Cowtown & Big Sky

I can't sleep, so I am going to post some photos from my recent trip to Alberta. But first, I'll share the last picture on my camera from before the trip.


I bought some Polish sausage as a thank you for Mike's boss for letting me use his shop (and his paint guy) to customize my new bike (pics coming up next time!) I made a sticky note, to remind Mike to take it to the shop, and somehow it ended up on Rufus. Mike says he doesn't know how it got there; I'm not buying it!


Ok, so friends of ours, from Alberta, went back home to get married in a modern day take on an old-time, small town wedding. I was honoured to be invited and asked to sing during the ceremony. The groom (John) was supposed to fly in on the wednesday, so we planned to fly out and surprise him at his bachelor party that night (I'm an honourary bachelor). However, the saturday before the wedding, John got really sick and had to fly out late, so he missed his bachelor party (we'll get you a new one in the fall, when you get better John!) and we found ourselves alone in Calgary for two days.

A few words about Calgary, from the eyes of a Cork-towner: clean, welcoming, smallish, easy to navigate, demographically homogenous, expensive, a little boring, friendly, under construction, great restaurants, not much to see... Calgary! Feel free to disagree.

I liked Calgary better than I thought I would, but I must admit, Edmonton is way cooler. I mean no disrespect, but the best part of Calgary was journey to and from Calgary and Fort Macleod. I have never seen such a huge sky! It's so immense, it's almost oppressive! In Toronto, the largest thing you see when you look around is the skyline-- all the buildings, and maybe the lake, if you are at the beach. In Alberta, outside the city, all you see is land-- rolling hills, mountains and BIG SKY! It's awesome, in the pre-1980s meaning of the word.

Look! You can see the curve of the planet!



It was FREEZING, by the way, so I spent most of the first two days trying to find a coat and something more suitable to wear in the 1 degree weather (silly me, I was thinking June wedding, summer temperatures?). Here is a pic of the most under construction building I have ever been inside, without a hard-hat-- The Calgary Mall:



And here is a picture of some snow, in JUNE, which appeared not long after the crazy hail storm we were so fortunate to be caught in:



The wedding was in Steph (the bride's) hometown, Fort Macleod, population 3000, every single one of them nicer than the next! Fort Macleod happens to be the town in which the movie Brokeback Mountain was filmed (you know the scene where they're making out in the stairwell, and his wife looks down and catches them? We walked by there like 10 times a day) Kind of funny, since Alberta is supposed to be so homophobic, that there are numerous plaques around the tiny town referring to the movie. Funnily enough, there's no mention of it on the town website. ;)

Steph and John got married in the theatre on main street, which was a very beautiful and well preserved early 1900s, multi-purpose theatre, and perfectly fitting, since the bride and groom are both "in" theatre. The next two photos are not mine, but I kinda forgot to take pictures of the town. These belong to a guy on flikr named "hikerguy". Hope he doesn't mind me borrowing them!





It's a quaint little town, with a pre-confederation feel, and we stayed in one of the 4 motels they have there, and apparently chose the wrong one:



Yes, it was raining in the bathroom!

The day of the wedding, we had time to go to Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, which was only about 30 minutes away. It was pretty crazy seeing it all in person. Not like there's a mountain of buffalo bones at the bottom of the cliff, but actually being there, and reading all about it, watching the recreations and historical footage, and realizing how quickly the near-extinction of the buffalo came about after the onset of European immigration. And, for me, the most significant moment came when I read the copy of the treaty that was offered the Blackfoot, Blood and Peigans by the government of Canada. They really did make the offer sound appealing. Seriously, I can see how the tribes would be wooed by the terms of the treaties, especially since their main source of food, shelter and clothing (the buffalo) was fast disappearing. Too bad Canada had no intention of following through with most of the promises made.

Here are some pictures we took...it was snowing as we arrived, and then hailing, so it's not a very clear day, but still, yo can see how beautiful it was there:






Another aspect particularly enjoyed-- the HSIBJ Centre's carpet, which ran throughout the 5 floors of the building




This is the Smiley Barn, which I saw on the way back into Calgary, from Fort Macleod.



I actually stole the second picture of the Smiley Barn from Rob Mitchelson, who played guitar with me during the ceremony, and got a much better picture of it! And here's us at the ceremony!

Music is My Boyfriend

I am sipping a thimble-sized glass of Baileys on ice, by myself at 3 in the morning, not at all worried if this makes me an alcoholic or not. It is a little gift to myself, more about the sugar and milk content than the booze; a gift for a job well done this evening. Post-gig, celebratory nightcap, in a very cute antique, cut-crystal liqueur glass, one of a set that I pulled out of the garbage room a few months ago-- but that's another story.

