ra mcguire dot com
On Sunday, me, Connor and sound engineer extraordinaire Pat Glover settled into Whitewater Studio for an all day "Mic Shootout". We set up a collection of some of the best and most highly regarded microphones in the audio world and compared them, one to the other. It was a day of spectacular audio geekdom. We had an excellent time.
‘Lee’ from Universal Music Canada came through with digital downloads. Half of our recorded output is now legally available online. There are still two unreleased albums that Universal owns but seems to be unable or unwilling to offer to the public. Once I muster the appropriate energy, I may bring this up.
‘Lee’ worked hard for us. He was friendly, positive and professional. He was a pleasure to work with and I told him so in an email at Christmas time. I wrote to him again this week, asking about download-related royalties and how they compare to our non-digital penny-rate. I also asked if he could look into our royalties for 2003 - which we have not received. Occasionally, I morph into a jaw-locked, mouth-foaming dog, tenaciously dragging behind a leg I’ve bitten into. It’s embarrassing sometimes.
Both my mothers have been to the hospital and have returned to us healthy. My Mother has moved from her house in Langley to a much smaller place here in White Rock. Her house sold last night. Our families have all weathered a series of emotional, worrisome, physically and mentally taxing, stressful, but ultimately positive sea changes lately. Those seas appear to be calming as the days begin to lengthen and grow warmer.
Today, Connor and I bought an Apex 460 tube condenser microphone and a ‘Groovetube’ vacuum tube so we could perform the mod that, according to a panel of audio engineers at a prominent Vancouver studio, will make the 460 the rough equivalent of a Neumann U87 - a revered, and much more expensive, mic. Connor’s downstairs now, using it. I can hear him singing.
After reporting that they were “fully up to speed now” and “alert to get this done”, “Lee” from Universal Music Canada emailed me, on November 3rd, regarding a problem with the Trooper digital downloads. He says that they will be good to go on November 21st with “all the albums except Hot Shots”. Our greatest hits collection - all the songs most people would want to download - cannot, for the moment, be included because of “a US system issue with incorrect info”.
A US system issue with incorrect info.
He says they’re trying to “get it fixed” for December 5th and that he’ll keep me posted.
Back in the eighties, Chuck from Universal sent me “finished” recording contracts with release dates on the front page. Much of what those contracts contained was different from the terms we had agreed upon, so I reluctantly returned them, requesting the necessary changes. The compilation project passed through at least three promised release dates before disappearing forever from Universal’s agenda.
I manage to maintain a reasonably hopeful and positive approach to the world. I’m not fond, or proud, of the cynical doubt that Lee’s promise has engendered in me. Regardless, a month must pass before I can know for sure what will happen next.
PS
An ironic and unintentionally funny email followed a few days later. It was from a Universal employee responsible for the iTunes upload. Although he was writing from the Universal building, from which seven Trooper albums have emanated, he was asking if I had hi-res copies of the CD cover art work - presumably because he didn’t know where else to find them.
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?
Disheartened, Connor and Simon struggled through auditions. One young drummer brought his girlfriend and asked for a mid-audition break so he could smoke some pot. Another played, unaccompanied, the complete and extremely complex drum part from a Dillinger Escape Plan song.
With a new drummer failing to materialize, Simon became less and less committed to the idea of the band. He explained that his musical tastes were shifting toward more artistic and experimental music. One night he called Connor to say that he would be unable to attend the drummer audition planned for that evening because he was going to a concert by one of those artistic and experimental bands. Although the two of them had been best friends since grade six, their musical partnership ended that night.
Two years later, last Friday night, at a coffee shop in Crescent Beach, a standing-room-only crowd listened intently as Connor, acoustic guitar balanced on his lap, described one of the first songs he had ever written.
“I’ve revamped the chords a bit, but the words still suck.” he said, grinning.
Then he called his friend Simon to the stage to sing the song with him.
From the moment he said; “Hi, I’m Connor McGuire, I write my own songs”, he had the young, and usually fidgety, audience in complete pin-drop-quiet control. He played for an hour - just him and his guitar - interspersing his amazing songs with charming and engaging banter. The crowd cheered, whooped, whistled and hollered after every tune. He completely owned.
Just two years after the collapse of his first rock band, Connor has returned to the stage with a completely new, and improved, version of himself. He’s written a collection of heartbreakingly powerful songs - each new one better than the last. He’s taught himself finger picking and has profited from the classical guitar lessons he took. His singing has become natural and unaffected and his vocal phrasing amazes me.
Connor’s show at the Wired Monk on Friday was a watershed in his music career. He’s proven to himself that he can do this by himself. What he did on Friday can be replicated successfully on any stage anywhere.
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.
What’s the hold up re: Trooper tracks on iTunes and/or Puretracks? It’s been over three weeks.
ra
“… 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.
My book has received some excellent reviews and has been nominated for the Blooker Prize. Also, I ran into the guys from April Wine at the Saskatoon Airport today and Brian Greenway (who is in the book and, apparently enjoyed reading the book) told me that he had seen it front-racked at bookstores in the Toronto International Airport. Which makes me very happy.
I did two interviews last Tuesday - one with a newspaper in Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta and one with a magazine in Toronto, Ontario.
While discussing the fact that many people come to see my band multiple times, the Fort Saskatchewan interviewer told me that he’d seen Trooper fourteen times. When discussing the same topic half an hour later with the Toronto writer, I proudly mentioned the Fort S. writer/fan.
“Well, he’s got me …” he said sounding a little disappointed, “I’ve only seen you twelve times”.
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 house isn’t large, and it’s old enough that the odd leak or dent is not a pressing issue. It’s comfortable. There are dahlias. You can walk from the covered porch down to the water. There is wireless signal on the beach. There’s an Airstream in the yard.
I don’t want the responsibility or the expense of an Airstream. I don’t want to learn how to back one into a campsite, or have to perform regular trailer maintenance or be the guy holding up a two mile line of traffic on the highway. I would just like for Debbie and I to wake up together in our own place and be the only ones in the world who know for sure where we are.
They’re unreasonably expensive and it’s not like we need the Rolls Royce of trailers, but I think it has to be an Airstream. It’s a romantic notion that’s worked its way deep into my mythology. I’d like to “fix it up”, whatever that means.
There’s nowhere in particular I’d like to take it. Lord knows I’ve traveled enough and seen enough. I think a WalMart parking lot would be fine - or someone’s back yard. I’d want the retractable awning. Here’s the picture:
It’s raining but warm. We’ve got the awning deployed and we’re sitting under it in folding chairs. We’ve just returned from a long walk and beat the rain. Maybe we have Coronas. We’re watching the WalMart shoppers going to and from their cars and we’re discussing their purchases.
I don’t remember how old I was: older than twelve and probably younger than fifteen. I know I had reached puberty. It was the topic of the conversation.
There were three boys and a girl in my Dad’s family. Jack, Dad, Fernie, and Ray, in that order, age-wise. There was a nine-year difference between Dad and Ray. Ray was the baby brother, and my Dad loved him fiercely.
Grown-ups were very different in the sixties. There was a clear and dramatic difference between childhood and adulthood. Demeanor, attitude, sense of humour, point of view, clothing, hairstyle - all different. Not at all like today where that line is blurred. Uncle Ray was a singular grown-up. He didn’t talk down to us kids. He told us jokes. Best of all, he could belch louder and longer than anyone we knew - and would bust out these spectacular prolonged burps at impressively inappropriate moments.
I remember thinking later that I’d been set up. That Dad had arranged for Uncle Ray and I to be alone together in his car. He was self-consciously squirmy in a way that I’d never seen. His face was red and he was having trouble kick-starting the conversation.
Maybe we were on our way to a motorcycle rally. Dad and Uncle Jack gave up their bikes when they married, but Uncle Ray continued to ride his Harley, and our family would attend GVMC events to watch him compete. I can’t imagine how Dad arranged for the two of us to travel together alone - Ray was married with a family at the time.
They used to call it having a talk about “the birds and the bees”. When Uncle Ray stammered into his introduction, I remember feeling a little annoyed that my Dad had passed off this right-of-passage duty to someone else. Uncle Ray was clearly not enjoying the experience either, but he gamely forged ahead.
Dad was an introvert. He expressed himself with his art, or when he played his mouth organ. He could tell good, dependable stories with beginnings and endings. He prepared follow-up stories so he wouldn’t be caught short without one. He was charming and kind with people but essentially shy and uncomfortable in the spotlight. I think Uncle Ray shared Dad’s core shyness, but he blustered on through with courageous bravado. The jokes and the funny stories broke the ice.
Dad named me - his first child - after Uncle Ray. Uncle Ray named his first child, Harry, after my Dad. Their great love and admiration for each other was obvious to anyone who saw them together.
“So, uh … how much do you know already?” Uncle Ray was looking to minimize the discomfort of the task at hand.
“Uh, you know … pretty much everything.” I lied.
He brightened.
“Ok, well, is there anything you need to know?”
I scrambled. There were many things sexual that were still a complete mystery to me. I needed to pick one and put us both out of our misery.
“Uh …” I muttered hopefully, “what’s a hickey?”
At the ‘celebration of life’ that we held after Dad passed away, Uncle Ray spoke about what a great brother Dad had been - how most kids would shun a sibling that was nine years younger but how Dad had taken him everywhere with him - made him toys - helped put together his first motorcycle. Listening to him speak, I was reminded once again that he was my favourite relative.
My Uncle Ray died suddenly of a heart attack on July 19th. He was seventy-six.
I have an excellent last memory of him - jamming with Connor and I and my brother Gary in our living room. He was playing his heart out on his harmonica as we played along on guitars - broad smiles on all our faces.
My sad, but perfect, memory of him took place a few days before Dad died, as he sat at Dad’s bedside and played him ‘Old Shep’ and ‘Danny Boy’ on his harmonica. ‘Old Shep’ and ‘Danny Boy’ were my Dad’s two favourite songs.
Alex wasn’t nuts about me when I first showed up - and I was just scared shitless of him. He was a strong, athletic Police Inspector who looked like Mr. Clean and I was a skinny longhaired rock singer who looked like Charles Manson. It’s ironic that the cop ultimately taught the hippy all about adaptability and flexibility.
