47 Rides – Ride Zero – Freedomfest

I spent the whole weekend, my bags already packed, everything I owned on my back, at Freedomfest, a festival near Barrie for local bands.  My old band Settle For Less had played there previous years but we were defunct now.  That was one reason not to stay.

Also I’d moved so many times in the past year that my belongings had been whittled down to just a few things anyway so fitting everything I need in a backpack, rucksack and guitar case wasn’t too difficult.  People think freedom is being able to buy everything but it’s actually not owning anything.

Everyone was there, it was perfect.  It was very sneaky of me to make it my goodbye party.  It was a weekend long party with lots of great bands, some of which I knew and some not.  It was a great time for music in Barrie.

I got a ride from my old guitarist Dave’s drummer from his new band Junior (later to be renamed Fight Like Gentlemen).  They dropped me off on the TransCanada highway, said goodbye and drove off.  I wonder if everyone was expecting to see me back in town the next week.  I sat there, not even accustomed to hitchhiking at all, wondering if I’d get picked up and thinking about this being my last opportunity to waffle and just go back to Barrie.  But I couldn’t.  There was nothing left for me there…

47 Rides – #44 Jack Black

I was walking down the highway, still the TransCanada even out here on Vancouver Island, just out of Nanaimo when a small blue jeep type car (I don’t know) pulled past me turning onto the highway as I looked at my map to make sure I was walking in the right direction.

The guy reminded me of Jack Black and he offered me a ride after I asked him for directions.  He piled the boxes in the passenger seat into the back and we were off.  He said, “I’d smoke you a J if I wasn’t working.”  Real friendly.  We talked about the forest fires and whatnot.  When he dropped me off, about half an hour down the road, he gave me to nice sized buds which was sweet because the night before, as I walked from the ferry terminal to Nanaimo, some speed freak with a bag of golf clubs sold me a dime bag, when I only wanted $5 bucks worth, and it felt small so I was like, “I want my ten back” and him and his crackhead girlfriend screamed “Fuck off!!”  I didn’t want to get beaten by golf clubs and have my guitar stolen so I let it slide.  The bag he sold me turned out to be just leaves he picked off a tree or something.

I told Jack Black the story and thanked him for returning my faith in good people.  “Karma,” he says, “what goes around comes around.”  I got his # call and party sometime.

47 Rides – #20 Trucker III

Before I even got bored of standing there:  I saw a wave from another hitchhiker – headed the other ways toward a funeral – toward the top of the on ramp to the TransCanada, where I was considering to be a better vantage for hitching.  I nodded, “Yeah, I probably will have a better chance there” and turned, only to find a truck already stopped.

“I’VE BEEN DRIVING SINCE 12 LAST NIGHT AND I NEED SOMEONE TO RAP WITH SO I CAN MAKE IT TO SASKATOON BY THIS AFTERNOON!”

“Great!”

Now conversation.  I was pretty beat from being up all night fending off the wind and rain at the Regina drive-in I slept at.  I woke up in the middle of the night (relatively speaking.  A few hours after the movies)  to thunder and lightning and I whipped the tarp out of my backpack and tied it to the fence before it started to pour.  It was then I realized I was in a patch of thistles.

I stayed on the ball with him, if not contributing much to the conversation, I was at least able to follow what he was saying and he was in no way short on filling the space I left him.  He had a fairly confusing web of ex-wives, girl-friends and “future” wives.  He was headed to Malta at some point, either to see his daughter  or ex or with his girlfriend or to meet a girl or something like that.  He had a daughter my age but his hair was still fully red.

I told him how I spent my time in Regina with these two English chicks and an Aussie girl and he was shocked and saddened that I didn’t sleep with any of them.  Making these fleeting acquaintances more intimate seems a little pointless and inappropriate.  I’m just having a good time.

47 Rides – #14 …………………

…….I’m Stoned. I’m sitting on the side of the road, 20 feet off the transCanada eating a carrot and hoping I don’t get picked up before this weed wears off. I was sitting on the side of the road but a house (literally a real house) was turning on to the highway so I thought I should move in case it made a wide turn.  And I’m a little stoned to talk right now.

The guy that picked me up lit a joint to smoke and talked really fast.  I was playing guitar when he stopped and I didn’t see him until he got out and waved in my field of vision.  I was right at the crescendo too.  His accent was hard to understand but I managed.  A farmer, I think he knew alot about alot of stuff I don’t know alot about.

So here I am at Goddamn not even 10 past 12 and I’ve been up over 6 hours.  Crack of dawn, woke up at the drive-in and watched the sunrise, walked a ways and sat down and played.  I have a funny image of someone seeing me scribbling furiously in my sketch book and saying, “I wonder what he’s drawing,”  when they catch my eye and I swing around the sign – REGINA.

I don’t even wanna move today.  Maybe later.  Someone just threw me a banana.  That’s cool.

I’m excer-

I think it’s time to move.  “Get up, Trevor.  Get..Up!”

Thoughts on Music:  Music with substance.  It’s not the number of rhymes or alliteration or poetic devices.  They’re just the tricks.  It’s how you use them to say what you need to say-the same as purposefully not rhyming or leading to the expectation to say one thing then saying another.  Great lyrics say complex things clearly.