Ashlea Jonesmith BLOG

Music Carreer - A push.

2012-02-01T22:05:00.000-08:00

Oliver and I are in full-swing music mode once again. Back in recording studio (a real studio!) once a week, and I’m cooped up in the cabin working on booking a tour about 40 hours a week. I wish I could say that I’ve written a bunch of new material and that we are working out the kinks, but I haven’t had time to think about being creative. It’s amazing how much time and energy goes in to the office-work portion of a music career. It really is a full time job; The Balling Jacks were right. Writing emails to venue managers who mostly don’t get back to me, tweeting to successful people who really couldn’t care less (I’m going to quit twitter, I think it was a stupid idea.) Writing to radio stations is actually getting me somewhere for once. I’ve got four on my side in BC right now, which is sweet. CHLY in Nanaimo, CBC One in Victoria, Long Beach Radio in Tofino and Kootenay Coop Radio in Nelson. I love that. One must focus on the good things!

I’m not intending this to be a depressing blog post at all. It’s just going to be honest. I’ve learned a few things, or I guess maybe just had a few things confirmed lately. Path-changing things.

The other day a really awesome band came to play on Denman Island. They were a Juno-nominated quartet, whose name I won’t mention here because I’m not sure they want to be associated with my ramblings. I got a short opportunity to talk to one of the members of the extremely talented, professional and well-rehearsed group, and we shared a few little tips about gigs and festivals and whatnot. It surprised me to learn that this band is going through the same struggle as I do to get venues, festivals, people to show up for shows, money to tour, time to tour, etc. It actually sounded like there was very little difference between their current battles and my own. Juno nominated, do you remember when I said that? Learning this was two things: Reassuring, and depressing. I thought “I’ve sort of made it then haven’t I? I’m about as pro as I’m ever going to get. Good right?” and I also thought “I’ve got nowhere else to go. This is it. End of the road, it’s a giant struggle or I can just give up.”

A couple years ago a friend of mine had gotten some radio play on the CBC and I was downright jealous. She totally deserved it – a very unique and talented singer/songwriter, but I figured she had it made and honestly, I was green with envy. Famous. Successful- Music-Career.

When I learned I was getting CBC play last month, I did a little happy dance in my chair, and continued sticking my CD envelopes together with my glue stick and licking envelopes and praying that more than one venue in the interior would offer me a gig, because I can’t afford to travel all the way to the interior for one gig, and praying that I’ll get paid for my odd-job work the next day so I can pay the $35 fee to book the Denman Hall for a concert in June. Yes, that’s how broke I am right now.

What do I want from life? I want to spend quality time with friends and family. I want to cook good food. I want to make things. Metal things and fibre things. I want to play a lot of music, and write songs. I guess I want to share the songs I write. I suppose I feel they are incomplete until they are heard, and the more they are heard, the more complete they are. Sharing them gives them life, and I suppose I feel a strong desire to give them life. Some people say songs are like children. I think that’s kind of weird, but I guess I see sense in it. Some of my songs I never want heard though. They get stuffed in a drawer and never get to breathe again, so I don’t think it’s healthy to compare songs to children. No.

I’m wishing for more time for the garden. Time to make some money and build a home. Time to start blacksmithing, time to for friends, time to have kids one day, (if the conservatives ever get taken out and Elizabeth May becomes prime-minister.) Time for canning preserves and smelling the flowers and living life. I guess I thought a music career would be a perfect life. But I seem to be constantly longing for something else. A life in the country. Wine. Laughter. Lazy days.

We have a two-year plan. To push push push this thing and see if it gets somewhere that satisfies me, then breathe again (because it likely won’t) and maybe get a barn cat. And a barn.

I'm Rich and I'm Poor

2012-01-30T18:12:00.000-08:00

"If you shape your life according to nature, you will never be poor; if according to people's opinions, you will never be rich.

~ Seneca Quotes from Letters from a Stoic

I am poor. If we’re talking money, I am absolutely, most definitely poor. Way way way below the poverty line. Technically. But I’ve always been good at being poor, and I although it’s bragging, I’m proud to say that I find ways to donate a pretty good sum of dough to good causes every year, through fundraising concerts and selling stuff I make and whatnot. I have a really good life. I’m never hungry. I’m never bored. I never go without. I supposed if I wanted a big-screen TV right now, I’d be going without, but I’ve never wanted a big-screen TV. I actually think that term might be out of date – is it? Ok ok, I actually go without warm, running water, and that’s a pain in the butt, but we have a big pot and a woodstove and most of the time we are happy with that, until one of us is in a rush and throws a fit. Luckily we have friends in civilization.

Sometimes I feel rich. When friends come over and we feed them woodstove pizza, I feel rich. When our garden is in full bloom, I feel rich. When it’s January and the garden is brown, but we are still eating its bounty, I feel rich. When I make a gift that would cost $200 to buy, I feel rich. Seedy Saturday on Denman Island last weekend made me feel rich. We traded our Pac-Choi and Buckwheat and Dill seeds for many other kinds of seeds, and this fall we will have several new vegetables to eat. When I finish a website that I am building for a friend with a nut and fruit tree nursery, we will have new fruit and nut trees. (Bartering is so cool. Bartering makes me feel rich.)

What up with money? Aside from having to pay property taxes, because our government fines us just for being alive, I think it may be possible to get along just fine without it. For all of us to live rich, prosperous, happy lives, without money – that would be something. I’m hoping to get there at some point.

When the tomatoes I canned sideways on a Coleman camping stove, in old glass-lid-jars, successfully preserved until mid-January, I felt rich. And very lucky.

Wood Stove Pizza = Wood Fired Pizza.

I believe this was a November Watermelon.

No Coal Mine

2012-01-22T20:51:00.000-08:00

Yesterday over 400 people from my community and folks from other west-coast communities gathered together in Buckley Bay (across from Denman Island) to stand up against the proposed (and apparently government supported) Raven Coal Mine, being planned to go in very close to our home. There are so many devastating effects expected if the coal-mine goes ahead. I am nervous because it most often seems like our voices are not being heard. Christy Clark, the premier of BC and Stephen Harper are both behind the project and seem unwilling to hear the cries of the people (Harper calls us “radicals”) who live in the area and will be most directly affected.

I am, however, hopeful because my community is not backing down for a moment, and proud of the fervour with which they/we are willing to fight this thing.

Last year there was a public hearing in Union Bay with representatives from Compliance Energy including the CEO, representatives from the provincial and federal government and many people from the community. It was a very exciting event. The government-hired (frazzled, fuming and belittling) moderator had a very hard time keeping the room under tight control as so many people wanted to have their concerns and comments heard in full, without interruption, and were not willing to back down. The event began at 7 and went until after midnight.

What was most amazing was the vast array of arguments from people in so many different kinds of expertise, generations, and investments in the land. We heard the emotional pleadings from owners of Oyster Farms who knew their businesses and livelihoods would be destroyed in the wake of a coal mine. Biologists stood up with scientific knowledge and advice, elderly citizens stood up and raged against the condescending reps on stage. Retired English professors and back-to-the-land anarchists, young children, worried parents, nature and sport enthusiasts… everyone had something different and important to say. It was very touching. I don’t know how the Compliance Energy reps didn’t burst into tears and throw in the towel. The CEO was so emotionless (the only thing close to feeling he showed was annoyance toward the end of the night) that I think it would be easy to label him a sociopath.