I am not sure what I want to write about tonight...I just got inspired by my friend Cate's blog, which I read from time to time....and felt the need to break the seal, crack the ice, open the door...what have you... on my own blog, which has been wasting away, neglected for the last 6 months.

It's not that I haven't had anything to say... it's just that all my thoughts have been pouring into my music and my design work as of late. Which is a good thing, but I have missed writing these, and I do keep getting nagged about having but not using this blog.

So, last time I wrote, I promised to tell you about an amazing recording experience I had in the summer with a rock legend! It's almost too long ago now to do justice, but, he came back again last week, and we did one more song, so I am re-invigorated by his genius... so I'll see if I can tell the story now.....



The man is Garth Hudson. He is best known for his work with The Band, Ronnie Hawkins and Bob Dylan. He is a virtuosic keyboardist, and basically pioneered the use of the organ in rock and roll. Just google him, if you don't know who I'm talking about.

Garth is a proud Canadian, though he lives in New York State now, he visits Canada frequently. He is well known for being an excellent studio musician, as well as performer. He's done session work with (among many others) Neko Case, The Sadies, Martha Wainwright--some of my favourite musicians. My partner Scott (who's helping me finance and produce my album, as well as co-writing some of the songs) is a HUGE fan, and had this craaaaazy idea that we should email Mr. Hudson and ask him to come play on a few tunes next time he was in Toronto. I humoured him, knowing there was no way Garth freeking HUDSON was going to listen to my tracks, let alone respond or agree to this craziness, and Scott whipped off an email. The VERY NEXT DAY, I got a call from Maud, his wife, saying that she and Garth happened to be in Toronto, and would I like to meet with them, because Garth liked my tunes? I nearly peed myself and/or dropped the phone when she introduced herself (those of you who know me can imagine how much nervous giggling was going on), but her big, warm drawl calmed me down, and we chatted for a while and made plans to meet that night at Fran's Restaurant, an all night diner.

Now, I'm a night owl, but the Hudsons are even more nocturnal than I, so we met at about 4am, after Garth finished a session nearby. He didn't say much at all that first meeting, and neither did I (too friggin nervous). Maud did most of the talking, and Garth quietly ate his lemon meringue pie as I stole glances at him, trying to see under the rim of his big, black hat. He still had the wild, flyaway hair and great bushy beard, though both are silver now, as he must be in his 70s... And I was intimidated as could be, though they were all very sweet, complimentary and easy going.

After a couple of hours of getting to know each other, I left them with a CD of the songs I was hoping Garth would like enough to play, and went home to scream into a pillow for a few hours.

It's not that I was start struck, because I wasn't really. It's more that Garth has an air about him. He's a LEGEND. He's played with BOB DYLAN. He is a GENIUS. He likes MY music???!!! Maud told me he gets requests all the time, that they always listen to, but rarely respond to. That fact alone, makes me feel like I have accomplished something with my music. A compliment, like none other.

Cut to a few weeks later, when Garth came back to Toronto, and squeezed a day in to record 4 of my songs. I picked him up at the hotel, Maud stayed behind to work (I get the sense she is the glue, the salt, the meat-- the one who makes things happen-- thought she herself is also a very talented musician). There was a few moments of silence in the car, nervous small talk on my part. Then Garth took out his corn cob pipe (!) and began to speak-- about what, I can't remember, but listening to him, I felt my hands relaxing a bit, and my shoulders coming down from the painful permahunch... He has this amazing voice, somewhere between farmer/professor/shaman... and it is slow, and steeped with wisdom. There is no sense of an ego, though the man knows more about music than all the musicians I have ever met in my whole life wrapped up in one.

When we got to the studio, he went straight to the beat-up old piano in the corner, ignoring the bazillion dollar grand piano in the main room, and played nothing in particular, except that whatever it was, it had me in tears, weak kneed immediately. Everyone in the room-- myself, Scott, Ben the owner, Watson the engineer-- shared a look of disbelief-- slack-jawed, at the magic sound of Garth's playing, mere feet away. We could have stopped right then and it would have been worth it.

It was a long, arduous day in the studio. Garth was very tired as he'd gotten next to no sleep the night before, recording til the wee hours of dawn. But as Neil Young says (an old buddy of Garth's!) that's his style, man. He thrives on sleep deprivation, and he played beautifully. We did 10 times more talking, eating, joking and listening to Garth's stories than we did actual recording, but it was a perfect day.

