I do love a Sunday morning mimosa.

There’s something about the pop of a champagne bottle at 9am that makes for an interesting day. The sparkly sound it makes when being poured generously into your glass, before you’ve even brushed your teeth, can be heavenly.

Steve, our host last night, prepared a killer breakfast of champions which included mimosas. (plural)

Upon our arrival last night, Steve also surprised us with a bottle of Madison Violet Pinot Grigio and a red, but I was on a clear white night, so I didn’t try the red. The white was very representative of it’s subject, not too sweet and goes down well with or without cheese.

Things I saw on today’s ride:

- A basketball hoop / court on a grassy lawn (I’m thinking over-protective parents)
- A tire swing outside an old farm house (I’ve always wanted one)
- Heavily caffeinated coffee creamers (If they were non-dairy, I’d have been all over it)
- Dead animals (Self explanatory)
- Trees (No shortage here)
- A couple in an embrace in a vintage truck (Please bring back the bench seat!)
- A motorcycle gang sporting no helmets (I guess if you’re silly enough to get on a motorbike without a helmet, there can’t be much to protect)

What we’ve been listening to:

- Metric (Bought it this morning. Liked it on first listen)
- Adele (Her voice makes me sick! In a good way)
- Lori Cullen (She could melt an iceberg with her warm buttery voice)
- New Buffalo (Great album, but it’s making me sleepy right now)
- John Cleese (He took a short turn as the voice on our GPS)

A book I’ve recently acquired and will begin to read if I don’t feel queasy in the car:

- The Omnivore’s Dilemma (Michael Pollan)

Something that does not belong in soft serve (fat free) frozen yoghurt:

Orange. (I nearly hurled) It’s bad enough not being able to have ice cream or cheese, but to rub salt in the wound, they decided to make the only flavour at this cutie pie ice cream hut, orange. Come on people! Be fair. That’s just plain wrong. And hurtful.

Lisa

Tootsie Pops and Budweiser. That’s what was on the counter at our last road stop. We pulled over for gas in the middle of nowhere, as Blanche was blinking ‘low fuel’ for what felt like an hour. Even though our car digitally states what’s left in the tank (which read 0 kms), we like to see just how far we can get, to the last drop. Will we need to knock on another stranger’s door to replenish our tank with fuel from their tractor? Yes, Madison Violet has been in that situation, twice in the past decade. With eyelashes batting frantically, unsuspecting rural folk have willingly accepted our pleas for help. And sometimes we found ourselves departing with a tank of gasoline, a take away bag of homemade goodies, an offer of a bed for the night and their son’s hand in marriage.

All we needed was petrol (or better navigational skills), but that’s very kind of you.

At the moment, our van is stocked with BBQ ribs, corn bread, slaw and baked beans. Dan & Carla, our hosts at last night’s show, decided that we were not to get on the road without a full belly and a picnic in tow. Thanks guys.

I don’t know what it is about picnics, but I feel my heart warm at the thought of one. For someone with a fear of anything with more than 4 legs or a shell, I don’t quite understand why I’d be drawn to the idea of sitting on a blanket in nature with creepy crawly things all around me, sticky hands, (because I would forget the wet naps) and probably hay fever. And I don’t think I’ve actually ever been on one, so I don’t know where the excitement comes from. If I have been on one, my memory is not serving me well, as it rarely does, so it will be like my first time, again.

My life is like that.

I’ve got a memory like a sieve, where morsels of precious time periodically get clogged in there like unrinsed pasta, but most occasions escape like a clear broth. Lately, I’ve been living quite the consommé lifestyle. And it’s not that I don’t try to remember things, dates, numbers, names, what I had for breakfast, the town I’m in, it’s just that I can’t seem to retain it. I’ve contemplated taking supplements (I think ginko biloba is recommended for my cerebral hiccups), reading or listening to audio books on the subject, but I typically forget about them as soon as I leave the house on a mission to invest in my mental health. I end up at the book store, distracted by the Asian cook books, the reading lights and the music biography section. What? I don’t have a problem with remembering. I remembered, afterall, that it’s been ages since I had spicy noodle dishes, I enjoy seeing what I read, and that I too play music for a living, like Dylan and Miles and the Stones, as I scan their faces on the front of those hard covered books.

