Jeremy Porter Road Blog

Road Blog: Wednesday September 04, 2024 - Tillsongburg, ON

Road Blog
September 4, 2024
Tillsonburg, Ontario, Canada

Seems odd that the first road blog of 2024 doesn’t hit until September, but what can I say? The Tucos took the year off the road to concentrate on the recording of our fifth album and just enjoy a well-needed break from the spring and fall tour cycles. I spent the spring also juggling the recording and mixing of my new solo album “Dynamite Alley,” which I am out supporting now, and have copies to sell on CD and vinyl at the shows, even though the release date is 2 weeks away still. (And you can and should absolutely PRE-ORDER it via my website or Pencil Storm or Bandcamp!) So the solo-acoustic tour started on August 29th, with Matt Charette and Glencoemusic in Detroit, and now the show hits the road with four nights in Canada, centered around my annual show in Montreal at the Hangover Golf Draft Party on Friday night.

I left home around 2:30pm and crossed into Canada before 3. Customs was a breeze, and I didn’t even get to the awkward part about how I am a musician entering their country. I stopped at the Canada Post office to send posters to Vancouver for my show at Trees Organic Coffee there in October, saving some bucks over US international postage, then headed east towards London and Toronto. Windsor traffic sucked and the lights were terribly timed and it took me 40 minutes just to get out of the city.

Somewhere a couple hours later I got off the 401 and did about 20km on some rural/county roads that led me to this small, crossroads town called Tillsonburg. I had to get some supplies for my AirBB, which I’d be hitting late that night and staying in for the next as well, so I stopped into the downtown Wal-Mart and got some bagels, milk, cheese, nuts, granola bars, and fruit. People in town looked at me like I was a Martian, not sure why, but I gathered my things awkwardly in my hands, not willing to pay the $.30 CAD for a bag (seems the US is the only country that gives you bags when you buy groceries anymore) and headed to the venue.

The Mill sits on the bank of the Big Otter Creek just outside of Tillsonburg’s downtown. It’s an 1870’s era pea and barley mill that was originally owned by the Tilson family that’s since been converted into this amazing restaurant, inn upstairs, and pub/music venue downstairs. It’s loaded with character, and I was greeted by the friendliest people you can find – sound engineer Billy and co-owner Mandy, each making sure I was fed and hydrated and had everything I needed for the show. I took a seat on the patio and watched the most massive blue jay I’ve ever seen chase his girlfriend around while I called TrooperGirl22 and ordered a pork schnitzel with a side of Belgian carrot, cabbage, and horseradish potatoes. It was amazing!

Corny (Cornelius) Hamm went on a bit after 8 and did about 40 minutes of modern alt-country covers like Tyler Childers, Morgan Wade, and Zac Bryan. He had a commanding voice and a strong but loose stage presence, and the crowd loved it! I played after him to a fairly full and attentive room, pushing my new record and spinning a yarn or two. After me, local dude with recently bleached hair Pete Klassen played a set of upbeat acoustic-punk originals and kept the mood light as he joked between songs and pulls off of his Bud Light. It was a fantastic night of music!

I had some pals from nearby London, Ontario in attendance; What Wave Dave, a staunch supporter since my first-ever London show at Call the Office in 2016, and his lovely wife Rena, Chillvis Freshly, an eccentric Twitter follower who makes these insane kaleidoscope videos of live music and rants from his chair about garlic beer and other weird things in a unique, crazy, Canadian way, and my pals Trevor and Jenn from near London, who I met in December when The Tucos played with Two Cow Garage in Toledo. People bought the new record and tee shirts and were very supportive and positive about their awesome little scene here in Tillsonburg. I chatted with the promoter Ben for a bit and some more with Mandy (no shortage of Jon Snodgrass stories!), loaded out, and headed towards my AirBB in the western suburbs of Toronto.

The drive was long and dark, through back-country winding roads that seemed abandoned and to go forever. Karen Jacobsen - The GPS Girl, my trusty Garmin GPS for many, many years, has been in a mood on this run so far, and my phone has my arrivals 10-20 minutes sooner, so I’ve using hybrid navigation, leaning on the phone when there’s a discrepancy. Eventually I merged onto the 403 and saw the massive expanse of lights that is the greater Toronto area as I rounded a corner at the top of an ascent. A few kilometers later and I was trying to figure out how to navigate locked gates, combination key-boxes, and sticky sliding doors in the back of a house I’ve never been to in the pitch-black night.

The AirBB is a middle floor of a house with residents below in the basement and a Vietnamese family in the apartment above. I was careful to be quiet as I booted up the laptop, scoped out the coffee machine, brushed my choppers and went to bed around 1:30am. Today I’ll work from here, looking out onto the back patio, watching three female cardinals fly around, and listening to Ozzy’s Boneyard on my JBL Flip5 speaker before heading into Toronto to play with my pals David Picco and Erika Werry tonight at LOLA Bar and Restaurant and have dinner and do some record shopping with Woody Whelan, the dude who got me into Canada to play for the first time, 14 years ago this weekend.

Huge thanks to everyone who was at The Mill for last night – you wonderful people make my heart full. Xo