A couple of months later, we got a call from John’s manager. Turns out he was George Canyon’s manager too. WOW!!! Did we want to get in on a small venue tour Canyon was doing across Canada? WOW!!! Sold out show that September at the Arden in St. Albert, all 550 seats. Again, the marketing, tickets, hospitality, we did it all. Canyon even wanted to have naps written into his contracts after having had the BBQ tenderloin dinner Tannis had made. What a blast!!
We soon realized that we really didn’t know what we were doing and it was costing us money. We took a hiatus. The that moment came. The one that truly sets you on your path. I was a Clayton Bellamy fan from way back. Long before The Road Hammers, long before the Clayton Bellamy Band, just Clayton, playing bare in the Cold Lake/Bonnyville area. This night, I ran into him in Fort McMurray, backstage at an Emerson Drive concert, connections were paying off. I told Bellamy that I had this idea. Come and play at my house for about 40 people, at 20 bucks each. Yeah, right. Ac oup eof months later I got THE call. Let’s do it!! Have you ever tried to convince anyone that you are going to have a Juno Award winner playing guitar in your garage? Not easy. We only sold 22 seats, but Bellamy and those gathered had the best time.
Bellamy passed the word. We got a call from Willie Mack. He wanted to come and he did. Brett Kissel played two shows back to back, playing his entire Warner debut album in out garage and announcing that he was moving to Nashville the following month. The list grew. Over the next four years, Duane Steele, Adam Gregory, Jake Mathews, Jason McCoy, Charlie Major, Russ deCarle, Lisa Brokop and on…. and on …. and on. We added opening acts to our house shows. Olivia Rose, Justin Hogg, Steve Newsome and many more.
It wasn’t much of a step now, promoting to managing, managing to booking, booking to recording. We had a lot of artists we had faith in and now work with Steve Newsome. We have produced a six song EP. We have four more tunes in the can, part of the next disc and three radio singles. We will be headed to Saskatoon early in the new year to work with multi CCMA Award winning producer, Bart McKay, at his award winning studio. It will be the first time that we record something that Steve didn’t write. You do know the writer, but that’s for another day.
We teamed up with the Town of Stony Plain and have just completed the third season of Summer Sessions in Stony. Summer Sessions is an eight week, free concert series in the park. Last season we averaged 250 on the lawn, per show, culminating with 600 in attendance to see Edmonton’s own, Adam Gregory. We have promoted, managed, booked and produced shows that we could never have imagined. All I know for sure, is it is only going to grow and get better. There is much more to our story here at Dog Rump Creek Music, too much to put here. Feel free to ask, we all love telling the stories. As a friend of mines says, I have no idea when or how, so for now, I am just going to Enjoy The Ride.