Garth played accordian on two songs, and organ on two others. He has a unique way of working. Once he's heard the song a few times, he does a take. Then he comes in to the booth to listen, stopping to have the engineer erase a bum note here or there (the very few that there may be). Then, he goes back in and records a second take, without listening to the first, comes back out and repeats the "wiping" process. It is a fairly tedious way to work, but he knows exactly what he is looking for, and what his overall vision is. Because, suddenly, he asks the engineer to play all the edited takes back together, and you have pure musical genius. I don't know how he does that-- without listening to them together. He reminds me a bit of a modern Beethoven, writing music from memory...

The most memorable part of the whole experience for me, (and this happened again, last week when he came back) was the first few moments, when he sat down to record each song. I cannot express what an honour it was (IS) to have Garth Hudson play my music. I am always appreciative, and thankful of any musician who will learn my songs, and come out and play them with me. But Garth is sooooo unbelieveably talented, and busy, and legendary, and soulful, and I could go on and on. It was overwhelming, and by FAR the best musical experience I've ever had.

This time, when he came out to record, I was much more comfortable and relaxed with Garth, and had a chance to get to know him a bit. He is Rainman knowledgeable about music, and we got on a lot of off-topic threads, stemming from licks that he liked to play, or tunes he thought I should listen to. I made a long list, and have some serious homework to do, because most of them are fairly obscure. Every now and then, he'd tell little anecdotes, casually mentioning people I've read about, listened to, loved, for years ("Well, Levon has these parties at his barn...") It was kind of surreal. But the best part was how kind Garth was. He treated me like a musical equal, (which is ridiculous!) and shared his stories and melodies with all of us. He hung out and ate the homemade pastries I brought into the studio. He spent time teaching Ben and I how to learn scales, and gave me a pamphlet he'd photocopied at the library on proper musical notation and just really seemed to enjoy, and be, himself.

I imagine he is more at home in the studio than anywhere else. But I confess, I would love to see him puttering around the kitchen, or garage of his own home. Smoking his pipe on the porch, watching the sunset, drinking tea with Maud, telling stories about the road, and hearing endless melodies run through his head.

Thanks be to Thansgiving

Thanksgiving is my favourite holiday. It's the only one where you get to have the whole family together for a big, celebratory meal without the added pressure of present-buying frenzies, enforced aging, religious dogmas, etc. Also, it's the only holiday with a message I really believe in.

The history of First Nation Peoples in Canada (and the U.S.) is something that I know shamefully little about, despite vague, inaccurate, Western-skewed lessons in elementary school history class. The more I learn about it as an adult, the more horrified I become about the way the Canadian government bullied and lied it's way into claiming ownership of this continent. You don't have to dig very deep to find a long list of broken promises and outright betrayals of the native people of Canada, perpetrated by John A. and the rest of the Confederate government.

In fact, if you want to be cynical, I am kind of surprised that Thanksgiving is an official, statutory holiday, since we tend to sweep most issues concerning the First Nations under the rug.

Thanksgiving is the prescribed day in which we North Americans remember the kindness of the early First Nations People to the arriving settlers on the shores of the St. Lawrence. So the story goes, kind native Canadians welcomed the pioneers, and taught them how to hunt, shelter and survive in the Canadian wilderness. We all know how we repaid their kindness.

So, I do believe Thanksgiving to be the most important celebration of the year. And I wish it wasn't relegated to just one day. This year, take the time to look around your big kitchen table and be thankful for what and who you have in your life. Even those of us with family issues, personal hardship and trauma can find something to be thankful about, if we look hard enough. After all, we are all here in this beautiful country, living peaceful and free lives.

p.s. Come celebrate with me on Saturday October 11th, at Bread & Circus in Kensington Market. I will be playing a bunch of new songs, and hosting a Thanksgiving Potluck. It's my first turkey, so come hungry!

Other Creepy Crawlies

While waiting for the GO train at Port Credit Station last weekend, I noticed a BIG spider...and then another one...and then about 50,000 of them. Seriously. Look up, next time you are there.

Mythbusting

Really, I just have a bunch of photos to post, but I will say a few words first, to debunk the myth of the slowness of snails.

