Nathan Munn recalls blazing a trail from the west to the east coast of Canada with his band in two tired VW vans.

We were almost ready to go.

It was 2009 and I was living in Victoria, British Columbia, playing bass for funk-reggae-rock group Rocky Mountain Rebel Music. We had just released our first album after six months of playing shows around Victoria's vibrant music scene, and we had booked an epic summer tour to support the record: a journey that, over several weeks, would take us from the Island (as everyone who lives on Vancouver Island calls it) all the way to Quebec City, over 3,000 miles away.

Most of the band had never been on tour before, and we were caught up in the excitement as we double-checked we had everything we would need for the trip. Our two vehicles formed a modern-day Gypsy caravan: a newer, 90s-model VW Westfalia, dark beige and nicknamed Brown Sugar, would be our flagship, while an older, dark brown VW bus, prone to breakdowns but that moved at a great, languid pace, was our caboose, given the handle of Dirty Cherry.

Inside each van, it was organised chaos: a broken-down drum kit, bass, two guitars, keyboards and a smorgasbord of tambourines, maracas, and other rhythmic devices were jammed into every nook and cranny. As we finished our pack-up under the summer sun, I picked up a small ceramic skull that the band had hand-painted together, with its gold, purple and red flourishes, and installed it on the dashboard of Brown Sug, facing outward to ward off ill fortune, bad weather and thieves.

And then we hit the road. We watched the green hills of the Island gradually fade away in our rearview mirror as we approached the Juan de Fuca strait. Once there, we drove through a terminal and into a massive ferry, where we parked below deck. The band clambered out as I busily stuffed our stash of weed, separated into a few Ziploc bags, into the seams of my jean jacket. I quickly rolled a couple joints and joined my bandmates on the deck of the ship, where we got high and savoured the excitement, the sea breeze and the gorgeous scenery of the Gulf Islands. A couple hours later, we are unloading under the cover of night in a filthy alleyway for our first show at the Railway Club in downtown Vancouver.

That night the room was packed, and it soon was so sweltering I had a hard time seeing through the sweat pouring down my face. We pounded through our forty-minute set with frenetic energy when suddenly, near the end, the music was cut off; the club owners informed us we had gone past the cutoff time for live music. As awkward confusion filled the room, I instinctively started chanting "Turn on the mics!!" Soon the whole room was chanting and stomping and our amps flickered back to life, and we got one more song in.

After a stay in a hostel, the next morning we drove steadily toward the awesome, ominous peaks of the great Rocky Mountains. Soon we were driving up mountain passes, Dirty Cherry chugging along faithfully behind Brown Sug. We stopped amid the jaw-dropping scenery of Golden, where we smoked and ate at a wooded picnic site, splashing in a stream under the shadows of gigantic green peaks.

We got to Banff, an unbelievably beautiful mountain resort town. That night, we gathered with some locals in the night's chill under the opalescent glow of the Three Sisters peaks, and, under a gazebo, lit a fire and brought out acoustics for a nighttime jam. I ate a can of chilli heated over the fire and looked out over the incredible beauty. The basement of the house where the rest of the band slept was too dank for me, so I wrapped myself in blankets and slept mummified in the van, my breath dissipating in clouds.

The next morning we hit the road, but by the time we reached Calgary at nightfall, we realised we had left our merchandise in Banff. So Greg the bandleader and I rolled a couple spliffs and took a long, spooky drive back into the mountains in the dead of night. As we drove slowly through the rockies, a coyote crossed the road in front of us, almost apologetically, his eyes glinting in the headlights of Brown Sug.

We played a big, strange nightclub in Calgary to a small crowd. When the club owner caught us drinking our own beer in the green room he tore into us, so I bought a few rounds to ease the tension. I walked around downtown Calgary at night, alone, surprised at how empty and cold the downtown core felt. We got paid and headed out for Edmonton, our guitar player Jesse's hometown.

At Blues on Whyte we played to a packed, raucous house, where Jesse got a hero's welcome. In the alleyway outside the club, various sketchy people did fraught drug deals as we loaded out, the vibe on the streets of the city dark and threatening as we drove away.

It wasn't long before we were on the prairies and stark plains of Saskatchewan, where you can see storms building a hundred miles away on the horizon. When it got dark, we stopped at a roadside truck rest stop, a patch of flat ground just off the highway, in what felt like desert country.

That night it was beautiful, and as most of the band slept in the vans or tents, I decided to sleep flat on the ground, under the night sky. Lying there in my sleeping bag right on the dusty ground, I stared up into the clear sky as night fell, and all the stars of the universe came out as the blue faded to indigo and black. The milky way swirled above, and I felt safe and at home, in the middle of nowhere, hurtling through the sky on planet Earth.

Outside Regina, we stayed at a campground with showers and facilities, where we washed off the dust of the road and caught up on email and phone calls in an old converted schoolhouse. (This was in the days before everyone had smartphones.) After we burned a huge spliff, the campground owner wandered by, worried a skunk was in the campground.

We rolled out. As night fell and the days rolled into each other, my sense of time began to swim, and the constant movement of nomadic life set into my bones. We ate where there was food; stayed where there was shelter; gravitated to the kind, and lived for our time on stage.

After a rough night camping in the dark pine forests of Manitoba, we made it to Winnipeg, where we played to a few old-timers in a dive bar with video poker machines. We stayed at the house of the bar owners, a young lesbian couple, right behind the bar, savouring some homemade food.

In the morning we reached Ontario, the beginning of Canada's east. North Ontario is a forbidding place, even in the parts with infrastructure. We got to Thunder Bay, a rough, hard city, grey like slate, both in architecture and mood. Tempers were starting to fray; our trumpet player wanted to do some street busking, but as an Ontarian I informed him that might lead to us getting in a fistfight. We left the city in a bitter mood, the massive pink and blue skies of the north in our rearview.

We drove south, through Sault Sainte Marie and on to Barrie, where we stopped at a friend's house in the burbs for a few hours' comfort. Then we were off to Ottawa, hometown of both me and Greg, where we played an epic two-set show for our families and friends and the now-defunct Babylon club.

We next headed to Montreal, where I had lived before moving to Victoria. We played a great set to a mostly-empty room, and I played a solo acoustic show at a record store where I met up with the amazing woman who, within a couple years, would become my wife. But that's another story.

Exhausted after weeks of travel, our caravan headed further east to our last show, in historic Quebec City. At Le Cercle we played to an empty room, but the owners were kind and fed us five-star meals and put us up for the night. And thus ended our epic tour of Canada, neither with a bang or a whimper, but with a good meal and much-needed rest.

After Quebec City, I was lucky enough to catch a flight back to Victoria, while the rest of the band drove all the way back to Victoria in record time, powered by sleeplessness and a fresh sack of ganja. We had done it, and it was incredible.

Today, in the Covid reality, I'm not sure if such an epic trip could be undertaken so easily again. It makes me sad to think that young musicians have a harder time now doing what they love, and experiencing the adventure and freedom of life on the road. But I'm sure they'll figure it out; the young always do.

A few months after the tour, I headed out on a solo acoustic tour of my own. I made it to Montreal, met up with the woman I loved, and decided to stay. I called the band and left on great terms, they wished me well and I never looked back. Now, my wife and I have children, and live in a small town; I haven't played bass in a long time. But I'll always remember my odyssey with Rocky Mountain Rebel Music as one of the most satisfying adventures of my life.

Words Nathan Munn Twitter

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