The kindness of strangers...

And the beauty of friends.

I've made a lot of remarks as of late that went a little something like those two sentences. Anyone in a band knows that it's your friends who give you a chance at success. Because they're the ones who go to your first few shows and give you the chance to sink or swim. After that, you begin to rely on the kindness of strangers. People that have no reason to be kind to you or give you the time of day. And yet, they do.

I was at Yonge & St. Clair a few days ago (literally pounding the pavement and dropping off press kits for the band to important people - and by important, i mean money-giving) and I actually stopped walking because I had such vivid memory wash over me.

About 7 years ago, just after my closing night for a production of Anne of Green Gables that I was doing (it was actually a pretty good show, despite the saccharine quality of of the piece), my friend, Suresh and I had done a swift and thorough job of hurting ourselves with alcohol. This was just the end of a fantastic and bizarre summer (we lived in a house with no cutlery, no plates, no food and no pots or pans, with a sociopathic liar, a three-legged cat who liked to shit in the air ducts and sattelite tv - which became an excuse to wake everyone in the house EVERY time the movie Armageddon came on [I believe the final number was 14 times in August]) and as such, the evening went on too long and we consumed waaaaaay too much booze. My friend Larissa was kind enough to drive me home to Toronto the next day. Little did she know what a favour that was.

Now. Kingston to Toronto is about 2 hours. There are several rest stops along the way. Three, I think. Usually, they're not necessary, unless you're completely famished or have a weak bladder. We made all three stops on this trip. None of them were because of the previously mentioned criteria. On this journey home, I vomited in two McDonald's restaurants, an enchanting and strange little wonder of Ontario called 'The Big Apple' (it - apparently - is the worlds biggest apple, by the way) and finally capped it off with one more bout of vomiting at the McDonald's at Yonge & St. Clair where I was dropped off.

This isn't a story about boasting. Yes, that's a lot of vomiting, but I don't enjoy relishing in the more foolish moments of my past. But my girlfriend, who - at that time - was a lovely young woman named Lori Duncan, went well beyond the realm of kindness that day. She had no reason to pity me, love me or take care of me on that fine August afternoon. If your boyfriend has been away for two months and you've only seen him twice in that time and he has the nerve to show up in a state resembling a background dancer in Michael Jackson's Thriller video, then I believe you're entitled to say, "You're an asshole. Call me when you're less so." But she just looked at me, shook her head, smiled and helped me home to her apartment.

Why? I have no idea. And that's how I've felt these past two or three weeks. So many people have been kind to us with no particular reason.

This band has amazing friends. We have amazing girlfriends and wives. We have fantastic family (and some of us are clinging to them dearly right now and thinking of them often). And we have beautiful, kind strangers (you know who you are). This is just a little post to say, 'thank you'. It's easy to forget to say that when we're on stage posturing and strutting and slamming our guitars. But without all of you - friends, loved ones and strangers - we'd have given up long ago. All I ask is that you - if you have it to give - keep the kindness coming and we'll keep better and better music coming your way. Dig it.