TWO SIDES OF TOURING

As anyone who's ever been in a band will testify, life on the road swings between soaring highs and crushing lows. Vancouver indie trio Velour3, currently on a month-long Canadian tour in support of its psychedelic self-titled debut, didn't take long to learn that.

The highlight came last week, when the band surfaced on MuchMusic with Sook-Yin Lee. "We were completely star struck," bassist Jonathan Schubert told the Straight long-distance from a Central Canada stop. "MuchMusic has something called Indie Spotlight, and this was like Indie Walk-on Spotlight. We were on for a minute, and they played our video, so it was really cool."

A couple of days after the MuchMusic triumph, Velour3 got an unwelcome taste of the dark side. "We were walking along in North Bay, Ontario, and this very drunken local walked by and slurred 'You guysh are faggots,'" Schubert said. "Immediately after that, we were attacked by bats, which kind of freaked us out because we'd just watched From Dusk Till Dawn a few days ago. Three bats came at us - apparently they wanted the bugs that were hovering around our heads." Everything must be slower up north - including the people - because at its show later that night, Velour3 asked the crowd whether there were vampires in the area. "I asked them 'Do you all turn into vampires at night or something?'" Schubert said. "They just looked at me and went 'Huhhh?'"

Velour3's road-trip wraps on August 3 when the band pulls into Vancouver and then heads straight to a headlining show at the Piccadilly Pub. - Mike Usinger, The Georgia Straight, 24 July 1997.