Year End Review and the Coast Percusssion Syndrome

2018 was a busy year for the band. At the beginning of the year we were really out gigging as Bag Of Snakes but as we covered more and more material from The Rebel Wheel catalog it became fairly obvious that we were quickly becoming the next iteration of THAT band. My Aunt (who is in hospital right now) told me that "Snakes" is an unpleasant word with bad connotations and my very good friend Rachel actually shuddered when I told her our name. So. Bag Of Snakes is no longer a band, it is instead just another album in the ever-growing Rebel Wheel canon (albeit a more hard-rock "angular garage-band" album than usual).

There have been lots of high moments this year. It was a delight to watch my friend Tara develop as a seasoned and confidant performer (she was already a strong song-writer but even that aspect of her career has developed too). Watching her become more and more at ease with the stage and allowing me to be part of that growth was a real privilege for me. Local song-writer and leader of The PepTides, Claude Marquis drafted me into his band for his first solo show featuring his "folky" tunes. The show was a great success and we have re-kindled a very strong working relationship.

Another PepTide front-person, Dee Dee Butters, also decided to start her own solo career and I was honoured and delighted to be asked to join her in her jazz gigs. We play as a duo, or sometimes as a a trio with PepTides, Rebel Wheel bassist Andrew Burns.

I also have been doing a lot of solo gigs myself, mostly jazz guitar "chord solos", where I might play any number of standards or originals playing the melody in four part harmony, usually with contrasting motion bass lines. It is a challenge but is immensely fun as well.

But it wasn't all lavender and jazz. I went on perhaps the single worst road-tour of my life in the spring. The much touted "East Coast Mini Tour" was a disaster from the get-go. In retrospect I should never have climbed into the car when the "driving force" of the project arrived an hour early and over-the-top-surly at 5am. We all scurried about in a panic so that when we left (an hour ahead of schedule and grumpily impatient), it ended up I had forgotten my wallet. I noticed about 100 miles in and spoke up, thinking that we still had plenty of time to turn around and fetch it. The driving force bluntly refused so I was looking at a ten day tour with no money of my own. As another friend of mine said, I should have gotten out of the car right then and there, but as I was the "band" for both artists I felt duty-bound to stay.

I am not going to detail each and every abuse I endured along the way, but the gigs were done against a back-drop of escalating tension and many whispered conferences and dirty looks. It all came to a crashing halt in Halifax when I was onstage enduring abuse hurled at me from the driving force who had perched herself at the bar (much to the bar-tenders dismay). It all got messy: she was booted out and everything went due south. I originally detailed EVERY abuse that night when I first posted this, now I will leave it at it being the lowest point in my entire career.

Of course it all worked out but now I know EXACTLY why Rachel shuddered and my aunt warned me when I told them my band was called Bag Of Snakes. When you actually meet a true snake it is a totally disgusting experience.