the daily mondegreen

In Which Liston Explains that which He Has Been Up to of Late (Abridged):

2011-11-15T14:02:00.001-05:00

Hello World,

I bragged that I had exhumed this blog last post; I value my word, and so here I am, back at it. Does two posts constitute a pattern? A rhythm? It’s a literary cadence in 2:4 time, look out.

There will be a time for me to delve into my fantastic experience at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design in greater detail. Perhaps once I’ve finished editing the photos. This is not that time.

[Ed. note - Couldn't resist, here's one:]

This is just a somewhat less ambitious, but no less earnest attempt to begin a process of documenting what I’ve been up to since returning from those travels - e.g. My experiences looking for interaction design work in Toronto, and the parallel process of learning more about the work I’m looking for.

If you, dear reader, are less hip to this design quest of mine, it may also serve as a partial primer on my underlying madness.

I’m going to stick my neck out and make a pronouncement: The kind of work that got me fired up enough to boot it over the Atlantic to Copenhagen this summer does not exist in Toronto. Yet.

That’s a highly qualified statement, but it’s been the truth of my experiences so far. Before I unpack it, however, let me say that I don’t see this as a good/bad thing. Having come to terms with the reality, I believe it’s more of a win-win thing; I’ll either chase a dream to where it’s flourishing, or perhaps be a small part of bringing it into more mature being here. Either way, I look forward to the people and work that such a journey will involve.

So, what am I looking for in Toronto? What is this work that I want to do?

I’ve been going on about interaction design, and now some may have heard me muttering about service design, information architecture, and user experience design.

At the core, I want to work on creating products/services/things that are:

Engaging, creative, or playful
Critically informed, transformative, and useful

Design thinking, user centred design - these are terms that are invoked a lot in the terrain I’ve been camping out in lately. But as a newcomer myself to the field, I retain a bit of skepticism about their utility in communicating to those outside the tent, for the present time. Or at any rate, the underlying philosophy is probably more readily arcticulated and engaged with if my precepts above are first understood as my process goals - whilst “design thinking”, etc. provides the process framework.

After all, for many people - myself included, up until this past December, give or take - “design” still connotes a largely aesthetic pursuit. An artistic process, but somehow colder, stranger, more codified.

The design I’m turned on by is the design that celebrates human ingenuity, creativity, and resilience. That is keenly attuned and curious about human needs and emotions, and makes them it’s concern and ultimate object. That in doing so, also deploys critical, methodological techniques - Not out of blind adherence to numbers, but so that the human potential so generated is scaleable, reproducible, and efficient. Through all of this I don’t see Western binaries of heart and mind, art vs. science, but more of a roiling yin-yang of iterative processes, systems theory on full boil. This kind of design isn’t about mastering the chaos, but more purposeful guidance, illumination, and incremental interventions within the ever-evolving morphologies of the human condition.

That’s my read on it, anyway, and I’ve found my own best connection to it so far in interaction design. But it’s a situational thing, and that term is less tethered to that aforementioned zeitgeist here in Toronto. You can feel the buzz of energies and ideas about it, but the circuit feels like it shorts and grounds out here in pragmatics that see the commercial web as the real frontlines of the battle to improve users' experiences.

I agree and can see the value in the web as a laboratory of sorts, but my dismay lies in the seeming delineation of this one niche of the human experience being the sole and proper purview of interaction design. If the design goals above are truly laudable, I want to apply them throughout the human-made world. This is a priori of the emerging reality that sees the division of the online/web/internet and tangible/so-called real worlds collapsing into each other. If the term “internet of things” doesn’t ring a bell, get thee to the search engine, and better yet, get thee to a copy of Shaping Things by Bruce Sterling. Simply put, the trope of the internet as a somehow discreet, remote domain which you interacted with via an alien and clumsy apparatus called a computer (necessary components of which include keyboard, mouse) - will someday (soon) be regarded as nothing more than an odd, awkward phase. For it’s nothing more than that - a trope, a convention of metaphors - that is arguably far past it’s shelf date. Not for the pretext of remaining novel (the worst argument for innovation and technological progression) but because it can no longer serve human goals and needs effectively.

If this sounds like I’m getting further down the tech rabbit hole than you thought I’d go, or than you feel comfortable following, consider the implications of a world where computers - computational technology - is largely invisible, embedded in the world around us. Does it still look/feel/behave like the world around us right now? It might. Ought it to, though? What sorts of possibilities do we want to aspire to, do we fear, do we want to explore? There’s a cultural conversation that needs to start happening, but most of the current technological dialogue (and yes, I’m looking at you, big web media) does nothing to advance the kind of literacy that’s required. Actually, before literacy, just an awareness, an interest, a hope for something different seems like a worthy precondition in itself.

And on that note, it’s perhaps optimism that most clearly frames the kind of work I want to take on. This was made clear to me in a conversation with a designer this afternoon. As I listened to her articulate her own seemingly divergent passions, as well as her mutual intransigent intuition that maintained there was a connection, I began to see the common thread of optimism as the narrative glue. An optimistic belief in the power of human ingenuity, leveraged by technology - a term which groans under the baggage of cultural assumptions and ‘digital’ hubris; language and paint brushes are technologies, too - to help create a world we can all live in. It’s a faith that I believe is largely lost at present, as so many feel we can only watch from the wayside as misguided or misaligned efforts to manage and shape the planet wreak havoc or are deployed to better selfish interests. In the fight for progressive, constructive responses, there can often be a tendency to throw technological or design related discourses under the bus - they are judged to be part of the problem. Or if they are implemented, their development is not fully supported, and they seem fall to fall upon society, clumsily and half-finished, doing more damage - ideologically or otherwise - than good. Think of pretty much every public discourse around large-scale power generation - whether it’s nuclear, coal, hydro, wind, or otherwise - in the last 20 years.