It was great to see many more people out for the rally on Saturday; some great speakers who really knew their stuff and a lot of creative individuals with costumes and signs.

Bad ass!

http://www.coalwatch.ca/solidarity-not-compliance-antil-coal-rally-brings-year-dragon-comox-valley - Coal Watch - About/Against the Raven Coal Mine

Garbage Land

2012-01-11T22:41:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, in the spike of pre-Christmas shopping season I saw a transport truck accident at the side of the highway. The trailer was on its side and spewing from the back doors was a mountain of over-packaged, candy-coloured plastic dollar-store junk. There was something about it that made me shudder – for real, shudder. In the scheme of things, it’s not a huge deal – it won’t make any kind of headlines in the news or attract much concern from any safety or environmental groups. But it got me thinking. And blogging apparently.

Over the last ten years I have moved several times. And in the past two years I have spent a lot of time sorting through boxes of stuff trying to decide what to keep and what to toss as I slowly transfer the good stuff from my original home town, Bracebridge Ontario, to my new permanent (whatever that means) home on Denman Island in BC. It’s a long and expensive road for my stuff. And I’ve been kicking myself over a lot of it.

When I was a kid I used to love dollar stores. I would march in with my bi-weekly allowance and buy up as many awesome trinkets as I could afford. I loved little boxes and bows and craft objects, small toys, hair accessories… pretty much all of it. I thought is wise to stock up for rainy days, or just in case I couldn’t get the stuff for so cheap later. My mother begged me not to spend my money on these silly trinkets, but I ignored her. I was certain I would find a use for every little thing.

Now as I sort through boxes and boxes of stuff that I used once and forgot about, stuff that is too crappy for the second hand store, stuff that I spent my parents’ hard earned money on, (earned later by me as I complained my way through a counter full of dishes twice a week) I am so angry with myself for not listening, not caring, not seeing the big picture.

I didn’t think of the sweatshops, the greedy corporations, the enormous amount of waste and toxins produced to create and transport this stuff that was essentially more waste and toxins. I just wanted the toys.

That over-turned tractor trailer was a sad reminder of how disgusted I am with myself and my culture. It was a gleaming epitome of wastefulness. Forget the big expensive stuff – the cell phones and generations of digital devices, the tickle-me-Elmos and lava lamps and hair straightness. Those things make me fret, for sure, but the amount of one-time-use plastic crap, absolute 100% garbage that is shipped over land and sea to be unwrapped, used once and thrown out (or in my case, stored for ten years, panicked over and then thrown out) is… atrocious.

I would say that over the past two years, since moving to the island and living small, I have become what a lot of people would think of as extreme in my opinions about wastefulness. My good friend Krystal and I have had some lengthy ranting-duets about friends and acquaintances who see us as “oh no, you’re one of those…” total fun-killing freaks for caring – a lot – about our world. The fact that most of the population of North America (and there are a hell of a lot of people out there) thinks this way is really, really fucked up. That’s right, I’m not even going to sensor that.

If you’ve read any other blog entries, you know the way I live. It’s pretty much camping. My car is a bicycle. My hubster and I grow food and plant trees, and actually hug trees. We actually do. I admit, I feel like a weirdo doing it, and I’m going to go ahead and say that my husband usually starts the tree hugging on any given day and I join in with some reluctance, but ya. We do it. And still, the fact that I have flown in an airplane more than five times in my life and usually forget my travel mug at home but buy hot chocolate anyway, and that I bought a pleather jacket last year, means I refuse to call myself an environmentalist. I have already, in my 28 years of life, used enough of the world’s resources that I’m sure my footprint is irreversible. Which makes me think there are actually very, very few environmentalists in the world and most of them are so poor they are almost dead.

I was listening to a radio interview on the CBC a while ago with a few panel members talking about the oil sands. Please forgive me, I won’t remember all of the details accurately, but I’ll try to get a point of some kind across here. There was a Calgary audience, who seemed to be mostly in cahoots with the environmentalist on the panel, but also sympathetic to the oil-sands representative, not so much when she claimed that Canadian oil was ethical oil, but when she stated that, let’s face it, our economy and thus world depends on oil. Without oil we’d all be poor and miserable and probably also dead. Canadian oil is way better than oil from the middle-east, and we need oil, there’s no way around it, so suck it up, the oil sands are good.

Blllaaaarrrrrgggg!!!!! I did not like that lady! We don’t need all of this stuff we have. Period. We don’t need it to be healthy, we don’t need it to be happy and we don’t need it to live. I swear we don’t. I have been living without a lot of it, and I’m pretty damn sure we don’t need it.

We need friends and family. We need skills, people who can make things out of what the earth provides, on a small scale so the earth has time to recover after we take a tree or move some soil. We need community cooperation and support. We need crafters and gardeners and people who know how to make medicine from herbs without processing them in to coloured pills and capsules and mixing them with poisons. We need to barter. We need pride and celebration. We don’t need S.U.V.’s in the city. We don’t need trips to Disney Land. We don’t need cheap plastic junk.

I’m going to stop ranting, because I’m going on a lot of tangents for one blog entry, and probably making someone angry. Please though, continue the conversation through comments. I’m interested in your opinion about all this kind of stuff.

And check out some Canadian artists and crafts people online. There’s a lot of high-quality, beautiful stuff to buy – purchases that really help the ecomony and don’t devastate the environment.

I’m being bossy.

krystalspeck.com

annaheywoodjones.com

Ampersand Quilts

http://houseofhsueh.com/

Yuck.

Contrasts

2011-12-29T14:05:00.000-08:00

Hello again. It looks like I may not be capable of keeping my blog up-to-date, so I’m going to stop apologizing about it. At this point, it’s not very popular anyway.

That said – here I go with another one.

It’s December 28^th – just after Christmas. I am back in Ontario for the holidays. Oliver and I were lucky enough to take part in Via Rail’s On Board Entertainment program, which took us from Vancouver to Toronto and Montreal and then back to Kingston in trade for performing our music on board the train. We played a show in Montreal at Grumpy’s Bar as part of Brie Neilson’s Chick Pickin’ Mondays. Brie performed at the end of the night and was outrageously awesome and very inspiring. There was also a performance by Hanna Epperson who layered violin tracks on a loop pedal, sometimes adding vocals and the whole time rocking everyone’s world. It was a really fantastic evening – I love playing a short set and then getting to hear other people play too.

We also played at The Bohemian Café and Gallery in my hometown, Bracebridge. A mother and daughter operation, The Bohemian is a very good thing in a town that really needs a venue for art and music and young people and emerging craftspeople to do what they do. Tammy and Kristen are doing their best to keep it going in what I would say are challenging times and are really reaching out to the community with this venue. Thank you Tammy and Kristen.

