The Universal Music Mystery

During my protracted ‘Trooper compilation album’ negotiations with a Universal Music representative (let’s call him Chuck) ten years ago, I would often wait for months for a response to my faxes. Occasionally, Chuck would offer an excuse for the gap; a holiday, for instance. More often than not, though, he would pick up communication as though only a day or two had passed. This glib pretense was usually belied by the fact that he seemed to have completely lost the plot in the intervening months.

In those instances where his memory appeared to have failed him, I would attempt to bring him back up to speed on what had already transpired. Then I would wait, for weeks or months, for his response. It was like trying to walk up an icy hill. Sometimes I would take two steps upward and slide back one. Sometimes, momentum would propel me down the slippery hill and back across level ground, leaving me helplessly looking up at the place I thought I was.

This went on for an unbelievable twenty-seven months.

And nothing was accomplished. No contract was finalized and no explanation was given as to why. At the end of Chuck’s final communications gap, I wrote, in exasperation, to the company president, who had originally conceived the project. He replied that Chuck was no longer with the company. Although the compilation was ostensibly passed on to another, communication from Universal simply stopped in 1998.

While negotiating with Chuck, I researched Trooper’s contracts with as many Universal representatives as would talk to me. It soon became clear that nobody at the company wanted to discuss royalties. Royalties also seemed to be a stumbling block with Chuck. My clear and pointed questions about what we would be paid, per unit, for the supposedly imminent compilation were side-tracked, ignored or, during the above described gaps, seemingly forgotten.

I have just experienced my first month-long communications gap with Universal in what is an uncannily similar engagement. Instead of championing the release of a two disk collection of the best Trooper songs, I am now simply trying to solve the mystery of why Trooper recordings can not be legally downloaded.

During the ‘Trooper compilation’ negotiations, packaging, pressing, album art, distribution and other old school “brick and mortar” sales issues offered significant - but by no means insurmountable - contractual challenges. Ten years later, though, in preparation for digital sales, all that seems necessary is the creation of the MP3s.

‘iTunes’ was launched in Canada on December 1st, 2004. ‘Puretracks’ went online exactly a year before that. Since Universal owns the copyright on these recordings they do not have to ask our permission to proceed, they merely need to pay us royalties on the sales. They can charge ninety-nine cents a pop for Trooper recordings that will cost them virtually nothing.

So why haven’t they?

Legal Downloads - So It Begins Again

Three and a half weeks ago, the President of Universal Music Canada passed me on to someone in the company who could answer my questions about why Trooper tracks weren’t available on iTunes and Puretracks. Let’s say his name was Brad.

Brad responded to me the same day promising that he would do a few preliminary things that would determine the next steps to get Trooper up and running in the digital world. Three and a half weeks passed. I emailed him today. The email bounced back. Since it was a ‘reply’ to his email, I knew the address was correct. I called Universal and found out that his mailbox was full. I asked the receptionist to alert him to this fact and gave her my email address so that he could let me know when he was once again operational. A few minutes later I got an email from the receptionist informing me that Brad’s “last day” was September 29th.

So for the last two weeks, I’ve been waiting for a response from nobody. Maybe worse, it turns out that Brad promised to get back to me knowing that he only had ten more days with the company. Maybe worse yet, The President of the company directed me, and my questions, to Brad knowing that he was already cleaning out his desk.

I did actually laugh.

This is good, really. I recall trying to explain to my partner the lunacy I was experiencing while dealing with this company ten years ago. Often I wondered if he believed me. Staying with this in real time will be good for me as well. By documenting it, I can be sure, later, that it really happened.

So I have written back to the President:

Hi _______,

I’ve just learned that _________ left Universal Music Canada ten days after his promising email to me. That would account for why I’ve heard nothing from him for over three weeks.

I’d like to see Trooper tracks available for legal download. Who do I talk to about this?

ra

UPDATE:

The President wrote right back saying that Brad had promised he’d do this. His email then asked another person in the company (who was cc’d) to contact Brad at his new job and find out “where this is at”. The email ends with the assertion that they’ll get this done for me.