Business Card, Twenty-Eleven Edition

2011-09-30T14:41:00.000-04:00

A strange manner in which to exhume my blog, perhaps, but:

Welcome the new business card!

It's the first to express my (still evolving) claims to practice "interaction design" in writing - though my forays into getting my hands on some actual work in Toronto have so far suggested I may be as likely to get my start in information architecture or service design.

Hence the distancing of interaction design from the title position. And the continuation of my status as a human being.

I had been going to axe that, but Myia tabled the observation that it always made an immediate and - seemingly, at any rate - favourable, emotional impression on people who received the card.

One thing is for certain; this is going to be the first in a good number of new iterations, as I learn more about the work I want to do, and how to approach it.

Let me know what you think of the design - and whether being human should stay or go!

What I Did On My Summer Vacation (Aural Edition)

2010-08-15T22:35:00.006-04:00

Hello Blogoshpere,

From last October to mid-July I enjoyed a fun flurry of touring and musical adventuring that took me to some really interesting new (and some familiar) places, in the company of some really lovely people. From Australia, to England, and Canada from one coast to the other and then some.

I was very fortunate to be swamped by many an awesome musical discovery at every turn; without further ado, I'd like to share some of my favourites, mostly culled from the most recent few months.

NB: I've stuck to MySpace sites for the links, since that gets you listening to the actual music most expediently, but of course many of the official homepages are much more aesthetically pleasing/have more content.

Here we go:

Räfevn - Swedish klezmer outfit. Saw them at Glastonbury at about 6am and they just about brought me back to life. Deadly playing. They don't miss.

http://www.myspace.com/rafven

Gadjo - Spanish Gypsy/Balkan/Klezmer fanatics. Also a top favourite from Glastonbury, really fantastic live set, tight chops, and delightfully quirky, oddball energy.

http://www.myspace.com/gadjomusica

Bette & Wallet - One of the more sublime sets I've seen lately, caught them in the perfectly intimate and understated "chill-out room" at the Calgary Folk Fest volunteer party. Franco-Celtic-clogging-aliens-shruti boxes-deconstructed reels, oh my!

http://www.myspace.com/bettewallet

Romantica - Shared a workshop stage with these guys at the CFF. Tight band, nice guys, and they do the pop-American roots-rock thing up right, alright.

http://www.myspace.com/romantica

The Singing Adams - One of the lovely folks we got to spend a healthy dollop of time with in England was the savagely humane and gently acerbic Steven Adams. Though I barely got to hear him sing a note during the tour, it turns out he's got a great new musical outfit going on in London town. Check it out.

http://www.myspace.com/thesingingadams

The Correspondents - Two men, two decks, a microphone... and one amazing pair of dancing shoes. I gathered from the discriminating Brits I talked to that "electro-swing" is old-hat, but when Mr.Bruce starts chatting pon de mic, it seems to be working. Not all that impressed with their stuff on MySpace, but live it really went off. Trust me, or just watch this video. It ought to give you the flavour of what it was like at 3am at the Club Dada stage at Glastonbury - You can't see me, but I'm there. :)

http://www.myspace.com/thecorrespondentsmusic

MOVITS! - Also declining to accept that electro-swing is dead, or that hip-hop didn't originate in Sweden, MOVITS! were another really, really convincing act live, under the Carnage tent at Glasto. If you can accept that tenor sax over live drum pads and Swedish rap can be persuasive, of course. Which it was.

http://www.myspace.com/movits

The Burning Hell - Don't mull over the name too long. This collective/troupe/horde is ostensibly based in Peterborough, and I think CFF was my first in-person meeting with any of them. Wherever this band is at now (seems to be a fun place), I'd say there's every chance they'll be somewhere even better a year down the road.

http://www.myspace.com/mathiaskom

Annie Lou - Yukon alt-folkie legends Kim Barlow and Anne Louise Genest start a string band with two other talented women. 'nuff said! They're awesome drinking buddies, too, as I learned at CFF.

http://www.myspace.com/annieloumusic

Man Man - Tom Waits goes dumpster diving, discovers Frank Zappa and George Clinton having afternoon tea in the bottom of the bin, and then John Cage pushes the whole lot down the stairs. When the skip lands, it bursts open and they all have garbage-covered Philly cheesesteaks somewhere in Middle America. And you bloody well can't get enough of it, although you feel kind of uncomfortable and unclean.

http://www.myspace.com/wearemanman

St.Vincent - If all hipsters from Brooklyn had poise, chops, ingenuity, and vision to match Annie Erin Clark, then... screw that, if most musicians had her poise and chops, well, I'd be out of work. Stunning performance on the CFF mainstage, although I did kind of find myself wondering if I was remotely cool enough to be there, for the first time ever at a folk music festival.

http://www.myspace.com/stvincent

Huelepega Soundsystem - Well, I haven't actually seen this outfit live, and I they are from my own backyard here in TO. But there is something so awesomely right-frickin'-now about their music for me, and I am just biding my time until I get to experience the in-person throw-down. Doombia, indeed.

http://www.myspace.com/huelepegasoundsystem

Ro Cemm - Ain't exactly a band, innit, 'guv, but he's alright, 'e is. Ro was part of the delightful entourage who made the Dan Mangan UK Summer '10 tour so pleasant, and he also happens to be something of a music journalist and impersario of sorts. He's a staunch and enthusiastic overseas advocate for Canadian music; in fact, I challenge any Canuck musician I know to stand against this man in a feat of knowledge on the topic and prevail. He puts together a regular podcast digest, and you can track him down here:

http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/author/rcemm/

----------

Hope you enjoy the music, friends! Feel free to pass on your own recommendations, I am in a particularly voracious mood right now.

