Oh My Snare! tour dispatch

[Our friends in Oh My Snare! are currently on a West Coast tour through September 1st . We asked them to keep a tour journal so we can all find out what these French Canadians are up to as they traverse the wild, wild west. They enthusiastically obliged. Keep checking in for more stories as they circle around out west. If you live on that side of the country, go see them and tell them how great they are. Tour dates are more info here: facebook.com/ohmysnare. – Steve O]

Day 1 - Best Friends!!!

“What do you mean, you lost my luggage?” said Dan between two farts. As Canadians, flatulences are one of our preferred ways to deal with frustration, along with apologies and maple syrup binge drinking. Oh, after such a long flight, Dan could easily have lost his temper and yelled at the baggage claim guy, or sarcastically praised the stupendous efficiency of the airline he works for; but then again, that wouldn’t have been very Canadian of him, so he simply farted in disapproval, and Seb and I echoed his rear whisper to show our support. I tried to go for the seventh harmony, to which the attendant’s eyes immediately betrayed a blend of disgust and fascination. And off we went. Better things were waiting for us at the Denver terminal. Friends.

So yeah I feel I should introduce myself first. I’m Jorel and I have a touring problem. There. I said it. I always need to tour, even if I know for a fact that these few weeks of fun always end up ageing me well over my years, hindering my actual career, stealing vacation time from my girlfriend and by all accounts costing me a shit ton of money. In the scope of rational thought, every member of Oh My Snare! has all the reasons in the world to quit. Some of us have plans to live outside of Montreal, others a family or a business. So why do we go on with this ludicrous endeavor? Why would any 30-year-old decide to ride a van for hours and play for drunk kids and sleep on strangers’ floors? For the money? Definitely not; numbers don’t add up for small bands like us. For the fame? Nah, we scratched that out a long time ago. For the opportunity of making new friends? I guess that’s it... Or at least that’s part of it.

So here we were, after 10 hours of saying that one weird Chinese textbook sentence (huo dao lao, xue dao lao) when passing Chinese people, drawing in Seb’s new Lord of the Rings coloring book and hijacking airport treadmills for egg-hatching purposes — Seb got his first Sandshrew, I got squat; we finally see our bandmate Lily waiting for us as our tired legs strolled confused through the terminal. Seb, as his prankster nature never sleeps, wanted to pretend we didn’t know her, but that didn’t catch on. This never-ending day had ridden me of all taste for mockery and I really just wanted to hug her guts out. Same with her fiancé Miggy and our Brooklyn-based lovely bitches CJ and Freya, who were sipping IPAs in the airport lounge. They offered us to finish up their beers, which is about the strongest evidence of true friendship one can ever hope to get, since those were airport drinks, the most unnecessarily overpriced item out there. You could see that Miggy and Lily were exhausted from Warped Tour, and happy to see fresh faces. Freya and CJ welcomed us with these smiles I had been longing for for way too long now. Then CJ couldn’t stop bragging about the fact that he had read the new Harry Potter book in one sitting. We acted as if we gave a fuck, as befits Canadian etiquette, and everything was just perfect.

Everything except Dan’s luggage, which was playing hard-to-get and got him to embark on the Kafkaesque venture of baggage claiming. As we’ve been told by an angry blonde chick clearly suffering from misplaced baggage herself, Air Canada (and therefore United) sucks dick at retrieving baggage. I’m gonna go ahead and play Lonely Planet here. Oh don’t you worry, we’ll be writing plenty of stupid puke-behind-the-van-at-4-am stories, I just thought we might address serious issues as well, starting with Air Canada/United’s reputation. So since I don’t wanna diss them for no reason, I guess you’ll see as the tour goes by. If Dan winds up wearing the same outfit in every single band picture, then you’ll know they suck dick.

It was late when we got in the van, so it was only natural that we’d talk about drinking your own semen and taking shits in bathtubs for the 2-hour ride. Miguel’s really my kind of guy, when it comes to story-telling. He’s funny-looking, tho… Freya tried to learn some French, so we taught her the Chinese sentence. She’s Australian, so she was suspicious. She kept repeating “Are you fair dinkum?”, which doesn’t mean shit if you ask me, but I didn’t complain and farted my irritation away, as I’m Canadian. It was a fun and smelly ride, overall, after which we got to Miggy’s place, where the best gift was waiting for us on his coffee table. An item of unfathomable value. A treasure of sorts, a real gem, for lack of a better word. Well he never said it was a gift, but he never said it wasn’t either, so I guess I’ll just take it and see what happens. An epiphany not unlike the biblical ones struck Seb as he turned the cover page. I literally saw a light emanating from the book and shining in his enraptured eyes. Tacopedia, it was called. Epic, bold, outrageous, kaleidoscopic Tacopedia, a compendium of higher knowledge said to contain the secrets and origins of mankind through the cryptic wording of ingredient lists and preparation tips. We never slept that night, and I don’t think we’re gonna be sleeping today, or even going to show up at tonight’s show. We’ve got years of Tacopedia to catch up on.

**Jorel sings, plays keyboards and guitars and shit in Oh My Snare! English is not even his first language, so please forgive all the mistakes, you obnoxious fuckface.