A Comment by a Friend

Envision this if you will: the venue is the (now defunct) Yucatan Party Can in downtown Orillia on a midsummer's night back in 1994. The event is called "Hip Tuesdays...Featuring the Wheat Kings...a Tribute to the Tragically Hip". A group of young archaeology students who are working in the area for the summer enter this empty bar. Having found comfort in their ice cold beers, they proudly display and discuss their respective scars following a day of digging up the past. All of a sudden, the lights go dim and five unassuming men take to the stage. This is pretty dramatic considering only the diggers and the bar staff are present. The drawn-out guitar riff to "Lookin' for a Place to Happen" immediately draws one of the diggers off his bar stool and onto the dance floor where he begins twitching like he's being attacked by fleas. Propelled by the collective raw energy of the drum, guitars, bass, and the lead singer's half-shouted voice that sounds like a between-cell secret from a fellow asylum inmate, the digger reaches Nirvana.

Whoa! That sounds pretty deep, eh? The truth of the matter is that the raw energy emitted by Wheat Kings at every show is, well, infectious. From a gig at some bar in Guelph where Yazz, a crazy Japanese buddy of mine, stole the show with his wicked harmonica playing, to those infamous road trips to the Pig n' Whistle in BurlOak where outlaw bikers and university students danced shoulder to shoulder, the Wheat Kings have provided my friends and I with countless memories, most of which were told to me the next day!


Andy Kovacs
ARCHAEOLOGIST

< we love you too Andy!!>