LIGHTS Tour Diary #3: A Sort Of Homecoming

Super-heroine and keytar queen LIGHTS is currently crossing the country on a massive tour and she'll be writing tour diaries about her adventures for CHARTattack. You can read the first two here and here. Check in next Thursday for the final installment.

Here's part three:

This week has been one of the most varied weeks I've experienced in a long time. It has been seven days of fluctuating scenery, quarters, crowds and company, and it has certainly kept things exciting. No complaints here; these are actually the times I look forward to. It makes thinking a couple days back feel like looking into a different era.

After we left Saskatoon, we high-tailed it to Winnipeg for an early morning radio stop. Thusfar, my visits to Hot 103 have served to invigorate me in those ungodly hours the way the skipped shower would have (it also could have been the bag of chocolate-covered espresso beans I wolfed down before my arrival).

I also realized (a little abashedly) how transparent I am about my personal interests when the hosts presented me with the DC Vault and a box of cupcakes. At least my sweet tooth and geek-knowledge-tank were appeased for the seven hours I had to kill before soundcheck.

The show that night was an interesting experience. I was pleased at how many people came to pack the Garrick Centre in spite of the fact that Dane Cook and Trivium both happened to be in town at the same time. This awareness made the onerous on-stage situation a little bit less of a buzzkill.

The monitor guy must have been doing crosswords or on a really high level of Parachute on Game Boy, otherwise I wouldn't have needed to use my microphone to get his attention mid-set.

I was reminded that even though things can get slightly uncomfortable up there, you can't let it bust your spirit. It's times like these that I'm grateful to have a stellar sound guy (Angus!). Even if it sounds like a shipwreck in my ears, I know the walls will always hear it differently.

The following night brought us to Thunder Bay, Ont., which I was really looking forward to since it happened to be my favourite stop on the Keane tour. Maybe it's the thunder, maybe it's the bay or maybe it's the fact that they're a mysterious little outpost in the forested north of Ontario, but folks in T-bay have something special about them. There's an extra spark there.

That's the best theory I can come up with after witnessing a circle pit break out during an acoustic version of "February Air." It was definitely one of the most energetic, enjoyable shows of the tour so far.

A much needed day off ensued, and we all kicked back in the great metropolis of the Soo. It's funny how the simplest order of events in a day can really renew a tired soul.

The perfect day for me in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. involved a homemade muesli-parfait and latte from Steamy Bean, a pit stop at Value Village (partly to people watch, partly to cast down my innate urge to buy the giant Barney painting and partly to buy some good Canadian flannel), and ended off with a retreat into the shadows with my guitar and the fleeting aloneness.

It was the next day that things took a change, of course. Not in a bad or good way, things just turned down an emotional side road when we got to North Bay, Ont. The funny thing about the Capitol Centre is that I've actually been on that stage many times before, only never once as myself.

Nearly nine of my 22 years were spent in this town. Those years gave me my first on-stage experiences as part of local Broadway productions. I've performed as a boogie monster, an evil octopus and even the yellow brick road itself (yes, a crucial role).

But of all the things I've been on the stages of North Bay, being myself I felt at my finest. It was a wonderful pseudo-homecoming show, and having old friends and family and even my dad there made it all the better. I suddenly felt like a little girl again.

With the child in me shining bright, we constructed a gingerbread bus in tribute to our own since it was our last night in the mobile quarters. It ended up turning into more of a gingerbread bust (see photo) but delicious nonetheless. Goodbye bus, we liked you and enjoyed our rest, but we want our van back.

If being launched back into childhood wasn't enough of a change, my circumstances rotated once again when I found myself at the SOCAN Awards in Toronto the following night.

I was no longer the one on the stage making the noise and taking in the glory. I was once again just another hopeful face in the crowd staring up at fellow Canadians like Rush, Glass Tiger, Gordon Lightfoot and Tom Cochrane, wanting nothing more than to do my country proud. I left that night, both humbled and inspired, reminded that there is a long but rewarding road ahead of me.

Now here I am, up high in my apartment perched in my bunk bed, trying not to be too moved by the ever-morphing places, people and things I've been and seen over the past little while. There is only one thing that is on my mind and that's what's happening tonight, at the Kool Haus in Toronto: my biggest show to date.

See you there, Toronto. And until next week, "shop smart, shop S-mart." —Bruce Campbell, Army Of Darkness, 1992.

LIGHTS.