Sept 27th - Oct 7th, 2007 (CLICK ON ANY PHOTO TO ENLARGE)
And finally... a chance to write! So, as I’m writing this, I’m actually  in a rainy car in Thunder Bay, on my way to Winnipeg with the lovely, talented and congenial Rob Szabo.  But before I get to the 2nd leg of the tour, I need to report on the first one:  My east coast adventure!

I left Toronto on Tuesday morning, much later than I wanted to as there were too many last minute orders of business to take care of before I get into describing the next 2 days, maybe I should just keep it brief and say that it was very far and I went a little loopy in my car all by myself for that long period of time.   I entertained myself by listening to the ‘Learn Spanish’ podcasts that I had downloaded.  Ola, que tal, mui bien, estupendo!, my jamo es Peter Katz, poquito, Hielo (Hello, how’s it going?  Me too, Studpendous!, my name is Peter Katz. Little bit, Ice cube).  That’s a pretty good sentence I’d say.  The guy teaching the Spanish had  areally heavy Scottish accent.  I need to dedicate a little more time to it, but I think it's apparent that I'm making signifcant progress. 
After my 2day drive, I made it to Halifax just in time for my soundcheck at Winston’s.  It was a pretty nice place, but not necessarily one that had an audience accustomed to original live music.  I played from 7-9 and had a party of 30 celebrating a 60th birthday sitting right in front of me...  While some people perhaps didn’t appreciate it, others did and I actually sold a CD to someone in the birthday party! (maybe it was my rendition of happy birthday that did it)
After the set, I  very quickly packed up and headed over to FRED , this gorgeous art gallery where a fundraiser for the ‘In the Dead of winter’ festival was being held.  Don Brownrigg (the Halifax musician who invited me out to the East Coast and helped book the tour) was one of the organizers of the festival and he managed to get me  a short set on the bill.   That show was definitely a little more up my alley and the crowd was fantastic.  I lucked out too as there were a whole bunch of amazing Halifax musicians in the crowd that I got to meet like Jenn Grant, Amelia Curran and Laura Peek. 
*Just a little side note about Don Brownrigg contacting me.  He just sent me an email that said “Come to Halifax! From some random Halifax musician”  That’s it, and so I did.  Life is unpredictable and wonderful.*
After the show, we headed across the street to Gus’ pub; a local staple where you can get tiny glasses of beer for1.75, poured personally by a man who I’m assuming is Gus himself. ( Although I never confirmed that.  But If there were eve a police line-up of suspected people named Gus though, I would have picked him).
The exhaustion of the 2 day drive soon caught up to me and I retired to bed.  On that topic, Don and Kris (Don’s roommate and guitarist for many people including his own band ‘Down with the Butterfly’) put me up in their place for 4 days!  It was very very kind so thanks to them!
The next morning, the heavens exploded and there was the hardest rain storm I’ve ever experienced in my life.  I literally got soaked walking from the door to  my car, and they were only meters apart.  Don, Kris and I all got into the car and headed off to Rothesay for our show at Sessions.  The drive was mostly uneventful, a lot of chatting music and getting to know each other which was nice.  Kris pointed out some places where he grew up, we listened to Wilco’s Sky blue Sky, we ate granola bars, all in all, everything a car ride is supposed to be.   Just as we were getting close to the venue, I got a call on my cellphone from Penny, my tour manager, to tell me that Sessions was having ‘power issues’ and we may or may not be able to have power for our show.  That wasn’t a major problem for me but it wasn’t good for Kris who was supposed to be playing lapsteel on Don’s tunes.  We crossed our fingers and hoped for the best...