Legal Downloads - Follow-Up

Hi _____,

What’s the hold up re: Trooper tracks on iTunes and/or Puretracks? It’s been over three weeks.

ra

Legal Downloads

Recently, I was asked by a Toronto magazine writer about the record industry’s assertion that they are opposing peer-to-peer downloading partly in order to “protect their artists”. This led to a short rant by yours truly that ended with the words;

“… our old record company doesn’t give a shit about Trooper.”

After I’d hung up the phone, I recalled the blunt, and possibly ill-advised, pronouncement - blurted out in a moment of impassioned interview-flow. It’s the kind of juicy quote that magazines like to use as headlines, and I wondered, in quiet post-interview introspection, if what I had said was accurate.

From the spring of 1996 to the summer of 1998, I logged countless hundreds of hours working with representatives of Universal Music Canada on a proposed two disk compilation of Trooper songs. The project, originally suggested by the then president of the company, was contractually complicated, professionally frustrating, endlessly mystifying and, ultimately, a complete waste of time. I have never received a satisfactory explanation as to why it didn’t go forward.

While working on that compilation, I communicated at length with record company executives, lawyers and accountants in both Canada and the US and, as an unintended consequence, I had brief glimpses of what may have been big-time record company evil. In 1998 I backed away from Universal; bone-tired and beaten, depressed and unwilling to ever again invest the time and energy required to penetrate their well-maintained corporate force-field.

Eight years later, and only weeks after the Toronto interview, I learned that Trooper songs were still not available for legal downloading on either iTunes or Puretracks. Days later I received a royalty cheque from Universal for $32.00. Debbie pointed out that Trooper had sold hundreds, if not thousands, of Universal CDs at shows. We discussed the fact that, despite months of pointed enquiries made at the time of the compilation talks, no one at Universal would tell me what our royalty “penny-rate” was. I still do not know how much we are supposed to be paid when a CD is sold. She became understandably angry - a state I was numbly unable to muster in response to the topic - and, in her best soul-mate form, helped me to break through my self-protective Universal disconnect. In a spasm of irony, i thought back to the interview quote …

… and wrote to Universal’s new president to ask him what was up with Trooper downloads.

He wrote back the same day. In his friendly and upbeat email he thanked me for pointing out the omission and passed me on to someone else in the company who, in another email, assured me that “a few preliminary things” needed to be done to “determine our next steps to get Trooper up and running in the digital world!”. He promised to get back to me when he got “those answers”. I received these emails on September 18th. Two and a half weeks ago.

I am determined to follow this down. I think I’m stronger now than last time.

I’ll keep you posted.

The Summer

It’s September 4th and I guess the summer is over. I’m sitting at Gate C at the Regina Airport. A couple of weeks ago we did 5 flights in four days. The week before, we did eight flights in five days. We’ve pissed away a lot of the summer in airports. We flew the day they arrested the liquids-and-gels terrorists. Don’t get me started.

There’s been way too much going on this summer. We were supposed to do a CBC TV show with Mark Kelly from the National. He was going to travel with us for a week and document our crazy reality on two TV shows. It was all set up, flights booked and plans made. And I bailed. Too damn much going on.

Debbie’s father died. My Uncle Ray died.

Frankie gave his notice. He could no longer balance his high paying real job with his wild and crazy Trooper gig. We got wind of this when he told us he wouldn’t be able to swing the frighteningly imminent first 20 show of our summer tour. Our old friend Lance Chalmers saved our bacon at the eleventh hour. We began looking for a new drummer. Dave Hampshire finished up his contracted year as our Tour Manager. In a bizarre example of rock and roll irony, he is leaving his position with the band to concentrate on becoming a better drummer. We began looking for a new Tour Manager. Last night, in Regina, was Frankie and Dave’s last night with the band.

At one level (because there are many) it’s been a summer of loss for me. First Alex - who still refuses to return, regaling us with stories of hockey victory - then Uncle Ray, and now, in a significantly less final version of loss - Frankie and Dave. Much of my activity this summer has been in response to losses. We’ve seen more of Debbie’s Mom. I’ve increased the value of my life insurance. We’ve redone our wills. Smitty and I searched, successfully I hope, for a new drummer. We have searched, unsuccessfully so far, for a new Tour Manager. I’ve glazed-over a bit with Trooper business. Too damn much going on.