I am a little sad to admit that it seems impossible to get anyone from my generation out to any shows in my hometown. Shit, was I really that unpopular in high school that my peers still don’t want to be seen associating with me or what? My parents’ friends (who yes, are also my friends too) are always supportive, encouraging and most importantly present at these hometown concerts, but never a soul from my school days. Huh. Thank god for Amber and Scott (a fine Muskoka singer/songwriter himself) who I met at previous gigs and who show up to hear us almost every time. And for the slew of teenagers who wandered in to The Boho and stayed to listen. My love to you.

Anyway, contrasts, contrasts… that’s what I called this post so…

While sitting in our private cabin (the largest cabin) on board the train, admiring our bunk beds, private toilet and sink and the little chocolates on our pillows, we started laughing about the incredible contrast between our regular life on Denman which includes chilly outdoor sponge baths from a five-gallon bucket, having to drag a battery in from the solar shed if we want to turn on a light or run a laptop, using a bucket full of straw and sawdust as our toilet, freezing our butts off in the morning if we don’t have time to light a fire, bicycling absolutely everywhere on the island, even in the most wretched weather, and getting our hands pretty dirty daily, to our life at some of these gigs. At the Roots & Blues festival this summer, the festival organizers put my whole family up in a really nice hotel room! They just threw it in when I mentioned I needed to find accommodations for my family. We got the big cabin on the train and nice meals in the dining car three times a day! In Tofino we got to stay in a nice room too, were well fed and well watered, and taken on the most awesome whale-watching tour ever! We get to do all this stuff that we could never, ever afford do if we weren’t touring musicians, but also could never afford to do because we are touring musicians. It’s kind of great. We reaaalllyyy rough it from day to day, but then we get to live in style once in a while.

I think I’d originally planned to drag out the whole contrasts thing a little more, but that was back when I originally thought of this blog post, and when I should have written it.

Oh I thought of another tidbit. I used to enjoy shopping when I lived in the city, but today I tried to go shopping with my Oma and aunt and sister and it seems that I have become a huge fashion snob. Me – bucket girl – a fashion snob. So much so that I told my Oma that something she liked was tacky. I wouldn’t let her try it on. I think it’s a good thing though, I think it’s driven by my friendships with some very good craftspeople who make extremely good quality work and a renewed, ever growing consciousness about where clothing is made, who makes it, how many people, animals and plants suffer for others to have nice (nice from a distance, poorly made from close up) things. I’m officially done with shopping malls, I think. I was trying to hold on for nostalgia sake. Growing up in the country, I loved going down to the city and looking through the mountains of stuff and returning home with fists full of plastic shopping-bag handles. But I’ve grown out of it. The people watching isn’t even very fun anymore. I just end up feeling sorry for the boyfriends who are being dragged around, awkward and feigning (badly) enthusiasm by their girlfriends. That must really suck. I’m glad Oliver hates shopping and comes right out with it. He knows how build all kinds of useful things. That’s better.

This really is a yammering blog. I hope it’s ok.

Until next time!

Happy New Year!

Oli and Leo

Somewhere north.

Grumpy's Bar in Montreal

Hurricane: New EP, and it's free.

2011-12-25T12:12:00.000-08:00

In 2011 Oliver and I moved the furniture around in our little rented cabin on Denman Island and set up our mics and computer to record the EP, Hurricane. We hadn’t released any music since The Things That Stay With Me in 2009, and I wanted to get some of my new songs recorded and out there. Through trades, improvising and generosity, we were able to produce the EP for next to no cost and now we have released it for free download through my website: www.ashleajonesmith.com. A handful of good friends assisted with these recordings – Ken Hatch, Cameron Walsh, Stephen Stepanic and of course my partner, Oliver Wives who puts as much creativity and hard work into my songs as I do while writing them.

Get the New EP for free

Link to a video

2011-09-26T18:31:00.000-07:00

Here's a video that was taken in Lillooet and posted on You Tube. I can't embed it, unfortunately, but I can link to it.

Thanks - fellow who made it on his ipad. I didn't get to meet you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUjRnhaHPvs

Tour Part Two – Mainland.

2011-09-26T18:13:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I’ve completely broken my commitment to this blog page. Life had just become too busy to plug the computer in and sit in front of it for any period of time. I’m relying more and more on Oliver’s iPhone to get online these days – embarrassingly enough. The worst part is that I don’t know what’s going on in my friends’ lives anymore. I don’t like that.

So, as anticipated, the Salmon Arm Roots & Blues festival was absolutely fantastic. The festival runs like a well-oiled machine with some 900 volunteers, happy-looking festival staff and organizers who greet you pleasantly and take care of all of your needs as a musician, a wonderful festival grounds, very friendly patrons, GREAT sound people, delicious food, interesting vendors… man the list could go on and on. Over 100 people showed up for our gig on the focus stage, which was better than we could have expected, as we were brand new to the Salmon Arm area. They were gracious and supportive in every imaginable way.

It’s so great to play music for people who have come to hear music; people who know what they want and come to get it, and then you give it to them and ya. It’s great.

After Salmon Arm and a side trip to Revelstoke where we camped and hung out with my visiting parents for a few days, we played a little venue called The Bike Shop Café in Kelowna. We stayed with some old friends in Summerland who it was very good to see. The Bike Shop Café was very sweet and a lovely place to play. It was a fairly quiet Thursday night, but we got to share the stage with Kelowna’s Leah West – which was a treat. Her set was beautiful. After the gig our friends took us on a tour of downtown Kelowna. Kelowna is actually a pretty cool place once you get to know it.

Our concert in Lillooet for the Music At the Miyazaki House concert series went very well. Another thing I really like is getting paid to play music for a bunch of people who 1. are there to hear you and 2. didn’t have to pay anything. The staff at the Miyazaki house were very kind to us and Lillooet is a lovely town. And what a drive it was to get there, and out of there. Beautiful scenery in both directions. The mountains in the interior are so huge and majestic and wild. I had been needing a good dose of the interior. On the way into town, the highway becomes a single-laner that edges along the mountainside like one of those crazy roads on the Roadrunner cartoons.

Our final stop was in Vancouver where we were taken by surprise by the number of Bracebridge, Ontario folks who came out for the night. It was a full house for most of the night, and a clapping audience, which is really all you can hope for at a restaurant gig. We had a good time.

We have learned a few things – some lessons that were hard to learn and some quite enjoyable.

First – Touring makes time slow down. Our lives seem to be racing by lately, especially as we work to build our home on Denman one little piece at a time. Months fly by, years fly by… but touring – seeing so many great places in a short amount of time, meeting new people and having new adventures every day – makes time slooooowwwww dowwwwnnnnn. Two weeks away felt like double that. I suppose travelling of any kind would be similar – probably one of the reasons people enjoy it so much.

Second – There isn’t a lot of point playing anywhere unless you’ve got friends in the neighbourhood who are willing to get out and do some advertising and bring their friends out. That’s what went wrong at the beginning of the tour, and I don’t think we’ll be making that mistake again. It’s pointless. Even if the gig goes well, if you end up losing $100 on it, it’s just not sustainable.

Third – I should have gone with my gut and not booked any ticketed venues. Who the heck is going to pay a ticket price for a band they’ve never heard of? I am all about pay-at-the-door, pay-what-you-can, and in towns where nobody knows us, that’s what I’m going to do from now on, or at least until we’re getting regular radio play of some kind… will that ever happen?

