Saturday night in Edmonton saw our little crew at Side Track, a bar a block from Tim's place. I was a bit uncertain what kind of place it was, as there were some cowboy hats present but it didn't feel like a full-on country bar. Also, there was a signup sheet at the door for a/the wet t-shirt contest (whose entrants amounted to a couple girls and a guy).

The opening band did not play the kind of music I'm used to hearing anywhere. Ben called the type of music "cow punk", which seems pretty fitting. The lead singer had one of those big country guitars and a cowboy hat, but his band mates had backwards baseball caps. The music was kind of like that, with a country feel over a nouveau punk sound. Interesting. Oh, and they covered Motorhead's Ace of Spades, which was cool.

The headline act for the evening: White Cowbell Oklahoma. Their genre of music was much more country than the opening band, but still . . . edgy. The exploits of White Cowbell Oklahoma are well-known in Toronto, or so we were told in some promotional material. At the beginning of the show, there were about 9 people on stage (just a regular bar stage, with room to comfortably accomodate a band of five with guitars and drums and such). Some played guitar, others sang, they had a drummer, one guy hit either a cow bell or wood block. Then after a few songs they were joined by people I had originally placed as being part of the entourage, so there were a good 15 people on stage. The second wave consisted mostly of dancers, and they would go out into the crowd and try to get people pumped up. The crowd was quite into it. I couldn't figure out how much I liked them, but they had great energy and if I weren't rolling around in a steak-induced blur I might have gotten more into it.