Who better to narrate the Canuckian leg of the Sunglasses Is A Must tour than the great white north's "favourite" son himself, A-Trak? Click more to read what the young boss has to say about his continued adventures from the highway to the cluuub to the Days Inn with The Rub.
We now enter the Canadian chapter of the Sunglasses Is A Must tour. Our last evening in the Land of the Free was spent bowling in Minneapolis with DJ Abilities, on a rare day off. Yes, we do things right around these parts. Abilities is quite skilled in this game. Ayres was good enough. Cosmo was just funny to watch, and also offered great game-side commentary. Our tour manager Scooter was so bad it was shocking. And me, I either hit gutterballs or strikes. There’s not much in between. It’s a game of chance, since my aim is nonexistent.
After a good night’s rest we headed towards the Canuckian border. A well-strategized halt at a truck stop in Fargo allowed me to pick up a lovely Daniel Boone hat, which would soon become the centerpiece of our Canadian sojourn. We crossed the border without too much hassle and, after a full day in the Dodge Caravan, pulled into Winnipeg around 2am. Somewhere along the way I saw some buffalos by the road but no one believes me because they were all asleep when it happened.
Our Winnipeg show was put on my these guys DJ Co-Op and Hunnicut, and they already the internet going nuts with this lo-fi youtube skit announcing our show. After sound check they drove us all the way to the other side of town, over the bridge, by some army tanks to have some borscht and pierogies at an Ukrainian restaurant that they obviously really like (apparently it’s a Winnipeg fixture).
We were playing in a big venue that’s meant for live performances and they explained to us that Manitoba law doesn’t consider DJs to be live entertainment, so what they do is they get these girls to dance on either side of the stage, behind screens. They must have some Hyphy Juice in their water out there because that show was off the chizzain.
The next morning I put on my raccoon hat and we started driving out to Regina, Saskatchewan. There’s a common misconception about that city. People seem to think it’s pronounced Re-GEE-na, but in fact it’s the other way. The vulgar way. (By the beard of Zeus!) Anyways, moving right along. We drove for a very very very long time on a very very very flat road, and finally pulled into the unfortunately-named city. We were delighted to find a swimming pool with waterslide at our Days Inn, and by George we made good use of it.
We happened to go to the same restaurant as the mayor for dinner, and apparently he asked the waitress where we were playing. That made its way through the rumor mill, and by the end of the night people were practically asking us “did the mayor have a scratch session with you?” There was also a girl who kept asking me at the show "do you remember meeting me about 3 years ago in Edinburgh, Scotland? I was at your show and I had a yo-yo… No but really, I want to know if you remember. I had a yo-yo. Do you remember? About 3 years ago in Scotland? I was talking to you and I had a yo-yo."
Good show nonetheless. And then at 7am the alarm rang and it was time to mosy on towards Edmonton. That’s the day where everyone started talking to plants. I like those days. The good thing was, Edmonton’s hockey team won some sort of playoff game that evening, so it was bound to be festive. And festive it was. We had a great crowd, and I want to congratulate them because even though the dancefloor was actually slanted up toward the stage (the room used to be a theatre), they gladly fought the forces of gravity and kept dancing all night. Good job guys. Canada is proving to be quite triumphant.
The weekend was technically off, but in reality I had to go to Chicago on Saturday for a Kanye show, and the rest of the guys had a 2-day drive across the Canadian Rockies to get to Vancouver. If you’re wondering why you never heard about a Kanye show this weekend, that’s because it was one of those morally offensive private Sweet 16 parties. What a weird experience. It was in a real concert venue for about 50 teenagers, and part of the décor was 2 women covered from head to toe in mirror fragments like a disco ball. The performance was a complete surprise and the kids obviously lost their minds. I kept trying to get Kanye to say "Who hates math?" between songs, but when I saw that it wasn’t happening, I gladly put myself out there, grabbed the mic and said, even better: "So! Who hates detention?" (Dead silence.) "Good, good… Tough crowd!" They were too busy taking pictures of Kanye with their camera phones anyway.
Meanwhile the Rub boys and Scooter had a National Geographic-worthy weekend, driving through glaciers and the wilderness. Says Cosmo: "We saw 2 moose, 2 caribou, a black bear, 4 wolves, a fox, a long-horned ram, something that ran across the road that might have been an ermine, a beaver dam, and a bald eagle." Ayres interjects: "That wasn’t bald eagle! It was a regular eagle." Argument ensues.