Four – Eating HEALTHY and taking our oil of Oregano is sooo important. And I think I’m going to start carrying hand sanitizer. We both got sick on this tour and that part really sucked.

We’re back home now. We’ve moved into a 10x10 cabin on the land where we have begun our quest for a farm of sorts. We’ll probably be living here for a few years. It’s nice to settle in to somewhere permanent. Move our stuff for the last time, make some cushions. We even bought a mattress – we are sleeping better than we have in years. The rainy season has begun and the West Coast is looking like a challenge for the winter. I’m getting back in to bathing with a five-gallon bucket of water and a wall of trees. Five-gallon buckets are pretty much everything around here.

Until next time

Ashlea.

One of the views on the way from Lillooet to Vancouver

Tweener on the Main Stage at Roots & Blues

That view again, with Oliver in it.

This little cat crawled up a telephone pole and jumped onto the neighbouring balcony of our motel room, and then squeezed through the space under the privacy wall between balconies to come see us. He was super cute. He didn't want to leave when we needed to go to bed though.

Just outside of Lillooet


The road.

Good stuff and bad stuff

2011-08-08T22:02:00.000-07:00

I think I may have promised to write after every show.... but I’m living in a tent, as is my computer, so three gigs have passed since my Courtenay rant. Luckily, we just came home from a really great gig in Tofino, so this blog post won’t be a gigantic downer, as it may have been had I completed it earlier.

We played The Dockside Pub in Tofino. Before we got there I was a little freaked out to be playing at a resort pub. Anyone else who grew up in a tourist town, and worked in the hospitality industry for a chunk of their life would probably understand why. There’s always something a little uncomfortable about it. A certain detachment between worker and patron. But pretty much as soon as we got to the Weigh West Marine Resort – my fears started disappearing. The place was comfy, the people who worked there were incredibly friendly, helpful and down-to-earth – every single one of them – and the patrons of the pub, mostly locals we found, were receptive and complimentary and generous. (And the audience was, ehem, a CD buying crowd.) You could tell that the folks who worked at the pub and throughout the rest of the hotel actually liked their jobs and their co-workers. They were supportive of each other, kind to one another and wore genuine smiles. It was such a relief.

On top of it, they had everything we’d agreed on for the show all set up for us, and all of the usually uncomfortable money-talk went smoothly. Dawson and the other bar tenders and servers treated us well – too well – and Pipot, the captain for the resort’s whale-watching vessel, took us on a great adventure where we saw humpback whales, grey whales, sea lions and other ocean life up close.

It was really a dream gig. We’ll be back, and I’ll be happy if we’re only treated half as well.

On a side note – I also learned that surfers are really nice people – at least the ones in Tofino. I’m a little scared of snowboarders, wake boarders and even skaters, I have to say, but it turns out the stuff I’m put off by doesn’t extend to the surfing crowd. Tofino is a really great, laid back kind of town. Next time we go we’ll rent boards and try the surfing thing out ourselves.

So – the bad news.

Nobody showed up for our Gabriola gig. Despite another pile of dough put into advertising – it didn’t happen for us. We were scheduled in at the Roxy, but when we got there Stephen B who owns and runs the place, sort of community-theatre style, broke the news to us that two tickets had sold. (To our friends who had put us up for the weekend.) We sat down with Stephen for an hour while we waited to see if there would be any walk ins and he told us how things had been going lately with music on Gabriola. It was becoming harder and harder to get people out for a show. Even fairly famous names weren’t getting any numbers in the audience.

I decided a few things after Gabriola. 1. We would not book any more ticketed shows, probably ever or until we became known, as in, played on the CBC. 2. We will only book gigs where we have friends in the town who will not only show up themselves, but help us get an audience together. 3. Festivals are where its at, and will definitely be a focus going forward. 4. We would way rather make no money and open for someone else than maybe make a few bucks but play for a nearly-empty room as a headliner. 5. Maybe we should just grow food and stop this silly music stuff.

Anyway, despite that, we did have a lovely time on Gabriola, roaming around as tourists. It had been a long time since Oli and I had found time to go for a walk and have a good conversation – so that part was nice. We had lovely hosts who fed us well and had a great home, and the trip was well worth it, despite the show not working out.

In Nannoose Bay we played a Sunday Afternoon show at a highway-side bar. Most of the patrons were bikers, it looked like. There were very few people there and the deal we’d originally made had not transferred through once the original booking person left, so there was some confusion. But the few people who sat down and listened were very very nice, as was the gal who worked the bar and took care of us. Near the end of our show, there was an old man sitting at the bar talking to her, occasionally giving us the thumbs up. The bar tender later told us how much he liked us, and that he hasn’t had a nice thing to say about any other band that had come in, in fact he usually complained – but he liked us, and that was something. She said she didn’t know what was up with the Sunday afternoon thing, and that we’d have to come back and play a Friday night. I would go back. I like highway-side biker bars.

A woman in the audience told me that people weren’t turning out for music like they used to. Ever since the recession.

Seems to be what everyone is thinking.

We’re back on the land now, in our tent, using our computers until they run out of batteries. It’s hard to live in a tent, work a day job and gig on weekends. It’s a tough adjustment going back to no electricity, plumbing, beds… or any kind of modern conveniences. In Tofino Oliver and I were looking at some of the ramshackle houses that the first-nations people were living in, and feeling like they’d really been ripped off. But here we are living in a tent. I think we forgot that at the time.

The best compliment I’ve ever gotten is overhearing someone say quietly to himself “wow” at the end of playing a song. It’s happened twice – both times from middle-aged men. I didn’t think middle-aged men would be my audience demographic, but they gave 90% of the compliments and bought the same percentage of CD’s at our Tofino show, and I have made a few of them cry. So… huh. I stand corrected.

Ok, that’s it for tonight. I’m going to try and fall asleep on this thin Thermarest now.

Long Beach, Tofino

Nanoose Bay

Oh here it comes, another bout with the music industry.

2011-07-22T10:45:00.000-07:00

We played our first show of our BC mini-tour last night. After I finish writing about it, I’m deleting it from my performance memory bank. But first I’m going to have a little rant. It’s not because I’m disgruntled – the scene was rather humorous once I made the professional decision to see it that way. I’m going to blog about it because I think it’s a good and fair thing to do. In this industry the performer is constantly opening herself up to judgement, criticism and financial loss at the whims of reviewers, bar managers, booking agents and various inflated heads, and rarely do you hear what the performer has to say about the whole thing. Well, nobody’s writing about me yet, so I’m going to go for the first shot.

When Oliver and I toured out from Ontario, I made sure to write a short, upbeat blog entry after every show. I say upbeat because I was unwaveringly positive in my reviews of our journey. As a very small fish in a very big pond, I was afraid to speak my mind or say anything negative for fear of losing what few contacts I had, or pissing off the wrong people. I don’t believe I’m a noticeably bigger fish now, and the pond looks like it’s grown even, but I’m beginning to feel differently. There are a lot of fish. Good fish and bad fish. And I only want to be friends with the good fish.

