Li'l Andy chronicles the pit-stops and hangovers of his 10,000km tour of Le Canada.

"I Love Winnipeg and There's Nothing You Can Do About it!"

With a night off in Thunder Bay, there's only one thing any self-respecting Canadian musician would do--visit the Royalton Hotel, where a 19 year-old Neil Young stayed when downtown TBay was still called Port Arthur. There, in an upstairs lodging room, he wrote "Sugar Mountain."

The bar itself is exactly my kind of joint: pool tables, VLT machines, pickled eggs, homemade curtains and a jukebox. Brother William starts off the jukebox selections: Neil's "Like a Hurricane," CCR's "I Heard it Through the Grapevine" (both over 7 minutes long--good jukebox value!), and some Nickelback. William is still not error-free with the letter-number combination system of jukebox programming.

I rack 'em up and Josh breaks. Seated far away, a local patron with hair like Christopher Lloyd in "Back to the Future" beckons Josh over to his table.

"Hey man, you guys students? In college?!"

Josh, in his Iron Maiden t-shirt and headband, says, "No. We're in town on business."

"Cool. Hey! You into rits and percs?"

Taking a shot at the pool table 20 feet away, I can see Josh is completely baffled.

"What?"

"Rits and percs, man! RITS AND PERCS!"

"Oh... you mean, like, Percocet?"

"YEAH!"

"No, I'm alright."

I went on to win two straight games, putting myself up 3-0 on our cross-Canada billiards tournament.

***

Winnipeg, the Gateway to the West. Home of leftist politics, the General Strike and rebellions from Louis Riel to The Weakerthans. This town is unique in North America simply by virtue of its attitude. Its citizensdon't go on tirades of self-loathing about their town (Toronto), they don't act like they are constantly on the set of a TV crime drama (New York), nor do they harbour an ironic detachment caused by living at the edge of nowhere (Regina). Winnipegers are concerned with Winnipeg. They live here, and here is where it's at.

When you load into The Times Change(d)/High Lonesome Club in downtown Winnipeg, John Scoles does what all bar owners should do for bands but which few attempt. He tells you when sound check will be, plys you with free beer and shows you and your entourage to the basement where you are free to carouse, drink, smoke and tell Helen Keller jokes until showtime.

Then he turns a blind eye while you coax the girls in the kitchen to fix you a pulled pork sandwich with BBQ sauce. Elsewhere, it may get better than this, but I don't care to investigate.

Winnipeg is where the shows really get cookin' on the tour. The room is packed with old hippies who know every folk song from Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and John Prine, but there's still a few regular jocks just out to feel tough in a room full of pacifists.

Half-way through playing "The Sun's Comin' Up (but my bottle's goin' down)"--a song that ends in the narrator passing out and falling on the ground--one happy customer in the audience droops his head onto his chest, slides off his chair and faints onto the bar floor. People rush to his aid while we heed the old show business motto that "the show must go on!" and continue singing with gusto. Two friends carry him out like a drunken sailor. As I sing the final line--"And now the sun's come up / And my whole body hits the ground"--the crowd thinks that, geniusly or cruelly, I've improvised new lyrics to my song to mock this guy for passing out.

On stage, we look at each other with a wink and a nod that says, "Yup! We're literally making them fall off their chairs with this set, boys! Well done!"