the record, Ottawa musician Eric Eggleston met and befriended the owner of 22 Studios while working in California. Built in an old beer warehouse the studio is packed with vintage recording equipment and guitars and has a comfortable old school vibe. Pair all of this with an American dollar at par and the easy eight hour drive was the hardest part of our decision.
22 Studios upon arrival...
We arrived just after nine on Sunday night and were greeted by the owner Kenevan and the studio engineer Dan. Our hosts were quick to offer much welcomed cold beers and snacks and we wandered into the ready live room where we played through the tracks to be recorded over the coming session.
Jeff at the piano on the first night.
Now in our second day of tracking things are slowly starting to take shape. It’s been a while since Silver Creek has been in the studio, and the process is slightly different every time. The frustrations, excitement and complexities common to the recording process have begun to take us over completely, but we’re here for another eight days, on the other side of which we will be one step closer to having a brand new record. It’s the biggest step. It’s also the hardest. Stay tuned.
Banff.
We left Saskatoon after a successful night at ‘Bud’s on Broadway’ and drove onto the prairies toward the Rocky Mountains. The extreme flatness of the last half of the prairies makes the appearance of the Rockies that much more spectacular. They loom for a while as a silhouette in the distance and then before you know it they are all around you like snow covered sleeping giants. No matter how many times I make the trip from Calgary to Vancouver, or down from Edmonton through Jasper the sight of the Rockies always leaves me breathless.
After a long drive we rolled into Banff a bit weary but eager and excited for a three night stand at The Rose and Crown. Banff is a unique place. A small town nestled not far from Calgary in the first fold of the mountains, Banff is home to tourists and ‘locals’ from all over the world. It is run by Aussies, Asians, Europeans, you name it, and the whole place is like some sort of surreal consumer dream. The buildings on the main drag are pristine and obviously wealthy shoppers stroll down it along side ski bums, camera flashing tourists and down and out transient workers who are just passing through.
The same kind of cross-section also helps to describe the crowd present at the Rose and Crown over the course of our three night stand, and once again music proved to be the great equalizer, the dance floor a giant melting pot that sweated and moved along with our music in the crazy mountain night. We met a ton of interesting people, sold CD’s and t-shirts by the dozens and played our hardest to an overwhelmingly appreciative audience.
I personally have a special nostalgic connection with Banff having lived there for a while nearly ten years ago. It’s amazing to see how little it has changed in appearance and in spirit, and it felt great to be at the Rose with my closest friends playing music and partying much like I had years before. It was the perfect ‘half-way’ point for the tour. It was a relaxing and morale boosting three days that wasn’t without it’s eccentricities and uh… interesting moments, but perhaps we’ll save those stories for another time.
Tour Tip of the day:
Patience. At a certain point in any tour after long hauls in the van and moments of isolation in dingy band rooms and motels it’s inevitable that nerves will begin to erode. Simple things such as a repetitive question, or an inconsiderate gesture or even particular character traits can boil over into arguments and in rare occasions, physical altercations. Patience is an important virtue on the road. A few seconds of reflection, just long enough to bite your tongue, is often all it takes to remember that the guys in your band are some of your best friends, and in most cases the problem you’re having is mostly your own. Take a deep breath, take a walk, spend some time alone or have it out civilly. The show must go on, true, but being patient with each other will make it go on a little bit smoother.
And now for your enjoyment… Episode 2 of the Anders Drerup Show!
More Silver Creek videos can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/silvercreekmusic
Hot Diggity Dog
Ladies and gents,
I’d like to take a break from the regular road blog to introduce you to a new and exciting series, the Anders Drerup Show. In episode one, he’ll show you a fancy new gadget he’s picked up that makes eating on the road feel like eating in a fine european bistro.
Stay tuned for episode 2!
Mark
Share fine music with Silver Creek here: http://silvercreekmusic.net/
Down Time
Having some time to do nothing is as much a blessing as it is a curse. There’s only so much you can do in a hotel room during the day, but at the same time, it’s great to have nothing to do and time to relax. We’ve been bunkered down in the same place now for 3 days, and we’re all getting a little squirrely. Things start to get interesting when this happens. The general shannigans level goes through the roof. Between drunken ghost hunting, climbing up water slides backwards, buying useless kitchen appliances, and trying desperately to get our N64 working so we can play some Bond, we find ways to pass the time.
Not only does the idle time force us to find ways to occupy ourselves, it also manifests itself musically. Last night we played a completely original set, but rearranged all our songs on the fly for the entertainment of the sparse Monday night crowd. Luckily, the camera was rolling.