What was I talking about again?

Oh yeah… Tootsie Pops. My favorite.
Lisa

I’m in the car, en route to the U.S. We’re nearing the border, and I feel beads of sweat rolling down the back of my neck already. Even though we’ve got all of our paperwork in order, there’s always the chance that we may say or do something wrong, and be subjected to the much unwanted little rubber glove. There’s a time and a place for little rubber gloves and crossing the border is not one of them. As a musician, I wonder why our friends to the south make it so difficult for artists to cross the border… and so I hear, vice versa with us Canucks (our border patrol) doing the same to our musical American friends.

It’s not as though I have bricks of cocaine lining my fiddle case, or a machine gun in there (although I have been asked that very question in jest by a police officer), I am trying to bring what I hope is a little love and culture to our final destination.

And it shouldn’t matter what genre of music I am performing, be it folk, R&B or thrashing death metal, as long as we’re not preaching hate. Oh those darn folky haters. Yes, we scream blue murder with our fiddles.

And on that note, I will put away my laptop, so as to not draw attention myself, so that they don’t think I am doing something shady as I enter Homeland Security.

I will behave like a perfect lady. Be polite, but not too polite. Not be sarcastic, ever. And make sure I do not drop the soap, if they do decide to put me away for singing about love and heartache.

2 hours later (mostly spent being interrogated)…

We are now on American soil, but it most definitely did not come easily. We were pulled in, as we always are, and subjected to many the personal and professional questions that we are typically prepared for. No glove thankfully. We were told, however, that they had found ‘traces of marijuana’ in our car, and that another customs agent was about to go out with a kit to test it, hoping that we would fess up to having drugs, because after all, we are musicians.

This was crazy. The fact that they were trying to trick us to admitting to drug possession was not funny at all. They spoke of Willie Nelson and Celine Dion while we waited. Not exactly sure where Celine fits in all of this. When the ‘tests’ came back negative, I guess we were free to go, once the computer systems were back up, since they’d been down for 6 hours nationally already. Ugh…

Thankfully they decided to manually do our P2s, once they discovered that we were a ‘little bit country, little bit rock and roll’.

I’m not kidding.

Lisa

It’s 8:30am and I should be sleeping.

Actually, musicians don’t really sleep in. I’m having my second coffee of the morning and we’re about to start a rehearsal. I think there’s a misconception about what we do for a living. More often than not, people think we sleep ’til noon (I do love a good long sleep in), play around for the day and magically we are at a show and get to do what we love for an hour or so, then we’re back in our cozy little beds for the night.

It would be cool we could magically crinkle our noses, land in a foreign country, have our work permits in hand, all our gear, with dozens of hotels, flights, & interviews booked, and go from gig to gig without having to sit in a van or bus for hours and days.

I feel a bit like George Bush (ugh) when I say ‘This is hard work’. I love what I do. I really do. But when I’m home, I spend so many freaking hours at this computer, rather than on my instrument, doing the business side of things, that sometimes I forget that I am not a secretary, and I’m actually a full-time touring musician. Right now, my calluses are failing me and I have dish pan hands from being off the road. Thankfully, the fun part begins all over again on Saturday morning. We are doing 8 or 9 shows in Ontario before we fly to Belgium to release our new album. Honestly, it’s a blissful job when you are actually on the road, touring. But I love what I do for a living, so I should never complain about the work involved. Shame on me.

Lisa

So I’ve already written 2 blogs this year and never posted them. I don’t know why it’s such a problem for me. I sit at the computer, I type, and then I stare at it for about 10 minutes before shoving it into my drafts folder, to look at later on in the day. Who am I kidding? They never get posted. The story or information or whatever I am writing, becomes seemingly obsolete by the time I readdress it.

I’m a failing blogger.

