Lake Okanagan, Kelowna BC

Hey folks! I’m spending the weekend in Kelowna BC, the capital of the lovely Okanagan Valley. I’m here for a very busy four days of BreakoutWest, the music festival and conference that leads up to the Western Canadian Music Awards on Sunday. Last night things got off to a great start… I dined with the CBC crew at an amazing local restaurant called RauDZ (weird name, amazing food, wine and beer – best Arctic char I’ve EVER had).

Then it was off to Habitat, Kelowna’s best club, for Aidan Knight, Victoria’s young pop prodigy, who was awesome and managed to control the all-ages crowd like Reveen! After Aidan wrapped it was time for Said the Whale… who did their entire set… in reverse. Just like that Seinfeld episode. They started with the encore, then left the stage, then came back and profusely thanked the crowd, then did their regular set backwards! Amazing!

Here’s my schedule for the rest of the weekend:

Friday Oct 22, 2:30pm – 4:30pm: Making Friends with the Media seminar

Friday Oct 22, 5pm: Live interview on All Points West, CBC Radio One, at Habitat

Saturday Oct 23, 2pm – 3pm: Adventures in Solitude Kelowna Book Launch (reading, signing, and special music performance from Michael Bernard Fitzgerald)

Sunday Oct 24, 8pm – 11pm: Western Canadian Music Awards, Kelowna Community Theatre

… And did I mention my hotel room has a “South Pacific” theme?!

Here’s the fifth instalment of my Home Movies from Desolation Sound, BC, where my book is set. In this one I talk about the Sound’s first-ever Caucasian resident, “Scarface” Mike, an American roughneck seeking escape after a near-death experience in a brutal bar fight in Montana. Mike’s whole story is in the book, but in this video I find the spot where he had his homestead.

And uh yeah… um… apparently it was No Shirt O’Clock when this was one was filmed. Sorry about that! It was about 35 degrees in mid-August when we shot this segment!

If I didn’t end up forming a band, or working at a radio station, or maybe putting out a book, I always one day hoped that I would open up a record shop and call it Lawrence Records, since record stores are where I spend a lot of my time and money anyway. Looks like someone named Lawrence in Nashville, Tennessee beat me to it (complete with the charming slogan “Think Globally, Act Hillbilly”… wait – isn’t that Sarah Palin‘s slogan?). Thanks a lot to my good friend Jo-Ann Roberts for taking this snap while she was down in Music City last weekend for a family wedding.

So I guess that means I’ll have to revert to my Plan B retail outlet… a Tibetan deli called The Deli Llama, our slogan of course being “Free Tibet with Purchase”.