Love and good listening be upon you,

Winter in July

2010-07-22T14:06:00.003-04:00

In lieu of a more travelogue-ish journal entry (though one is forthcoming), I give you something penned last fall that I've dusted off and am endeavouring to turn into song-thing. You can take the boy out of brooding autumnal navel contemplation (and put him in a Toronto heatwave), but you just can't take the brooding autumnal ... You get the drift.

the tumbler says it comes from urbana, illinois

i wonder what it's like to always be so urbane

born urban with a city in your name

we take our cosmopolitans to the country

take them to the gravel roads

...

i wonder what this winter brings

frozen bones left by rotting things

not that decay is something we should fear

nor find the bones so left any less dear

than when they were wrapped in blood hot

and flesh and hair

there's a chill in the air

i can see my breath and it's the only breath around

sidestreets lie empty in this coastal town

where the ground has need of the leaves from these trees

so she calls them back

and that just leaves the trees

skeletons of things we've known

blow wind, blow wind, blow wind blow

between the ribs and behind the eyes

branches barren against a violet sky

that silhouette traces the lines

of everything that's left behind

and we'll hope to remember

what grew and filled the air

when winter comes to take this home

The Good, The Bad, and the Cyclically Vicious

2010-04-17T19:08:00.026-04:00

Greetings Blogically-Inclined,

Hope you're in the midst of something pleasant -- a coffee and some mid-April sunshine, perhaps?

I am putting-off going glasses shopping (What happened to my glasses, you ask? Read on...), which is a bit risky, given that I am wearing my last pair of contacts. But I have been procrastinating this blog entry for longer, and therefore I am giving it precedence. Lens Crafters just better be able to come through on their one-hour promise.

So I left off in Sydney, circa late January, and that's where I'll pick up.

Here, let's set the scene:

The last week or so of the tour was fairly rapid in pace. I did manage to get to the beach -- Bondi, to be precise -- on exactly one occasion, and experienced the first real, honest-to-god surf of my adult life. It was so much fun in fact, that I completely neglected to remove my glasses before plunging head-first into the water. And that would be the last thing that I saw in focus for the duration of the trip. But it was great, if blurry, fun splashing around in the house-sized waves.

Final resting place of my glasses.

Good thing Dan wasn't counting on me for, well, any of the driving during this tour. For anyone who's curious how blind I am without my glasses... let's just say that beyond a foot or two text needs to be pretty darn huge for me to read (even road signage sized type is a real issue at any kind of practical, functional distance), and I can only identify people from across a room by their voices and large physical mannerisms. Which does get you a bit further than you might otherwise think, but it certainly makes one realize how much mobility and independence you can take completely for granted... until it's been sucked out into the Pacific Ocean to swim with the fishes.

So I got to be the butt of a few good-natured onstage jokes, but suffered little other harm (aside from the financial damage I've managed to put off until this afternoon). The remaining Aussie shows were great fun with the Folk Uke lasses, and I managed to take the time in Melbourne to stumble my way over to my old childhood home (age 5) in St.Kilda. It's amazing how much smaller

things seem as an adult, that loom so large in your younger memories. I decided to be bold and a little creepy and rang the buzzer at what I was pretty sure was our former apartment. The current resident was understandably somewhat cautious but friendly, and actually let me step inside the foyer. Bit of a trip, you might say. It was actually an exterior feature which was perhaps the most compelling to see again; that neon sign you can see front and center on the building - "The Oaks". That's what I remembered most clearly from my childhood, that we lived in a house with a neon tubing sign on it, and I was pretty excited to see that it's still in place. The neon torch still burning, as it were. As it was. And all that.

I was very lucky in that last week to be able to schedule some spur-of-the-moment lunch and dinner dates with more family friends and family. There were Georges, Morehens, Rodwells, and a Cameron. Makes me feel warm and fuzzy to think of all the hospitality I was bathed in mercilessly.

Smart parakeets eat at Morehens.

Alack, but all good Australian tours must come to an end, eventually, and so it was that Dan and I boarded our separate, private trans-Pacific jetliners and winged (wung?) our way back to Vancouver town, rich in new friends, treasure, and reasonably more skin pigmentation than we brought with us. After a day or two, it was off to LA for the Canadian Blast Grammy's party, there to play with Hey Rosetta!, K'naan, and, appearing in cameo, Daniel Lanois... and Emmylou Harris.

Yes, Emmylou Harris. There might have been other famous-ish people there that night at the Canadian Consul General's mansion (like, I don't know... Leonard Cohen!), but I had eyes only for EH. Was able to finally work up the courage to gently pull a string or two (Thanks and my first-born to Bob and Fran) and voilà , year complete.