I have a colony of snails living and growing in a goldfish bowl in my kitchen. It started with one snail, whom I harvested from my friend John's tank because I thought it was cute. I managed to keep it to one snail only for months (this particular kind of snail breeds asexually), ritualistically culling unwanted eggs, and watching him/her grow bigger and cuter everyday. Then one day, I guess I missed a batch of eggs, because BAM! there was like 80 of them sliming around in there. So I have given in, and continue to let them procreate to their heart's content. They are really cute.

I decided to take some pictures of them the other day. Snails are really fascinating up close, and I wanted to try to capture some of their characteristics with my macro-lens. They have little mouths that are constantly scrubbing the sides of the tank, plants and rocks. They have little eyes, which aren't, contrary to popular depiction, at the end of their "feelers", but are on their faces. The "feelers" are just "feelers", as far as I can tell. Hmm...what's the technical term for a "feeler"? It's not quite an antennae...not really a horn...somewhere in between. And they have beautiful, one-of-a-kind patterns on their shells, which grow with them, over the months. They start of about as big as a pin head, and the largest I have seen gets to be about the size of a blueberry.

However, I was entirely unsuccessful in my attempts to photograph them. The little mofos refused to sit still. In fact, come to think of it, I have never, EVER seen a stationary snail. I think, like sharks, they never stop moving. Or maybe mine are just really high strung.

...And the little s.o.b.s are FAST! You know how everyone sterotypes snails for being slow--"inching along like a snail"; "going at a snail's pace" etc? Well it's not true! Snails are speedy. I bet if you did some kind of comparative analysis on snails-- speed vs. size vs. distance covered-- you'd discover they're nearly as fast as humans. Maybe not, like, Usain Bolt fast, but definitely mall-walking-granny fast. Or faster. I was duly impressed, and so should you be.

So excuse the blurry photos. What can I say? They were just too damn fast!

Garfield Minus Garfield

I am really excited right now because I just discovered Garfield Minus Garfield. A Irish man named Dan Walsh has re-invisioned actual Garfield comic strips, but without Garfield, Odie, Pookie or any of the other characters except Jon. The results are funny and disturbing. Here's what the website says:

"Garfield Minus Garfield is a site dedicated to removing Garfield from the Garfield comic strips in order to reveal the existential angst of a certain young Mr. Jon Arbuckle. It is a journey deep into the mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness and depression in a quiet American suburb."

What's amazing is that Walsh has done this WITH the permission of Garfield creator, Jim Davis. Apparently when Davis saw them, and was so impressed with the reinterpretation, he decided to allow Walsh to continue to edit and publish the strips, and the two are now collaborating to release a "Garfield Minus Garfield" book.

I find it really very interesting and amusing to look over the same cartoons I saw as a child with an entirely different viewpoint. No one has ever done anything like this with children's material before, to my knowledge. Or at least, no one has ever done it, gotten away with it, and even had the blessing of the original author!

I was a huge and I mean HUGE Garfield fan as a kid. My stepmother even made me a Garfield birthday cake one year, and I have never been so excited about cake (okay that's a lie....all cake is exciting---ooooh, especially the Simone LeBon cake she made two years later!) I still have all my Garfield books, and browse through them occasionally. What's sad is I dont find them funny at all anymore. Not even a little bit. They have unfortunately crossed into that vapid territory occupied by "Family Circus" and "Cathy".

I think that's okay, though. I think that's what's supposed to happen: you're supposed to grow up, and NOT still laugh at dead baby jokes and armpit farts. It's a good sign if you're 35 and you don't still find "Ziggy" hilarious.

The problem is, I don't WANT to grow up. I desperately WANT to still find Garfield funny. Every time I leaf through the books, I am like "please, let me laugh this time!"

But I don't. *Sigh*

So thank you Dan Walsh (a good, solid, straight-man-in- the-comics kind of a name, don't you think). For making Garfield funny again.






















images from www.garfieldminusgarfield.net

Dream Myself Alive

My apartment is a mess, which reflects my mental state. My Nanna used to say her bedroom was "upside down" when it was messier than she liked, and therefore off limits. Mine however, is apparely, "sideways".

Feeling busy, lazy, tired, excited, creative and overwhelmed all at the same time. Big plans to use this blog like a verbal fencing pit in the next while... Tossing things up in the air, skewering some, letting others fall...

I have been writing a lot lately. Music, that is, not this kind of writing. It's good for me....each song feels like a major accomplishment if I complete it, and if I still like it once it's finished.

In the past I have written mostly about my relationships--usually when they are new and exciting, or when they are failing painfully.... eg. "Afterglow", "Happy", "Inside", "Noah", "On The Highwire", "Blame", "Never Fall", "Half The Man"...

