Damn! Edmonton. Lots of love - first time in town - Playing with Bella (from Vancouver)...Cam and the ladies were amazing on stage - great people too...Moonbox were strong local openers. This Edmonton crowd was something else. They were asking for it - the rock that is... We all played our fucking asses off for over an hour. I was soaked by the end of the night - a few jugs of water - wet! The Sandbag crew showed up to the show...and even with the pressure, i finished day 14 without any booze...it was hard to fend off the beer - the next day i caved in. Lots of beer in the "strong arm" city - Calgary.

Calgary was the big ticket show for the weekend - Alpha Baby opened. They are an amazing band from Kelowna - a balloon party on stage with some great chemistry on stage...love those guys. Their first song was a 10 minute jam a la My Morning Jacket. The ladies in Calgary were up for the show - lots of ladies...no cowboys at the show...a stage that was designed for long distance jumping helped out...sorry if i spit on anyone who is reading this blog. Hot Little Rocket headlined - amazing live band, great dudes, with a great new video - soooo funny - should be on Much Music soon.

Both the Velvet Underground in Edmonton and The Hi-Fi Club in Calgary are great venues to play - gracious staff...

5 more shows to go...feeling great. miss van.
see you at the Halloween show which is now on Oct. 26th - NOT Oct. 27th....

Getting ready to play with Mongoose (our boys from Vancouver) on Tuesday, in Medicine Hat - hope I don't break the Les Paul in that city again...fuck.

Cheers,

Mike

Well, since my last diary entry a hell of a lot has happened. Mike got sick with a severe throat infection following the Medicine Hat show and didn't recover for over a week, but we still managed to get through the shows.

We had a great week in Toronto with Mike's folks who treated us (as always) like Royalty - Thanks Ole and Darka!

When in Toronto, we had the opportunity to meet with some very influential people, did a press interview at the Horseshoe Tavern (for Edmonton's 'See+' Entertainment Magazine) and ended up getting approached by the Director of a forthcoming werewolf movie to feature our music, t-shirts and posters. So, although in some ways being land-locked in Toronto was difficult, it was also very productive.

We left Toronto and drove two/three days to Winnipeg where we were playing at The Zoo. We stayed at Greg's Dad's place and enjoyed some good times at the Buhr Household as well as some nice meals out. We met with Chuck (The Promoter for The Zoo) and following a few cups of well deserved coffee, we ended up on the Radio at 'Freq107' that afternoon, where we did an interview and they played 'Strange Disaster'.

The Winnipeg Show that night was awesome, the opening bands were great and good times were enjoyed all around. Some of the guys from local radio stations came down and enjoyed the show so much that they promised us regular rotation on their shows.

After packing up the trailer, it was time to begin the torturous 16 hour journey to Red Deer. We left the venue at 3.30am and Mike, Myself and Jay took it in turns to drive 2 hour stints at a time giving each person around 3 hours sleep that night.

Needless to say when we arrived in Red Deer, we were all quite tired. It was great to meet up with our old mates from 'Mongoose' and enjoyed their set as well as another awesome band called 'Bogart'. Surprisingly, as tired as we were, when it came to our turn to perform we somehow managed to get a second wind and played a great set. We all slept pretty damn good that night!

Following Red Deer we headed on to Edmonton and Calgary which was a bloody amazing weekend of pure unadulterated in your face VanCity Rock and Roll. But I'll leave it up to the other guys to fill you in on that...

See you later

Mark

Holy shit...The Bovine Sex Club in Toronto was a fucking blast last night! So many old friends and family coming out to check out the show - too bad i couldn't talk to anyone as my throat felt like it had been ripped to shreads by a fuckin' African tiger (or as Jay put it, a menstruating rabid prarie goafer). One suppository later - i had my game voice on and the crowd was with us for the entire set - bigtime! Other than a completely disorganized Bovine staff who thought we were opening the show - aswell as the strange bill that had all the dirty hardcore kids shitting their pants when we played (yes there is more to rock 'n' roll that a power chord played on a BC Rich Guitar at the fucking Bovine you dirty turds).

It looks like on paper I've had a rough week with a blown Showman Amp, a 58' Les Paul Jr. cut in half due to a hail mary miss (Montana Manville was off his game that night), and some sickness to boot!

Aw, but the show's have been very rewarding indeed with insane praise from all kinds of folks, and this is what keeps The Manvils going strong - the constant gear and health battle. Fuck it, Ottawa and Montreal are next and we will be sure to destroy the crowd.

Some pic's will be added later this week so check back for some live tour photos.

Gonna go garggle...Mikey Manville.

