The story: We were good friends with those guys. Once I was sitting in a beer tent at the Edmonton Fringe talking with them about performing…they’d seen us play a couple of times and vice versa. We were talking about low points in our careers, thus far. I told them about a time when I got paid $500 to play Desperado for a bunch of drunk waiters/waitresses at a restaurant party which made me feel pretty dirty. They thought that was pretty funny. At the time we were set up playing each night during the Fringe at Mickey Finn’s on Whyte Ave. The Worms came to the show that night and kept yelling out for Desperado. It became a thing over the course of that week, when they came back a few times and kept doing the same thing. The last night of the festival we had a surprise. We pretended we were going to finally cave in and play the song (Desperado) but instead we launched into “The Last Sask Pirate” which we’d learned that day. They thought it was funny. So did we. It just kind of stuck. We recorded the song. Then we went on to sell thousands of copies of East Of Edson and the rest is, I guess, history.

We’re still friends with the Worms…although we haven’t seen them in a while. A couple of other songs we did we’re also Arrogant Worm songs or co-writes. “Frozen Puck to the Head” was written by John Whytock from the Worms (with Brock). And “Go To Hell” was a Trevor Strong song (with Scott). Both of those songs are on the BOUGHT THE FARM album.

Hope that clears it up for you.

Chris Wynters
CT 2007

Captain Tractor, perhaps you can clear up a question I’ve had (and apparently a lot of people judging from the comments on your video). Who wrote the song, and performed it first, the Arrogant Worms, or your band?