A few months ago I booked this show at a Courtenay Bar. I thought it would be a good idea to start the tour in the closest city. Time passed after booking, I sent poster images to the venue owner who approved them, we compromised a ticket price (I’m always pushing for affordable, though some see it as unprofessional, I prefer to play for a big happy crowd, not a few people who are now worrying over their account balance) I put an ad in the paper, and we were set. I was under the impression that things were going as planned until last weekend when I checked to see if the venue was doing any advertising for our evening.

They indeed were. But it was for a different artist.

When I checked in and it was confirmed that the venue had indeed double booked us, I offered to open for the other group. Seeing as we were the forgotten band and the closest to our home base, it seemed smart.

When we arrived at the venue, we heard the distressed story of how the double booking happened, and how they keep happening. We did our sound check and waited for a few bodies to fill the room. In a separate oversight, the show had been advertised as “doors at 8:00,” so needless to say, there was nobody there at 7:30, which was the time that the venue owner had slotted us in. Unawares that the other band needed a prompt 8:30 start, and with no soundman in sight, we didn’t get on stage until 8:00 when the panic-stricken owner clambered out of the kitchen and shooed us onto the stage.

After five songs the owner returned and told us to wrap it up. I said “alright, we’ve got time for one more song,” to the small crowd, but the owner shook his head. He meant now. Really. They were breathing down his neck. Whoever they were. So on that note, which was a C at the end of a slow song that we wouldn’t have chosen as our last, we abandoned the stage under orders.

As the other group played, I looked around the stage and at the booking agent and his ticket person at the door and wondered which of these five people was the neck breather. This band was significantly more pop-y, the instruments ran through pedals that made them sound like electronic swells of sound, and the songs were contemporary, jazzy mantras that were, in a roundabout way, about being true to oneself, standing strong and loving life. Nothing wrong with that I guess, though I tend to like feeling a little more depressed (and for-real) when I listen to music.

The singer, who’s name the band played under, swooped and danced around the little stage, getting low on the floor, doing that spine bendy thing that dudes seem to like and swaying about as if completely hypnotized by her own carefully orchestrated sound. The crowd seemed pleased by it all. I wondered, as I often find myself doing, if this was what is took to get people on your side and out to shows. Would I have to become this?

No furrrking way.

Adding up the number of people who were trying to make a dime off of this single performance by a relatively unknown but radio-friendly band in a small, somewhat poorly run venue sort of made me glad that I’m not eliciting the type of support this broad is fetching. I was glad the overdressed booking agent and his big-ticket taking side kick had nothing to do with me, and that at the end of the day, while I could have lent my ego to the whole fiasco by making a big fuss about the double booking and the money we put into advertising, I didn’t. I’m not that. This wasn’t my scene. After Oliver and I finished up a conversation about fishing and camping with a nice, rough-around-the-edges guy from inland, I took my free dinner and caught the next ferry out of town with my man.

Stuff's a Growin'!

2011-05-22T21:37:00.000-07:00

Despite waking up with a hangover and a bad case of first-time hives, today was a pretty darn fantastic day.

Oliver and I have been working on a small, semi-temporary green house for our impatiently waiting tomato plants, (one of which bears a small tomato, though it’s only mid-May) and upon approaching the site, I found that Oliver had managed to clip on the tricky pieces of plastic stuff onto the frame and get the billowing house ready for its inhabitants.

A further tour of the garden unveiled lots of greenery that has finally decided to show itself in a big way. Including (but not limited to) corn, which people have had limited success with here on Denman, or so I’ve been told. The beans, peas potatoes, chard and lettuce are popping up everywhere.

Still fairly new to this, when I put a little seed in the ground, my thoughts are “heck, that will never grow. This little hard bead isn’t going to turn into a giant plant full of food.” But it does. Another thing that amazed me the other day was when I found three of my tomato seedlings flopped over on their sides, looking as good as dead. I carefully transplanted them into a bigger pot and gave them some water, and within minutes, voila, they began to spring back to life again, and are now looking as happy as the rest.

Outside of the magical garden, I got to work with some of the photos Ben took yesterday for Oliver and my promo shots. I am a horrible subject, unable to keep a strait face, or find anything cleaver and natural to do with my arms – so Ben had his work cut out for him. I thought I’d botched every red dress shot we took, by standing like an ape, square to the camera with my arms hanging giant at my sides. But then I found hope in one photo, and after fooling with the colours for an hour or so, I got exactly what I wanted, and it seems to be getting great reviews so far.

Speaking of which – it actually amazed me how posting a photo of me looking all dolled up got me waaaay more attention than posting a new song, a call-for-help environmental message or something about anything real, and in my humble opinion, valuable. We (and I definitely include myself in this) hold appearances in such sickeningly high regard. It is very interesting, and I wonder if it is truly a natural and biological behaviour for humans and other animals to value appearances. Hmmmm. It’s odd. But, now I know and I guess I’m going to use it.

Anyway, that sounds negative, but a bunch of compliments didn’t cast any kind of shadow upon my day at all.

Also got a free working toaster from the side of the road today.

The ugly but functional greenhouse

Corn, slightly bug-munched.

Silence

2011-05-08T21:53:00.001-07:00

It is 9:25 and I have just returned from a Sunday evening walk into the village. It is vacant. I was alone with my breathing and the crunch of gravel beneath my feet and the smell of hay fields and blossoming fruit trees and the fading light. Seldom do I experience a vacant town on a warm evening – in fact, I can’t remember the last time – it is something both eerie and romantic. It’s different from being alone in the woods, or on a farm. The empty streets and porches and stores entice and disturb me; the under-layer of our little civilization. I am right downtown and I could do almost anything without anyone ever knowing. I could write messages in wooden railings, lye down in the middle of the road, re-arrange the posters on the bulletin board, press my face up to the store windows and look inside...

Someone else’s footsteps in the distance are a threat and a mystery. If we were to cross paths, our “hello’s” would linger in the air until morning. If we were to meet eyes and hold one another’s glance, it would be a strange kind of intimacy, the two of us, there alone in the twilight. What a shame it would be to break the silence. Maybe we would bow and curtsy. Maybe we would waltz anonymously in the streets.

Maybe I should learn to waltz.

Day Off

2011-05-02T23:16:00.000-07:00

Today the rain brought me a day off – a day to do as I choose. I feel like it’s been a while since I had a day like this. Oliver has been doing a lot of work on the land while I’ve been away working on other people’s land, volunteering in the school and trying to sort out this summer’s tour.

I spent the morning planting seeds and loving them up to help them grow. There are many things in the gardens now – potatoes, various peas, fava beans, lettuce, kail, chard, pac choi and plant species between, herbs, onions and our crowning glory: garlic. The Garlic is already surprisingly huge and since it’s one of my favourite tastes in the world – I am very excited every time I see it. The orchard is now packed full of trees and fruiting shrubs and many of them are beginning to bloom.

Today I’m feeling pretty good about all of this mess. I think I’m beginning to come to terms with not having a proper home and that it will be some time before I ever have anything that resembles a couch or a desk.

