Dentist Canadian Tour Log

Dentist and Windigo

Part the First

by Justin Bornemann

We knew we were going to Canada to play Canadian Music Week, but we initially thought that we would do a weeklong tour at most. Unexpectedly, a band from Canada called Windigo -- who are awesome, by the way -- asked us to join them on a month long tour from Vancouver to Toronto. Dentist had never done a month long tour; and there were many obstacles to overcome, like getting off work for a month, and not having a drummer and bass player who could do it, but we decided not to let those minor details stop us. Besides, booking a tour really sucks, and hopping onto one that was already booked was a very agreeable prospect.

On March 21st, we flew into Vancouver with our luggage, a few pedals, some merch, a bass, and a guitar. Despite the fact that Emily didn't play bass, aside from doing a Pixies cover set on Halloween one year, she rose to the challenge of being our low end. We sold my Fender Jazz Bass (I have two) to get a Fender Mustang that would suit her better.

We decided to take another risk and ask Windigo's drummer, Mitch, to play drums for us despite never having played with him before. Windigo sounded really good on recording, so we figured, why not? What's the worst that could happen besides his not bothering to learn any of the songs? We arranged our schedule so that we had two days in Vancouver to organize and rehearse before the start of our tour. On a side note, I should mention that we were in the process of moving the week before our tour; and it was probably one of the most stressful weeks ever with all we had to get done, organize, and lift.

Things got off to a rocky start when we overslept for our flight. After realizing we weren't going to make the train in time to get to Newark airport, we started to drive in that direction to possibly catch a different train. As we were driving, Emily asked to see the flight info; and she noticed that the flight was actually leaving from LaGuardia Airport not Newark. My bad.

It seemed we had no choice but to drive there. With not enough time to figure out anything, we ended up parking in a lot that was 60 dollars a day and only meant for temporary parking because it was the first lot we saw. Calculating how much this would cost us was very stressful to put it mildly, but we didn't want to miss our flight and it would have to be figured out later. I left the parking lot ticket in the glove compartment as I started thinking about who would be able and willing to pick up the car for us, and we rushed to make our flight just in time.    

The flight was long, had a layover, and we flew with the lovely people of United, who really know how to treat their passengers. Upon arrival, we found that they had thrown our merch case, as opposed to maybe placing it as they were loading it, and they smashed the shit out of it. We gathered our things and made our way toward our rental car, a Mazda 5, and headed toward our Airbnb. While we drove, we noticed that Vancouver is a beautiful city with great mountain views and a Seattle-type climate. One of the highlights about the west coast is looking at the mountains as you drive, but I'll discuss more later on.

Traffic light with mountains

Are you ready for out first culture shock? Upon arrival to our Airbnb, we were told to take off our shoes before entering! This place was not what I would call nice. Don't get me wrong it was fine, and it was only 40 dollars a night or something; but this was a very surprising request to us. Our initial reaction was, “Wow, really?  You think your house is so fucking fancy?” But, it turns out, our host was nice and that Americans are just slobs that never take their shoes off when they go to someone's house; while it's pretty much universally done in Canada. Someone later asked us when I told them that we don't usually take off our shoes in the States, “Do you guys just mop all the time or something?”  Fair enough.

Seattle-type climate

After dinner and a night's rest, we first had to figure out what to do about the car. I contacted my friend Santo to see if he could be persuaded to pick it up for me. We went to the post office and overnighted him the key, but this mistake would set us back 300 bucks when all was said and done. Better than leaving it there and a lesson learned. From now on, just pay for a ride to the airport.

After taking care of the car, we were ready to rehearse with Mitch, the drummer from Windigo. This tour, like any tour I'd imagine, was a series of ups and downs. It's one of the most fun things to do in my opinion, but you never know what to expect; and we left a lot of possibilities open for things to go wrong. I've laid out a lot of bad stuff already, but our first "victory" took place when we discovered that Mitch is an awesome drummer who put some serious effort into learning our songs. Emily did a great job playing the bass, and I did my best to fill up any empty space since we are usually a four piece. For better or worse, we had a band that sounded good and was ready to go across Canada.