Dave Bidini - Around the World in 57 1/2 Gigs

The author wishes to acknowledge the help, support, kindness, and efforts of Jason Sniderman and family, War Child Canada, Mikko Keinonen, Andy and Yu Fei, Yulia Ochetova, Haddon Strong, Alun Piggins, Jay Santiago, Dawyne Gale, Steve Clarkson, Rheostatics, and Six Shooter Management, without whom this book would not have happened. Also, the Africa chapters were written for Ed Sawyer, who died shortly after this book was submitted. Thanks as well to Readers Digest, the Toronto Star, TORO, Swerve magazine, Post City, and One Yellow Rabbit.

And to Janet.

THE RHEOSTATICS BROKE UP QUIETLY. BASSIST TIM VESELY stared out the window of an Edmonton hotel on a cold, sunny morning, then turned and told me that it was time for a change, that twenty-five years of playing with us had been enough. My immediate reaction was to wonder why these kinds of things always seemed to happen in Edmonton. Next, I danced the dance of the spurned, asking obvious questions about what we could do to still hold it together and arriving at obvious answers. Then I stopped battling the inevitable and looked on with a certain ennui as things spiralled down from there. A few weeks later, Michael Phillip-Wojewoda, our drummer of five years, packed it in. Guitarist Martin Tielli and I and a friend Ford Pier scrambled to piece together a future, but none of our ideas had any glue. While the end hurt and burned a hole in my stomach, it pushed me out of my musical nest and set me on a solo walk through the greater world of rock n roll.

In a way, perhaps I owe Tim for putting our band to sleep. Had we stayed together, I might well have indulged in one of those frontman laments about needing to bust out of band prison so that my self-expression could be better served (one of the reasons why our bassist felt the need to fly the coop). But my self-expression had been given more than enough attention over all of those years of Rheostaticdom, and going solo seemed to me to be the domain of those who were sick of working with others, or who werent trying hard enough to play the hand that the rock n roll gods had dealt them. Besides, since 1978 I had only ever played with my friends, and going solo would have meant breaking loyalty and tradition.

This isnt to say that I hadnt ever considered it. I think every musician in every band has moments on stage while watching their bandmate singing to the adoring throng when they consider what might happen if a two-ton lighting rack fell from the ceiling struts and obliterated him, leaving the dreamer to respond to the pleas of the hungry crowd. Moments of great self-satisfaction only feed such a fantasy, and its not until you choke on your lyrics or butcher your drum part or bust a bass string that you feel blessed to have other players behind or beside you.

Over the years, I had from time to time tangoed with the notion of setting out on my own, if for reasons more geographic than artistic. For decades, our band had subsisted on consecutive tours along the same maple road, playing middling clubs in cities named Saskatoon and Antigonish for dudes named Rob and women named Alice (and a few dudes named Alice), whose faith in us brought the Rheos relative success in Canada but nowhere else. The Rheostatics had always been worshipped by a devoted audience and respected by more, but the mainstream ignored us, and we did little to curry favour. Still, had we been invited to the party, we probably would have loathed attending. I remember turning on the television one afternoon to find that the corner of Queen and John in Toronto a hotbed of Canadian youth culture, and two shakes from where the Rheos had cut their teeth at the sop-carpeted, broken-staged Beverly Tavern had been roped off so that teeming thousands could gather for the worst of American pop culture: Jessica Simpson and Johnny

Knoxville. Women from Beamsville, Mississauga, and Napanee competed in a Daisy Dukelookalike contest (Im Allison, and I want to ride you like a cowboy!), their images piped into the countrys living rooms, where fourteen-year-olds from coast to coast to coast lapped it up. That I felt only cynical not suicidal was a wonder.

Still, I had kicked around the idea of exploring the World of Rock the way the Rheostatics first explored Canada on our inaugural tour in 1987, discovering out-of-the-way places that harboured crazy promoters and drunken drummers. In my twenties, I heard a campus radio interview with a veteran local guitar player whose brother a singer had died just as their band was starting to get some attention. It was a good interview, and then the host asked if he had any advice for young musicians. He paused a second, then said, Yeah, quit. With a few exceptions, its a miserable life. I swore that I would never be that guy. But now here I was, a forty-two-year-old Canadian guitar player, showing signs of crust and poison.

Id known for a while that both the Rheostatics and I needed a break, so when Tim pushed, something told me not to push back, not to fight or declare emotional warfare, as I had previously with other members whod left. Perhaps leaving my Canadian band to play for other faces and fans in different pop cultures would bring back some technicolour to those old road dreams of exploring, learning, and living, which are the only reasons anyone goes anywhere, guitar in hand or not.