Tag Archives: Backroad Bounty

Featured, Reality, Lifestyle & Documentary

Backroad Bounty looks for more deals and Canadian history in Season 2

If his Backroad Bounty gig ever ends, Peter “Bam Bam” Bamford is plotting his next TV role: Big Brother Canada.

“I think I would stand out, to say the least,” says Bamford, sporting his trademark cowboy hat, bushy beard, green army jacket, jeans and motorcycle boots. “I’m very old-school train of thought, very militant and punctual, and I’m very OCD. I don’t know if I would get along with everybody, but it would make for some interesting TV.”

We think Bamford would do pretty well. After all, he does interact with strangers—alongside Marty Gebel—as they crisscross Ontario in search of quality antiques and oddities for Season 2 of Backroad Bounty, returning to Cottage Life tonight at 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT. Earlier this year, I tracked down the duo in Ingersoll, Ont.—home to Gebel’s Modern Hipster Antiques—as they got dusty and dirty hunting around the top floor of E. W. McKim Quality Home Hardware, seeking hidden treasure and discovering Canadian history in the process.

Season 1 tracked the fellows as they dusted off items and dickered with owners over prices, and that formula is in place for Season 2 too, though a focus on those folks and the hosts has been amped up.

“This season is going to be funnier,” Gebel teases. “We’ll be talking a little bit more about values and selling this year, because the audience wants to know how much things are worth.”

“Because we have a season under our belt, people are opening up to us a lot more,” Bamford explains. “It’s more like a road trip with two guys and the incredible people they meet along the way.” That road trip includes provincial stops in Grand Bend, Quinte West, Harcourt, Port Dover, Walkerton, Wiarton and Owen Sound.

When the cameras aren’t rolling, Bamford is working to expand his business. Always a buyer at trade shows, he’s evolving his Bamtiques brand on social media and at shows, selling items and seeing if he can make a go of it as a full-time gig.

And if the Big Brother Canada thing doesn’t work out? Bamford has another idea in the works where he travels the world exposing silly local rules and regulations.

“It’s called Bam Bam Breaks the Law,” he says. “There’s a law in Pennsylvania where you can’t carry an ice cream sandwich in your back pocket. I want to break that law. There are laws in France about dolls with certain faces. If they’re willing to arrest me for putting an ice cream sandwich in my back pocket, I’m willing to accept that charge.”

Backroad Bounty airs Mondays at 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT on Cottage Life.

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedinmail
Featured

Digging for more Canadian history on Backroad Bounty

1 Comment

You never know what will be uncovered during an episode of Backroad Bounty. Will hosts Marty Gebel and Peter “Bam Bam” Bamford procure a cool neon sign hidden in a disused storage room, a box full of collectible Matchbox cars aching to see the light of day, or an old stand used to hold cans for a long-forgotten brand of car oil?

What these guys find, what they pay for them with plans to re-sell—and the stories behind those items—are at the heart of the Cottage Life series as it heads into its sophomore season. I hopped in the car and drove two hours outside of Toronto to Ingersoll, Ont., where Gebel and Bamford were busy searching for buried treasure. I found the pair climbing around the cluttered, humid third floor of E. W. McKim Quality Home Hardware in Ingersoll’s downtown, calling out to one another—and to store owner Bob Mott—when they discovered something cool. There was plenty to chat about. Among the items the fellows were interested in? Old ice skates, wooden boxes, vintage hardware store displays and a sign that once hung in front of the store. And while the items the boys found had interesting stories attached to them, the future episode’s setting did too: Mott recalls how the hardware store was a buggy shop during the 1800s.

“Searching for items is in their blood,” Joe Houlihan, president of Our House Media, Backroad Bounty‘s production company, tells me during a break in shooting. “They’d be doing this whether there was a TV show or not.” Season 1 of Backroad Bounty saw Gebel and Bamford tooling around cottage country, poking around decrepit hotels, barns, overflowing basements and garages in search of finds they could fix up and re-sell; this go-round has expanded its boundaries.

Backroad_Bounty

“This season feels more like a buddy road trip,” series producer and director Marshall Kaplan says. “It’s about the characters they meet along the way. It’s always about the amazing stuff that they find, but there’s humour and more of a story, more meat to the bone this year.”

Houlihan points out Backroad Bounty “sneaks history” into each episode through the tales told and items purchased; he himself has learned an incredible amount of Ontario history from his program. Among the areas the duo visit in Season 2 are Grand Bend, Quinte West, Harcourt, Port Dover, Walkerton, Wiarton and Owen Sound where the pair entertain each other as much as they do viewers.

“Marty is Bam’s best audience,” Kaplan says with a laugh. “Bam is a really good entertainer and Marty laughs at every one of his jokes. They may be interested in different things, but at the end of the day they both love the hunt.”

