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Mike W. Bryant
Staff columnist
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Well, they were a near bloody mess by the time I got them to their sound check at the Northern Arts and Cultural Centre Thursday night.
With pain etched on their faces, Chris Durand , Jeremy Doody and Steve McGonigle eyed the burbling lacerations on their hands like condemned men would reading their death warrants. I thought for sure that I had just signed my own.
These guys were hired gun musicians from Edmonton, brought up to back up a pair of local ladies, Cynthia Russell and Sandy Pringle, who were launching their brand new CDs Thursday.
They'd surely kill me if I brought them back to the theatre with every guitar-pickin' finger perforated with pike wounds.
"You got any Crazy Glue?" asked Chris. "I'll be OK if you just got some Crazy glue."
I gotta say, I love slough shark season. Them little lizard heads are the funnest things since lawn darts. This time of year, you can go down to the ol' fartknocker hole and throw in a water buffalo carcass and them little buggers will have nipped it clean within two minutes. They're worse than piranhas.
A couple years back, a few of us had a contest to see who could catch a pike with the most ridiculous lure possible.
The winner was Coco Cabana Barbie with a big snelled hook threaded between her feet. There was only a pike-slimed plastic torso left by the time we were done.
Of course, all hell broke loose. Suddenly, Chris Durand had this eight-pound pike clamped around his wrist. Blood was gushing everywhere in a geyser of gore. Then I looked over, and another musician was badly bleeding and under attack.
All I really had on the boat were some wet naps, which was hardly enough to staunch the flow of blood spurting out of first Chris's fretting hand, and then Jeremy's.
That's when Chris asked if I had any Crazy Glue. He figured it was the perfect thing to help seal and cauterize his wound. I did have some at one time when I was plugging up a few holes on the poop deck, but I was out now. To stem the tide of panic, the boys started smoking more. It was kind of a weird scenario because I quit smoking cigarettes almost two months ago. I've been avoiding smokers and smoking ever since and here I was trapped on a boat with a bunch of nic-weed fiends.
Actually, I haven't been able to quit nicotine all together just yet. I've been sucking back about 15 ampules a day with a nicotine inhaler.
Frankly, I'm about as tweaked out as a pine weasel in a tuna cannery. All the boys said they were thinking of giving up the smokes as well, just not while they were bleeding.
"I'm going to go on the patch," said Chris.
"I haven't tried it before but I have tried the inhaler. It burns the back of your throat a little too much."
Actually, I like it. Maybe a little too much, but for someone who's attempted to quit smoking 13 times in the past four years it's about as good as it gets.
By and by, the boys performed remarkably well at the show, and Sandy and Cynthia sounded great. There was only the odd time where one of the guys had to stop playing and shake a hand in agony but other than myself I don't think too many people noticed.
Cheers boys. Chris, by the way, has a new album coming out and plans to be back real soon.
- Mike W. Bryant is an editor with Northern News Services