The elections are happening today and I decided to swap my vote (party choice) with someone from another region in an attempt to resurrect democracy and have the election outcome better represent the voters. A lot of people were doing this, and I feel really great about it. I’m not sure it we’ll get the results we want – but it does make Canada feel smaller and more like a big, supportive community where everyone works together, despite their differences, in order to meet a common goal. Also, after talking with my vote-swapping partner who found me through an Internet application, we realized that she was married down the road from where I grew up in Muskoka, at a little resort where I worked as a teenager. Great coincidences like that always put me in a good mood.

This past Saturday was also a day that put a smile on my face. Oliver and I played our first gig at the Comox Valley Farmer’s Market. It was a big, beautiful market with lots of farmers and happy little kids running around and we had a really great audience gathered in front of us. The pay for the gig is a donation from each vendor and we went home with a wheelbarrow load of fresh, locally produced veggies, pasta, cheese, meats (which I won’t eat, cuz I’m veg, but my lovely friends will enjoy it), bread, desserts, starter plants, and even a blueberry bush. It was the most amazing paycheque ever and I love playing music outside so that was also perfect. I hope they’ll keep us coming back in future years.

Garlic


Our most spacious garden - about half planted.

the bawling lumberjack

2011-04-09T21:52:00.000-07:00

Does the occasional minor injury have you fighting back a river of tears these days? Does even cutting onions, at times, seem to give your inner-child an excuse to break into a sorrowful cry? I’m not sure what it is, but lately my emotions seem to be getting the best of me at the most unexpected moments. Today I jammed my shin between two logs while I was peeling on the pole rack, and while the result will be a giant purple bruise, it’s not typically the kind of thing that, well, hurts my feelings. It may have been the sappy, nostalgic feeling I get every spring or perhaps it was that once I was back in a less compromising position I noticed how far away I was from anyone who could have helped me if anything had really gone wrong. A few weeks ago, Oliver’s father fell off a ladder and was alone for short while, and ended up phoning Oli who came with the car and then called an ambulance. By the time Oliver got to his dad, his mum was there, but the size of the clear-cut we are all working on is just too large for total security.

The task at hand seems more daunting lately. When we first picked up shovels and pitchforks and began building our gardens we were driven by excitement, but more and more we are being driven by seasons and deadlines and need, and the road ahead looks longer and longer. The house itself is not even in the foreground of our thoughts – the logs we’re peeling are going into a workshop, which will temporarily serve as a kitchen and dry storage for everything we own. We’ve put in an orchard with fruit and nut trees and shrubs and the food we’ve planted in the soil is showing signs of life. But the dry season is fast approaching and Oliver has been rushing around rigging up a gravity-fed watering system to prevent death during the impending drought.

The construction of my smithy has taken a back seat to most other things, although I did get in there to level the ground the other day. I am still on a hunt for tools, and there’s really no rush to get the building closed in until I at least have an anvil here on the island. I’m looking in to shipping solutions for a 100-pound, awkwardly shaped chunk of steel.

I think I’m feeling a little uncertain lately. (Well, always…) I look at the lives of friends from school and usually see something very different from where I am. Twenty-nine is approaching and I’m not nearly as grown-up as I ought to be. I think perhaps I missed the maturity train when it went by. (I’m still trying for a music career, for christ’s sake.) At the same time, I’m way more grown-up than I want to be. Not only am I part of four committees and the owner of three aprons and a Dutch oven, but I’ve decided a lot of absolute and un-renege-able stuff about my life. We’re committed to this tiny island and this huge task of building our home by hand in the middle of an off-grid west-coast clear cut. I can’t even imagine the feeling of finality that comes with children and mortgages, but I imagine that like this, it must be enough to make you cry when you cut onions.

Anyway, things are good, but springtime sure does get me feeling wishy-washy and wishing for a few more carefree years.

The pole rack.

old photo

2011-03-01T20:57:00.000-08:00

I thought this was the coolest picture when I was a kid. My dad was in a band when he was in his youth - which to me, at the time, pretty much meant that he was a celebrity at one point.

I thought myself pretty damn lucky to have cool parents. I suppose it was lucky for them that I thought so. They weren't afraid to tell me the truth about their own interesting pasts, both successes and screw ups and let me laugh and learn from their mistakes in hopes (in hopes) that I wouldn't make so many of my own. I remember one day the kids at school were calling my parents "hippies" and I got so upset I almost cried. When I went home and told them, they said "That's ok. I guess we sort of are."

If I ever get to be a parent, maybe my kids will find at a picture like this and realize that I too, parental unit A, am actually a real person with dreams and ambitions and a little bit of cool.

Rory Jordan-Stevens: The Flowers Are Budding

2011-02-21T13:34:00.000-08:00

Rory Jordan-Stevens is just barely old enough to get into the bar and play a set, but the song he sings exposes a soul as old as the earth. His self-produced, independently released EP, The Flowers Are Budding, may well be scientific evidence of pure, unadulterated musical genius. Like some of the most acclaimed singer/songwriters on the scene today, (Hawksley Workman, Ray LaMontagne, Ryan Adams et al.) Rory shows an unfaltering ability to think outside the box of formulas and subject matter and deliver truly unique, unforgettable music that quiets even the rowdiest of patrons. With a satiny smooth, moody-dramatic voice that could belong to someone twice his age, Rory steals your heart as soon as he opens his mouth.

On The Flowers Are Budding – Rory independently and quite professionally lays down multiple tracks of vocals, guitar, keys, nature sounds and percussion. The result is a heart-gripping ode to some of his most-loved people, places and things, and a six-song album that is personal, natural and faultless. If this emotion-soaked EP is Rory’s contribution to music at only nineteen, it’s hard to imagine what kind of magic he will produce in the long future that waits ahead of him.

Buy the album:http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/roryjordanstevens

The oil will run out.

2010-10-26T21:44:00.000-07:00

The end of the cheap oil has become a scary thought since I moved out here, far away from my family and most of my friends. So far every trip I’ve taken home to visit has relied on the old black gold, and I can’t see any way out of that. I’m hoping I’ll suddenly become an amazingly fast cyclist.
   While I don’t know exactly how to prepare for the day when I can’t afford a bus ride across the country, I am starting in small ways to get ready for the upcoming oil-crises at home.
   I think a major global crisis inevitable. When I go to the city what I see is that people are not changing. Some people are changing yes, and trying to get others to follow along. But the vast majority of people are not ready or willing to change their ways, and would much rather ignore the problem all together – the problem being global warming and the decreasing availability of oil. Business will continue as usual until it’s gone. And when it’s gone people will be screwed.
   Unless they get ready.
   This is probably one of the biggest reasons why I’m here on Denman – after Oli. Maybe this is why Oli’s wants to be here too, but I can’t speak for him. It seems to me that there are certain factors that will make it easier to live off the land here – some of those factors being climate, a local government that seems to be focused mainly on environment, and a very strong sense of community.
   Anyway, I don’t want to blather on too much. A few months ago I joined up with a group of people who are trying to turn Denman Island into a Transition Town. “Transition Towns” is a global movement that started in Totnes, England. Each Transition Town creates a plan to go from oil-dependence to oil-free (or very low-oil) sustainability or “Local Resilience,” as the TT movement likes to call it. Denman, luckily, already has a whole bunch of groups working on various components of the entire goal. In ten to twenty years, if all goes well, Denman will be producing all of the food and energy it needs to continue day-to-day life, without help from the monster oil industry. On the side bar there is a link to the “Transition Denman Island” blog, which I created. The website is www.transitiondenmanisland.org.
   As for Oli and I, we are hoping to build a house that is completely off the grid and doesn’t rely on maintenance people from off-island. This is going to be a challenge – but a good challenge. We have been watching Oli’s parents build a log cabin with barely any power tools. They peeled the logs with a hand tool and used a chisel for the notches to link the logs. It is totally ridiculous in some ways, but it reminds me of how much can be done without standard electricity.
   I’m really glad that I was brought up in the country and taught to use a saw and a hammer and to light a fire. There are lots of people out there who can’t do these things. I don’t know what’s going to become of these people. Thanks mom and dad.

