Secret Society's first-ever Canadian tour began early Sunday morning in a less-than-auspicious manner. The band had gathered on the corner of 42nd and 5th at 4:30 AM, waiting for a 4:50 AM pickup from the Newark Liberty Express bus. For you non-New Yorkers out there, Newark Airport is basically the Eighth Circle, except it's also incredibly difficult to get to, especially when you're trying to make a 7:30 AM international flight. Taxis from Manhattan can run you upwards of $100 (and even more from Brooklyn), so this bus was our only viable option.
So you can imagine our stunned reaction when the driver failed to stop and sailed right by us, despite our frantic waving. At that point, faced with a choice between waiting another 30 minutes for the next bus, or dropping hundreds of dollars in cab fare, I figured, "Okay, if we wait for the next bus, we'll probably be at the airport by 6 AM at the latest, which still gives us 90 minutes until our flight -- and how busy can Newark Airport be on a Sunday morning?"
Well, by the time we got to our terminal, it was more like 6:15, and "pandemonium" doesn't even begin to describe the scene. The departures area was packed with so many bodies we were barely able to squeeze in the door. Thankfully, a handful of co-conspriators had arrived earlier by other means -- they were able to fight their way to the front of the group desk, and engage in some first-class stalling until the rest of us were able to catch up to them. We managed to get everyone checked in for the flight within 30 seconds of Continental closing it.
Having arrived in Vancouver by the skin of our teeth, the rest of the tour actually went surprisingly smoothly -- especially considering our touring party consisted of 19 musicians, one sound tech, and our newest co-conspirator, Jon and Ingrid's nine-week old baby Kårinna (pictured below):
There were other close-calls involving instruments (always stressful trying to fly with all those horns), gear, etc, but ultimately, we played every show we were supposed to play and nobody died, which in my books marks the tour as a resounding success.
Again, huge thanks to the Canada Council for the Arts and the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation for helping to underwrite our 2011 Canadian incursion.
Incriminating evidence coming soon, including photos, audio, press, and such like.
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