” … and if we can’t put her down in Halifax we’ll have to go to … uh … our alternate.”

The landing gear came down, but the dense grey fog prevailed, with no land in sight below us. At the very last minute of our descent, the nose pulled up sharply. The flight attendant answered her phone, listened and then announced:

” … we’re going to try again on the other runway, and if we’re unable to land there, we’ll go on to Moncton.” She smiled coyly. “Although the weather’s not that great in Moncton either …”

I was drifting in and out of a fitful upright unconsciousness. When my alarm woke me at 5:00 am, I’d had two hours sleep. Our second pass at the Halifax airport was no more successful than the first. Moncton was twenty minutes away.

Our show in Triton, Newfoundland was our third sold-out performance in our favourite province. Like both Gander and Port Aux Basques, the lively and loving crowd joined us in a fun-filled, large-scale, kick out the jams kitchen party. Although Triton is full of die hard Trooper fans, it lacks a hotel, so we didn’t arrive at our Deer Lake rooms till 3:00 am. Our flight boarded at 6:30.

Conditions over Moncton were identical to those at Halifax. We began our third descent through socked-in fog, trying not to consider what our options would be if we again failed to touch down. We peered into the unchanging grey until grass came into view. As we taxied to the terminal we had new issues to consider.

For reasons still unclear to me, our friend Jack Livingston, the promoter of the three Newfoundland shows, had booked our flights out of Newfoundland into Halifax, Nova Scotia despite the fact that we needed to get to a place called Neguac, New Brunswick – two hours out of Moncton. Four days earlier, in order to accommodate this far from perfect itinerary, we had left our two rental vehicles and some luggage behind at the Halifax airport. Now we were sitting on the runway in Moncton, much closer to where we needed to be, listening to the flight attendant discuss the possibility of flying back to Halifax, or, if Halifax remained unreachable, Montreal, Quebec.

Our crew had not slept at all. Dave, Randy and Richard had struck the stage and dead-headed to the Deer Lake airport. Pulling himself together, Dave began trying to convince the Air Canada ground crew to let us disembark the Halifax flight in Moncton while Smitty discussed options with the National car rental people. We left the plane twenty minutes later with a rough plan that involved Dave and Richard taking an Air Canada financed cab ride to Halifax to pick up the two vans while we drove on to the gig with Randy and the gear in two additional rented vehicles.

Before we left, Smitty and I picked up our complimentary Air Canada toiletry kits. The suitcases we had checked in Deer Lake were not on the plane.

I’m in a creative holding pattern, cycling through a daily regimen of familiar themes and experiences – phoning ahead to next week’s cities to discuss last year’s adventures. I feel like a snake that’s eating it’s tail. The perpetual Escher-esque self-reference that the book’s promotion necessitates has stolen my ‘now’.

I shouldn’t complain. I’m getting great reviews and sales are brisk. I’ve been offered daily interviews with press, radio and TV all over Canada. There were two this morning here in Kingston, and I have four tomorrow.

On Thursday I’m appearing on ‘Canada AM’ and, later that afternoon, ‘Entertainment Tonight’ wants to talk to me about “the sex, drugs and rock and roll aspect of the book”. I’ll also be having lunch with a friend who wants to talk about a show in which I would play “a version” of myself. Perfect. I’m already immersed in a similar role.

I’m awaiting inspiration. It’s a foolish conceit and I know it – yet I continue to expect an epiphany of some kind. I feel as though I’m reaching critical mass and that soon I will complete a complex artistic synthesis and, at some significant moment – perhaps the completion of the Toronto book launch event – I will ping like a microwave oven and know that I’m ready.

Ready to make something new.

Two Marshall amps sit on the sand. Waves crash in the distance as an orange west coast sunset burns through it’s final minutes of glory. A young man approaches, straps on a waiting Stratocaster and begins to play. Thunderous Jimmy Paige power chords echo across the beach.

The short film ends and I sit, transfixed, in the darkness – the only person in the small theatre. I was waiting at the entrance to the National Gallery of Canada when they opened the doors this morning.

I had wandered slowly through the lower gallery taking, as always, extra time with the Group of Seven, soaking up the power and tenderness of Tom Thompson and the majesty of Lawren Harris and J. E. H. MacDonald. I sensed my Dad’s presence beside me as I admired a Cornelius Kreighoff, one of his favourites. I stood with my nose nearly touching Alex Colville’s “To Prince Edward Island” and examined the thousands of tiny brush strokes that create the high-surrealism of his eerie and evocative paintings. In the Contemporary Gallery, I mounted a motorized office chair in a large interactive installation and, pedaling hard, failed to elicit the promised spinning. As I exited down the Gallery’s long staircase/ramp I could feel my creative batteries topping off.

