Toronto's Massey Hall

Hey,
We crossed the border into Canada without incident (at least MY bus did), and arrived at the famous, historic Massey Hall around 9am. Massey Hall is very old, and it shows in terms of the lack of dressing room and wing space. I was so far onstage that I looked like I was in the band. Which was great, really, for the view of the audience I got. The bad news? The coffee was utterly undrinkable. The new term I've learned is "asswater."

Massey Hall was fantastic. Sounded great, not a bad seat in the house, and the crowd totally kicked ass. Made the bad coffee more than worth it. I enjoyed the 60-ish year-old woman with the reversible sign "Bless You Conan" and "Leno Sucks" sitting in the second row. As historic as Massey Hall is, it really could use a loading dock and backstage renovation. The ice-cold showers, few backstage bathrooms, and crazy long ramp load-in through the front of the house made for a somewhat difficult day.

There are displays inside the venue corridors which highlight the artists who've visited Massey Hall each decade since its inception in 1894. The display for 1934- 1943 featured, among other things, a nephew of Adolph Hitler who evidently came to Massey Hall to explain "What the German People Are Thinking." Weird.

Toronto itself didn't seem that unique to me. Other people on this tour tell me it's a great city to have a day off in, but I only had about an hour to walk around in search of photo-worthy sights. I ended up seeing several nice, old churches, a couple trolleys, and the fountains at Toronto's answer to Times Square.

After the show, we traveled to Columbus, Ohio for a day off before our Monday show, at the Schottenstein Center on the Ohio State campus. The border crossing was easy on the way back into the States this time- we didn't even have to get off the bus. I slept the whole way, around 8 hours. More on Columbus in my next post.