Jodie Ponto Photography

A few excerpts from the Trout Forest Music Festival in Ear Falls, ON … Or, as we like to call it, Fredstival (after Fred Penner, who was without a doubt the highlight of the weekend).

Miss Quincy & The Showdown at the Trout Forest tavern.

Although Miss Quincy & The Showdown may have mean reputations, nothing can reduce them to a gaggle of giggling 6 year old girls faster than hanging out with Fred Penner for the weekend.

Poor Choices Christmas card shot with Andrew Neville.

Ross Roeck, King of Hospitality & Master of Midnight Pulled Pork.

Jonathan Byrd and Corin Raymond, 2 of this continent’s greatest songwriters, rehearse for their set.

Shari grows a horn (or drinks a viking festival goblet beer).

Post-festival van & trailer fumigation.

You can’t fully comprehend the absolute enormity of Canada until you traverse it by automobile. For some perspective, once upon 2 years ago Miss Quincy & I stupidly drove from Calgary to Montreal in one fell swoop …. It took us 54 hours.  54 fucking hours!  That’s with a constant rotation of drivers and only stopping for gas, grub, and one four hour sleep in a roadside ditch.  What’s even more unbelievable about that number is that it excludes 5 whole provinces.

Here are a few rogue photos from the past week when Miss Quincy & The Showdown and I put over 3,000kms on the Vangina in a massive westward trek from Quebec to Saskatchewan.

Quebec City By Night

Everything you’ve ever heard is true, Quebec City is a time-travelling European city stranded in North America.

Backstage Pass

When travelling as an independent band you don’t often find a backstage full of star-studded dressing rooms, bottles of vintage Dom Perignon, 18 year old Greek virgins, and jars of M&M’s with all the brown ones removed.  In fact, there’s most often not a backstage.  Here’s what it really looks like:

Shari & Miss Q putting on their stage faces at Chez Rachelle & Erika in Montreal.

Pre-show beerverages on the leather-couched back patio of Not My Dog in Toronto.

Backstage in Bruno, SK at the Bruno Arts Bank.

Pre-show rehearsal at The Rusty Bike in Moose Jaw, SK.

Roadside Attractions

Miss Q making dinner for four on the hood of the Vangina in Wawa, ON.

Shari shadow-kicking the shit out of Miss Quincy.

Sleepover Time

As mentioned many times before, to survive on the road you have to become one hell of an adaptable sleeper. You must develop the ability to sleep when you can and where you can, or you will die a haggard sleep deprived death.  Here are a few of the more respectable places we’ve bedded down in over the past week:

Miss Q & Holly take turns chugging cough syrup (for illness not inebriation purposes) at the Motel Express in Quebec.

Our European mansion of an apartment in Quebec City.

The Thunder Bay International Hostel – although we arrived too late to take their infamous dump tour we still managed to sleep peacefully beneath the watchful eyes of the hostel owners’ wedding portrait.

Ontario: Putting The Cunt in Driving Across The Country Since 1867

As anyone who has ever driven across the country knows, the vast majority of your highway time is spent in Ontario. I’m not exaggerating when I say it takes days & days to circumnavigate the edge of the Great Lakes.  As Miss Quincy put it, “Ontario puts the cunt in driving across the country”.

One of the innumerable craggy lakes along the Trans-Canada’s seemingly endless Northern Ontario stretch.

A Northern Ontario sunset looking especially beeyootiful after 9 sweaty hours in the Vangina.

Prairie Respite

The Vangina finally emerges into the Prairies after 4 days of driving through Ontario.

Here are a few photos from the night Miss Quincy & The Showdown teamed up with Sault Ste. Marie’s burlesque ensemble The Salty Mollies for the debut performance of Spark Mandrill, their first throbbing male member. (Photos taken at LopLops).

Miss Quincy & The Showdown backing up The Salty Mollies.

Miss Gretta Bomb.

Spark Mandrill’s Surprise Package …

… And by “surprise” I mean the ol’ apple-in-the-leopard-manties trick.

Miss Quincy at O’Reilly’s in Perth, Ontario on June 2, 2010. With Tyler Toews on guitars, banjo, and cowboy boot stomp.

View through Merch Wench goggles.

Quincy electrified.

Boys & girls, welcome to Ontario.