I thought I would wait to get a couple shows in before I talk about what's been happening. It is now thursday the 27th and we are in Toronto getting ready for our Bovine show tomorrow night. Relaxing with family in between shows has been the saving grace for this band. Huge homecoming shows for me, great reception everywhere and rockstar treatment all around. This has been quite an experience from the start and it is continuing as I write this. So far we have seen Mikes' amp blow up, his Les Paul Jr bust in two (although he did get two great tosses before the third one slipped his grip) and seen some amazing crowds. The venues have been interesting...hmmmm....but we still ripped it up. From the start...a manic soundguy, small town drunken debauchery, and some super generous promoters, this tour has some amazing stories to fall back on.....and we still have four more weeks to go!!
Thanks to all the Manvils fans who have shown me love, this is gonna be one hell of a ride...........

Jay Koenderman
Percussionist

Hi, this is Mark. I thought that I'd grab a chance when we have 5 minutes to add an entry to the tour blog, so I was nominated to do the Saskatoon Show - and what can I say??

Well, Saskatoon can only be summed up in one word - "CRAZY". Everything insane that could have happened did. Mike kicked his mic about 20 feet into the crowd to wake everyone up, missing the sound guys head by an inch. After nearly coming to blows on stage, his amp bit the dust in literally a cloud of smoke. After setting up my Orange amp for Mike, the show exploded, hitting the crowd right between the eyes. And in some unreal, surreal and somewhat "Twin Peaks" induced moment, Mike ended up dancing with what can only be described as our "smallest" fan - long story!

After the crowd made us play our third set at 2am, we sold a whole bunch of merch and got the hell out of dodge.

By the way, the venue is haunted - so go figure!!

More to come...

Well, here we are again on the East Coast, having just played NXNE Music Festival in awesome Toronto and again the Torontonians showed us a lot of love. The show was fantastic! We played our asses off last night to a extremely full 'Black Bull'. Opening with the Pretty Bleed, introducing our newest song 'The Anchor', which was well recepted and knocking the walls down (almost literally) with a maniacal 'Buried Love', which ended in guitars wailing and thrown with a final Golf Swing through the kick drum by Mikey. Absolutely CRAZY - probably the best ending to any show that we have ever played!!!

Following the show, Mikey and I got interviewed for an internet site called PunkTV.ca, which gets about 3 million hits a month. It primarily does stuff with major label bands, but is at NXNE to expose some good indie bands. More info to follow...

It's back to Montreal again tomorrow (where we played two nights ago) for a final show at Cafe Chaos. Montreal is also a great city, so it will be good to play one more before we fly home on Monday.

Anyway, I guess we'll fill you all in on more eventful things as and when they unfold...

Mark

The gods of food were calling on our way to Salt Lake City and we heeded the calls in... Council Bluffs, Iowa. After exiting interstate 80, we began our search for an all american buffet and found the neon sign at The Golden Corral. $10.99 all you can eat sounded pretty fucking good. We wandered around for about ten minutes jockying for position and established ourselves as hungry young lads. The food was great and the service was awsome. Afetr eating, our server asked us to sign her cd and soon after surrounding kids approached with napkin and pen in hand for their Manvil encounter. We gave all the kids some cd's and left feeling satisfied, headeding back on to the 80 West to Utah.

Andy Mac.

So its been two weeks since my last entry and the boys in the Manvils have made it safely to Southern California. After Indy, we drove our asses down to Minnesota and played at the Triple Rock. Fantastic venue and the the most gracious of staff. After a strange night in Milwaukee we drove all the way to Salt Lake City and brought the gift of the ROCK to the Mormons (hey Zen - I'm talkin to you!).

The Urban Lounge in Salt Lake was fantastic and we played with the amazing Juan Prophet Organization (on tour from Tennessee). Some great folks running the show there - with a crowd that was listening to every note we played, and watching every step we took. it looks like folks have to become 'exclusive members' to drink there asses of until 2am in Salt Lake. After getting drunk, and rolling around on the main street with Greg watching out for oncoming traffic, we passed out and drove to the Grand Canyon the next morning. Sweet. After a rough night in Vegas, we drove the Orca van to San Diego and enjoyed Mexican offerings from the amazing Del Taco with our Manager, Kristyna. After a fun rocker at the Brick by Brick, we were ready for The Viper Room in Hollywood....

Cheers, Mikey.

The Viper Room revue(with special guest, Ron Jeremy)....coming soon!

Inianapolis has been quite a ride.

4 shows in 4 days - this city has an amazing music scene. The boys from Margo and the Nuclear So and So's we sweet enough to give me their handmade gold trojan helmet!Although it doesn't fit when driving the Orca. Andy played LA woman last night with the houseband at the Mousetrap on our day off - enjoying the brownies!!!

NYC
NYC was a blast - three shows in four nights - the Brooklyn show was impossible to find because we typed in GranT St. as opposed to GranD St. (we ended up in the depths of the Queens getto). I had to take a piss so bad i got out in between two Cadillac tinted bad-ass machines and squirted on their tires. Nobody inside though.

We finally arrived at the show and ripped it up at the Trash Bar. You'll probably find some stupid photos of me with my pants around my ankles skrewing a black wall in the green-room. I got kinda drunk that night. oh yeah! and Greg's brother Derek came down from Ottawa to catch the show! DIE HARD!!! Thanks Derek - you rule :)

The Knitting Factory was very nice and sweaty...a very pro-venue with many familiar faces in the crowd. It was great to see folks eating up the merch after the show.