I’ve fantasized a life that is less concerned with loss, either recently incurred or potentially imminent. i have a quote on my powerbook desktop that reads; “Worry is the misuse of imagination”. I strain, as I drive by, to catch a glimpse of the old tarnished Airstream parked in the brambles behind the house on 16th Avenue. Debbie and I went to Protection Island for two days. We’ve gone to the bank to see how much money we could muster to fund an as yet undefined getaway.

The shows have been beautiful. When I walk onto a stage, there is nothing but the music and the audience, and I have floated euphorically, every night, in the sweet spot between the two. We have broken attendance records at every fair we have played this summer. The crowds have been large and loving. I do love my job.

The Edmonton Show

It was raining and dark at the Edmonton airport. The ground transportation was late arriving, and the van sent for the gear was too small. Dave and Mikey waited another hour for a larger one to arrive. Everyone was in great spirits - undaunted.

My 3:00 PM TV interview, conducted in the lobby of the Sutton Place Hotel with Edmonton’s Graham Neil, went well, and as a surprise bonus, Graham informed me that it would also be aired on ‘E-Talk Daily’ - nationally.

Our show was scheduled for 6:30. All of us knew that this was way too early. It continued to rain heavily. Everyone remained in great spirits - undaunted.

In the dressing room, Dave reminded us to wipe our feet on the pile of towels at the top of the stage stairs to minimize the risk of electrocution. When we arrived on the stage - set up facing the night club’s parking lot - we were greeted by no more than fifty people, huddled under beer-branded umbrellas intended to shade the sun. Two brave, jacket-less girls danced enthusiastically, in the pelting rain, in the open space in front of us.

Everyone was in great spirits - undaunted. It was our best show in months.

The Last Day of the Tour

” … and if we can’t put her down in Halifax we’ll have to go to … uh … our alternate.”

The landing gear came down, but the dense grey fog prevailed, with no land in sight below us. At the very last minute of our descent, the nose pulled up sharply. The flight attendant answered her phone, listened and then announced:

” … we’re going to try again on the other runway, and if we’re unable to land there, we’ll go on to Moncton.” She smiled coyly. “Although the weather’s not that great in Moncton either …”

I was drifting in and out of a fitful upright unconsciousness. When my alarm woke me at 5:00 am, I’d had two hours sleep. Our second pass at the Halifax airport was no more successful than the first. Moncton was twenty minutes away.

Our show in Triton, Newfoundland was our third sold-out performance in our favourite province. Like both Gander and Port Aux Basques, the lively and loving crowd joined us in a fun-filled, large-scale, kick out the jams kitchen party. Although Triton is full of die hard Trooper fans, it lacks a hotel, so we didn’t arrive at our Deer Lake rooms till 3:00 am. Our flight boarded at 6:30.

Conditions over Moncton were identical to those at Halifax. We began our third descent through socked-in fog, trying not to consider what our options would be if we again failed to touch down. We peered into the unchanging grey until grass came into view. As we taxied to the terminal we had new issues to consider.

For reasons still unclear to me, our friend Jack Livingston, the promoter of the three Newfoundland shows, had booked our flights out of Newfoundland into Halifax, Nova Scotia despite the fact that we needed to get to a place called Neguac, New Brunswick - two hours out of Moncton. Four days earlier, in order to accommodate this far from perfect itinerary, we had left our two rental vehicles and some luggage behind at the Halifax airport. Now we were sitting on the runway in Moncton, much closer to where we needed to be, listening to the flight attendant discuss the possibility of flying back to Halifax, or, if Halifax remained unreachable, Montreal, Quebec.

Our crew had not slept at all. Dave, Randy and Richard had struck the stage and dead-headed to the Deer Lake airport. Pulling himself together, Dave began trying to convince the Air Canada ground crew to let us disembark the Halifax flight in Moncton while Smitty discussed options with the National car rental people. We left the plane twenty minutes later with a rough plan that involved Dave and Richard taking an Air Canada financed cab ride to Halifax to pick up the two vans while we drove on to the gig with Randy and the gear in two additional rented vehicles.

