Play It Forward

One of the things that made me proudest of being a Barenaked Lady was our commitment to helping others. Together, we developed a reputation for compassion and dedication to causes near to our hearts. We helped local charities, arts groups, pitched in when there were health or political crises, and always had a great time doing it. It's a great thing to be able to contribute what one does for a living to a great cause. I've been happy to see that my pals in BNL are continuing this tradition with shows to benefit causes such as cancer, literacy and music education (and a tasty ice cream to boot).

I was thrilled to be invited to participate in a few benefit gigs myself lately, and it seemed to make for some fitting first live appearances post-BNL. A couple of weeks ago I played at People For Education's Telling Tales Out of School gala. At the last minute, Jian Ghomeshi cancelled as the host, and I was asked to host it as well. It was a great event for a great cause. PFE have been working tirelessly for years to advocate on behalf of public school students and their familes here in Ontario, and with three sons in the public system, and as a graduate myself, I was more than happy to help out.

Then, last week, I played a set at the fundraising party for the Cazenovia Preservation Foundation in Central New York. I've gotten to know Central New York pretty well over the past couple of years, and Caz is a beautiful little enclave set around a lake. The Foundation has done a great job of maintaining the village vibe as well as warding off the behemoth likes of WalMart et al, ensuring that their community doesn't die the same bleak death of so many other parts of the state/country/world. Driving along Erie Blvd in DeWitt and East Syracuse can be pretty depressing sometimes (goodbye Arthur Treacher, goodbye Krispy Kreme, goodbye Batteries Plus, goodbye Goldberg's Furniture, goodbye Emerald City Video and on and on), so good on 'em. And besides, I thought it was damned nice of them to ask me to play their event. It would be easy for a lot of people in that area to treat me like a pariah, but instead, they've treated me like a friend and neighbour. Even if I spell neighbour the Canadian way. The party was in an airplane hangar, surrounded by vintage aircraft and motorcycles, and when I showed up, the party was in full swing and people were having a blast. They welcomed us, fed us, and sang and danced to the music. There is some bizarre YouTube footage of it, complete with dancers who look like fresh-caught fish flopping on the dock, and a man in a loud madras jacket who looks like he's checking his blackberry until the camera zooms in and you can see he's singing along. Thanks to everyone there for a great night!



On top of those shows, a bunch of other concert announcements for this summer have ben trickling out, so I figured I'd better consolidate them here. Folk Festivals are a huge part of the summer here in Canada, and I have great memories of playing at them, as well as attending them (my Dad was the Chair of the Mariposa Festival when I was a little kid), so I'm trying to hit as many of them as I can this year:

July 4 Mariposa Festival, Orillia, ON
July 10/11 Vancouver Island Musicfest, Courtenay, BC
July 12 Winnipeg Folk Festival, Winnipeg, MB
July 18/19 Vancouver Folk Music Festival, Vancouver, BC
July 25/26 Calgary Folk Music Festival, Calgary, AB
August 7 Festival of Friends, Hamilton, ON
August 21/22 Ottawa Folk Festival, Ottawa, ON

Hey Now, The Fair's a-Filling

For the last little while I've had my nose to the grindstone, working on the music I'm writing for Ben Jonson's play Bartholmew Fair, which will be running this coming season at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival of Canada. I love working there - this is the third play I've scored - but it's a ton of work. We start meeting before the previous season is even over, and spend months going through the text alone and with the director, Antoni Cimolino, coming up with ideas for musical themes, styles, and where the cues will happen. Then, I sit down with guitar, keyboard and computer and start procrastinating. Well, it's all come to fruition now. Over the past several weeks, I've been out in Stratford at least once a week working with the cast on the songs (there are three songs built into the text, plus I've written incidental score music to help with scene transitions, and to play underneath other sequences as well), and we go into the studio next week to record all the instrumental score tracks.
I've posted one of the songs, in demo form, on both my Facebook page and on Last.fm, so you can get a taste of what I've been doing lately. Hope you enjoy it, and I hope you can make it out sometime this season to see the play, along with some of the other great productions going on this year.

