The Awakening US Tour Part One: Happy Times!

The Awakening US Tour: Part One - Happy Times!

In February of 1989, The Awakening finally was able to hit the road and do some kind of semi-legitimate tour of the US. It was hard booking these shows without the help of an agent or without record company assistance, but Andy and Glenn were able to get enough confirmed gigs in a row, that we decided to go for it. We had been trigger shy back in the Fa

ll of 88', but in early 89', we knew we had to make a run for it regardless of the financial risks.

Most of the dates on the tour were in smaller towns, in small venues, for small crowds. We didn't have huge radio support, and obviously your average Christian concert goer wasn't faithfully reading the magazines that were giving us high praise, so I'm very sure that a great number of people who WOULD have wanted to see us, never even knew we were on tour. A good majority of the audiences we played for had never heard most of our music before.

Some bands tour in a tour bus. We had to tour in a run-down motor home.

Actually... I'm having a serious case of forgetfulness! I'm going to have to wait until Mike, Andy or Al can refresh my memory. I'm suddenly getting mixed up about whether we had an RV on this tour, or whether we just had a Cube Van and a single vehicle. I know that when Andy and I toured the US in 1996 with One Hundred Days, we had an RV, and it was a nightmare - always breaking down on the road. But I also have memories of pulling into town and having Al go investigate parts for the broken vehicle we had. So I'm pretty sure Al wasn't on tour with us in 1996, but I'm obviously drinking the wacky Kool-Aid at the moment, so perhaps I should move onto details I DO remember!!!

Ok... anyway!

Whatever it was we were driving in... we started our tour in the Northeastern States - Maine, etc. In fact, it's possible that our first gig was in Maine at a Holiday Inn. We didn't play a lounge gig, but for whatever reason, our first gig was being held in one of the ballrooms at the hotel. Later on in the tour, we made fun of this fact by doing our "band intros" to a background of cheesy Lounge music!

One strong memory I have of the early tour was stopping in New York City. The band had to make a long trek from the northeastern states down to Nashville. Mike and Al went down separately in the Ryder truck that had all the PA gear. Andy and I took a bus from Maine to Nashville. (which pretty much nixes the idea of an RV. Where did THAT end up going and who drove it?!!!) One of the stops for the 24 hour bus trip was in New York City, at Grand Central Station during the evening. Neither of us had ever been to New York before, and we were going to have 2 hours to kill before our connection bus would leave for the rest of the journey.

I remember being really frightened of the big city. No kidding - when we got off the bus at the station, there was an aggressive guy hassling me - "where you going sir? Where you going sir? Can I take your bag for you sir?" I replied, that my partner was at the back of the bus and that I needed to wait for him, to which he replied, "come this way now sir!" I couldn't believe it. I hadn't even set foot in the city that doesn't sleep and I was already potentially being mugged by some armed thug!! Thankfully, nothing came of this, but I was shaking in my boots.

When we got settled, Andy thought it would be cool to walk around Manhattan together. I was less enthusiastic about this idea because just before we left Mike and Al in Maine, we divided up all of our US spending money between us. So I had $200+ US dollars in my wallet, and here I was about to walk around what I assumed was the most dangerous city on earth! Frankly, it's been 20 years since then, so I don't remember much, but the buildings and the lights were pretty fantastic.

When we came back to the bus station later on, we had a bite to eat and talked to another guy who was waiting at the station. I told him about my brush with crime, and he said that people always hang out at bus stations looking for handouts. He said it would have been smarter for me to throw him a few dollars or let him help me to my station post. Blowing him off like I did could have worked against me, had he saw me wearing a nice watch or something like that. Fortunately, I was poor at the time and had no nice jewelry to entice him with!!

After that, we got back on the bus and drove through Central Park, Washington, Philadelphia and lots of other towns before our bus arrived in Nashville.

I'll discuss the Nashville part of the tour in Part Two - the Crappy Times!

Our tour ended up taking us down into Florida, where we did a number of smaller dates. Most of us had never set foot in the ocean before, so it was pretty exciting. Our manager Glenn Koehler flew down to meet us there and spent most of the rest of the tour traveling with us. Our lighting tech Ted Acorn was also there, and now I'm starting to recall, that his black Jeta was down there with us, so maybe THAT was our actual band vehicle!!!

I have some great pictures of us having fun at the beach. Glenn was (and still is) a conservative, well mannered guy. I have a picture of him with a cigarette in his mouth that is really funny... and of course, lots of pictures of me wearing this stupid hat I thought was pretty cool at the time! I'll scan those and throw them up here eventually. Lots of fun in Florida for sure.

We did a gig in Lakeland or Lake City (I forget), and a friend of the band was going to college down there and offered for us to stay at his townhouse, thus saving us the expense of another hotel room. It's memories like this that make me never want to go on the road with a struggling band again. It was very gracious of our friend to put us up for free, and that really meant a lot to us. But it was having the whole band sleeping in the living room on the floor or on sleeping bags that I look back on with some degree of horror!!

I DO have one funny memory of one of these band sleep-overs though. Andy was, and probably still is, an outrageously LOUD SNORER!! One night when we were all sharing a room together, Andy and Ted were snoring so loudly that none of us could get any sleep. Al got up between their bed and stood on a chair and conducted them! It was a riot!!

From Florida, we headed WAY back up north east, to play some shows in Pennsylvania and New York State. It was this sort of routing that caused so much extra expense for us, but it was the reality.

When we hit PA, we had one of the most memorable concert dates of our career, in a tiny, but beautiful place called Susquehanna. We played in a high school, and I'm not sure if there were too many people there who had ever heard of us, but their reaction to our show was like being at a Beatles concert. *(Well, perhaps I exaggerate somewhat - but it was pretty far out!).

We had an opening act for a few shows up there - an all-girl singing group called The Heartbeats. They were cheesy and played to tracks, but I kind of had the hots for their lead singer, who's name escapes me at the moment, (Kathleen?).

There was a video tape made of this show, and I'm really hoping that one of the other guys has it. I used to have this tape for years, but I've misplaced it. I hope it turns up eventually. The quality would be dreadful, as it wasn't good to start with, but it sure would be nice to see some footage from what could have been one of our most exciting shows.

One other factoid I can point out is: There was a guy at the show that night who had driven hours from Portland to see us play. It was nice to know that somewhere out there there were actually hardcore Awakening fans.

When we left PA, we headed to the Buffalo area and did one final show before heading back into Canada. This final show was pretty depressing. For one thing, we were coming off the huge high of our gig in PA, and then secondly, we were playing at a Pizza place that had entertainment, which was a small place with a tiny audience. I have most of this show on tape, and although some of the performances are pretty good, the spirit of the band was not good at all, and it's obvious from hearing the tape.

I'm not positive, but I assume we headed back into Canada and did our final date at the Alternative Entertainment Club.

Although it was cool that we had been away from Canada for a solid month, and people obviously would have thought we were riding a high, very few people knew that The Awakening was in serious trouble during this time. I doubt this homecoming show was nearly the pinnacle we thought it might have been.

The bad news that we had to share with people back home was - we had been dropped from our recording contract with Reunion.

That happy chapter will be featured in "Part Two - The Crappy Times!"

Ian - June 22/09