Yup, I'm done. Should have just quit then.

Didn't get a chance to see much of LA during my first visitation, but I started to get an inkling of why Myia might be so set on living there. Not so sure I would survive being shackled to the needs of an automobile for any length of time. Which sounds like pure hypocrisy coming from someone who has logged a fair bit of time driving around the country in a car for weeks at a time, but you know what I mean...

I didn't try any fish tacos whilst I was there, either. I was saving that experience for Austin...

But first, there was that early Spring bacchanalia that is Canadian Music Fest. Or Week. Or whatever clever and ever so poetic and vibrant noun they currently care to deploy in the tertiary position (Experience? Conference? Event?). I was playing with Dan Mangan, and Dan Mangan only this time out. (Seems like all my noteworthy events of late have revovled around that man and his coat-tails. They've been thoroughly enjoyable coat-tails to ride upon, I am happy to report.) Personal highlight of the WeekFestExperience for me was Timber-Timbre's devastating set following ours at the Great Hall. Perhaps not as synchronous a billing as might be imagined, but I was certainly happy to be taking in the sounds of that splendiferous trio that night. I got a little chill thinking about the lovely spirit of Lhasa de Sela moving around in the rafters, perhaps.

Also noted the effectiveness of the lap steel-violin-guitar axis of pure genius evil, and was pleased to think about my own recent blueprint for Antlers and Anchors (sub banjo for guitar) and the awesomeness of small sounds and ensemble parts. Got me thinking, let me tell you.

And, so, there was Austin. SXSW, of which I had heard so much about. From those capable of remembering, whose ranks are thin. My taste for debauchery of the rock and roll scale seems to be much less than I might have thought, however, and so I have largely intact rememberances of the week. Mr.Mangan rented a charming set of digs for the Greater Mangan Ensemble, which included Myia "Tour Manager" Davar, and File Under Music impresario Rob Perron. We were situated about a 20 minute walk from the extremely (and surprisingly?) walkable downtown core of Austin, with it's bars, and taco stands, and bars, and taco stands, and...

Austin's civic credo is "Keep Austin Weird", which is awesome. By contrast, consider Toronto's ("Diversity Our Strength") which is not really a sentence in the commonly held modern sense, and Vancouver's ("By Sea, Land, and Air We Prosper") which sounds more like a potential maxim for the US Armed Forces. Not that I'm comparing cities solely on the merit of their mottos, but Austin does have a bit of wonderfully welcome weirdness to it. Whatever preconceptions of Texanity I might have brought with me, Austin seemed to subvert with relative ease. Well, there were tacos, and other iconic things like... trucks... and lots of people who spoke Spanish... but overall the experience was pretty caricature-free. One of the popular local attractions is going to a certain city bridge around dusk, to watch waves of bats fly out a-huntin'. Besides that, the part of Austin we were most exposed to was the entertainment district, which is something they take pretty seriously in Austin. The bars down 6th Street just stretch into one endless line of venues and boozecans and pubs for blocks and blocks, doors and windows mostly open to the warm(ish) March air. Even though you realize that the thronging multitudes streaming from one show to another and filling the street solid are primarily a product of SXSW, it's hard to imagine that the place isn't pretty hopping most nights of the year.

Despite the relative ease of securing free beer for performers at a number of locations, and the general hedonistic mood throughout, I didn't debauch half as much as I really ought to have. It was all a little overwhelming really, and I find it hard to debauch when I'm running from one bar to another every 45 minutes. Also, I now have an allergy to crash cymbals.

Yeah, so good fun was had aplenty, and I think we played some good sets. The "we" of Mangan on this outing was, as it often has been in my relationship with the man, a singular and newly-minted grouping, featuring this time the talents of: Kenton Loewen (long-time drum collarborator) out from Vancouver, Gord Grdina (first-time collaborator, long-time guitar and oud god) also from Vancouver, and Bryden Baird (first-time collaborator, sage ninja on keys, horns, and the zen of packing light) from Toronto. It was a rather fruitful combo by all accounts, and lots of fun to tear it up with those gents.

I didn't take in a lot of other shows, relative to the actual number taking place that week, it was all just pretty overwhelming -- In a fun kind of highly over-stimulated way.

Here's a snapshot of a manor home, maybe conveying a sense of the more serene and surprisingly laid-back feel to the city neighbourhoods that pervaded just beyond the perimeters of the over-saturated festival core.

Well, that ever moving, ever elusive present has gotten away from me again, it would seem. I'm going to close out this entry, and get right to work on the next. It's an action-packed episode, though it involves far less in the way of international travel.

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see you soon.

Love,

That's Cockatoo to You

2010-01-14T20:42:00.012-05:00

From our perch atop the jungle canopy of Yowie Bay, or that's how it looks, anyhow.

So, Dan Mangan and I are presently a few weeks into an Australian tour, one that has seen us largely rooted to the kitchen table from which we are both currently broadcasting and receiving our global communiques.

You see, there has been no grueling schedule of 4am bedtimes and 7am wakeups to hop between major urban centres, as there would have been in Canada. Rather, we have been comfortably ensconced in our jungle tree fort (OK, it's a three story house) just under an hour south of Sydney, and venturing out like jungle cats at night (can't let it go, sorry) to poach small gigs here and there in the vicinity. Owing to my lack of left-side-of-the-road driving experience, I've been relegated to the passenger seat the entire time, which has made it all the more luxurious a "tour" experience.