Why is it that I consider myself a perfectionist when it comes to some things, but can be absolutely dreadful at other things without breaking into a cold sweat? I know blogging is the way of the future, or rather, the now, but it just seems too damn hard to me. I’m writing this, actually wondering if I will post it or not. If I do, then I am turning over a new leaf. I will become the Madison Violet Blog Queen. Okay, I’m deeming myself that from this point on. If I don’t live up to it, I will not get that gold star that everyone wants on the top of their virtual page.

Why do today what I can put off until tomorrow? That’s been my internet motto for several years now. I guess it’s time to turn over that new leaf, or dig a bigger hole to get into.

Lisa (the MVBQ)

How can it be legal for retailers to leave the doors of their stores propped wide open in the hopes of enticing shoppers in with blasts of arctic air conditioning?

Here I am in Hawaii and I can’t even go into any shops without a sweater on .. and I mean a thick sweater. I walk out chilled to the bone, fingers numb, goose bumps.. it’s awful. There are at least 100 ABC convenience stores in Waikiki beach and they are the worst culprits. I have to walk on the far side of the sidewalk when I walk past them just so I don’t freeze. Don’t get me wrong .. I don’t HATE A/C .. I even use it from time to time in the car when It gets unbearable but when I get on a shuttle bus and it’s bitterly cold, I can’t hear myself think over the pumping air conditioning fan - that just pisses me off. I can understand when you have people boxed into a sealed, confined area - you need to keep the temperature bearable but most office buildings are running AC year round - even in the frigid northern wilderness of Toronto!

Why can’t we come up with a temperature law - 24 degrees seems about perfect. You set your A/C below 24 and you get a fine. You leave your doors open for more than a minute, another fine. Big ones too! It’s not even that hot here .. the humidity level is tolerable and yet I have to wear jeans to go to a restaurant for dinner. You don’t find this is Europe, Austrailia or the Caribbean, only in Canada and the US - we are gluttons for air conditioning.

Again, we are in a tropical destination and Lisa wore a toque to breakfast. Nuff said.

A week at the Hilton in Waikiki beach… a much needed rest. We began our day with blueberry pancakes.. one order for two. Holy american size portion. We didn’t even get through one of them between us… we had them packed to go.

We walked into a little juice and smoothie cafe and noticed the sandwich menu -

item 1. Veggie sandwich
item 2. Spam sandwich

I couldn’t believe my eyes .. do people really eat spam? Sick.

Flash flood warnings today. Awesome. Torrential rain kept us indoors all morning but it cleared up for a few hours in the afternoon .. long enough for a nice walk on the beach, lunch at Cucharachas where, despite the name had delicious fajitas and passion fruit margaritas.

Dexter season 3, episode 8 is on the agenda for this rainy evening.

We begin our final day of the tour on the Mediterranean coast in the city of Valencia. Ron, Jason and Evan have one more show to go, after tonight in Mallorca, but our last performance will be tonight in Murcia. The five of us went out for a feast of paella at a typical spanish restaurant on the beach before beginning the journey to Murcia. It’s the first time we’ve left the bus unaccompanied with all the gear in it on this entire tour, so as much as we were all enjoying our lunch, I think we were all a little bit stressed about it.

This region of Spain we’re driving through right now is mountainous. The terrain is quite rocky and there are palm trees and evergreens every where. I happened to look out the window to see a fortress on my right at the top of a a narrow cliff and 5 paragliders who seems to have been lucky enough to locate a thermal, hovering over a mountain on my left.

I’m looking forward to getting home and cooking. I want to make dumplings and tons of veggie stews …mmm. I have not been eating enough vegetables and I’m really craving them. Too much starch and junk food on the road. Here’s a good recipe I made up for serving with dumplings. Oh and my favourite dumplings are filled with sweet potato and leeks.

Recipe for marinade
1 minced hot chili
1 clove garlic
3 tbsp sugar
1/3 cup water
1 1/2 tsp fresh lime juice
4 tbsp fish sauce
1 tbsp soy sauce
1/3 cup passionfruit juice
stir well
add 2 tbsp of shredded carrot

Brenley

We watched Hannibal and The Red Dragon to pass the time on the bus. Lisa had her eyes covered for most of it. She was not pleased.