Pender Island

A starfish at Welcome Bay

I was over on Pender Island last weekend for a working holiday. Banquo was performing at the community hall on the Saturday, so Stephen and I rented a beautiful suite in a waterfront house located on the top of a cliff. We had our own private deck with a beautiful view - it was stunning!

Friday morning on the deck.

We didn't do much other than spend our mornings on the sunny deck drinking coffee and reading. The weather was perfect.. very sunny and 20-26° C. Welcome Bay was a five minute walk from the house and is only accessible during low tide. It was great for Woody (Stephen's dog) to play fetch in the water. We BBQ'd the first night, but ended up having the rest of our meals at the Hope Bay Cafe which was only a few minutes walk away. The food was very good and they immediately got two thumbs up for having eggs benedict on their menu - I love eggs benny!

Stephen and Woody playing fetch in Welcome Bay.

While the vacation part of it was wonderful, the concert did not go as well as we had hoped. We only had 10 people in our audience. Eek. We later found out that small audiences are normal for Pender. I'm not all that keen to play there again as we obviously lost money on the gig. It felt so odd to go from a sold out house on Mayne to almost nothing on Pender! We still gave those people a good show. After the show we all went to the place where the rest of Banquo were staying. It was one of the neatest places I've ever seen.

Springtime Haiku

Ah, the signs of spring!

These signs were posted outside the hotel that my office is located in. I'm guessing that some of their guests were getting attacked (heh-heh.. the crows don't like tourists, either).

May 31, 2007: One of the said crows decided to try to attack me today.. it almost got me! It came up on me from behind.. sneaky bugger.

Mayne Island show sold out!

Playing some tunes on the ferry deck on the way to Mayne Island!

Our show at the Mayne Island Folk Club last night was a complete success. Much to our surprise, the show was completely sold out; they were turning people away at the door! The audience enjoyed the show.. we got a standing ovation at the end of the show as well as the "foot stomp" after our encore. We were paid a percentage of the door sales -- it was well worth our while to do the show! I'm looking forward to visiting Mayne again; it's a lovely island.

How could we NOT get a picture with the sign for our show? :-)

The venue with the tour van parked out front.


Banquo in action!

Famous Puppet Death Scenes

"Death"

Last night Stephen and I went to see Old Trout Puppet Workshop's "Famous Puppet Death Scenes" at the Metro Studio. If Edward Gorey wrote puppet shows, this is probably what he would have come up with. If you have the opportunity, I highly recommend getting out to see it (it closes here in Victoria on Sunday). The Old Trout website is here and information for Victoria performances is located here.

New band photo

As mentioned in my previous post, we had a photo shoot with Barbara Pedrick the other night. Here's a proof of one of the full group shots. :)

Latest Banquo news

It's been a bit busy around here at Banquo HQ the past few days. I am quite proud of the lovely gig poster I created for our June 2nd gig on Pender Island, which you can view by clicking the image above. The finished poster size is 11x14 (legal size). I printed them today and they came out wonderfully. It was nice to see that I can still do print work after so many years of doing only web design!

This evening we met with Adrian Dolan of The Bills, who is indeed performing the final mixing and mastering of the new album for us. Over the course of the next week we will be getting the rough mixes finished, and then it's looking like next Friday/Saturday will be the time for Adrian to work his magic. After that it's only a matter of getting the CD duplicated (2-3 weeks). Taking the extra step of mastering will make a world of difference in the final product, so it's worth taking the extra time and expense to do this.

In addition to the above, we also spent a few hours with Barbara Pedrick at her photo studio this evening. She took shots of the five members together, individual portraits, and then some of the "Banquo-lite" trio for when Jude and Adam are touring. It was a great experience and Barbara was wonderful to work with. Not to mention that everyone looked fabulous in their costumes. We get to see the photos next week... I'm excited! :-)

Work extended, again

For what seemed like the umpteenth time over the past year-ish back at my job, I was once again offered another extension this past Thursday. I couldn't turn this one down... I am now employed until August 2009!

While it's not the permanent position I've been hoping for, it does offer me some stability over the next 2.5 years. Who knows what will happen over that time...