The Communitea Cafe in Canmore Ruined My Birthday

I just have to say, before I post this...my boyfriend is the best person ever.

And the people at Communitea Cafe in Canmore, RUINED my birthday.

My man wrote this, and is letting me post it.

If you are a musician, please tell your friends never to play here. It's all we have left as a communi"tea" lol!!

Here's what Randy has to say. Baby I love you :)



The moment we arrived to load in gear this evening we were made to feel like a major inconvenience. (by Marni)

At first i didn't quite understand why we were getting some obvious negativity, but as this story unfolds, it becomes crystal clear.

Our first hurdle, and it was like pulling teeth, was to agree upon where we could set up merch. As you know, on a night like this when the guarantee is minimal, the merch becomes the most important aspect of making this stop financially feasible.

It turns out, they'd not only sold to capacity, which is why they (Marni) outright refused to let us have a table by which to set the merch up for display, but they'd OVER sold there venue. There were audible rumblings in the audience like "why did they sell more tickets than they had seats for?".

We were instructed to set up merch on a part of their counter where they serve their tea... of course, there were people sitting directly in FRONT of that counter so the merch was completely obstructed as well, the area needed for either of us to stand behind the counter to tend to any customers was prioritized by their staff for their tea duties making it impossible to be directly behind the actual product...

So, to sum it up... we had to stand off to the side for most of the time...getting dirty looks from their staff (by Marni) while trying desperately to reach over a counter to tend to audience members who loved billy.

Billy 'was' offered food. The offer was 'before or after'. She chose after.
Wrong choice.
The same woman (Marni) who was blatantly put off by the fact that we were there was so insanely busy selling alcohol that it would've been impossible for her to break away from her beloved cash register. Case in point, when i asked her (Marni) to unlock the office where our cases were stored, she delegated that to one of her friends who was an audience member there to do even that.

The accoms r a mute point. If billy had of been on her own, the 'spare' room would've been fine. Although, before she found out i surprised her and showed up, she was happy about this gig saying "at least i get to play to a full house, get 50 bucks, sell some merch, and i get my own hotel room. All 4 of those points seemed to be things she was sure were part of the deal.

The show.
Billy's banter had the audience laughing out loud, cheering, clapping etc...
They were all singing in unison to the chorus of "just tryin to get by"...

Does this sound anything like an audience's reaction to an artist who's energy wasn't good?

That was a quote from Marni. Directly. Spoken to me in front of the sound guy in the back kitchen.
She actually said, "If i'd thought her energy was good, I would've considered paying her something"...

We were all packed up.
I told Billy to go wait in the car, and i'd settle up.
I approached Miss Negativity (Marni), who I'd i'd been desperately been trying to kill with kindness all night with no success, and asked her if I could get Billy's fee.

She was, of course at the time, at her cash register, and instructed me to "hang on a moment".

Approx 25 mins went by as i watched her have friendly discussions with the only 3 people left in the bar. I sat there. In full view. Remember. Full house. Packed bar from the moment the doors opened until the last note of the main act.

50 dollars.

There i sat patiently.
Chairs were being stacked on tables, no-one from the audience was left in the bar now.

Enter billy to see me sitting there.

She asks, "what's going on?".
I say "I have absolutely no clue, but it's painfully obvious that i'm being blatantly ignored at this point".

Now I actually have to go looking for Marni.
Found her in that back kitchen having a conversation with the sound guy,
I had to actually interrupt them to say, "Hey, it's billy's bday today (which Marni knew), would it be ok to settle up so i can let her celebrate it in some other way other than sitting out in a cold car waiting for 50 dollars?"

It's then that Marni decides to tell me that there was never a 50 dollar figure discussed. It's then, for the 2nd time (1st being when we were trying to set up merch) that she reminds me that she had sold out and didn't need billy and that she was doing a favor for the agent.

Without belaboring the point of my decades in the music business, this was definitely the most rude insulting example of a artist being horribly treated I'd ever encountered.

Dear Marni,
I'm embarrassed for you that you work at an establishment called "communtea".
Plz get a job in the back of a warehouse somewhere, where you don't have to encounter any other humans.
Plz get out of the people business.
You're just not cut out for this sort of thing.
You know.
People.
That thing.