Best-Ever Canadian Winter Blues Boogie

Clearing My Head

When my feet found the floor Saturday morning, a vague recollection was already pushing its way through the fog in my head. I shuffled bleary-eyed toward the kitchen. By the time I reached the espresso machine, I was awake enough to notice a crystalline blue sky framed in the window. I pulled the first shot and tried to reflect. Half-way through the second pour it hit me: this was the day for my annual trek north to the Canadian Winter Blues Boogie in Silverton, B.C.

Getting Ready to Go

Thanks to a small online cash advance I’d gotten the week before and already paid back, I had snow tires on the car and was ready to go. I wouldn’t miss this event even if I’d had to get an installment loan. I chugged the second shot, tossed my junk in the back seat, and was off to see Dr. Fun and the Nightcrawlers. Route mapping and other minor details could wait.

Planning My Route Carefully

I knew it was a four-hour drive, but I was hoping that careful route selection would make the trip  much longer than that. I asked the customs agent at the border if he knew the ferry schedule on Kootenay Lake. He handed me a printed schedule and offered me a sly grin that seemed to say, “Beautiful day to be on the lake.” That grin assured me that my careful planning had been worth the extra effort.

Composing a Rocky Mountain Eulogy

People write songs about the Canadian Rockies because they can’t help it. With the sunshine flooding through my sunroof, I was composing some effusively sentimental doggerel of my own, when the mountains rose up on the opposite shore, their likeness mirrored without defect on the placid, blue water.

Starting the Day Later that Night

I climbed over the pass (finally, a reason for the snow tires) and rolled into the parking lot of the Silverton Memorial Hall. It was eight o’clock and the sun had been behind the peaks for hours, but the day was just getting started. The doors of the hall were unlocked and everyone in town was shuffling through the knee-deep snow and up the welcoming steps.

Getting Good Stuff for Free

Inside I noticed a sign on the wall touting “Crystal Clear Glacier Water, Fresh from the Tap – Free.” Same price they charge for smiles. The stage was full of instruments. Dancers loitered on the hardwood floor and the air was charged with anticipation. When the Nightcrawlers hit the first note, the dance floor was instantly packed, and tables and chairs became a waste of floor space. Dr. Fun squeezed his way through the ten other musicians already on the stage and the band tore through the first set.

Getting My Hair Raised

Earlier in the day as I drove through town, I had noticed promotional posters for a special guest, Helen Davis. I wasn’t familiar with the name, but I had learned a long time ago that great and famous rarely have much in common.

I found out later that Helen Davis is part of an award-winning a cappella group called the Euphorics. If you want to hear earnest singing, listen to someone who sings without instruments. That’s how Helen Davis does it.

Davis and the good doctor finished the second set with hair-raising renditions of “Burning Down the House,” “Treat her Right,” “Fever,” and “Think.” The third set started with Dr. Fun looking and acting younger than he ever had in all the many times I’d seen him here.  The dance floor was full before the first song ended and it stayed that way until the last note.

Refusing a Frozen Finale

The party ended with a plunge into the icy lake on Sunday morning. Being warm-blooded, I opted out, but my return trip through the Rockies was an adequately grand finale. The Boogie organizers had promised that this year’s event would be even better than last year’s, and it was. I wouldn’t have believed it could be true, had I not been there to witness it.

Marking Next Year’s Calendar

I shuffled into my kitchen and tossed my junk on the table. I reached for an espresso cup, but changed my mind and reached instead for a pen. I flipped through the months of the calendar hanging on the wall above the espresso machine, found the date for next year’s Boogie, and wrote: Best-Ever Canadian Winter Blues Boogie. Then I ground the coffee.