Season 2 of Backroad Bounty will air on Cottage Life.

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedinmail
Featured, Rookie Blue

Comments and queries for the week of July 24

Help from the Backroad Bounty boys

I hope you can help me. I just saw Canadian Pickers have stopped. I have a family member who has very old items from 1800 (an army saddle for example). Do you know any one who would be interested in coming to look and purchase these items? There are a lot more items for sale. —Cheryl

I know a couple of guys. Marty Gebel and Peter “Bam Bam” Bamford star in a series called Backroad Bounty on Cottage Life, where they go to people’s houses and look to buy items. Here’s the link to their Facebook page, where you can contact the show (and Marty and Bam Bam) with your question. As for the show, the boys are almost done filming Season 2 and I got the chance to watch Marty and Bam Bam pick through and purchase some cool items from a hardware store in Ingersoll, Ont. Look for my story in the coming weeks.

CraveTV to go direct to consumers on Jan. 1

I’ll definitely subscribe, but I don’t think we’ll drop my satellite TV service. We share it with my my mother and father-in-law and my brother-in-law so we split the bill three ways because it makes it more affordable ($127 is too expensive for any of us to pay on our own and it allows us to get all the channels rather than just a basic package). Our household is in a rural area without access to cheaper cable options so my in-laws subscribe to satellite to help us out even though they have cheaper options where they live near Edmonton. Truthfully, Crave TV and Netflix combined have more than enough shows to keep me with enough stuff to watch but my Internet (satellite Internet, again, our only option) gets to slow to stream 50 per cent of the time so until our Internet improves, I can’t cut Bell satellite.

Another big concern of mine is sports. Until Bell and Rogers launch good sports streaming apps that don’t require a cable/satellite subscription, I won’t consider throwing out my satellite. I would miss Jets games, Roughriders games and the Olympics way too much. —Alicia

Preview: Six pictures previewing tonight’s Rookie Blue

Lotta kissing going on. :) Guess Nick gets over Juliette’s I.A. gig. Maybe he ends up going with her to Vancouver instead of Andy? Because I totally called it that Swarek would win Andy over by getting her Boo Radley! —Kathryn

 

Got a question or comment about Canadian TV? Email greg@tv-eh.com or via @tv_eh.

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedinmail
Featured

Interview: Backroad Bounty boys sound off

When Canadian Pickers went off the air, it left a void. There was no one tooling around the country in a van, digging through barns and basements looking for hidden treasures while serving up a slice of Canadiana on TV. Now another pair of dudes have picked up where the Pickers left off. Meet Peter “Bambam” Bamford (he’s the one who looks like a Duck Dynasty guest star) and Marty Gebel, the stars of Backroad Bounty.

Debuting Monday on Cottage Life, Backroad Bounty follows the two friends from London, Ont., as they drive around the province looking for things they can re-sell for a profit. Among the items they discover in Episode 1? An old phone booth and motorized bike Gebel went gaga for and a vintage fishing pole Bamford just had to have.

Bambam, what is a “Bam-tique”? You mention that right off the top in Monday’s first episode.
Peter “Bambam” Bamford: A Bam-tique is an antique, but I don’t buy porcelain dolls and Limoge china. Bam-tiques are things that you could hang in a man cave or a living room above a mantel.

Marty, what’s your specialty? What are you always on the lookout for?
Marty Gebel: I stay on top of what is trending. The stuff you see in magazines and on designing shows. I mix a lot of styles, but I also stay away from Victorian antiques, saucers and china as well. I love mid-century Modern, old science and medical stuff. Those are my favourites.

I loved Canadian Pickers, and I feel like Backroad Bounty kind of picks up where it left off. How did you get involved in this?
PB: Marty was on Canadian Pickers a few times, so he had his foot in the door. The idea for the show came up and he got short-listed for it. He has a great TV presence and has a great knowledge. They called him up and he threw my name in the hat as a co-host for the show.

MG: There’s a big contrast between us, and we’re friends.

PB: We’ve known each other for about four years and they called me up and asked if I wanted to be on the show. They came down and filmed a pilot and now we’re on TV.

You guys are literally climbing over stuff to get at things. Is that an everyday part of being a picker?
PB: Absolutely. That’s the whole thing. If you are willing to climb things … there are times when we’re going into century-old burn piles and junk yards … we go into that stuff. That’s what sets us apart from everyone else. We’re willing to do that to find a treasure.

MG: We’ve had all of our shots. I’m sure we made the insurance people nervous with the way we were climbing all over stuff. That’s the way it is. We go to locations like that in real life. You’re on call, you don’t know what to expect when you get there and you may not be wearing the right clothes but you climb around and get filthy and dirty.

Backroad Bounty airs Mondays at 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT on Cottage Life.

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedinmail