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The band had come and gone on European soil. In between touching down after the BJB Euro tour of 2007, Little Miss Risk went off to commune with her burlesque sisters and then came home to take off again on the road. John was fixing his boat, s-sCare-oline was plucking her banjo, and JT was learning new tricks of the stick. Perhaps I should stop and introduce myself. Again. My name is still Todd, and I am still a leopard. However much a handicap that people tend to view that, unlike the rest of my ilk, I spend my days travelling with the band instead of crouching in the jungle bush. It is as harrowing a life for any sweet jungle cat as living in the forest primeval, but it does give me insight into the world of bands. Rather like Jane Goodall and the apes. I may not blog, but this is as close as it gets in my life. Here I've collected some sordid summer stories of the bands tales. Some pretty, some ugly and all somewhat interesting ... here for your reading delight is the summer of 2007.
A short tour through BC and Alberta was the plan in order to play the 2007 North Country Fair. We decided to give one Luvroc sister a break and bring aboard the elder Luvroc sister, Camaro who needed a break from Vancouver. It started out on a hot June day, with a drive to Golden and being, just a smidgen late. But the old saying goes, "Leave them wanting more," though I suppose in our case it was "Start them wanting more,". Once we hit the stage the crowd was appreciative with willing 'patients' clamouring for Voodoo Dollz medical treatment. I guess they've worked out a spoonful of Jager helps the medicine go down in that town! After Golden we went over to Edmonton and the crowd there was as faithfully crazy as it ever was, with hula hooping, masked luchador singers, and heavy metal grinders to go with the usual assortment of BJB hijinks. I think our afterparties are as much an institution as the show itself now! Daaaaamn!
Over to Red Deer to play the Vat. A far-reaching wing of the Unlucky Ones (Kustom Kar club) were out in force, luckily for us, and we were happy to gawp at their wheels. Even though the band was almost done, never underestimate the power of the performance high mixed with Red Bull and Jager. It is a potent alchemic combination! We turned up the A/C and pointed the Palace north to Grand Prairie to see our pal Earl, formely of the "A" in Red Deer now manning the York Hotel. One could even call him the "Grand Old Duke of York". He showed us a fine time and the same hospitality that he has always given us. If you don't recall, he was the one who cleared John's "sick bowl" from the stage the night he got severe food poisoning in Red Deer. Not many club owners are willing to do that! Finally – we come to the North Country Fair. Located in the wilds of northern Alberta you wouldn't find this roadside distraction unless you were looking for it. Even our faithful GPS was doubtful and showed us hovering over a kind of no man's land. Not usually a good sign – but the crew were well versed in the needs of arriving bands and quickly made us feel at home. They were even kind enough to provide the Dollz with their own dressing rooms. The music was varied and came from all over. sCare-oline joined in with the other belly dancers while Little Miss Risk grabbed her hoop and gyrated with the other hula hoop dancers. BJB was scheduled to hit the stage last on teh Saturday night and what an event that was!! The crowd was well warmed up (and I suspect shroomed - leopards know these things) and some 4000 peeps were ready to rock! When the Dollz slipped the crowd the first glace of pastie action the noise that went up was that to rival any home team scoring at an NHL game during the Stanley Cup! Not a bad way to introduce yourself to the North Country! Back to Vancouver for a slight respite and then back out again to Kelowna for the Cycle Logic Canada Day BBQ and Show and Shine. It was the first time in a long time playing Kelowna and it was a blast playing for our first time up there. As usual the afterparty spawned blackmail material galore. Here's hoping the photographer doesn't have a way of posting them online before we can mail them a bribe!
We must have had the BBQ juju that summer, since the next show we played was the Annual Canadian BBQ Championships as Dusty's pub in Whistler. Always a pleaser and as usual the lure of the pulled pork brought the crowd out (and a few bears too) but it was the music that made them stick around. The only one who missed out was Lil Luvroc (sorry darlin' that's the life of a vegetarian, but we still love you regardless). Can we top that in our stomping grounds? An upside down, rusted out Land Rover Some road kill that had become Possum Pate Plants growing up and around a old car So it was with a great relief we made it to the Lodge with nothing worse than the pressing need for a little Gravol. A night of drinking combined with winding backroads equals disaster to the upholstery in a van! The show went off and everyone had a blast, with some of our Tofino friends making the trek over to party with us! We had a few weeks to trade Luvroc sisters (Lil for Camaro) and pack up the Palace for the States for a west coast tour. We started off at El Corazon where we lured Jesse (from The Wages Of Sin) and Adrian out to see us and we had to be very sneaky about drinking our Jager ... then down to Portland to crash into Dante's where the Exotica Girls were performing overhead. I think the band might have gotten a few cramps in our collective necks from looking up at them during the set! Afterwards we had scotch and confections from Voodoo Donut. Of course we did!
Further down the road in Eugene at Diablo's Downtown, where we made some new friends who invited us to play their bar in Medford the following night so we rolled over to Johnny B's and the locals got the jungle drums thumping! Then to good old Bakersfield ... well, we weren't late this time around, but it was hotter than hot. It might have had something to do with the blooming problem with the van's A/C or it could have been the audience members at Fishlips ... either way no one is safe from a visit to Bakersfield (sorry about all the spike holes in your lawn Joe and Trish) and we woke up in the morning with one of our number still kind of drunk, one with his pants hanging off the back of the van doors (we're still trying to figure out how THAT happened) and one now fully defunct A/C. Such is life. Then towards Santa Monica for the Summer Strummer Festival where we shared a stage with Eddie Spaghetti's band and the Lonesome Hearts. The Santa Monica Mirror called us the most surprising band at the festival, which went a long way after we watched our mirror glass melt off and smash on onto Hollywood Blvd. Ah, rock'n'roll, gotta love it.