Alex was a shining example of what a man could do if he set his sights, and his forthrightness and honesty inspired me. He also made me laugh. A lot. He was a powerful and profound influence on my life - a second father and a trusted and beloved friend. I cannot believe he’s gone.
Alex Andrascik, my father in law, passed away on July 2nd, 2006 at Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster while awaiting heart surgery.
Every man in the sprawling Fraserview housing project was a Second War veteran, the father of three or more children and the unwilling but not ungrateful recipient of a lower than average income. These were contracted conditions of the rental agreement. The houses in the project shared four identical floor plans. There were kids everywhere.
At the time, I was the singer for the Epics. The group’s guitarist, Brian Graham was my best friend. Derek Solby, a Killarney High School wunderkind, played the drums and Ken (Tarpaper) Hynds was the sax player. Gerry Andrews played a Fender Jazzmaster, and, with his guitar swung out of the way, the electric organ. It was Gerry who hooked me up with another group - a Fraserview soul band that would soon be called “Little Ramon and the Enduros”.
Gerry had signed on with the nine-piece horn band and had recommended me to replace their diminutive but muscular singer Fuji Forchuk. The remaining musicians were a hard-core crew of soul music fanatics in their mid to late twenties. The singer that preceded Fuji, and who had remained attached, talisman-like, to the band, was Rick Cameron - a quintessential James Dean greaser and a member of the notorious Bobolink Gang. I met with Cameron alone in his kitchen one afternoon to discuss my role in the band - tempering my adolescent admiration of his rebellious cool and juvenile delinquent fashion sense with wary respect and an abject fear that he was probably well accustomed to. It was hard for me to believe that these guys were giving me the time of day - let alone a spot-lit place at the front of their soul revue.
Brian Henderson, the lead guitar player was the fastest, coolest and funkiest player I’d ever known. He wore horn-rimmed glasses, sported a blonde pompadour and played a Fender Telecaster. He was Fraserview’s Steve Cropper. The band’s manager, a burly, hard-assed, unpolished lout, was the drummer’s father. He would occasionally visit us in his dungeon-like basement - where we practiced - and deliver what he thought were inspirational pep talks, in the manner of the Commitments’ Jimmy Rabbit - but lacking the conviction, passion and intelligence. It was this man who announced dramatically, when Gerry and I had finally tired of his two-bit tyranny and given our notice;
“Singers and Guitar players are a dime a dozen.”
Paul, the sax playing Sal Mineo look-alike, taught me ‘the Continental’ - the cool and casual step with which all the players shifted, in perfect rhythmic synch, from side to side - the pivot executed at the drop of the left foot, and then the right.
Fuji Forchuk stayed on to deliver a final unforgettable basement command performance, so that I would be clear about what was expected of me. Wearing a tight white wife-beater over his dark muscular torso, he moved with animal grace and sang ferociously. In the musty basement darkness, lit by a single bare light bulb, he jumped, shook, gyrated and, at one point, rolled on the floor. The band’s manager nodded in told-you-so approval. Fuji was the best.
I watched in hopeless appreciation and dismay, knowing that my thirteen-year-old feet could never fill Fuji’s shiny, black, and lightening-fast shoes. I was convinced I lacked the cool, the charisma and the menacing command of the stage that characterized Fuji and his band-mates, and I was probably right. I was thirteen, five-foot-eight, weighed 110 pounds and could not, for the life of me, get my mother-cut curly hair to stay molded into the essential pompadour position - despite liberal applications of my Dad’s Brylcream. Worse yet, I was a nerdy smart kid at school - I had skipped a grade only two years prior - introverted, socially awkward and nearly always afraid that guys like Rick Cameron were going to beat me up for sport. But for all that, no one in this new band seemed to notice, or care.
At home, alone in my room, I nervously dropped the needle onto a borrowed James Brown LP, ready to begin transposing lyrics and fleshing out melodies. The music filled the room and I was transported to a dark, wild and erotic alternate universe. This was not the clean-cut radio music I knew and loved. This music was dangerous and dirty - too passionate and overt for Fraserview. Songs like “Please, Please, Please” and “Try Me” - unashamedly over-the-top soul ballads - were unlike anything I’d ever heard. A week went by and I was emulating every note and emotional vocal scratch that came from the throat of the man soon to become the ‘Godfather of Soul’.
Singing with a full horn section blowing thick, sweet and menacing chords behind me was thrilling. Jumping on to, and riding, the careening guitar hook of “I’ll Go Crazy” was an exhilarating vocal adventure that was different every night. The tight, staccato horn shots punctuated the funky groove like syncopated rifle shots and kicked into my back as I sang.
I learned to dance - in a fashion. I did the Continental with the band at the appropriate moments. I lost myself in the deep soul groove. I may not have mastered Fuji Forchuk’s moves, and no one ever invited me to throw in with the Bobolink gang - but for a brief groovin’ moment in the long summer of 1963 I was Little Ramon, a soul singer unaffected by the cruel and clumsy teenage reality of his otherwise un-soulful world.
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.
Photo: Dave Hampshire
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.