When we showed up, everything was very dimly lit but there was still power.  Unfortunately, that didn’t last very long as there was something very wrong with the building’s power and we soon were in the dark.  I was most disappointed in the fact that we didn’t get a meal as I had heard that Sessions has great food (which I later confirmed when I went back a few days later).  Instead the 3 of us headed over to Sobeys and ordered a pizza.  I must admit, for grocery-store pizza it was fantastic.  But do you really need to hear about that?  Probably not.
So we went back and there was a nice little crowd (unfortunately some of the reservations cancelled when they found out there was no power, but fortunately we still had about 20 people in the room).  A woman there happened to have  a flashlight in her purse so she provided the light while we played.  We alternated songs for about 8-9 songs each and that was that.  Odd circumstances, good show.
After the show, we all headed back to Sylvia (Kris’ mom) and George’s place where Sylvia prepared  a late night feast and George filled us up with tiny cans of beer (Sylvia had accidently bought the ‘strong beer’ cans.  I thought it tasted alright, kind of like beer, but stronger....)
Don and Kris were extremely gracious and gave me the bed, which I felt guilty about, but man did I ever sleep well.  I felt extra guilty in the morning when I walked out to see Don under the coffee table, with a sheet halfway on, and his airmattress, completely deflated next to him.  Sorry Don.... that should have been me!
Sylvia made us a great breakfast and we headed off into Saint John for a little tour of the town.  We went first to the farmers market and checked out all the local produce.  Ironically the only thing we bought were 3 asian pears, obviously not local.. although we did buy samosas.  If there’s anything that says east coast, it’s a samosa.  They were really good...
After a nice walk around town, we headed out to the small town where Kris grew up (can’t remember the name...Chudleigh, Chutney, Mangoville??)  Regardless, it was small and lovely.  We stopped in at his Dad’s place where his younger brothers were building a shack up on the hill for hanging out in.  It was pretty unbelievable what they had accomplished.  They had the whole frame up and were in the process of doing some work on the roof when we got up there.  I must admit that as they worked on the roof, the entire structure swayed rather precariously.... (Don and I later confessed to each other that we had played out the scenario of what would happen to the boys if the house came crashing down while they were on the roof. We both concluded that no one would die on account of youthful nimble bones, but there might be some serious injury.  I’m going to hope that doesn’t happen...cross-braces boys!  They even made their own outhouse!  That was a much sturdier, definitive structure (although they had gotten a little lazy when digging the hole for it and it was only a foot deep...  imagination, kick in now.
After that, the 3 of us headed back to Halifax, with a dinner stop-over in Moncton (we stopped at this place for Mongolian buffet where you load you plate with vegetables and they stir fry it up for you. In my head I was thinking ‘value value value’ so I loaded my plane to embarrassing heights and apologeticaly presented it to the chef.  In a few minutes he presented me with the largest plate of food I had ever encountered in my life which, in my head immediately made the ‘lunch tomorrow’ bell go off in my head.  Sadly, the waiter informed me that there was a ‘no take-out’ policy on the Mongolian buffet, much to my horror and chagrin.  She said ‘it’s not all you can eat, but eat all you can’.... clever clever clever.  Needless to say, I recruited Kris’ stomach for assistance (as he had wisely gone with the much cheaper, sensisbly portioned ‘vegetarian stirfy’ from the menu.  Depsite both of our courageous eating, we didn’t make it to the end, so I put the rest in my pocket.  Just kidding, I made compost in the city square and planted a tree to commemorate my east coast tour... that’s  a lie too... it ended up in the garbage... forgive me world!!! Defeated, and on the verge of explosion, I passed on the wafer-thin mints and we headed back to Halifax. 

Once back in Halifax, Don and I hung out and played guitar (Kris had a ticket for the Broken Social Scene concert) and I quickly grew very tired and fell asleep (even though other people were over visiting – I am a professional sleeper, I can do it anywhere, anytime.  I felt pretty bad, but I was asleep, so that feeling was tempered).

