Thunder Bay Ontario

We had come in from Manitoba through freezing rain into Thunder Bay. It was the last show of tour, with another 19 hours of driving before we were home. We’d been on the road for two months straight, and had been unceremoniously banned from an entire province for no reason other than the fact that the bible-belt of northern Alberta had deemed us to have the ‘potential’ to be considered ‘bizarre, grotesque, and offensive’. Suffice to say tensions were running high and we were hoping for a good show.

We had performed in Thunder Bay on the trip west at the beginning of the tour, and somehow managed to spend three days there over Easter in what appeared to be the set of a zombie holocaust movie. While seeking out the venue the first time through town we were accosted by an elderly homeless woman with dementia. Later that night a freak blizzard hit town dumping around 6 inches of snow during the length of our set. But the fans were great and Thunder Bay, which we had somehow lovingly dubbed ‘butt-fuck’ bay, has always been a good town to us and this night was no different. Tonight the fans came back, and were there to have a good time. The show was loose and the jokes were looser. The last time we were in town, Pepper somehow managed to extinguish a butane torch on his face. This, presumably, was mostly my fault since I was the one who put it out on his face. This night went off seamlessly however and was a fine end to what had been a long trek back and forth across the country.

At the end of the evening my friend Craig from the tattoo shop Ink Alley gave me this joke in response to the news of our recent ban in Alberta…

‘What’s the difference between cowboy hats and tampons?’

‘Cowboy hats are for assholes.’