Tomorrow we head to Saskatoon to play at Bud’s On Broadway, which is only about an hour away, then we’ve got a long haul to Banff on Thursday.
Tour Tip of the Day
Capitalize on your time off, as it’s few and far between. Try to stay busy and productive, because when you’re bored is when you start doing dumb things, like remaking your songs into reggae songs…
Check out more of our videos on our youtube channel – www.youtube.com/silvercreekmusic
Cheers, Mark
The Prairies
We left Winnipeg late in the day with the memory of a great show the night before still ringing in our minds. There are some shows that provide a reassurance that life on the road is worth the effort after all. Things just click on stage and out in the crowd are smiling faces, dancing people, enthusiastic newspaper and internet blog writers and happy bar owners. You sell your CD’s and t-shirts, make contacts, chat with like-minded strangers, get paid (hopefully) and then you move along.
The stage in Winnipeg
We were wishing that we could stay in Winnipeg a little longer as we began our long drive North West out of Manitoba and across the prairies into Saskatchewan. Our destination; North Battleford (about an hour North of Saskatoon) a dusty town about nine-hundred and fifty kilometers from Winnipeg.
Coming through the prairies in the dark is much what I would imagine purgatory to be like. It sounds a little dramatic, but nine hours of nothing on either side, and straight lines in front of and behind you, coupled with a distant destination that never seems to come any closer makes it easy for the imaginative idle mind to wander.
Headlights of the oncoming traffic shone softly though the fog and grain elevators and the occasional barn loomed out of the darkness as we rocketed through the void in a big blue van sparsely conversing with each other and listening to a quiet radio. I began to wonder how people came to live in such desolate places. There are no trees, no rivers, no valleys; just pale yellow and brown grassy flatness as far as the eye can see.
View from the Happy Inn.
The lights of North Battleford are visible from about seventy-five kilometers away and shone like an oasis in the night as we drove, late for our show, into the parking lot of the Happy Inn hotel. The people here are good down to earth folk and were waiting patiently with cold beer at the ready. Almost two hours late, the forgiving crowd and bar staff were more than happy with a two and a half hour set with no breaks, and we played well; as tired as we all were from our ghost ride across the dark prairie purgatory. North Battleford is not paradise, but we have been through here before, and I personally am looking forward to the three days that we have to spend here before moving onto Saskatoon and then into the Rocky Mountains to Banff.
Today the water slide. Then the Grey Cup and more music. But first a poem.
Saskatchewan
Driving into the twilight
everything looks like the silhouette of a ghost.
Train tracks are like a lonely line of comfort.
They provide a companion for the solitary road
as we chase the edge of the storm across the Plains.
Here the grain elevators are the only testament to the goal of settlement.
Or maybe more so they are the accidental result
of fatigue
or of circumstance.
“Welcome to ‘Such and Such,’ Where the Horses Got Tired!”
Or, “Thank You for Visiting ‘So and So’
This is far enough for now.”
The green pine scented expanse of Ontario and Quebec
and the white capped crags and salty rain forests of the West
lie behind and before us.
The sun burns the clouds out of the sky on time for dusk
as the last raindrop falls with purpose
on some flat surface.
A candidate for a future irrigation that
once it has done all it can do here
will be chased by some storm or another
some place other than the prairies.
Tour Tip of the day: Take advantage of all opportunities as they present themselves. You never know where a chance encounter may lead you. For example: The other day we met with Dale Penner, a seemingly routine meeting may lead to big things down the line. Tonight we’re invited to watch the football game at the house of a local guy named Clint. He’s a good guy, and it should be fun. Some of our best memories from the road have come not from what was planned, but from unexpected chance detours and random tangeants taken on a wim.
Winnipeg
Winnipeg Crane Convention?
Winnipeg.
We’ve been in Winnipeg for about two days now, and it’s been an amazing experience so far. The music scene here is very supportive and has been beyond kind to us. We’re staying at a local musician’s house, someone who we’ve never even met in person before but was just eager to help a band passing through.
We played a few songs on the radio last night and on City TV this morning, then met with Dale Penner (produced Nickelback, Matthew good band, Holly Mcnarland, and more – http://www.paradise-alley.com) at his studio here in Winnipeg.
Tour Tip of the Day:
The ceramic travel mug. Coffee is essential on the road. You can’t live without it. Everytime you use a travel mug at timmy’s now you save 10 cents. This is only the beginning. The travel mug keeps your coffee warm longer, and helps you feel better about the environment (despite the fact that you’d have to use it for about 10 years to get back the carbon cost of making a travel mug vs. making a paper cup.. but that’s for another blog). The reason why you want a ceramic one, is because you can microwave it. You can make soup in it, hot breakfast oats, ramen noodles, even easy mac kraft dinner. All you need is a microwave and some water, and you’ve got some warm dinner to go.