The reception for Dan at these shows has been really great. True, he's played here a few times before, but not for a couple of years, and those of you familiar with the last couple of years know he's made some amazing ground and has one heck of a new record. Audiences at the rooms we've been playing have been by and large very attentive, focused, but with a fair bit of character/pulse/mojo/what-have-you. They're not timid.

Our first show was literally within hours of us touching down in Sydney. After a quick detour to shower the trans-Pacific travel off of us, we were whisked up and out of the city to Peats Ridge by Dan's friend and Oz label rep Peta and her partner Paul (hoping they name their kid Mary). Lovely pair. Not to beg sympathy, but I especially needed the wash, as I had been traveling for aprox. 31+ hours at that point, having left the snowy, wintry (-26 and falling) seclusion of the Davar Homestead in Onanole, Manitoba at around 7am, and then proceeding via a long sequence of cars, vans, and planes to Brandon, Winnipeg, Minneapolis, and LA, before getting on a 14hr flight... anyway, you get the picture. Furthermore, you can probably smell the picture when I add that my luggage (re: change of clothing) had been conveniently "re-flighted" (repurposed? how green!) and would not be joining me for my two days of post-flight camping pleasure.

Needless to say, I am a professional, and I know that nothing says [Peats Ridge] "Folk Festival" than an unwashed musician with less-than adequate access to personal hygeine. As we were joining a festival already in situ, I figured I would just fit right in off the bat.

As it turned out, it was easy to fit in at Peats Ridge. While a very different flavour than any North American festival I had participated in, it also felt generally very comfy and welcoming. There was, naturally, a good dose of folk, but also a decidedly less mellow party-goer vibe to it, somewhat more akin to rave culture, bubbling up everywhere you went. But it didn't feel fractured into scenes or cliques, or hostile factions... Everyone just seemed out to have a good time, and not overly discriminating about the kind of music they used to get to that state. Party-time flavour was accentuated by the lack of fenced beer paddocks (you could wander freely with your glass bottles of thirst-quenching VB Raw), which was also -- incredibly, for one from the land of Prohibition, etc. -- universally free of drunk yobbos or anyone else out of control, for that matter. I mean, it was crazy. People were everywhere getting reasonably drunk, but not violent or out of control at all, and they were doing it without paddocks or long lineups of ID-checkers or plastic disposable cups.

Anyway, back to the music. We spent a fair bit of time figuring out things like what bass I was going to play, and the songs we were going to play when I got it, so I didn't check out as much music as I might have. But I met a lot of lovely folks, and generally just basked in the friendly atmosphere that had been created in the bottom of that narrow valley.

Following Peats Ridge, we played a New Years Eve gig with The J-Crew: Jeff Lang and Jason Lowe , of Australia, and Jeff Martin, formerly of Canada and now of Australia, too. After Jason and Dan's respective sets of introspective folkiness, Jeff Lang led his power trio for a pretty amped up and virtuosic set of blues inflected tunes, on a variety of guitars. The man sure can play a lot of notes! Then the inimitable Jeff Martin, of Tea Party fame, took his adoring disciples on a tour of his four variously tuned guitars. Australia is apparently a stronghold for the man these days, and he seemed to enjoy playing for 'em. Speaking of guitars, we would get to know his awesome guitar tech, Kenny, over the ensuing days... but more on that later.

With our first few dates in the bag, I eloped for Adelaide, in South Australia, where my grandmother has been living for the past year and a half, amongst most of my living relatives. It was a really important trip to make for both me and my family, and also the kind of trip that I am very much not used to making.

I had a great time catching up a bit with people I had not seen in a couple decades, hanging with the Gram', and, of course, stalking Australian wildlife inside fenced enclosures.

I've been thankful for my mixed-background of Commonwealth parentage and raising, as it makes the adjustment to cultural references easier - petrol, trams, crisps, hires, flat whites, and other things dinkum Aussie. Overall, though, the folks we've met have been exceedingly welcoming, so I haven't been able to embarrass myself too much.

The first round of shows we played when I got back into Sydney were with a fine guitar and fretless banjo picker from out Minnesota way named Charlie Parr. He and his Melbournite tour manager Joel were both scholars and gentlemen, to be sure. Charlie has a very quiet, kind, and somewhat reserved demeanor onstage and off that has a way of drawing you in and then leaving you wanting more stories. He's got lots of great songs of his own and others from the catalogue of American roots musics, and I don't think he played the same set twice. I would have been keen to jam with him, but I heard he "don't tolerate" playing with others so much. Shame. I'll get him next time...

And speaking of playing with others, for most of those shows we had the pleasure of the company of some of Sydney's finest, Cam Potter and Lee Carey (pictured) of Dead Letter Chorus. They're the guitar and drums, respectively, of this band, and in addition to being super wonderful dudes to hang out with, they also latched into Dan's music with a lot of inuitive sensibilities and energy that made the shows with them a lot of fun. Nice work, boys.

While we've yet to hear the full Dead Letter Chorus live, we've hung out with the rest of the band, and I must say rarely does one luck out with such a fun bunch... Their record sounds great, and they'll be embarking on their first tour of Canada this spring, so keep an ear out. As Mr.Mangan has aptly put it, they sound like "a sex party between Ohbijou, Jason Collett, and the Deep Dark Woods. And the sex is good."

