Mike Plume is "ridiculously excited" to be coming back to Bonnyville for a show this month. The Mike Plume Band will play at the Dream Wheels gala in the Flint Field House on Aug. 28, a thank-you evening to the many drivers who will have made their way to the Lakeland, and a fundraiser for four charities.
"I hope to do such a good job that they'll have us back again and again and again," Plume said about the show. "I'm very excited."
The cars will arrive in Bonnyville around 4 p.m. for viewing at the Centennial Centre. Tickets for the gala are $100 and include a meal sponsored by Flint Energy. The evening will feature comedian Tim Nutt and live and silent auctions of items donated by local businesses. The evening's proceeds, along with Dream Wheels Weekend, will be donated to Bonnyville Health Foundation, Hearts for Healthcare Cold Lake, Military Families Support Society at 4 Wing, and the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation.
"I think it's a fantastic idea," Plume said about the event. "If you can do something, that being me, or you, or the Town of Bonnyville, or the whole Lakeland area, you do something to help the other guy out then it's always a good thing."
Plume spent the "best time" of his life in Bonnyville, he said, the town where he met band mate Ernie Basiliadis. The two continue to play shows and record music together since meeting during high school football try-outs in 1985.
"I sort of think back on my first year in Bonnyville quite fondly," he said in a phone conversation with the Nouvelle.
The last time he played Bonnyville was in November at the Wetlander while on tour promoting the album 830 Newfoundland. The 2009 album featured a few patriotic numbers, Plume said, because he was "just a guy who was homesick. So I started writing all these songs about being a homesick Canadian."
While not touring and writing songs for the Mike Plume Band, Plume is a salaried songwriter in Nashville. "I haven't had the big smash, number one song on the Billboard charts, yet," he said, but he does find it satisfying to have other musicians record his songs.
He said he doesn't write music with a message in mind, but if there is one behind the songs, it's the Latin phrase carpe diem: seize the day.
Plume is spending the summer teaching music at a Tim Hortons camp in Kentucky, in addition to performing. If teaching and touring weren't enough, Plume is also in the midst of writing a new album, his 11th, which he guesses could be out by next summer.
"That was the hope and the dream and the prayer, that'd we'd get to do another record," he said.