Outside the bar on the main drag in Brunkild
We’ve got to get to another gig.
See ya!
Stick with Silver Creek here too: http://silvercreekmusic.net/
-Mark
Manitoba
Typical Ontario geography
It may sound odd, but throughout the drive from Ottawa to Kenora (easily 24 hours of solid driving, not including any stops) it’s hard to feel like you’ve gone very far from home.
The landscape is exactly what you’d expect in Ontario – rocks, trees, lakes, rivers – and the stops all seem to look the same. You can rest assured that every couple hours you’ll pass by a Tim Hortons, Subway, Esso station, OPP officer, LCBO, etc.
It’s hard to tell whether you’re just outside the confines of Ottawa, Sudbury, Thunder Bay or any of the other places along the way. But something strange happens as soon as you pass through the Manitoba border.
All the familiar sights instantly change.
Suddenly, you’re hard pressed to find any trees at all, the rockiness is gone, and the rolling hills and beautiful lakes are entirely replaced by flat, seemingly featureless plains. It’s amazing how far off into the distance you can see completely unobstructed on a clear day here, and it makes it easier to appreciate that prairies have they’re very own brand of beauty. The usual Tim Hortons and Subways are replaced by the frequent grain towers that loom everywhere and look as though no one has stepped foot in them in years. The always brightly lit and super clean LCBOs and Beer Stores disappear and in their places are dimly lit dives where you can order your beer of choice through a small teller window and “off-sale” at bars where you can buy cases of beer or booze straight from the bar.
The speed limits change, the road signs look different, even the way that they paint the lines on the road is different. The lights on the traffic lights are in a different order, license plates are different. It also gets significantly colder.
Another striking difference is the video gambling machines that you find in every bar. Much like the coin slots you’d find at any casino, these machines populate every bar and are almost always occupied. It’s somewhat disturbing to watch someone at them for an entire night, as the waitresses bring them drinks and they squander their money away. I’m quite happy that we don’t have them in Ontario.
Tonight we’re playing in Brunkild, which is just south of Winnipeg. It’s a very small town, populated by the aforementioned grain towers and a few scattered houses and businesses. The people here are friendly, drive trucks, and like their country music.
Which means we should do just fine.
The stage in Brunkild
Tour Tip of the Day:
Ipods. They are absolutely essential to any road trip with music lovers. We’re travelling with two video ipods. They’re loaded with tons of music, episodes of South Park, Flight of the Conchords, and many other good shows and movies. It’s easy to create playlists on the go, and it means that we’re not travelling with a boat load of CDs or messing around with a cumbersome laptop. We’ve got a car charger so they’re always fully charged, and if one person isn’t digging the music or wants to watch a movie on their own, they can use the other one. We’ve also got a cable to connect the video ipod to a TV so that when we’re in hotel rooms or band rooms we can chill out and watch a movie. They also double as a small and portable usb hard drive and work well as a place to store photos and video that we take while on tour. They’re small, robust, and even Anders can figure out how to use them. If you’re planning on going on an extended road trip anytime soon, I highly suggest picking one up.
Check us out on
Facebook -
Twitter – @creeksilver
Website - www.silvercreekmusic.net
- Mark
Arriving in Thunder Bay – through the fog
We set out on the road from Sault Ste. Marie early this morning and made our way through a thick fog down the long stretch of highway around Lake Superior to Thunder Bay. There are few things that give a better sense of freedom than driving a long haul. The open road is one of these. No red lights, just a straight line between point A and B. Conversations, music and silence fills the time, and it gives you a real appreciation for how vast our great country truly is.
This is my fifth time making the trip West from Ottawa, and I’ve been lucky enough to have done it each time with great friends. I took the first shift in the seven hour saga, and in the back, Tony slept while Anders and Mark passed their time composing a hilarious hip hop tune (track to follow soon) while the pine speckled forests of Northern Ontario breezed by.
The drive through Ontario is the longest part of any band’s trip West and it is rare for this part of the journey to be without incident and excitement. While we have yet to encounter the dreaded Moose (touch wood) as Mark mentioned in his last entry, we did manage to cross paths, in a lonely Northern KFC, with Canadian band the Arkells. Other bands are easy to spot on the road… just look for the unshaven, tired and disheveled people who travel in vans and trailers that just don’t seem to fit in up North in a place like KFC.
