Juno Part 2: Saturday is for schmoozing. I love your record.

There may have been schmoozing going on, but don't forget that this was also Mommy and Daddy's weekend away!
And do note that I clean up pretty dang good for a farm girl!!!!
Before I get too deeply into the schmoozefest, take another quick look at the scenery. This is the harbour side of our hotel. Holy crap you don't wanna know what our production company had to pay for us to stay here. Although, having said that, I'm just a little bit glad that the other hotels were booked up!

I am so tired today I feel half dead. Two days later, still feeling it, and I didn't even get slobbering drunk...not like some people I know...it's just that normally I don't schedule an appointment AND a trip to the grocery store in the same day, but here I was flying around on airplanes and laughing at lame jokes and worrying about being late and forcing myself to say hi to musicians that my daughter is in love with. Therefore, I am allowing myself a few days to recover.

Here's a rather trivial piece of stress: my hair was fading. It started off as a strange pinkish-purple experiment but by Saturday morning it was orange at the roots. Orange. I am not a natural orange-head. The colour was coming off on my fingertips. My darling husband knew that I wouldn't be happy with this. We found a salon, where they made an hour to spare for a poor girl going to the big Juno party that evening. If you are ever in Halifax, and want your hair turned fuschia, go to The Hive Hair Studio on Barrington st and see Billy.

We stopped by the Granite Brewery for a beer before going upstairs for Billy to do his magic. People, do you know what I had? Raspberry beer. Honestly. I'm telling you, this place is amazing.

The invite-only industry party is strange. You don't really get to be star struck because the actual star power is a small percentage of the biz. There are a lot of non-musically-talented, minimally-musically-talented, and fed-up-with-being-a-musician people who are necessary in order to get the musically-talented into your ears. Jethro would be in that third category. The evening consists of all of us "industry" people milling around, snagging snacks off the trays and grabbing a champagne glass, then juggling these items in order to shake hands. This is about an hour or so and it is, for my man, the MOST important time of the whole evening. This is where he catches up with people he hasn't seen in the last year because they were all trapped in the studio. This is where the business cards are shuffled.

I don't work for him anymore so I'm free to go famous people hunting. This weekend I talked to:

Kathleen Edwards- she is so cool and absolutely beautiful in real life.
Tom MacDonald from Hedley- I already knew he was cute.
Steve Bays from Hot Hot Heat- I saw a young fella walking around looking slightly overwhelmed. Jethro was chatting up somebody very important, I don't know, like a record lable prez or something, and I walked up to this elf-like kid and introduced myself. So shy! So adorable! I told him that my 11 year old daughter loves their record. His eyes lit up. Kids are completely free of BS if you grow them up that way. If a kid likes it, it's supreme flattery. And I dig that record too. They are better than the Strokes. Yes they are. What a nice guy.

And now my brain is failing, because there were more but it's becoming a blur. Also, it occurs to me that many of you reading this won't even know who these people are. Fame is a subjective thing.


The dinner and awards were awright. Our table got a little silly. It was fun.

Jully Black was a great host; she moved things along as well as possible considering that 29 awards were handed out as well as five performances and a five course meal. She is funny as well as fiercely sharp witted. I think we should get her to host the big show one of these years. Jully cracked us up constantly, partly by chiding the script on the teleprompter, and partly with her bizarre obsession with Nickelback's Chad Kroeger. Oh, and the Jamaican-to-Canadian translations. She also closed the show with a performance which I believe cemented her a roomful of new fans. That girl can sing! To top it all off, one of our buddies got the Engineer of the Year award. YAAAAYYYYY!

My best side.

So, did I get to meet the love of my daughter's life, as well as the object of obsession for my Bestest's daughter? Yes. Yes I did. I can't say I made the best impression on Jacob Hoggard, frontman of Hedley, because despite my ability to be decent and treat the "famous" like "humans", I gurgled and spluttered and giggled. The white wine didn't help much. But understand, I was on a mission to meet this guy. And there he was.

And did I get pictures? Yes I did. Too bad I won't be showing them to you. You'll just have to take my word for it.

We topped off the evening with Jethro doing tequila shots with his Russian buddy in Stayner's Wharf, and later barfing up everything. All that magical red wine that kept appearing in his glass at dinner...I held his silky long hair back, gave him a glass of water, and went back to bed. Later I heard him snoring in the bathroom. Falling asleep on the can after barfing-- that is SO ROCK N ROLL! Go Jethro!!!!

It was a good evening if you judge it by those standards.
Next: the telecast, and the industry after-party. And the day after the after party.