dude ranch – Jean-Paul De Roover

March 16th & 17th – London and Ottawa

March 21, 2012March 21, 2012 By Jean-Paul De Roover Tagged as avant garde bar, BBQ, dude ranch, FUBAR, green beer, london, northern ontario, Ontario, Ottawa, shirt, Socialism, St Patrick's Day, tour, Year of the Loop

Finally played at the Dude Ranch in London! It’s this awesome punk rock basement where they host shows on weekends, and I was originally scheduled to play there a while back, but the basement flooded. I was glad to be back in a little haven of Northern Ontario settled in the South. Seriously, everyone involved in that house is either from TBay, Schreiber, Marathon, Terrace Bay, etc. Unfortunately, they’re moving out / moving on, so this was the 3rd last show at the house. I only managed to take one photo throughout the whole night, but there was lots of sweat, singalongs and BBQ throughout the whole night! Big thanks to the fellow Ranchers for hosting me, and I’ve already been sporting my new shirt for the past few days.

Here’s the snapshot of Thousand Young, but Black Frame Spectacle and Arkham Dispatch also killed it that night.

Thousand Young at the Dude Ranch - London, ON

Ottawa was a fun time – y’know – hanging with Ignacio and Alicia (the usual folks I spend my birthdays with), but this time it was a St Paddy’s day partay. Josef Mieto (Ottawa), Redbird (Vancouver) and Portage and Main (Vancouver) also joined me at the Avant Garde Bar – where the theme isn’t so much green, but red – it’s a socialist Russia themed bar. Again, my pipes and shirt fit the theme well and I didn’t have to worry about colour coordinating with the occasion. Turnout was decent, but thankfully we didn’t get a lot of the rowdy green-beer-drinkin’ drunks. I think they were upstairs with Deaner from FUBAR.

London – a moment of fail, but friendship wins

March 21, 2011 By Jean-Paul De Roover Tagged as dude ranch, flood, grooves records, in-store, london, mini skirts

I wrote earlier that I have a ton of friends in Ottawa, which is true, but I think I may have a similar number of friends in London. Regardless, everytime I always end up staying at Reggie’s place. This time though, him and his housemates (all TBay ex-pats, and 3/4 of the band Freeground) had finally gotten their band going. They were scheduled to play Saturday night with me, at what was going to be an awesome basement show at a place called The Dude Ranch. They even have their own t-shirts!

In-store pipes - photo by Shannon Lepere

The bad news, however, was that their basement flooded, so the show was canceled. This was a fail, but not so much their fault, as there was literally one brick in their basement that prevented water from flowing in, and this one wasn’t cemented in properly. Thankfully, Dustin (head Dude) was good friends with the band Staylefish playing at Call The Office that night (a legendary venue), and I was offered an opening slot on that show so that I could still perform somewhere that night. It was a ska-themed show, so I was the odd man out, but everyone still dug it, and I mean, c’mon, what’s not to like?!

Performing at Call The Office, London, ON - photo by Shannon Lepere

But, before that, I also did an in-store performance at Grooves Records. I had only found out about them since they had ordered physical CD’s of mine direct through CDBaby, so I looked them up and saw that they did in-stores, and were glad to have me!

In-store performance at Grooves Records, London, ON - photo by Shannon Lepere

Also, random side note; after the Call The Office show it was snowing crazy amounts (even a few hours before the show), yet I still saw the largest number of mini skirts walking around downtown in a blizzard thatI have ever seen in my life. You do realize that it’s early March in Canada, right?