DLC are handled with tender loving care by Geoff Trio of Code One, your one-stop Aussie promotions, booking, management, and slumming-around-in-your-underwear-all-day shop. It's Geoff's coffee table upon which our twin MacBooks have hummed and purred this last week, and from whose coffee cups we have drunk our precious coffees. Geoff is also a big fan of other Canadian acts, and he's brought quite a litany of them into the country; names like Workman, Plaskett, Barber, and so on... Good taste!

Oh yeah, in addition to all that management-side stuff, Geoff has a studio in the basement of his house, uh, I mean tree-fort, and that's where Jeff Martin and Kenny had spent the past week, mixing a new live album. We, and Geoff's indulgent housemates, were one rather interesting blended family, crossing paths in the kitchen, on the couch, etc. It's not quite the same without all that energy around. ;)

Tonight, we are playing our second show with the folktastic duo Folk Uke. If you say that ten-times fast, you'll start to get a sense of the irreverence which Cathy Guthrie and Amy Nelson wield with great abandon. Their vocal blend is fantastic, can't-be-faked rootsy golden goodness, and they pen some pretty truly deadly, dry wit tunes. Dry like South Australia is dry. An ode to a severed foot ("No-body Blues"), a waltz dedicated to sperm-donorship ("Knock Me Up"), and a paen to physically violent relationships ("Treat Me Just Like You Would Your Wife") find curious company alongside more erm, traditional chestnuts from the canon. So far I'm really enjoying their set, although I can't quite quell the vicarious squirminess from the percentage of the audience who might have come on an uninformed whim based on the name-brand parentage of these ladies (Arlo and Willie, respectively), and who might be caught unawares by the tender sentiments of "Motherfucker Got Fucked Up (Because He Got in the Way)." Good thing they save that one until the end of the set.

I don't have more to report on Australian life or beaches, because I have instead managed to spend untold hours of my time not devoted to directly playing music in front of my computer procrastinating the completion of my grad school application for this fall (saving that for next post). Well, it seems that now all the component parts of that application are out of my hands and en route to being in the hands of York University, so I can turn my attention back to the present physical reality... Once I get this blog post done, that is.

It's time for us to pack up for Sydney now, playing at an underground spot called Qirkz. Tomorrow we have promised ourselves a bona fide beach day. We will not take our laptops.

Be in touch soon.

Hugs and Kisses,

All Hail the Rain

2009-04-26T15:59:00.002-04:00

Greetings, Blogosphere,

April is drawing it's last (gusty) breaths around these parts, teasing us with afternoons of sun that have left many necks and bare arms a nice shade of pink. We're also being treated to some humidity, and the requisite deluge that relieves the pressure.

I am winding up my filing gig this week, and then ... Continuing with what I affectionately refer to as my "plan".

Now that we here at Spadina Mansion Industries are possessed of a functional computer/recording platform of our own, the quest for production/scoring/etc. gigs begins in earnest. Hopfefully I can make the school of the streets thing work, or die trying.

Teaching will be on the menu, too, whether as an ESL teacher at a local college, or doing private music lessons at home. That music for toddlers program I auditioned for in January could also become a renewed prospect in the very near future.

My "solo project" (ed. note: term usually used in reference to a regular band. not applicable in this case?), Antlers and Anchors, is now officially in-the-world, in that I have created a myspace site for it.

I think this is the beginning of the long, slow exhale into spring and summer, after a tense March of breath holding and nerves fraying. Much as I like winter and all it brings, this is definitely the time to start chasing down some of those greased pigs I've let loose in the playpen of my mind over the long, dark months.

Yeehaw.

Love, and Kisses,

Winter Reveries

2009-02-18T00:26:00.005-05:00

Dear Reader(s), [n.b.: plural assumed, but not verified]

Amidst this winter of my surviving-if-rather-socially-withdrawn-content I find myself at a bit of a loss sometimes to be certain of my precise course or state of reality or coordinates in the universe. While this in itself has not been all that disconcerting, the steady rate of attrition of those social skills, by which I might have once been able to relate this state of affairs to those who care ask, has been rather more alarming.

Consider this, then, a first salvo ahead of spring and it's assorted awakenings, physiological and otherwise.

So... Winter's progress thus far: December saw me return from the Coco Love Alcorn cross-Canada tour in good spirits and flush with ideas for all sorts of things, including moving to Winnipeg, amongst others. Myia and I did spend the last two weeks of the year with the Davar clan in Onanole, MB, and that's as far as that idea has traveled, so far. It was a surprisingly busy two weeks, but certainly full of love and reflection -- and one wedding and a winter bird count.

January found us back in Toronto wondering where Manitoba went, and preparing to hunker down financially. Neither of us had steady employment, and we were both committed to stretching a bit further in our search for rent, food, and happiness. There was more than a bit of re-definition of self, priorities, and goals going on at Spadina and Nassau, let me tell you.

No surprise, that process is still underway. Loosely put, here's what I'm looking to pull-off these days:

A renewed focus on music, specifically on projects in which I invest initiative and leadership. That includes composition and performance of my own music, and production of others. Developing a practice of educational work -- for others, and myself -- in music and language. Even as I write this I wonder how I can stretch this further than the roles of music and ESL teacher that seem clearly defined to me, yet maybe more starting points than destinations. We'll see! And lots of questioning... questioning... tearing down and rebuilding.

