“Steel Belted Radio” Documentary

Holland – June 2000

Back in May and June of 2000, we were on tour in Europe.
We had a wildly successful run through Holland, Belgium and Germany.
It was our first time back in two years and they were ready for us.
We played 16 shows in 16 cities in 14 nights.
It was crazy.
People followed us from town to town.
We felt like stars.
The last show was insane.

As we left the gig, people were running along side our van yelling, “Come back soon! Mike Plume Band! Come back soon! Rattle the Cage, Mike Plume Band!”

I finished writing the song Jubilee on that tour.

The next day, Dave, Hurricane Carter and I hopped on a train in Amsterdam and barrelled to Paris for a week.
Loads of fun.

Meck and Ernie stayed in Amsterdam for the week and toured various coffee shops (wink wink nudge nudge)

Anyway, somewhere along the way, I decided to give my pal, Joel Stewart a phone call (collect) in Calgary.
Thankfully he excepted the charges.

We talked about this, that and the other.

I hadn’t really seen him since our big “homecoming” in Edmonton in December, so it was nice to catch up.

We talked about the road.
We had a lot of laughs at about 3 dollars a minute in long distance charges.

After we hung up, Joel thought it would be a good idea to pitch CMT on a “documentary” following a young band on the rise.

For some reason, CMT agreed with him, they thought it was a good idea too.

No kidding?

Wow.

So in early July, Joel and his crew met us in Edmonton where we filmed the show used in the “Steel Belted Radio” documentary.

About month later, we met up again for a three night run beginning at the Ottawa Folk Fest, then to Wakefield, Quebec at the Black Sheep, Ottawa Ontario and down to Southern Ontario to the Fred Eaglesmith Picnic.

The joke was on them, because, sadly the “rise” only truly lasted about 2 more years before everything ground to a halt.

I’ll tell you the whole story some time when I’m drunk.

Mike Plume

May 4, 2017