>> media // ache brasil salmon arm tour: 08.15.03

For the Roots n Blues Festival in Salmon Arm, I was called in to substitute for keyboard player Nick Apivor with Ache Brasil. I have played many an occassion with this group on bass guitar which allowed me to get through the tunes with relative ease. Road trips are so much fun when it's with nice people and great players, and in this case, I travelled up with guitarist Budge Schachte, bassist/driver/ageist/luthier Laurence Mollerup and percussionist Ivan Soto Matos. Being the young guy, once again, it was great to hear all of the stories of the Vancouver scene from these experienced musicians. Funny moments included imitations of British skiffle musicians turned famous pop stars to funnier moments of ageist remarks being flung in all directions. A hilarious video about thumb slapping with Laurence and Budge can be found by clicking here. [may take a while to load, but well worth it!]

It was a particularly scorching summer in British Columbia and as many as 865 individual forest fires were in effect. We chose to take a route that saw us take the Coquihalla Highway through to Merritt, Kelowna and finally Salmon Arm. There was a lot of ash in the air and in the sky was particularly grey from the smoke. At the gig itself, I noticed the accumulation of ash on my keyboard and who only knows how much of that stuff we all breathed in. The Roots n Blues Salmon Arm festival was incredibly well organized in spite of the scheduling chaos caused by flights and performers being delayed or not arriving from Eastern North America because of the massive blackout. The festival personnel were top notch and really knew how to take care of the performers.