The peril of rebuilding the same thing you had before is always there, of course. I tried hard to push myself down some less-traveled roads these last couple months, with limited success. It's true that right now I am spent and scattered; were I writing a few weeks ago, I would have a good deal more fire in my words, and in my heart. It's not a looming sense of catastrophe I fear, it's the long, slow decline of repeating your same bad habits and excuses, never content to rest from shoring up the mountain of procrastination, regrets, and cast-off dreams that you give your time and breath to.

On the plus side, I did finally get around to procuring the necessary ingredients for a couple of Thai curries as authentic as I will likely ever prepare. This involved some perseverance on my part to obtain the assistance of the staff at Oriental Harvest, to in turn obtain for me the magical galangal, Thai basil, and lime leaves that would make the curry gods smile favorably upon my saucepan. This oft-dreamed of feat being achieved, several batches of curry resulted, much to the delight of the children.

There's been lots of cooking going on, in general, in fact. We've both managed to kick the eating-out habit without much in the way of withdrawal symptoms, largely by virtue (?) of not having the money to partake in it. This has been unquestionably good, although right now I would kill for a burrito, of the Big Fat variety. Should probably stop writing about food, I suppose.

And so, the question you've been asking yourself all along: What am I doing for money/work/contribution to the economy? Right?

Well, the last few weeks I've: Attended to the janitorial needs of the TRANZAC, played numerous gigs with assorted songwriters of various regional affiliations and dispositions, taught my first banjo lessons, held down the reception desk of a law firm specializing in litigation, worked the sound board for a surprise birthday bash replete with band, taught ESL classes on grammar, idioms, and the Zapatistas, done an overnight shift back at the psych unit, and DJ'ed my first and possibly last Waitangi Day party, ever.

Where it goes from here, who knows. Hopefully in a pleasant direction.

For now, we sleep.

Love,

m.

Yearly Update

2008-06-06T17:32:00.003-04:00

Greetings Fambly,

Hope everyone's keeping well out there. Here in Toronto, where rumours of summer's death appear to have been greatly exaggerated, it's pushing 35 degrees of humid, friday fatigue outside.

I'm inside, sweating at the computer. Go figure.

Well, as it is traditional to dust off this tome solely for "significant life events" [or S.L.E.] these days (I blame Facebook and it's culture of 24-7 omniscience), I am doing just that. Thought it was the right thing to do.

Anyhow, on with it. The S.L.E. of most note at present is that I am going to be moving on from my position at the youth psychiatric unit (which must remain nameless in these hypertextual pages), the steadiest job I ever done work, at the end of June. It's been a unique year, all right -- but more on that later.

The other things that should bear mentioning are that I am finally putting into practice my infamous, formerly highly-classified "Berube Plan", and will be doing the CELTA ESL teacher training course throughout the month of July. I thought it was an "ESP" course and signed up. Much to my chagrin, it also has naught to with the Celts, either.

Then, come mid-September, the plan as it stands now is that I shall embark with the one and only Coco Love Alcorn on a Canada-crossing binge of music making to flog her forthcoming, much-anticipated, and sure-to-be-a-smash-hit album. Here tracks from the prior, here.

As Coco tells it, we should be on the road more or less non-stop until the end of November. I am much looking forward to making music as a (more) regular part of my diet once again, and well, it's certainly going to be rather regular.

What, you might ask (if you're still reading this, that is), do ESL/ESP and music have in common with each other? The answer, as far as I can see it now, is that I am making a more or less deliberate move to weave parts of my life together for the better. That means really getting back to core strengths and finding ways to use them creatively, as opposed to sitting back and dreaming of a world where things are already going my way.

My focus is on learning, collaborating, and communicating, and the ways in which these can be expressed and realized. I'm excited. I suppose in a way, that's always what my focus has been, but it's a matter of acknowledging that, and then allocating resources accordingly... Getting "in-phase" with oneself, as it were. I welcome any stories (well, I always welcome stories) you might care to share and celebrate about any journeys you're on, not to mention advice.

***

I suppose the future is necessarily more tangible in my head than on the page at this point, but I'll keep things updated here more regularly -- as much for my own clarity! -- from now on. But it also makes more sense in context; I'd like to try and recap some highlights from the past year, since it's been such a transformative one for me, but also rather fragmentary.

This past year (and a bit) was the year I...

Got into clawhammer banjo, worked on a salary, put on a seven bass improv-extravaganza, recorded a solo EP of my sappy songs, paid-off my personal debts and had my student loans returned to the government from collections, got my interior decorator on with Myia in not one but two apartments, played host to and played music with many old friends and some new ones from all over the place, and schemed, dreamed, and reflected to no end.

That's my short list -- no names to protect the innocent and the guilty alike, you know who you are.

Here's to the road ahead, my friends. Much love to you all.

m.

Grants/Funding Calendar for Music

2008-01-25T15:02:00.002-05:00

Hey Folks,

I've compiled a (non-exhaustive) calendar of grant deadlines for music-related programs from the following funding bodies:
Canada Council, FACTOR, Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council.

I'm hoping that this can encourage those of us who need a push to be more proactive when it comes to hunting for the kapital!

Feel free to send on any comments, suggestions, additions, etc.

Note that my four categories are somewhat arbitrary and porous. For accurate details, go check the respective literature.