"Skinning logs" as I like to call it - cuz I will never skin anything else. Except potatoes.

Moving Dirt

2010-10-20T20:54:00.000-07:00

For the last couple of weeks, on my free days, I’ve been working on the plot of land where we are going to build our little home. Before any house starts to happen, we are putting in gardens and fruit and nut trees. The trees take a few years to start producing edibles so we want to get them in asap. And the garden is something we can do while we are still deciding about house stuff.
I’ve been listening in on Oli’s conversations with other people to try and figure out what kind of garden to build. Last winter Oliver took a “Permaculture Design” course given by Jesse Lemieux of Pacific Permaculture. (www.pacificpermaculture.ca) Through the course Oli met several of the people who are now our friends on Denman. Whenever we get together with any of these friends, they speak in tongues. Permaculture language. I don’t always understand it, but I’ve caught on to a few things and I’m trying to use them in my garden project. I’m sort of trying to get my way with the garden – I want it to have nice aesthetics. But I’m also sort of trying to impress Oli, who thinks I don’t give a rat’s behind about permaculture – which is not true, I just don’t care for the jargon.
I’ve been spending all of my time so far on this one garden bed. It started out as a four-foot-deep ditch between the stumps and top soil that were pushed over to clear space for the pond, and the sandy gravel that came out of the hole that will be the pond (once we get it sealed and the rain fills it up). I filled most of the ditch with living and rotting logs and branches and salal and then I dug top soil out from the jumble of stumps and put it on top. We got a load of seaweed and put that on, and some sawdust. Then we were given 6 truckloads of soil that had been built by Jesse for one of his courses – so we really lucked out. The soil was built from various types of plant matter that broke down into rich earth over the summer. So that went on next. Now I have a fairly large garden bed with some stony key-hole shaped pathways into it. The layers of organic matter will turn to soil over time, as will the stocks and leaves from the veggies we grow in it every year. In a couple days I’ll be planting garlic into it – the first crop. The soil is raised in a way that water should flow into the garden when it rains, and the mulchy soil should hold it for a while, so it doesn’t have to be watered as often.
Next I think I’ll take over Oli’s project. He is building an even bigger garden and is doing it the way I did mine, but more accurately. He’s been busy planting and fencing our trees and helping his folks build their own house, so he hasn’t had time to work on his garden bed.
I’m really excited to be putting in big gardens that I will be able to keep, instead of move away from when the lease is up. I’m going to grow stuff, and can it, and get totally ready for Armageddon. Yay.

Welcome Home

2010-10-07T22:51:00.000-07:00

It’s Friday night, 8:00 PM and I’m in my twenties. A year ago I would have been sipping on a glass of wine and getting ready to go downtown in an hour or so. That’s when I lived in Toronto and was into live music and clinking glasses with friends and looking nice. But right now I’m in my pyjamas and in bed. And if only it were a bed, but in fact it’s a piece of blue camping foam and a blow up Thermarest sleeping pad on the loft floor of a tiny sauna. When I say tiny, I’m not kidding – your average basketball player would not be able to lye down in here.
I’m living on Denman Island – a tiny speck of land surrounded by a moat of salty pacific ocean off the east side of Vancouver Island. It’s rural to say the least. I’m in the middle of the island, in the middle of a clear cut that is quickly becoming forest again. I’m dirty and I have a headlamp on. I haven’t had a shower in two weeks, since I got back from my visit to Ontario. I have attempted to bathe with a bucket of water and a giant sponge – and I tell you, after a couple days of digging in the dustiest kind of dirt even a bucket of cold water feels great – but it’s not the clean I’m accustomed to.

My partner, Oliver and I came to Denman Island last January after playing a dozen gigs on a little tour across Central and Western Canada. Oli’s parents live here on this clear cut and have been doing so for six years. They are off the grid. They have a couple solar panels that they use to charge a few batteries – One for some light, a hand blender, a seed grinder and a cell phone charger, one for pumping water from the pond to the gardens, and one for backup. They have a woodstove to heat the air and the rain water they collect from the roofs of their 10x10 house and all of the little out buildings. They fill drinking water barrels at neighbours’ houses. They eat raw food – fruit and vegetables from their garden and from local organic growers, nuts and seeds and Ryvita crackers and rice wraps.
I did not in a million years see myself living this way. But somehow, I am. Except, Oli and I don’t have a 10x10 house or our own solar panels. We have a 7x7 room where one of us sits on a bench and the other sits on a pail that is turned up-side-down, and we have a woodstove to keep warm when the days get cold enough to light it. We have a tent made of sails that contains a chair with a toilet seat and a bucket full of grass, and a pail of sawdust, and coffee container with toilet paper. I keep calling it the bathroom, even though it will never include a bath.
I wear overalls covered in dirt. My hair looks like the high school Janitor’s mop, tied back in a flat ponytail with frizz sticking out the sides. I go to bed when it gets dark and I get up when the sun comes out. I only see my reflection in windows and when I do I am embarrassed to be seen by the dear that roam the property, desperately trying to break in to the gardens. They even smell better than I do.

We are going to build a house here. We will probably be very dirty for a couple years, but in the end our house will have a shower.

A new secret crush song - not yet recorded but here on a low-fi video.

2010-05-18T20:40:00.000-07:00

I wrote this song this past winter. (December 09) The chorus came to me after I slipped on the lawn after the first snow of the season while I was taking the recycling out to the shed. It took a few hours before the rest of the song came out, but eventually it did.

My friends Krystal and Lori liked it a lot. Krystal asked me to record it and send her the lyrics so she could learn it. So here it is Krystal – the best recording method I’m set up for right now. And here are the lyrics:

Everything’s going good so it seems

It looks like my life is on track finally

I haven’t seen you in almost two weeks

I think I’ve got my balance back

Then what do you do but walk through the door

Of the bar that is rightfully mine

Like my pupils are paperclips and you’re one big magnet

I stare the entire time

I fall over you like I wipe out in winter

So fast and unprepared

How is it that you spin me so dizzy

I’m living my life impaired

If only I had the guts to say something like hi, are you new in town?

I’ve see you in here a few times lately, would you like me to show you around?

But instead I keep my face hidden, under the brim of my hat

And I sink down low so I’m disguised behind my glass

And I fall over you…

You’re cute but it’s not about that, I like the way you walk

You look smart and sophisticated and I love the way you talk

You’re making everyone laugh, but I can’t hear you from across the room

I hold my breath, this will be over soon, but I don’t want it to

Cause I fall over you…

I fall over you…

Speaking of Krystal…

If you like cute and fantastic things made by cute and fantastic people – check out Krystal’s blog: www.krystalspeck.blogspot.com . Not only are Krystal and her pieces cute and fantastic, but she had lots of links to other cute and fantastic artists and craftspeople.