Before we left, Smitty and I picked up our complimentary Air Canada toiletry kits. The suitcases we had checked in Deer Lake were not on the plane.

Random Acts …

I woke up this morning in a hotel room deep in the concrete heart of downtown Toronto. I swung from bed to chair and cautiously cracked open the tall thick blackout curtains. Outside my second-floor window, the corner of Jarvis and Gerrard was pulsing with humanity. Street people and office workers bumped shoulders on the crowded pavement. I rubbed sleep from my eyes and squinted into the bright morning sunlight.

Across the intersection, in the middle of the sidewalk, sat a lone wheelchair. Its occupant, a man in his eighties, put me in mind of my Dad. He was casually smoking a cigarette and seemed more than comfortable relaxing, stationary, in the midst of the morning hustle. As I watched, a younger man, long hair spilling from under a backwards army hat, stepped up holding a white two litre container of Tropicana Orange juice. He leaned close and spoke to the man, smiling as he offered him the juice, which was accepted and quickly maneuvered to a spot behind the old man’s back.

I recognized the red star on the green army hat. Gogo had bought the hat in Kingston at the surplus store on Princess Street. Once I had identified the hat, his familiar smile came into focus. I watched as he then produced what looked like a can of pop, which he also gave to the grateful wheelchair occupant.

Gogo’s brief random act of kindness lasted only a few moments. As he turned and walked towards our hotel, the wheelchair made its way along the sidewalk. As it rolled, the large plastic bottle slipped out of the chair unnoticed and landed on the pavement twenty feet behind where the chair again stopped.

A tall, silver-haired and bearded man in a well-cut grey suit appeared, smoking a pipe and walking briskly. He stopped at the orange juice and picked it up. He held it for a moment, and then turned and walked down Gerrard street, swinging the the bottle in the warm morning air.

Ready to Make Something New

I’m in a creative holding pattern, cycling through a daily regimen of familiar themes and experiences - phoning ahead to next week’s cities to discuss last year’s adventures. I feel like a snake that’s eating it’s tail. The perpetual Escher-esque self-reference that the book’s promotion necessitates has stolen my ‘now’.

I shouldn’t complain. I’m getting great reviews and sales are brisk. I’ve been offered daily interviews with press, radio and TV all over Canada. There were two this morning here in Kingston, and I have four tomorrow.

On Thursday I’m appearing on ‘Canada AM’ and, later that afternoon, ‘Entertainment Tonight’ wants to talk to me about “the sex, drugs and rock and roll aspect of the book”. I’ll also be having lunch with a friend who wants to talk about a show in which I would play “a version” of myself. Perfect. I’m already immersed in a similar role.

I’m awaiting inspiration. It’s a foolish conceit and I know it - yet I continue to expect an epiphany of some kind. I feel as though I’m reaching critical mass and that soon I will complete a complex artistic synthesis and, at some significant moment - perhaps the completion of the Toronto book launch event - I will ping like a microwave oven and know that I’m ready.

Ready to make something new.

Leaving Ottawa

Two Marshall amps sit on the sand. Waves crash in the distance as an orange west coast sunset burns through it’s final minutes of glory. A young man approaches, straps on a waiting Stratocaster and begins to play. Thunderous Jimmy Page power chords echo across the beach.

The short film ends and I sit, transfixed, in the darkness - the only person in the small theatre. I was waiting at the entrance to the National Gallery of Canada when they opened the doors this morning.

I had wandered slowly through the lower gallery taking, as always, extra time with the Group of Seven, soaking up the power and tenderness of Tom Thompson and the majesty of Lawren Harris and J. E. H. MacDonald. I sensed my Dad’s presence beside me as I admired a Cornelius Kreighoff, one of his favourites. I stood with my nose nearly touching Alex Colville’s “To Prince Edward Island” and examined the thousands of tiny brush strokes that create the high-surrealism of his eerie and evocative paintings. In the Contemporary Gallery, I mounted a motorized office chair in a large interactive installation and, pedaling hard, failed to elicit the promised spinning. As I exited down the Gallery’s long staircase/ramp I could feel my creative batteries topping off.

