Get ‘er Done Tour, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Edmonton
After switching up the lineup and bringing Bitchin’ into the game, the ladies touched down in Winterpeg on Thursday afternoon in rapid succession. Mama Miche and Jubilee from Calgary, Kenzie Clarke from Victoria, and Roxy Cottontail fresh off of a rest in Toronto. We must not have read the fine print on the itinerary, because apparently battling the lady at the Hertz counter with the T-Rex arms was first on the list of to-do’s. Once we had sorted out a snazzy red Mazda 6 (with enough trunk room for the luggage of 4 women…you do the math) we were able to navigate ourselves into downtown Winnipeg and the suite hotel rooms waiting for us. Miche checked in the group and we were happy to discover that we each had our own bed…..well, that we each had our own THREE beds, kitchenette, dining room, and living room area. BAM! Depending on how you looked at it, it could have been a good thing or a bad thing….Good for having room to let your suitcase explode in girlish fashion, and have your choice of sleeping arrangements, bad in that it made for a harder job covering the surface area looking under each of the beds and in the closets before you went to sleep.
The Soundcheck at the venue for the evening, The Pyramid Cabaret, was about as nice a surprise as our life saving Pho at a Vietnamese Restaurant in Saskatoon. The Sound was money. When we headed out for dinner and found that we were going to be sharing the Thursday night crowd with another night hosted by new friends and Winnipeg/Guelph DJ heroes, Brock Goldngrams and Tim Co-op, we were a little worried. Turns out that Thursday was not our lucky strike, but we got to have some serious bonding with opening DJ, and all around rad chick, DJ Sw@t, got to meet Andy Samberg (or a reasonable facsimile), got to play “Name what that dude smells like”, and got to DJ some bumping tunes for those lucky kids who came to check us out. Roxy definitely got us through the night, playing some crazy ripping bass lines that kept them on the floor till 2:30. We kept our party super tight due to the impending 800km drive between Saskatoon and Winnipeg that we were to tackle in the am, but did manage to have one of the shots that was dubbed by Mama Miche especially for the tour: The Hand Job, or, Jamieson’s shaken on ice.
We were up early enough to take Roxy to Tim Hortons for her virgin run…..A coffee, some Canadian lingo, and a breakfast sanny saw her totally sorted and understanding why some Canadians need their Timmy’s like some people need crack. We piled in the car and headed out onto the plains, our new mascot, Sparkle-Eh the unicorn, seated comfortably on the dashboard. After falling in love with a wicked Baltimore DJ mix, Portage of the Prairies and their weird bikes, and the fact that we had discovered The Nothing from The Neverending Story, we were off and driving that Mazda 6 like a G6.
Putting autopilot on and resigning ourselves to the fact that we were in for an approx 10 hr drive we hit that highway like a bunch of pros. 7.5 hours motherfuckers. Saskatoon was waiting for us, and we were excited to all be there to play at Scratch (a personal favourite venue in Canada and home to the best host ever, Neil Malik.) Neil fed us amazing Indian tapas and the Gaff warmed up the room with his serious skills. When we hit the decks, a Red Bull fridge filled with Heineken, Red Bull, and a bottle of the Silent Bird (grey goose), had magically made its way onto the stage behind us……so we invented another tour drink :The Finger Bang….Vodka, Red Bull, and soda. Very interesting to request one of those from whoever is on making drinks duty…especially in a crowded and loud club……oh, and btw, we totally rocked Saskatoon…. Bitchin’ on opening with some Nu Disco jams, Roxy on second playing her “best set!”, and Jubilee getting into it with her signature bass.
The end of the night had Jubilee and Mama being a bunch of pot-heads as an homage to our friend DJ Ayres, many grammatically erroneous Twitter posts, and some attempts to cover INXS’s “I need you tonight” with a beer bottle ‘jug band’ accompaniment.
The first word out of everyone’s mouths the next morning was “PHO”, so we made our way to the gates of heaven, aka Vietnamese Restaurant. That place will bring you back from the clutches of bad feelings from the night before like nobodies business. We had fixed ourselves, and the days drive from Saskatoon to Edmonton was calling (and B.Traits was tweeting for us to get our asses in gear and get there so she could meet up with us) so on the road again we went. The drives through the prairies are sponsored by the numbers 1, 5, and 5, and the letters k, m, and /hr. Needless to say, we got to the hotel in a shorter amount of time than was originally calculated….suck it Google maps. Jubilee woke up just before we rolled into Edmonton as our friends gave us a full shout on their radio show,….going from full sleep to “WTF?!” was pretty amazing to witness.
The Edmonton show was awesome for having at least the rider set out in full force. The pros in all of us shone through, and we went to town on the sound systems in Temple/Brixx. Jubilee and B.Traits gave the basement a thorough bassy rinse out, and Bitchin’ and Roxy went 4/4 techy upstairs. We got to see a variety of past Get ‘er Done fans, Betti Forde’s friend Gerald, (such a doll), all the foosh/danksoul/treehouse peeps, and Colleen, our resident hottie and music nerd.
Things we’ve learned so far? Driving on straight highways without any music or cd’s because there is no ipod plug in sucks, Mazda’s are just Ferrari’s in disguise, PHO is the elixir of life and we will probably eat it ten times or more before the tour is finished, stuffed unicorns on the dash is better than a GPS, having a cigarette lighter adaptor to plug your chargers into in the car is essential when you are tweeting/texting obsessively trying to keep the drive boredom at bay, and Roxy Cottontail is an amazing addition to the Tour this time around, and we will all miss her as she’s finished her dates and has headed back to NYC.
Saskatoon is definitely in the lead for best show, but now we’re onto the west coast….where we almost lost our minds and livers last times. Let’s see what you got.
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