KASIA JUNO - artist of words and melodies (and she's my friend)

2010-05-17T17:25:00.000-07:00

She is so obviously not from around here. As I listen to her transform her anguishes and longings into some kind of wild gypsy poetry that winds through captivating and beautiful melody lines, I am lost in some kind of magical past where pirates sail the seas and sorcerers cast love spells over unsuspecting mortals. Her themes are modern and relatable; her use of language is otherworldly. (Especially sung with Kasia’s unique accent, acquired through a childhood spent mainly in South Africa, but which saw temporary homes in Mexico and New Zealand and travels throughout the world.) If I had to compare her in an elevator pitch, I might call her a cross between Tori Amos and Joni Mitchell – but not. Kasia Juno is very much Kasia Juno, and since I first heard her sing at 19 years of age, I have been in awe of her mastery of the English language and her vocal creativity.

I must note, that I’m not the only one who realizes Kasia’s aptitude where the written word is concerned – this past spring she graduated from the English Literature program at Montreal’s Concordia University as Valedictorian, and received several awards such as the Irving Layton award for Fiction, The A.G. Hooper prize and the MacGuigan prize for Literature, and recently an award from the Quebec Writing Competition for her story “The Fox.” She did all of this with no melody lines.

Wait, there’s more. Not only does Kasia spin together clever words and silky vocal melodies, but she supports them with remarkable competence on both guitar, and piano. The girl can play, and adds the musicianship and solo styling to her own performances; an ability that doesn’t always accompany the skills sets of great songwriters. It’s apparent that Kasia has done her time practicing those slippery minor scales and hand-cramping chords – she leaves no fret unused, no key un-tinkered.

Despite her accomplishments, Kasia Juno is one of the most casual, friendly and easy-going performers I have seen; clunking notes on the piano as she figures out what to play, interacting with the audience as if they are chums sitting around her livingroom. She doesn’t seem to have a pompous bone in her body, and you may leave her show with not only Kasia’s CD, but with Kasia as a new friend.

Kasia now lives in Toronto, and is working on a Master’s degree in Creative Writing at the University of Toronto. Hopefully she will find time to enchant the music-lovers of her new home-city with her brilliant works. I’m looking forward to regular listenings.

Photo by yours truly.

Visit Kasia's MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/kasiajuno

Read her short story "The Fox": http://maisonneuve.org/pressroom/article/2009/dec/13/fox/

Tour's End

2010-02-02T20:48:00.000-08:00

The cross-western-Canada tour has come to an end and Oli and I are settling into our little temporary home on Denman Island BC. The tour and the trip were a lot of fun, and definitely a huge learning experience.
Last I left off we were about to play a set and host the open mic at the Henotic Lounge in Lethbridge. That was great and was probably our favorite night of the tour. Not only was out audience fantastic and appreciative, but also full of other talented musicians who followed our set during the open mic. We met many fantastic people and got to hang out with our friends Mel and Tyler and hear them play music again. It was fabulous.

Next up was our two-night stint in Fernie. We met a few really nice people and played for a pretty busy venue. The Brickhouse had excellent food and very competent staff, I just have to say. Fernie is a pretty town. It was exciting driving back into the mountains after 4 years away.
The Blue Belle Bistro in Kaslo was nostalgic as we’d been there a few times before to eat and see shows. The food there was also excellent, awesome staff and really nice and interesting patrons who were fun audience members.

It was crazy to be back in Nelson. We stayed for a week and caught up with several old friends as well as Oli’s sister, Anna. We played a show at The Royal, a bar that we probably spent a little too much time in when we lived in Nelson. We’d both played at The Royal before. Everything about that place has changed. It’s being upgraded. It’s not the seedy drinking hole we remembered. They are making it classy. Pretty crazy.
We spent a few days with some friends in Summerland, and them played a show in Kelowna at The Minstrel Café. A very fancy venue. I had to upgrade myself for that one. It was a small crowd, but some good friends were right there in the front.
We ended up having a last-minute Vancouver show. Oli’s cousin, Christine, set up a concert at The Lynn Valley United Church. All proceeds went to Haiti. The concert raised $515.oo for Haiti, so that was a nice success. It was a little bit odd playing in a church – quite different from a bar. The people were very appreciative though. I was a little concerned about my potty mouth, but I was able to keep it under control. One elderly lady in the front kept nodding out during the show. Her neck was limp and her head falling in to her chest for the majority of it. It was such a typical church sight. I can’t imagine her sitting through an entire service.

So now were on the island planning our next move. Hoping to meet some people who will tell us where to play. Also trying to stay dry and sane in our 7x7 cabin.

Jan 13th - Tour Update

2010-01-13T23:31:00.000-08:00

Well, our tour is off to a great start. Tonight we are playing at Henotic Lounge in Lethbridge, Alberta and staying with our good friends Mel and Tyler. So far we’ve had shows in Marathon Ontario, Thunder Bay, and Regina. This weekend we head to Fernie for two nights at The Brickhouse Bar and Grill, and then we’re booked for a few more shows in the BC interior before we head further west to the islands. The tour so far has gone very well, as has the January driving. We agreed with those who said we were crazy to decide to tour in January, but the weather and road conditions have been better than we could have asked for. Right now there is a Chinook blowing through Lethbridge, the sun is shining and the temperature is in the double digits. The temperature in Regina was also unseasonably warm. Thunder Bay was absolutely freezing, but the car started and the roads were dry.
I have been doing a small share of the driving on out longest days. I like driving, but I have no experience with a standard vehicle, and that’s what we have. (Really, it’s Oliver’s car.) I still hold my breath when I have to change gears, but I now longer scream and get heart palpitations.
In Marathon we met Andrew and Bev, the wonderful hosts and organizers of the Concerts in the Parking Lot series. They were very kind to us and amazed us with their dedication to bringing new music to Marathon. They opened their home and their fridge and their hearts, and made us feel very at home. The concert was held, not in the parking lot, but at the Marathon Cross Country Ski Club, which turned out to be a perfect, cozy venue.

In Thunder Bay we met Sheila and her mom, Tina, and Alex the sound guy at The Apollo. They were all amazingly wonderful people as well, and despite the freezing cold weather, both inside and out, we had a fantastic time playing at The Apollo and chatting to out hosts and out audience. Good food, good wine, great new friends. We’ll be back to the Apollo for sure, and we hope that one day we’ll be able to pack the place.

In Regina we played for a very large crowd at Brewsters Brew Pub. It was a loud and rambunctious party, but we had a good time… mostly people watching as we played I think. After the show we got lost in the thick prairie fog, but eventually made out way to our friend Kyle’s house where we stayed for a few days and learned all about lentil and grain farming in Saskatchewan. What is day-to-day life for Kyle was so fun and fascinating for us.
We’re excited to play our next few shows and to see a lot of old friends along the way. We’ve missed the west and are glad to be back.