Some Of My Favourite Things (Live)

I've always wanted to make a DVD or a playlist with a collection of my favourite live performances I've seen over the years. I guess that's what YouTube is for. Now and again, I'll just post some of my faves here instead. This is Little Richard from John Lennon's Live Peace In Toronto concert in 1969. Played insanely fast, I've always found this clip incredibly exciting.




On another note, I've always wanted to be able to share iTunes playlists. Anyone know if this can be done? I imagine a world where I could post or email a playlist (just the playlist, not the files), exported from iTunes, and if you don't have any of the songs on it, it would skip them, or you could buy them from the ITMS, and if you did, they'd just play. Thoughts?

I Don't Know Much, But I Know It's YouTube

So Colin Meloy of the Decemberists threw down a gauntlet for reasons unknown to me. On his Twitter feed (is that what it is? a feed? a page? an account? or is it just his Twitter?), he asked fans to write a song about Linda Ronstadt and post them on YouTube. He'll select a winner and post it to his Twitter afountage. I'm a fan, so I figure I qualify.
It was fun to have a challenge to write a song like this, with no real expectations. I'm been up to my ears in writing and orchestrating some faux-Jacobean music for Stratford's production of Bartholmew Fair, so it was a nice treat to write something that comes a little more naturally like this. Being a Ronstadian scholar and all, you know.

woke up new with tobias wolff

How great is this?

Testing 456

Well, between my new Blogger account, and trying to pull the RSS over to Facebook (to? from? near?), I'm trying to figure out how to post photos inside the blogs.  I see over here on Blogger that there's a button for photos.  Shall I click it and see what happens?  Yes, of course I shall.  If it doesn't post in the RSS feed, then I'll have to (after banging my head against the wall) go back and upload them to my Flickr account and link to them from here.  

Wow.  That's a whole lot of corporate social media brand-names in one sentence!  Let me throw some more in just for fun:  Google! Delphi! Prodigy! Compuserve!

What you should be seeing is a picture of the Texas plates we ordered on our trip to Rochester yesterday.  Picked up a cute little Fender Mustang bass at the dusty, disorganized and awesome House of Guitars, and worked up quite an appetite which was quickly vanquished by the Texas Hots Plate at Tacis Irondequoit Hots across the street.  Although it didn't seem to live up to my long-ago memories of Nick Tahou's Garbage Plate, it wasn't 1am, I wasn't drunk, and I wasn't 23.  Still it was probably not that different. I'm sure purists will flame, but welcome to Web 2.0. The plate consisted of two very good hot dogs (local Zweigles), split and griddled to perfection, home fries (the deep-fried chunky kind, not my favourite style) and macaroni salad, covered in mustard, onions and what they call hot sauce - a ground beef deal that seems not too far off from Cincinnati chili, another of my favourite food blogging topics.  

In short, I should have not gone with the mac salad - it didn't do much for the plate, and just added a lump of something cold.  I guess it might be the standard choice, because it's what the dude behind the counter offered me, as in "home fries and macaroni?" Like the locals?  Like, if you don't want to seem like a martian?  What was I thinking in not ordering the baked beans?

We each ate our hot dogs and the sauce and picked at the other bits a little before heading back home and rolling around clutching our bellies.  Who's got bets on me hitting 220 again before this year is over?

Whew

Well, day one of the new frontier was exhausting.  Lots of media asking about the past, the future, the reasons.  Well-wishers, dirt-diggers, and everyone in between wanted to know the story.  I really shouldn't be amazed that this is as big a story as it is (especially in Canada, it seems), but am glad and proud of the fact that people care.  I'm really proud of the 20 years I spent with BNL, and it's always heartening to hear how it has affected so many people.  To the fans who are really, truly grieving right now - it's ok to be sad.  This is a big deal for us, and we know there was a kind of magic between us onstage.  But look at it as a twofer.  You'll get their music and mine.  Double your pleasure.  Double the magic.  Like Queen said, "It's a kind of magic."  Or as Pilot said, "Oh oh oh it's magic."  Or as Doug Henning said, "Ta Daa!!"

Can you tell I'm tired?

I'll be on Mix98.5 in Boston at 8:15 tomorrow, WCLZ in Portland, ME at 8:45, and then Friday morning I'll be doing Q on CBC Radio 1.  I can guess that there will be more in between.