Oh and we also sang some songs.  That seemed to go over much better.  A great night with a great crowd caps off a great summer!  Next up is Cayuga, ON on September 16th.  More fall and winter dates will be added soon.  Stay tuned.

We had an unplugged workshop on Saturday afternoon.  Had we plugged in, we wouldn’t have seen Saturday night which was too much fun to miss.  We had a nice full amphitheatre for our Saturday night mainstage show.  We were digging into the hamper of hits and were still able to fill 40 minutes.  The crowd had been rained on all day and gave us such a nice welcome and ovation, although that may have been for the few hours of dry weather.  We’ll take it regardless.

Sunday started out fine weather-wise but then quickly got wet again.  Luckily for us, we were in the beer tent which was huge and dry and held a big dry audience.  We did a great workshop where we sang our silly songs and the bluegrass juggernaut known as The Chapmans played with us.  Fast and furious.  Then Mike and Trevor participated in Mixed Up Bands which randomly selects performers from the festival to form bands and play a couple songs together.  Apparently, Mike’s band won with their rendition of Purple Rain.  While this was happening, Chris was doing a kids’ show while the sun was starting to come out again.

The last event for us was The Last Laugh.  90 minutes on the beer tent stage with The Good Lovelies and Lorne Elliott.  We can’t say enough about these people.  We had been looking forward to this one for a couple of months and it did not disappoint.  We think the audience liked it too.

So a great weekend full of music, mirth and moisture.  Many thanks to Richard for having us and all the thanks in the world to the volunteers of this festival for going above and beyond to keep everyone happy, safe and mostly dry.

And now, a picture of Britney Spears and an umbrella.

So off we went in a southerly direction passing through the hotspots of Watertown, Syracuse, Binghamton and Scranton.  We’ve done this ride so many times that we didn’t really need Maggie the GPS.  We hit some torrential rain which made the last couple of hours a bit dumb on the road but we made it to the hotel by about 12:30 or so.  Our guest roadie Djuus (pictured below) had beverages cooling.  Djuus has joined us in Bethlehem for the last three years.  He is a good friend from way back and actually appears in the video for Let’s Go Bowling.  If anyone has a copy, please let us know because we can’t find one anywhere!

Our first show was 4:30 on a very hot Sunday afternoon in the Plaza Tropical tent.  It felt a bit tropical for sure.  The crowd was sensational and we rocked them real good.  One of the fun things about this festival is that we are given a big stack of food and beverage tickets to spend while we are there.  It’s pretty shameful to have tickets left over at the end so we do our best to spend every one.  That’s what the three goons are holding in the photo below.  We found some meat on a stick and strudel, heard some more music and then headed back to the luxury digs for a pretty fantastic night – a marathon of Keeping Up With the Kardashians.  We were way behind on our Kardashian news but they have now been sufficiently kept up with.  Exhausting in every way.

Prime time Monday night.  Yep, when you’re this big you get Monday night!  It was another really fun show of music and mirth and making fun of America for their credit rating woes.  We think that food and beverage tickets might be the only good investment left.  The crowd was big and loud and it was a good way to cap another fun year at Musikfest.  No Kardashians that night, which is good because not even Bruce Jenner could handle back to back marathons.

So that’s that.  Our 11th time at Musikfest (just looked it up) and another fun one.  Thanks to the fine folks at Artsquest for booking us and the awesome fans at Musikfest who keep coming back and bringing more friends.

We opened the mainstage in the afternoon to a fine crowd of Bengoughites.  While we played a kiddie train with cars shaped like pigs, cows and other animals kept rolling by.  Only one car had an umbrella over it.  All the others fried in the hot sun.  Always fun to watch sunstroke in real-time.

After our first set, we were the emcees for the next few hours.  We get to thank sponsors and make announcements.  A lot of people wouldn’t want that job but we kind of love it.  We got to thank the local Co-op for providing the reefer truck!  Pardon?  Reefer truck.  Apparently it means refrigerator truck.  It kept the beer cold.  We took it to mean something else and wondered why they sold chips and other munchies at the next booth over.  Maybe you had to be there but we thought it was hilarious.  On second thought, you didn’t have to be there because we were the only ones there who thought it was funny.  Anyhow, thanks to the Co-op for keeping beer cold.