Our return to the Ottawa Tulip Festival last night was a triumph over the elements and an excellent party, despite intermittent rain and a cold, biting wind that whistled past the Parliament buildings and across the large outdoor stage. As the crowd-lights came up in “Raise a Little Hell”, I could see the faces of thousands of brave concert-goers standing in the rain - arms in the air - shouting the words.

Lance Chalmers has returned for our summer tour - still the brother he became during his eight years with the band. He walked onto the stage in Sarnia, Ontario - after three years and no rehearsal - and dropped back into the slot without missing a proverbial beat. Ottawa is Lance’s home town and last night his parents, brothers, sisters in-law and their kids all partied happily backstage with us. Gogo invited two random teens in for orange juice and full deli-tray priviledges. They were visibly chuffed to be part of the action. Kids, parents and grandparents swarmed the t-shirt booth after the show. An eighteen year old girl told me I was “hot”.

A 9:30 show time put us back at the ‘Les Suites’ Hotel by 12:30AM. By 12:35 I was sleeping like a baby.

On the Road Again

The first three days of the Spring tour were just an extension of the frenetic weeks that preceded them. At home, interviews about my just-released book complicated my usual pre-flight drill of trying to wrap-up family business whilst simultaneously wrestling last minute tour details. As usual, my eleventh-hour efforts to prevent something or someone falling through the cracks were unsuccessful. Instead of making more time for Debbie and Connor, who I wouldn’t see for a month, I squandered the time obsessively, refusing to acknowledge the one sure truth in life - that nothing is ever dependably finished.

I arrived at Vancouver International Airport with my backpack, my suitcase and a jacket pocket full of yellow post-it notes: “Find out about Ottawa flights”, “Insurance”, “Mike re: Horseshoe”, “Write Tom”…

It was somewhere between London and Cambridge, on Friday afternoon, when it happened. Kevin Gilbert’s CD was playing on the van’s stereo, the highway was smooth and traffic was moving swiftly. We were talking quietly about Gilbert’s lyrics, his brilliant arrangements, and the care taken in the album’s production. I took a sip of my coffee and glanced out the window at the green and wet Ontario scenery and, exhaling slowly, I felt my mind and body acknowledge the transition to that familiar sweet spot between yesterday and tomorrow - that road-wearied zone where time becomes relative and immaterial. I reached for the volume knob and turned up the music - and settled into road-mode.

End of Tour Party

In our Nelson, BC dressing room, Randy Bergner joked about falling asleep at the sound board with his arms on the faders, slowly nudging the volume higher as he fell deeper into unconsciousness. He had slept for only two hours since the show at the Delia, Alberta Community Hall the night before. He could barely keep his eyes open. Richard Nott, our new merchandise manager and guitar tech, seemed surprisingly fresh, despite having shared the cab of a five-ton truck with his fellow crew-members for a grueling 760 kilometer, ten hour drive. Our tour manager, Dave Hampshire, his head newly shaven for the April western tour, also seemed impressively unaffected by the hard work and long drives that had characterized the tour.

We had completed a dozen sold out shows in sixteen days, logged eight thousand kilometers on our rented gold Suburban, and crisscrossed the thawing prairies between Vancouver and Winnipeg. We were all tired, but energized by the incomparable buzz of being part of the Trooper touring machine.

Two weeks earlier, at the first band party of the tour - an acoustic jam in a Camrose Alberta hotel room - we realized that with Richard playing bass, Randy playing guitar, and Dave drumming, we could, potentially, have TWO bands on the tour. Part way through our Banff, Alberta show, “Funbucket” took to the stage, busting out a blazing version of Doucette’s “Mama Let Him Play”. They happily returned to the stage many times throughout the tour. The Nelson ‘end-of-tour party’ version of the song, with additional harmonies and percussion from Frankie, Scott, Gogo and I, was the tightest of the tour.