Our return to the Ottawa Tulip Festival last night was a triumph over the elements and an excellent party, despite intermittent rain and a cold, biting wind that whistled past the Parliament buildings and across the large outdoor stage. As the crowd-lights came up in “Raise a Little Hell”, I could see the faces of thousands of brave concert-goers standing in the rain – arms in the air – shouting the words.

Lance Chalmers has returned for our summer tour – still the brother he became during his eight years with the band. He walked onto the stage in Sarnia, Ontario – after three years and no rehearsal – and dropped back into the slot without missing a proverbial beat. Ottawa is Lance’s home town and last night his parents, brothers, sisters in-law and their kids all partied happily backstage with us. Gogo invited two random teens in for orange juice and full deli-tray priviledges. They were visibly chuffed to be part of the action. Kids, parents and grandparents swarmed the t-shirt booth after the show. An eighteen year old girl told me I was “hot”.

A 9:30 show time put us back at the ‘Les Suites’ Hotel by 12:30AM. By 12:35 I was sleeping like a baby.

The first three days of the Spring tour were just an extension of the frenetic weeks that preceded them. At home, interviews about my just-released book complicated my usual pre-flight drill of trying to wrap-up family business whilst simultaneously wrestling last minute tour details. As usual, my eleventh-hour efforts to prevent something or someone falling through the cracks were unsuccessful. Instead of making more time for Debbie and Connor, who I wouldn’t see for a month, I squandered the time obsessively, refusing to acknowledge the one sure truth in life – that nothing is ever dependably finished.

I arrived at Vancouver International Airport with my backpack, my suitcase and a jacket pocket full of yellow post-it notes: “Find out about Ottawa flights”, “Insurance”, “Mike re: Horseshoe”, “Write Tom”…

It was somewhere between London and Cambridge, on Friday afternoon, when it happened. Kevin Gilbert’s CD was playing on the van’s stereo, the highway was smooth and traffic was moving swiftly. We were talking quietly about Gilbert’s lyrics, his brilliant arrangements, and the care taken in the album’s production. I took a sip of my coffee and glanced out the window at the green and wet Ontario scenery and, exhaling slowly, I felt my mind and body acknowledge the transition to that familiar sweet spot between yesterday and tomorrow – that road-wearied zone where time becomes relative and immaterial. I reached for the volume knob and turned up the music – and settled into road-mode.

In our Nelson, BC dressing room, Randy Bergner joked about falling asleep at the sound board with his arms on the faders, slowly nudging the volume higher as he fell deeper into unconsciousness. He had slept for only two hours since the show at the Delia, Alberta Community Hall the night before. He could barely keep his eyes open. Richard Nott, our new merchandise manager and guitar tech, seemed surprisingly fresh, despite having shared the cab of a five-ton truck with his fellow crew-members for a grueling 760 kilometer, ten hour drive. Our tour manager, Dave Hampshire, his head newly shaven for the April western tour, also seemed impressively unaffected by the hard work and long drives that had characterized the tour.

We had completed a dozen sold out shows in sixteen days, logged eight thousand kilometers on our rented gold Suburban, and crisscrossed the thawing prairies between Vancouver and Winnipeg. We were all tired, but energized by the incomparable buzz of being part of the Trooper touring machine.

Two weeks earlier, at the first band party of the tour – an acoustic jam in a Camrose Alberta hotel room – we realized that with Richard playing bass, Randy playing guitar, and Dave drumming, we could, potentially, have TWO bands on the tour. Part way through our Banff, Alberta show, “Funbucket” took to the stage, busting out a blazing version of Doucette’s “Mama Let Him Play”. They happily returned to the stage many times throughout the tour. The Nelson ‘end-of-tour party’ version of the song, with additional harmonies and percussion from Frankie, Scott, Gogo and I, was the tightest of the tour.

Gogo brought his violin – which he played frequently in small town Tim Hortons parking lots and hotel lobbies – and a ukulele – which eventually lead to a traveling Tiny Tim party. Scott and I worked our way through a collection of songs by “The Big Four” – Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Tony Bennett and Dean Martin. We refined the playlist to a fifteen-song set of classics that Scott rehearsed daily. We downloaded videos of the Dean Martin show and Frank Sinatra concert clips that we watched as we rolled down the highway. Nothing brain-bombs more effectively than songs like “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love” and “Ain’t That a Kick In the Head” and I spent most of the tour singing like Frank, Dean or Tony. Scott plans to become a crooner, a perfect fit for his rich baritone voice – and by the end of the tour he was confidently singing those brilliantly constructed songs, performed originally by true vocal masters.

After the final show, the band and crew relaxed in the candle-lit dressing room with some new Nelson friends. An Irish tenor, sitting across the table from me, got everyone singing “Lean on Me”. A surprising number of our guests sang well, dropping in harmonies and soulful licks. Another song followed and voices grew stronger. I smiled around the room at my traveling companions and savoured the moment.