So we were in LA and checking out all the glorious Hollywood things in the middle of the summer. The hottest summer on record for as long as anyone could recall. I ask you to remember this to keep our tale in context. So, we're in LA, there's a heat wave, and our A/C is broken. This is important since we were headed to Las Vegas, and it's difficult to go from one place that you know is already pretty hot to the desert. I think, on the great control panel in the sky, our irony warning light had come on. It didn't matter since once we were in Vegas, Camaro, s-Careoline and JT went exploring and John and LMR camped out at the local Ford dealership hoping to get the problem rectified and they did... kind of... (turns out banging the broken part will get it to start working again. True story) The show at the Dive bar was a hoot with LMR's friends from Exotic World coming out to say hello as well as the girls drinking from the beer bongs. LMR had to be carried out by the end of the night and loaded in the trailer... serves the little minx right! ;)
From Vegas we headed to Phoenix then off into the night (and the desert) towards Denver. We bought a collection of tacky roadside bric-a-brac (something about sleep deprivation and overheating might have caused this) but we rolled into Denver and hit the beautiful Bluebird Theatre. If you look closely at the stage if you've ever there, you'll note that JT finally got top billing...
Over to Salt Lake City, where the girls nearly burned down the house (never get LMR riled up about law enforcement!) with the Utah County Swillers. It was good to meet up with Durwood and Sweatin' Willie, who we finally managed to tag again after two years. About time! From Salt Lake City over to Bozeman to rock out at the Zebra. Helluva fun place to end the heat wave ! Jagermeister "100,000 Cases in Canada" Party The summer heat wave tour was over, but we weren't going to let the fire go without a fight. A good way to keep the fires burning was to fly in and play in Toronto at the Jagermeister 100,000 Case Party. As a Jager-sponsered band, we feel that we humbly did our share in the consumption of that number. So for this party, the line up including Toronto's White Cowbell Oklahoma, we kidnapped Miss Cherry Ontop to come for our overnight stay and the party. The whole night was a blast – orange carpets, Jaggerettes, and additional burlesque by Little Miss Risk and Cherry Ontop. Things got a little out of hand after the show (Little Miss Risk going onto Drunken Scottish Autopilot, photos taken in showers, room hopping and occasionally getting the wrong room, etc) and John's mad hotel shower bash - but that's what happens when you open Pandora's Box... and the box is a bottle of Jager... and it's on tap.
"And a few other things ... " The next show we did was a home town show at the Plaza with White Cowbell who were on tour and cool band from Wisconsin called The Wildbirds. Nothing like having Jager throw you a little party at home to keep the home fires burning! We had Lil' Luvroc aboard to perform with us and made sure that we brought the house down and then stayed to take in the antics of the WCO boys. The things those boys can get up to with a roll of toilet paper! It beats the conventional use of the product, let me tell you...
We had two shows over on Vancouver Island later in the month, one in Nanaimo at the Malaspina University for the college crowd (some folks were getting into the Halloween spirit early) and one up in Cumberland at The Waverly for our Hell-O-Ween Night show with lots of additional burlesque courtesy of one of the troupes from Campbell River - Sweet Tease Burlesque. The Dollz dressed up hot enough to make cold blood run hot and our emcee even dressed himself as Alice Cooper, circa Welcome To My Nightmare. Approved! Normally we're not as gentle as this, but we decided to break in new Doll, Lola Frost, gently. Normally it's jumping into a tour with both feet, but in November we did three dates and gave her just a little taste of tour life. Suffice to say, she is still on the rodeo bull that is the tour animal, and we're happy to have this flapper girl (in her own Roaring Twenties) along for the ride. So we started her off in a perfect location, at the Royal in Nelson. She kept up with the frantic pace even when the gold skeletons blew apart (hey, it's not a party until there's desecration of the dead!). Our friends from Kelowna came out to the show as well as an appearance by BJB's brother Bruce. As usual the night wound down (or up?) at Brendan's house where the BC/DC master was lord of the blender drinks...
We travelled to Calgary the next day to play at the Mount Royal College with our friends of old, the Rambling Ambassadors. There were Gretschs a-plenty on stage that night and we made some new friends up on campus. Daddy Frost even made it out to see the show! Not a bad way to spend the night! The next night we were in Red Deer where we got up to no good and s-Careoline's parents joined in the fun... these dates were all about family reunions! Lucky we all have large levels of fun flowing in our bloodstreams, since the nights were a ton of fun and hotter than hell. Christmas comes but once a year, and this year BJB had a little something special for all the kids who had been EXTRA naughty in Victoria – a full length show with additional burlesque by Cherry Ontop, Lola Frost and Little Miss Risk as well as a set full of new numbers and one home-made Christmas carol. Daaaamn! And a specila emcee - Bad Pat! We can assure you that the band was naughty, so you didn't have to be, and we'll all be having a BBQ on John's boat this summer with the contents of his stocking... (yep, he got lots of coal – sometimes you have to take one for the team). The Voodoo Dollz were decking the halls, mostly with mistletoe, and handing out gifts of BJB and Jager swag from their Santa sack of sass. It almost makes it worthwhile being good all year for a pay off like that at the end of it!
2007 had come and was almost gone, but not before we made a trek up the mountain to Whistler for a farewell party to the year past. For the occasion, the band turned Dusty's into a big top and made the usual three ring circus into an actual three ring circus, complete with sexy side show! Side show acts featured sCare-oline as the belly dancing fortune teller, Little Miss Risk as the tightrope walker and Lola Frost as the traditional hurly-burly carnival girl. The crowd was revved up by the time the ringleader (John) marshalled the band up onstage and we suffered only minor setbacks (one broken dance platform). Not a bad way to end the year. What's our resolution for 2008? To have more fun!
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