Gogo brought his violin - which he played frequently in small town Tim Hortons parking lots and hotel lobbies - and a ukulele - which eventually lead to a traveling Tiny Tim party. Scott and I worked our way through a collection of songs by “The Big Four” - Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Tony Bennett and Dean Martin. We refined the playlist to a fifteen-song set of classics that Scott rehearsed daily. We downloaded videos of the Dean Martin show and Frank Sinatra concert clips that we watched as we rolled down the highway. Nothing brain-bombs more effectively than songs like “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love” and “Ain’t That a Kick In the Head” and I spent most of the tour singing like Frank, Dean or Tony. Scott plans to become a crooner, a perfect fit for his rich baritone voice - and by the end of the tour he was confidently singing those brilliantly constructed songs, performed originally by true vocal masters.

After the final show, the band and crew relaxed in the candle-lit dressing room with some new Nelson friends. An Irish tenor, sitting across the table from me, got everyone singing “Lean on Me”. A surprising number of our guests sang well, dropping in harmonies and soulful licks. Another song followed and voices grew stronger. I smiled around the room at my traveling companions and savoured the moment.

Good Stories

A “pre-interview” is an interview that’s never heard, seen or read by anyone. The pre-interviewer’s job is to confirm that a potential radio or tv show guest will have something interesting to say, so that the REAL interviewer won’t find him or herself floating in what media people like to call “dead air”.

Monday’s pre-interviewer was intelligent, charming and funny, and we talked comfortably until she asked me to tell her a couple of stories.

“… like you would tell when you’re all sitting around having a beer.” she hinted. “I just need one from this tour, and maybe one from the early days.”

Despite the fact that I am a seasoned interviewee with not inconsiderable experience in the field, I could not, for the life of me, deliver a story. She needed two. I had zero. I apologized, explaining that stories have always just come up in conversation so I’ve never felt the need to choose some “good” ones for this kind of context-free interview emergency. Being a complete professional, she picked up our conversation as though the request had not been made and we successfully completed the otherwise smooth-sailing simulated interview.

The next day I asked my band-mates to help me develop some party-pieces - at least two good road stories that I could count on. For the next hour, we riffed through a small collection of oft-repeated and familiar tales that still reduce us all to hysterical laughter.

Someone once took three of us out on an expensive and powerful cigarette boat. As they pulled away from the dock, the high-strung skipper admitted it was only his third time at the helm of this souped-up macho racer - and it quickly became terrifyingly obvious that he had never been trained to drive it. After a white knuckled beeline to the middle of the lake, and with no land in sight, he turned off the roaring engines. The shaken passengers were then offered drinks … and cocaine. After nervously declining the fat white lines he had produced, they watched in horror as their host finished all the drugs himself.

This is the kind of story that we tell when we’re having a few beers. I had lied. I have hundreds, probably thousands, of them but I can’t trust myself to know with a certainty that the one I have chosen to tell will turn out to be appropriate for all audiences. This one probably isn’t.

Undeterred, we continued. There was the one about a former Trooper crew member who, at a large outdoor concert, had pissed off so many on-site crew and staff that, when he fell to the stage floor with a painful hernia attack, everyone just stepped over top of him - carrying on with their work.

There was the time when one of the band members, sick with the flu, had us stop the van quickly so he could leap out the side door and vomit impressively in front of a packed restaurant’s dinner patrons.

There was the time when, a former light man driving the gear truck in dense fog in Newfoundland nearly hit a deer and screamed - waking our sleeping merch guy who, disoriented and seeing only a white void beyond the windshield, and deducing that the truck was flying off a cliff, braced his hands and feet against the dashboard screaming “NO! NO! NO!” - waking our tour manager, Mike Pacholuk who calmly surveyed the situation and made a mental note to remember to tell us all about it later.

The search for appropriate stories continues. My real interview is a week away.

All About Yesterday

(This is the post that followed the final post in the book - and the last entry before I shut the site down for the winter)

"You should know that there may be some weight issues on the way back."

The young pilot leaned close to me and spoke quietly.

"Sorry?" I said.

"Well, with the gravel and all ..."

"The gravel?"

