When I phone acclaimed Canadian hip hop artist Shad (né Shadrach Kabango) in search of a road story, I’m secretly glad I don’t get him on the phone immediately. That way, I figure, he’ll have time to think of an especially funny/weird/bizarre tale to tell. So when he calls me back just a few minutes later, I’m thrilled. That’s a sure sign he has a great story he can’t wait to share, right?

“There was one thing that happened that I thought was weird, but no one else thought was weird,” Shad begins. “Outside of our show one time was what appeared to me to be a McDonald’s street team, which I thought was really weird, because McDonald’s doesn’t really need a street team, you know? Most people have heard of them since they were like, six months old.”

“True,” I say, wondering where this is going.

“Yeah. So I got an Egg McMuffin t-shirt, and a Dogg Pound CD from 2001.”

He pauses.

“For some reason that’s the weirdest thing that comes to mind,” he concludes. “Maybe I’m just really boring, but that’s the weirdest thing.”

Not to pass judgment on Shad’s boringess, but there’s no way this anecdote will fill a column.

“Well,” I say hopefully, “have you ever gotten lost on tour or anything like that?”

“Well, no,” Shad says, “’cause in Canada you kind of stick to the one highway, you know?”

I say nothing. Three thoughts are forming in my mind, however: (1) How come I still manage to get lost? Where is this one highway I’m supposed to be sticking to? What about Confusion Corner in Winnipeg, for example? (2) Canadians not living along this one mystery highway will never get to see Shad perform! And (3) This interview is going nowhere fast.

Shad continues, unaware of my worries: “The East Coast usually provides some good stories, like super-friendly people, you know? Like this one guy in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. We crash at his place and he took us around to like the farmers market in town and all these crazy places.”

“Crazy places like what?”

“Oh, he cooked us quail at his restaurant, which was pretty cool.”

Now, on a craziness scale of one to ten, eating quail dinner is a 2.46 at best. I am getting increasingly worried.

“Do you have anything in contrast that is bad,” I ask, “like where people screwed you over?” For once in my life, I find myself wishing there was something terrible that happened to a fellow musician.

“Well,” Shad says, “one time we played this frosh week show at a university but they didn’t quite plan it right, and by the time we were going on it was completely dark and there was no one there, so we were just playing in the dark, by ourselves. We had stuffed our van full of gear, but we didn’t need any of it. They had rented stuff for us, so we drove with our faces slammed up against amps and stuff unnecessarily.”

By now I have concluded that not every musician lives in an extreme rollercoaster ride world of blessings and curses, elations and disasters. These are people I envy. However, they are perhaps not the ones I should interview for this column. Quail dinner is a nice treat, crowded vans aren’t, and is it a bit weird that McDonald’s does the grassroots thing. But good news: Edmonton happens to be along the one highway! At least that’s what I assume; Shad is performing at the Urban Lounge on Sept. 25.