But for the last year and a half my love life has been stable and supportive, which although wonderful, leads to me having little to say musically. I hadn't written a song in maybe 6 months. Then in June, I wrote one for a dear friend who finally found the courage to leave a very destructive and abusive relationship. I was thinking about how scary that can be...wondering if you'd ever heal, wondering if anyone would ever find you attractive again, whether you'd ever find anyone else attractive again...? It's a quiet, private little song, just for me and her. Nobody else will ever hear it.

It sparked me, musically. All these repressed melodies came bubbling up: at the studio, clay-covered drill in hand, humming, searching for some way to record the persistant little melody that demanded to be written down. I discovered a function on my new cellphone: it makes voice recordings. How handy! Hopefully I won't accidentally text message them to people hahaha.

I 'd take the melody home to the piano, ruminate for a while, and elaborate on it. But for the first time in my life, I had this panicky feeling like I had nothing to say. It went deep, this panic, because of my secret fear that I am actually a shallow, hollow person with no real opinions or intelligence. (This fear was launched by an ex-boyfriend who said something like that to me in the heat of an argument, once, years ago. I know it's not true, but it remains, a kernal of insecurity stuck in my mind, forever).

In actual fact, it's not that I had nothing to write about-- it was just that I had to change techniques, create new pathways in my songwriting process. I had to look beyond the immediate desperation and emotion that songwriting has always emerged out of, and ask myself what I have been thinking about lately. What are things that are important to me that I have never written about, and why haven't I written about these things before?

The environment, obviously, is a big one. How can I be so vehemently "green" in my lifestyle, but never consider it in my music? After some serious soul searching, I wrote a song called "Manufactured Landscapes" which is a title I stole from a book about Ed Burtynsky.

Another big issue for me is Canadian patriotism (or lack of). This concept first tweaked in me when I moved to America for a year in 2000, and later became a part of the regular discourse of my design work, but never of my music, thus far. I am very pleased with the fun little song with (what I consider) a big message that was born a couple of weeks ago, which I have entitled "Humble Pie."

Another new song, less political and more theoretical, is called "Starting Tonight." It's a little self-pep song about "the best night of my life" and all that would occur on such a night. It has a line where I imagine I am a train whistle, all swoops and overtones...

And just a few days ago, I tackled a subject that has been very purposefully avoided by me for the last 2 years: the death of one of my best friends, Christina Jarvis. I sat down and wrote this little bossanova tribute to her, with the only rule being I could gush all I wanted, but no sappiness or depressive lyrics. It is written almost entirely tongue-in-cheek, (as she would have LOVED) but I will confess I do get fairly emotional when I play it. It was supposed to be the song that I waited 2 years to write in order to NOT make myself (or anyone else) cry when I played it... I almost succeeded.

So, as it turns out, I DO have lots to say. What a relief!


Hmm. I was planning on writing about a recording experience I had on Wednesday with a world renown musician, and personal hero of mine....but I guess I will save that for the next post, cuz I have to go to a bbq now. Mmmm...sweet BBQ! Has anyone written a song about you and your charbroiled goodness? :)

Holy Crap

Has it really been almost three months since I updated this?

I am sitting at my kitchen table right now, in a fairly black mood, with a rather large, sharp kitchen knife off to my right, beside my hand. I used it at breakfast and didn't put it away. Don't worry, I'm not going to hurt anyone, I just think it's kind of funny. It's like one of those little jokes that God plays...."I know you're really angry right now, so I'm going to put this great big knife beside you and see what you do..." It's probably some kind of test. Wonder if I have passed or failed it....?

Actually, I can't even kill flies (mosquitos, yes, but only with an emboldening yell of "DIE!") I'm the kind of person who would likely, even in the reddest of rages, maim themselves accidentally long before ever managing to inflict any pain upon anyone else... So even if I wanted to wade into murderous territory, I don't suppose I would find myself very successful at it. So, no one need worry, seriously-- ain't no stabbing going on here. Just murderously ironic observations.

I did, however, moments ago, feel like murdering my cats, just for a second. One of them had somehow knocked over the kitty litter box, spilling kitty litter all over the hall, and blocking the front door. The other cat (or I suppose it could have been the spiller, but I doubt it) then promptly peed on this new, lower, more convenient pile of litter. Lovely. I had to push the door open through a large, wet bead of stinky kitty litter, and then got stuck because my bike wouldn't fit around it. And then roll my bike through peed-on kitty litter.

Good thing they're so cute or they would have been set free in the forest long ago.