Having said goodbye to our new friends the Arkells we were swiftly pulled over by Northern Ontario’s finest for ‘swerving a little in the lane.’ Not able to find a single chargeable offense, they let us go on our merry way, and after a long while finally arrived in Thunder Bay and checked into the trusty ‘Lakehead Motel.’ We’ve stayed here before; by some standards, it’s great.
While Mark and Tony partook in much needed showers, Anders, Jeff and I made our way to LU radio for an interview with Anthea and Siggy who much to our surprise were very happy to have us back since our visit last year. We spun old vinyl, talked about the road and shared some laughs before picking up the boys and heading out to The Black Pirate Pub for our show opening for ‘You Say Party, we say Die.’ While our music is drastically different, and their crowd wasn’t expecting us, we still managed to turn some heads and make new friends none the less. It was a great night of music in Thunder Bay. The clubs were packed, and within two blocks you could find the likes of Bluessmyth (Calgary), The little Girls (Toronto), Blind Mule (Hamilton), You say Party, we say Die! (Vancouver), and of course Silver Creek.
Highlight of the night: While sitting in another club, Mark and I spotted a guy wearing one of our old T-Shirts (we gave him our new CD, and bought him a drink).
Touring tip of day: There is a common link that unites bands who are ‘on the road’ no matter how different their music may be, and that is, quite simply, we’re all out here doing it. We all want people to like what we do, and we all have a long way to go before we get where we want to be. On these fundamental grounds it is easy to make friends out here. Be genuine, keep an open mind and play your hardest, and the most unlikely gigs will, before you know it, turn into tour highlights to remember.
Hear more from Silver Creek here: http://silvercreekmusic.net/
Night Off
We drove for about 6 hours today, from North Bay to Sault Ste. Marie. Tonight we have a rare night off, which means Tony can catch up on some football. Tony says “go Dolphins”. You see, Tony has a fantasy football team and I have a fantasy hockey team, and it’s incredibly difficult to stay up on what’s going on while you’re on the road. Whenever we have an internet connection, we’re both packing as much sports news in as possible so we can adjust our fantasy rosters accordingly. While we’re messing around with our fantasy teams, Shawn’s messing around on the internet with his fantasy girlfriends. It’s a strange thing, because Anders is completely computer illiterate and not dependant on the internet at all while the rest of us are starving for bandwidth.
Those of you who’ve seen a Silver Creek show in the last year or so have probably seen our mascot, Jimmie James Hootrix. He’s a large ceramic owl who hangs out on stage and keeps an eye on things. Because of the logistics involved in carrying a huge ceramic owl around, he unfortunately had to stay home. Luckily, we managed to find a suitable stand in yesterday at the local Value Village. Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to introduce Benjamin Roadie (aka: Brodie, B-roadie, B-ro). He’s our smaller, compact, super cute, equally wise and noble touring mascot.
Touring tip of the day:
Northern Ontario is a hot bed for wildlife, especially large mammals that like to cross highways at night. A moose is a very large and imposing creature, and they won’t budge in a game of chicken. Luckily, they have quickly identifiable green eyes that flash brightly when the beast is facing towards your headlights, and one large brown eye when it’s turned the other way.
Tomorrow night we’ll be in Thunder Bay, where we’re opening for You Say Party, We Say Die! I’m not sure what’s up with the new trend of ending your band name in an exclamation mark, but it promises to be an interesting show none the less.
Follow us on twitter – @creeksilver
Mark
Visit Silver Creek also at: http://silvercreekmusic.net/
Road Song
So we recorded a new song today, written and taped within an hour!
Friday afternoon we departed. It rained all the way to North Bay. We settled in to the “band room” above the bar, set up our gear, and played our first show of the tour. I’d say it was a success, we sold a ton of CDs, and kicked it off on a good note. Saturday’s show was even better. We sold even more CDs than the night before, and finally popped our t-shirt cherry and sold some shirts.
Touring Tip of the day:
Drip dry – Let’s face it, a towel is an inconvenient thing to cart around. They take a long time to dry, stink up pretty quick when put in a bag, and don’t really serve any purpose other than to dry your body after a shower. They’re also very prone to being forgotten as they hang on the backs of doors and in other obscure places. I’ve done away with towels all together. You’d be amazed at how quickly you can drip dry after a shower. Just turn the water off, and enjoy a few moments of naked deep thoughts. It’s incredibly relaxing and therapeutic.
You can check out the webcast we did last Thursday at http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/2595882. It went pretty smoothly and the band really enjoyed it. It was fun to have a few close friends in the room while we played some old favourites and new ones for all the interweb to see. We’re hoping to do it again sometime soon.
pic from our webcast
Silver Creek also blogs here:http://silvercreekmusic.net/
