NXNE 2009: we came, we played, we ate pad thai

Damn, Toronto. This is total ‘from the bottom of our hearts’ kind of stuff: thanks for the amazing weekend. Thanks for packing into the Horseshoe and making us feel welcome (and a tip of the hat to Grant Lawrence for reminding us that NXNE was also our return to playing on Canadian soil for the first time in months), and for somehow letting us go over the written-in-stone LIVE ON CBC / NXNE set time allotments. And oh, the whole surprise live-on-air awarding of the NXNE Galaxie Rising Star award thing was an added beautiful surprise. We’ll come back any time you’ll have us, Toronto.

As for the rest of our trip, that too was grand. Boompa Erin and I tried to take in as many Pad Thais as possible over the course of four food-stuffed days. The Red Room gets points for being nice and spicy (and cheap), but I think I’m going to have to proclaim Queen Mother the winner in the Toronto’s Best NXNE Pad Thai Race 2009. (And when it comes to breakfast, Sandro Perri revealed the incredible Café Lula’s poached eggs on cheesy polenta as one of the city’s finest morning offerings).

It was great to see so many friends again, and exciting to walk past so many artists recognizable from our music collections at home. A festival like NXNE is a rather heady, panicked, and overwhelming experience (so a special thanks to the pal who let me use her apartment ever-so-slightly off the beaten path this weekend), but at least in this particular instance, everything went off without a hitch.

PS. Cheers to the Woodpigeon NXNE 2009 band: Annalea Sordi on Nord, flute & vocals; Foon Yap on violin, Mandobird & vocals, Paul Aucoin on vibes, Arran Fisher on bass, clarinet, percussion & vocals; Garrett McClure on guitar, and Dean Martin on drums. And oh. I’m Mark. I wore extremely white trousers which Maggie MacDonald spilled a full pint of Coca Cola on in the Red Room right after our show. From here on out, whenever I see a faint brown stain I’ll think fondly of Toronto.