Our second set was at the beer tent stage (reefer truck!!) and it was a bit more rock and roll.  Even though this was the country themed day of the festival, we rocked out anyway.  No one seemed to mind.  After watching most of George Fox’s set (featuring his band of guys who also play on our albums including our producer Andy), we got into a pick-up truck with our new pal Mark and headed back to Regina.  We drove between two rather spectacular lightning storms on our way there.

We met in the hotel lobby at 4:45am and went off to the airport for the trip home.  If we didn’t have so much fun, it would be hard to convince us that we went to Saskatchewan on Saturday.  We’ll stay longer next time we promise.

And the gig was awesome too.   The Royals were in Ottawa on Parliament Hill but we made out just fine without them.   The mountains were our backdrop.  Apparently they were real.  Our midday set was oozing with Canadian goodness.  We were also on big screens which was a bit frightening at times.  Hi def was not made for us.  We also got to emcee the rest of the day.  There was lots of great talent and the audience was eating it all up.  They also ate poutine and other delicacies.  We got to see the Irish Descendents play.  We hadn’t seen them in a long while and actually met them in a fine bar in Saint John, NB in 1995.  Yikes.  We’re old.  But not as old as Canada.   Thanks for fun day, Vancouver.  Here is a view from the stage…

We got to our hotel to chill for a while before heading out to the festival site.  Trevor tried plugging something in to his wall and flames came shooting out of the socket.  Bring on the comedy.  We made our trek to the festival and said hello to some people we recognized from their folk singer trading cards – a tremendously unpopular business we tried in the 90s.

We were last up on Friday night for the mainstage and it rained quite a bit.  The crowd stuck around though and they were awesome.  A great feature of this festival is the sign language interpreter on the side of the stage.  Jake is awesome and he’s been doing it for a long time now.  We were able to stump him with the Gaelic Song in our first Old Songs visit many years ago.  We decided this year that the sign for Charlie Sheen is to make circles with your index finger around your ear.  It’s catching on.  It was a very fun set and then it was back to the hotel to plug more stuff in.

Saturday and Sunday saw us at various stages doing various things.  At festivals, we get a chance to be in workshops which are smaller stage shows with a bunch of other acts based on one theme.  We often get put into comedy songs for some reason.  We did one such workshop and then the rest of our four side stage events were just us.  We don’t play well with others apparently!  And it was a no repeat weekend so we ended up singing a lot of our songs.  Chris did a fun show for kids with his Small Potatoes stuff and we closed our part of the festival with an informal little concert that mostly consisted of a Q and A.  It was fun.  We did a couple of songs but we mostly just chatted with the audience.  Good times.

We had been looking forward to returning to Old Songs for quite a while and we were so happy that it was just as great as always.  Many thanks to the Spence family for bringing us in and to the great audience and to the Canadian Customs officer who knew who we were when we came back across the border on Sunday night.  At least he wasn’t shy about it, like The Hip.

The venue was a great re-purposed building with a great performance space as well as an art gallery and other fine features.  The crowd was fun and enthusiastic.  We’re pretty sure they were just happy that winter was over.  They were singing along which is handy because we often forget lyrics.  Thanks, Alliston.  Hopefully it won’t take another 245 months to play there again!

Here is a picture of Mike’s MP Cheryl Gallant with our Prime Minister.  Apparently they’ve met.

If I Were Prime Minister

The next night was a surprise show – for the audience and for us.  We got a call two days before to ask if we could do a show in Aylmer, ON.  Turns out that The Lost Fingers were booked to play but had to bow out because of illness in the band.  Food poisoning apparently.  Yikes!  Well, it WAS Juno weekend and once again we didn’t have any plans.  Our success for 20 years is often attributed to our availability.  Well it turned out to be super great because not only was there a great crowd at the show, but it was also Cookie Night.  Imagine our luck.  We were eating cookies while The Lost Fingers were tossing theirs.  Life is good.

Next up is Hugh’s Room Toronto on April 9th.    Come on out if you can and keep the Hindsight party going.