"Well, ya ... and the short runway. And the fact that the take off is over water. There may be some weight issues. You may have to leave some things behind tonight."

"We already left a bunch of stuff behind in Winnipeg." I said, thinking out loud. "And we play tomorrow night ..."

I paused, weighing safety against a potentially missed gig, "How much stuff?"

"No more than a hundred pounds ... but it's really up to the pilot ..." He thought for a moment, "and the wind".

Our tiny ten passenger Pilatus single engine turbo prop sat alone on the Big Trout Lake air strip - a ragged gravel swatch cut out of the lakeside forest - surrounded by the band, the crew, a small collection of gear and the community's welcoming committee.

We moved quietly through the gathering entourage, shaking hands and making introductions. Accompanied by Eno, the show's coordinator, Luke, our constant companion for the evening, and three teenage boys, we boarded a battered yellow school bus for the ride to the "resting place". We crashed and bounced through the trees on dusty dirt roads - I raised my left hand, like a rodeo bull rider, bouncing on my seat. We hooted and hollered. Glen the school teacher - obviously British, wearing a Tilley hat, steel-rimmed glasses, shorts and boots grinned from behind the wheel.

"Kish'n'mayg'sib" Luke delivers the community's name as though it contains no more than two syllables.

"A little slower, Luke. Who's got a pen?"

"Kitchen - aw - maygo - sip" I repeated the word over and over in the arena's basement dressing room.

"Kitchenawmagosip, Kitchenawmagosip, Kitchenawmagosip"

"You've got it now" said Luke, smiling.

"Kitchenawmagosip" I repeated, unconvinced.

Kitchenawmagosip, or Big Trout Lake as it's called on the map, is an hour and a half flight northeast of Winnipeg. It's not accessible by road in the summer, when the ice-roads have melted. They have two stores, a school, a police station with three policemen, a woman's shelter, and a small hotel with a restaurant. They are planning a youth centre and a laundromat. We were there as part of a celebration that also included square dancing, fiddle music and a $50,000 Bingo game.

"Take us there!" we said when we heard.

"Two Fifty a card" replied one of the buzz-cut teenagers.

"Two hundred and fifty dollars?"

"That's how we do things." Eno said proudly.

About a hundred people, in two rows of chairs, sat at the halfway point in the large dark arena. The six o'clock show-time had drifted to seven. Our high-intensity intro music exploded in the silent, near empty arena and the first show began. It is fair to say that first nations people have a general tendency to shyness. As an audience, they applaud appreciatively between songs but lack the animated interaction of a typical rock crowd. After I insisted that they move their chairs closer to the stage, the small audience began to warm up. They smile. Shyly.

We have flown from Vancouver to Winnipeg, from Winnipeg to Big Trout Lake and performed a ninety minute set. Our second show begins after a short thirty minute break - most of which is squandered signing autographs at the t-shirt table. We are already exhausted as we take the stage for the second time that day.

"That second show was on fire!" says Luke quietly as we make our way down the basement hallway to our bright yellow dressing room.

"Hey thanks." I say, shaking his outstretched hand.

By 11:00 PM we are assembled again at the airstrip. The warm, clear northern night is pin-drop quiet - headlights from a few randomly parked pickups provide enough light to load the gear. We talk quietly as we say our farewells. Luke promises to email photos. Eno's handshake turns into a hug. I step away from the group for a moment to discuss the weight issue with the pilot.

Ten minutes later, as we fly back to the tree-line, the copilot shuts off all the lights in the plane. We are high above the clouds and sharing the sky with a massive display of northern lights. Our tiny plane is surrounded by enormous curtains of shimmering and dancing light. Like children, we press our faces to the small windows - maneuvering our elbows to the seats in an effort to see higher into the night sky.

An hour passes before Winnipeg floats into view in front of us. We take turns craning over the pilots' shoulders as the city lights grow brighter. Soon, two clearly defined parallel rows of lights position themselves below and ahead of us. It still seems like a very long way down. Tilted at a slight angle to break our speed, but moving straight towards the runway, we descend smoothly to the Winnipeg tarmac.