Life of a Rockstar

My friend, Troy Fagan - snowboarder and aspiring photographer - was kind enough to stop by one of my Bruno's gigs a couple of Thursdays ago and take a few paparazzi shots.

It was an empty bar, but it was fun making art together each in our different way.

This is just a sample.

I think his talent speaks for itself.

Ciao for now. xo

Slush Slush Slush

On Monday 23rd May, 4500 very drunk, very colourful, very rowdy snow enthusiasts arrived at Sunshine Village to celebrate the end of eight months of record breaking snowfall. And they did that by skiing and snowboarding down a hill and trying to make it across a dug-out of chilly, winter water.

This is what they call Slush Cup.

From the beginning of the season, Slush Cup had been pegged as the loosest, craziest, busiest day we would experience on hill and its reputation certainly delivered. After a few days of bipolar weather patterns, the sun got its act together at the last minute and rewarded us with a beautiful, blue bird spring day for our last day at SSV.

My boss at Trappers very kindly gave me the day off (as well as the Saturday and Sunday before it) to play my final gigs at Sunshine with Lisa Baskin. We spent one and half very memorable hours playing our final show together on the main stage that morning. It was the perfect way to end my season - playing my music in front of the snowy hills that hold so many happy and unfogettable memories.

It was my pleasure to then boot up, line Bluejuice up on my iPod and ride those snowy hills one last time before fighting my way through the crowds to buy a jug of Richards Red and a good posie for the big show.

Slush Cup is a well-known Sunshine Village tradition and 2011 marked the 83rd year that skiing and snowboarding extremists have streamlined down Angel run in hope of making it across the watery dug out. While many of the snowboarders crashed to their aquatic end, a few skiers had the skill to make it without getting their feet wet and were rewarded by an appreciative drunk crowd.

After polishing off a jug of beer to myself, it was back to the slopes with all the confidence and bravado of a professional. Needless to say, I ended up back at the bar with a spiced ceaser on one arm and a bloody, ice graze up the other.

But beneath the beer haze, I hardly felt the pain. All I could feel was happy. A happiness that continued well into the evening until the ceasers, snowboarding and sun-burn sent me home around 2am.

Yes, my snow season was over. But that was not the point. The point was that it happened.

Ciao for now. xo

I've Got The Music In Me

I haven't blogged about it much, but every Thursday night since arriving in Banff, I've been performing at Bruno's. I haven't blogged about it because it became such a regular part of my routine. I'd rock up, have a few beers, play a few songs with my muso-friend Lisa, do a few shots and stumble home to wake up with a hangover.

I mentioned it to a friend at work who has contacts all over town and next thing you know, I'd lined up another gig playing the piano at the Banff Park Lodge every Friday night. So I'd go along, drink a few waters, play a few songs, help myself to their seafood buffet and go home with a bit of cashola in my pocket.

So there I was, running a fairly self-sustainable side business as a musician in Banff without really trying. When my contract at the BPL ran out a few weeks ago due to their seafood buffet finishing, I was left with my un-paid, alcohol supplemented gig at Bruno's and thought that would be it until the end of the season.

But word got out, as it always does in Banff, and next thing you know my boss is lining me up another (paid) gig to play three hours each Saturday and Sunday at Creekside - the bar at the base of Sunshine Village. Knowing that I don't have enough songs, or enough voice, to hold out three hours, I invited my Bruno's buddy Lisa to join in with me.

So there we are on the mini-stage at our first performance at Creekside, doing the set we do each Thursday night at Bruno's, when the director of events from Sunshine walks in. In the middle of our gig, he pulls us to the side and asks us if we would like to open each Saturday for the head-lining acts on the mainstage at Sunshine's Spring Music Series. To which we answered,

"Um... HELL YEAH!"

So last Saturday, admist the sunshine at Sunshine, Lisa&Kristen played their very first mainstage show. Okay, so we were simply the opening act, but when you're plugged into a professional system, playing your own songs and hearing your own music amplified out among the masses, not to mention standing on a big fancy stage surrounded by big fancy equipment, you can't help but feel like a bit of a big, fancy rockstar.

We played for an hour, took about a bazillion photos, and then headed down to Creekside for our afternoon gig. I got home at six o'clock feeling absolutely wasted.

Like a true rockstar, minus the addictions.

Ciao for now. xo

Halloweening (Off-a the Candy)

It's been an eventful week in Banff, Alberta as me and my new housemates settled into our new home and tried to establish some sort of normalcy in our lives.  But it's hard to feel normal when every day seems to offer up some new Canadian experience.

This week, it was Halloween.

The costumes were outrageous, the candy consumed phenomenal and I'm not even talking about the kids. Trick-or-Treat is a child's game. Trick-or-Try-and-get-as-drunk-as-possible-while-dressed-up-in-a-skantily-clad-costume is the adult interpretation.

Halloween at the Muskrat St house didn't get off to a stereotypical start. We left it until the day of Halloween to buy our pumpkin to carve, only to find out that Banff, and probably the entirity of Alberta, was completely sold out of pumpkins. We didn't bother to buy any candy to hand out and none of our costumes were inspired by porn stars or showed a jaw-dropping amount of flesh (it's just too damn cold for that sort of thing).

But dress up we did - a pirate, an 80s skier, an All Black and a rastifarian - and when we woke the next morning, the demolished pumpkin heads lining the streets weren't the only heads that felt like they'd been kicked in.