BOSTON
Talk about a leather studded event at the Abbey Lounge! The bands were great that night. Some punk ass rock n roll with some of the finest female screaming I've ever heard. Nice to see some of the Anal Cunt ex-members enjoying the "BUD LIGHT" with us. Thanks for the light beer boys - it was the ongoing joke o'the night!

got to go...East Indy show tonight - The Manvils @ Zanies Too - should be a blast!

Cheers,Mike.

Hello to all...

The Manvils tour has been nothing less than amazing so far. For our first tour down to the US, I am thankful to see folks coming out and enjoying the Canadian Rock n Roll to the max. We are in Inianapolis right now - so warm and sunny - big change from the Montreal blizzard and the NYC thunder! We played two shows last night at some fantastic venues "Locals Only" and the historic "Melody Inn - Indy is filled with lots of local love for out of town music...the folks here are fantasic!

There will be photos and some crazy tales from our US shows added later this evening for you to enjoy.

Cheers, Mikey Manville.

Spent the morning sorting out a rental bass amp for Greg whilst his was being repaired and went to a great Montreal pizza/pasta place for dinner.

Andy had spent the night at a friend's place, so we Picked him up at around 2.30pm at Cafe Chaos.



We then hit the road for Ottawa with directions loaded into our GPS Unit (Bambi).

Arrived in Ottawa at 'Zaphods Beeblebrox' at around 6.00pm, where we unloaded, set up, changed guitar strings and sound checked.

At around 10pm, the club began to fill up and by the time we hit the stage at 10.30pm the place was full.

We were on fire that night and ripped it up with ton's of energy, Mikey jumping across tables, kicking drinks in the the laps of those he walked in front of and Andy's drums collapsing on the stage as a result of our on-stage antics. Greg had some problems with his amp cabinet which blew up due to a repair done in Vancouver, but this didn't stop him or the rest of the band giving it our all.

After our set, we ended up signing lots of T-Shirts and CD's for people and ended up partying with a bunch of people from Ottawa at a local bar.

After taking some people home in the Van, we headed out of town to stay with relatives of Mike's. It took us an hour to find the place as Bambi (GPS) seemed to be confused.

We crashed at around 4am.

We left Toronto around 1.30pm after collecting our repaired van from the shop with new alternator in place. Mike's mom provided us with enough food to safely feed an entire township, should a threat of nuclear attack be evident. We said our goodbyes to family and friends and hit the open road 6 hours for Montreal.

On arrival in Montreal, it decided to snow and it came down in bucket loads! We found the club (Cafe Chaos) and unloaded with some help from the opening band 'The Famous Lovers'. We sound checked and headed back to the Van to get changed.

The opening band were very good and we hit the stage at around 11.30pm.

3 songs in to our set - disaster struck!! Greg's bass amp decided to blow up and we were left with out bass until the sound guy decided to run Greg through the D.I. But the band held it together and everyone loved our set.

We then headed back to Lisa and Brent's place (Vancouverites now living in Montreal) and chowed down on some of the amazing food that Mike's folks had given to us, along with a couple of bottles of Montreal's finest beer!

Hit the sack around 4am.

The Manvils hit Toronto for some Shopping on Queen Street, Younge Street and the Eaton Center. We all bought new gear including jeans, sweaters, shirts, underwear (Andy) and hats.



We got home around 5pm and left for our second show in Toronto at the Cadillac Lounge at around 7.30pm. When we were about 50 yards from the venue, the Van broke down and we were left to unload the gear in the middle Queen Street in the pouring rain.

We called out a tow truck and it appeared that the alternator had gone!

We played a great set at the Cadillac Lounge and the place was packed.

Got to bed around 4am after lots of talking and drinking.

We insured our van (nicknamed 'The Orca')and went to rent to an amplifier cabinet for the show at the Horseshoe Tavern. We spent two hours driving around to various music stores until we found one that we could drop off in Ottawa after our last show in Canada.



We loaded up the van ready for sound check at around 4.30pm and headed to the venue on Queen street. Sound checked at 6pm and headed back to Mike's parent's place for some dinner. Mikey's Dad made us a great 'Spag Bol' and we left for our first show at around 9pm.

The opening bands were both great and we took to the stage at 11.30pm.

Everyone seemed to enjoy the show and we were invited back to play a weekend in the fall.

We headed home around 3am and got to bed by 4am.

We flew out of YVR @ 7am. The Budweiser commercial played at least 5 times on Much Music on the four hour flight to toronto. We arrived in Toronto at 2.30pm and headed to Mikey's parent's place.


It was Mike's Sister Anna's birthday, so there was a big party that night for her and for the Manvils. There was ton's of Ukrainian food as well as other amazing bit's and pieces.

It was a great night of celebration and partying and we crashed at around 2am.