The next day, we went out for a great breakfast at the pyramid cafe and Kris and Don gave me a walking tour of Halifax.  What a great city!  I know I’m rushing through this day, but it’s only because I’m excited to tell you about what happened at night, so I’m just going to fast-forward.   So... I had this silly fantasy that while I was on the East coast I was going to be partaking in kitchen music parties --- and I did!  We went over to Catherine Maclellan’s house (an AMAZING singer-songwriter from PEI/Halifax) and there were a bunch of other great musicians there with mandolins and guitars and basses and trumpets and we played music all night. Definite highlight of the tour; I love playing music.
I feel like this is getting really long.  I’m going to start cutting to the chase. 
Let’s see, I played the Blue Olive in Saint John on a Tuesday.  Great venue, incredible food, not a heck of a lot of people on a Tuesday, but the ones that were there were very kind (including Sylvia, Kris’ mom who came out again and once again put me up and fed me.  People are nice).
From there I headed to Liverpool , I was going to take the ferry (which I was very excited about as I love ferries and think they’re so romantic) but sadly it was $200+ dollars (can you believe that!!!??) and I couldn’t afford it.  So I drove for 7 hours instead... boo.. But I learned more Spanish!  Porque, donde esta el bagno, felis navidad (Why, where is the bathroom, merry Christmas). 
I rolled into the Mersey house in Liverpool (well, in front of it) and was very pleasantly surprised by the venue. It’s this gorgeous restored hotel/restaurant and it’s run by Michael and Heather, 2 of the nicest hosts I’ve ever met.  I was also really excited as Ben Spencer, an incredible Edmonton-Montreal based singer-songwriter was sharing the bill with me (read about Ben in my tour blog from last year, we played in Saskatoon together at Carrie Catherine and Curt’s house).  Fortunately, there was this industry event called ‘Contact East’ going on in town the same night and some of the delegates (including singer-songwriters Jill Barber and Rose Cousins) were eating dinner while we were sound-checking.  We chatted a bit before they had to head off to do their showcases but they came back along with a few other people from the conference and we got to play for a nice little group of amazing musicians.  After the show, we crashed the Contact East after-party and chatted with more of the presenters and artists.  Sometimes you’re just in the right place at the right time.   Michael and Heather feds us (AMAZING food) and gave us our own rooms.   Michael and I also talked the next morning about having me come live there for a few months as the artist in residence and doing some kind of community-based art project.  I’m very excited about that, stayed tuned for more news.
From Liverpool I headed back to Halifax and spent the afternoon with a family-friend from childhood (my Dad’s best friend’s daughter Heidi, her husband Jason and their 3 ridiculously cute kids).  We spent most of the day doing things like jumping up on down, swinging on swings, kicking balls, playing xylophone and writing a song about everyone in the room, including the cat.  It was just what I needed and before I left they even gave me some of their drawings for my guitar case.  Too much cuteness.
I headed back to Winston’s for my final East Coast gig.  I was very pleased to see that a bunch of old friends had come out to the show, but even with them in the crowd, I was concerned that my show was going to go much like it had the week before.  Much to my suprsise and delight, the crowd erupted in cheers after my first song!!  Exact same room, seemingly exact same crowd, totally different response.  There were even people that had come back from the week before!  I guess you never know...
The next day I drove from Halifax to Montreal (14 hours, oh yeah). I couldn’t walk when I got out of my car.  I stayed at my brother Andrew and his girlfriend Gab’s place and we went out for amazing, real-deal Italian pizza.  It tasted good.  My literacy level is waning...
Alright!
To conclude:  the east coast is a beautiful, large place, populated by extremely kind, talented and wonderful people who will feed you and give you a place to stay at the drop of a hat and are always up for playing music in their kitchens.  I can’t wait to go back!!!
My hands are cramped and I feel slightly car-sick, so I’ll end this first chapter and when I return, my adventures on the west coast with Rob Szabo will be the subject.  Thanks for reading!! Take care, PEter

n.b. I decided to start a new blog just for the tour with Rob Szabo. CLICK HERE to read it