This week also marked my first day of work and my first visit to the top of Sunshine Mountain (I was, quite literally, walking on Sunshine). I met the team I'll be working with over the next eight months, started the mass preparation that is setting up Trappers and got a feel for what life is going to be like working up on the mountain. As Sunshine isn't officially open yet (and won't open for at least another week), a lot of the runs remain untouched. That's right, smooth, white untouched powder - like icing on a cake - just begging to be carved across.

And carve across it I will on my beautiful new Arbor snowboard, which waits patiently for me at the ski and snow store in Banff. With my official start day at Trappers still a week away and pay day another fortnight after that, I haven't been able to formally purchase my snowboarding gear and have consequently, set up lay-by debts in multiple stores around Banff. It's either eat, or buy my board. Tricky... very tricky.

But the real blast out of the blue this week came in the form of an open mic night at Bruno's Bar and Grill. Still living a little off the high of performing at Appel Farm, I put myself back on stage and busted out a few original songs at the open mic night for a crowd of appreciative music fans. What resulted was the supervisor asking me to play a regular set at the bar every Thursday night, unpaid but compensated in drinks. It's going to be advertised in the local newspaper, my new friend Jay-the-bongo-player is going to back me up on percussion, they're going to provide me with a guitar to play on and I get to play whatever I want.

Missy Higgins, here I come.

Ciao for now. xo

Some Australia flag flying, overnight camping and my stint as a parrot

I’m approaching the end of week seven and with just over one short week left at Appel Farm, the cruel realisation that this experience will soon be coming to an end is starting to really affect me.

It feels like I have been here forever, that I didn’t have a life before coming to camp and with that comes a fear for what waits beyond next Saturday – when I wave goodbye to my Appel Farm family, these people I have learnt to trust with my faith and my fears, these people who I may never see again but have been players in this beautiful memory of mine.

And then I watch some kid super-gluing his fingers to a table in the Art Barn and I know I’ve had just about my fill.

With second session starting to wind down to Performance Week (the week all the kids perform their work from the session) as well as the camp itself closing, Appel Farm seems to have been hit by a contrast of extremities. The campers are wearing out, the counsellors are wearing out and now our sheer fatigue seems to have turned into eccentricity. It seems not even exhaustion can slow my girls down.

As the second session schedule is a repeat of the first session, early last week we held our second International Day. However, this time it was centred on the International vs. America soccer game – the only occasion in the Appel Farm calendar when the counsellors and campers are allowed (or more so, encouraged) to act competitively. This game is a HUGE deal and as you can imagine, a camp for performing arts never does anything by halves, even when it comes to sports. There are strategy meetings, coaching, training, warm-ups, referees, rules, red cards, water coolers, commentators, cheer teams and a whole lot of male ego going wayward. The International team is made up of all the international counsellors (primarily British, who as you can imagine, feel they have a point to prove) and the American team is made up of all the Americans (who being American, also feel they have a point to prove). While the Internationals were victorious in the first session match, we did not fair so lucky in the second session where a sneaky goal in the final minutes of overtime saw us beaten by the red, white and blue – and they haven’t let us forget it. All in all though, a good excuse to dress up in as much Australian paraphernalia as I could bring with me and roll my eyes at the children who asked me what language I speak in Australia.

One activity I missed out on in first session due to my day off but got to experience this week was overnight camping – an Appel Farm tradition where your bunk and another bunk traipse out into the middle of the field across the road and camp for the night. For a 22-year-old who spent much of her childhood sleeping on a blow-up mattress in the middle of nowhere, one evening of overnight camping didn’t phase me much (especially when there were smores involved). For a group of 16-year-olds who couldn’t bear the idea of bugs, flat beds and sleeping bags, overnight camping appeared apocalyptic. But with a few smores in their belly and the only beetles being the Beatles hits we sang around the campfire, I think they survived with most of their sanity in check.

Friday night brought the first dance for the session and the first opportunity for our camper couples to test out how much bumping-and-grinding they could get away with before intervened by the counsellors. The theme for the Friday Night dance was Pirates and Mermaids and not feeling like dancing with a fish tail between my legs, I went, instead, as a pirate’s parrot. Thankfully, the camp costume shop comes in handy for events like this and just so happened to have a meticulously detailed parrot costume waiting for me to use. A beak, a pirate patch and some extensive eye make-up later and I was ready to dance the night away (between the bumps-and-grinds).

Being at a performing arts camp has been a pretty humbling experience. The sheer talent of the campers I am surrounded by and being privy to the unadulterated passion they have for their art form has been inspiring. This being so, I’ve taken a deep breath and returned to the stage. I performed a few times in first session – singing and playing an original piece on the piano and fronting the jazz/funk band’s rendition of Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag. And on Monday night, I took up my guitar and accompanied a friend’s first performance on the piano. Playing on stage again has really stirred something in me and it’s one thing I’ll definitely miss once camp is over. Below is the YouTube video of our performance - Imagine.

The leadership team like to keep us and the campers on our toes, so yesterday they sent the camp schedule into mayhem by hosting Reverse Day. When your day-to-day existence comes to rely on the mechanical comfort of a routine, suddenly flipping it upside down leaves you feeling the strange effects of vertigo. We had dinner for breakfast, evening activities in the morning, majors in the afternoon, breakfast for dinner and early-bird activities in the evening, where we sat around drinking coffee and reading the paper.

Only at camp.

Ciao for now. xo