Take care, and all the best!
m.

p.s. don't save the thumbnails below, or you will end up trying to read off of thumbnails -- pop them both open in a new window or tab, and you'll end up with a readable/printable copy.

thaw

2007-04-12T21:02:00.000-04:00

let's hear the dream of the dead caribou

begin with the rifle crack that pierced my skull
red dream fragments appeared on the white snow
by the edge of the spruce clearing i lay me down
touch my antlers to the roots
that hold the lightening sky above the ground

i was foaled in the spring after a thunderstorm
left water standing in pools amongst the lichen rocks
blood licked from my face shudder into life
to begin to rove with the herd the hunger

caribou bones
restless bones

seven winters i saw seven winters
antlers come antlers rang out through the tall trees
for the rut for the wolves seven winters

i shared the gift with the leaves and twigs
leave scat stories a promise to return

this dawn i came to the edge of the spruce clearing
to forage
and
thunder split the sky

(=)

bonjour mes amis,

springly-tingly. rain. new shoots. hormones. discernable sunsets. less sweaters.

love my wool, i'm a real woolly-guy, but less sweaters.

thank you, seasons, thank you.

(this "season" thing, it really is sort of new to me, still. no vancouver-bashing intended, but i've never quite felt the same sort of happy free-fall-over-the-edge kind of feeling that the first few good days in this spring have generated in me)

speaking of vancouver, myia and i have been relentlessly nourishing the seeds which we received as a "Yule-Gift" from the dear, beloved mr.eric simons.

not just any seeds, mind, but our very own "westcoast rainforest kit".

a veritable old-growth-cathedral just waiting to burst into life, and featuring such all-stars as: western hemlock, sitka spruce, western redcedar, and salal. good eatin' on that salal.

all TOTALLY appropriate for this ecosystem, guaranteed. i swear.

well, the little darlings are doing just marvelous, as you can see.

it looks like only one species has germinated, as alreadyborne out by mr.simons' similar experience, but we're not sure which one and we don't care.

either way, we're going to enjoy being known as the ex-vancouverite eco-terrorists who heinously fucked-over the toronto maple population with super-spruce, or hyper-hemlock, or...

i don't think i've grown anything from scratch since... kindergarten. ahem.

ok, moving on, i've moved on work-wise to a psychiatric crisis unit for youth.

can't say i expected to see myself working in such a clinical setting, but it's been a positive and very illuminating, stimulating, and encouraging experience thus far, not to mention a good challenge.

it's also been interesting to note how many people, who've known me for a while, have been asking variations on "are you qualified to do that?". i guess if i got one thing out of my 8+ years of higher education, youth work, and mental health work, it's a swollen head and a sense of entitlement, because i've been taken aback by the surprise this gig has created. moi, msr.liston? future ruler of the world?

or maybe i just do an excellent job at passing myself off as a bone-fide, born-to-be-wild-and-not-much-else, rock star. more than i give myself credit for? i think that that is a stretch.

so, anyway, the gig is good. i want to get on the phone to my former PHS colleagues in the DTES and give them all the brilliant advice they can handle... well, it's a different paradigm, to be sure, but it has been very interesting to work in a highly-regimented, low-stimulus, highly-directive environment, after coming to believe that surfing the anarchic waves of organized chaos was the only way to work with people in crisis.

if you're curious, email me, or wait until i post again sometime... i guess i'm more fixated on drinking whisky right now to numb the pain of myia's three-day absence than sustaining much of a thread.

yes, myia is gone. she has gone to lennoxville, to celebrate the life of grandfather tom bowen, whom i had the pleasure of having a beer or two with in the june sunshine last summer. he seemed like a very kind, stand-up sort of man (though he clearly enjoyed sitting down when he drank), who cracked dry jokes about how his former golf partners were all dropping dead on the green, making it hard to finish a round these days.

i didn't know him beyond that one encounter unfortunately, so maybe it's appropriate for me to just pay tribute with a humorous, glancing story from that same visit: knowing that myia ate vegetarian, and myself vegan, it was forecasted that tom would probably just as well have served us beef stew and in all-innocence suggested that we simply eat around the beef, had he been in charge of meal preparations that evening. it was also forecasted that his wife, pat, would therefore be in charge of dietary deliberations, and she was. the vegan thing being - understandably, i will be the first to admit - something of a deal-breaker for the lifetime-carnivorous set, pat opted for the eating-out route. it seemed the safest bet, as neither she nor tom could conceive of a dish suitable for a vegan.

their restaurant of choice, then -- "scores": a truly quebecois delight, famous for its chicken. in fact, ordering a salad or fries served without chicken on them seemed quite implausible. it was a salad-bar night for us, and we had, in all honesty, a marvelous time.

here's to that.

love,
m.

special banjoes

2007-02-12T01:26:00.000-05:00

heya heya,

just returned from the TRANZAC and a night of wonderful musical excellence.

'twas the night of the "Banjo Special", a presentation of the Flying Cloud Folk Club, and a special one it was indeed. A consortium of banjoists, representing several different stylistic traditions, were present, and between them managed to blow my young banjo-mind.

You can read the official thang and find more links here.

Other friends and non-banjoists also made appearances; overall it was a fine showcase/hang session for some of Toronto's bluegrass/newgrass talent... or so it seemed to me.

Tasty!

After the "Special", I made the short hop to the TRANZAC's front room, where bartender/songwriter/curator Justin's "On a Limb" series was entering its ninth episode.

Songwriters Erica Werry and Dan Fournier were mish-mashed with an ensemble of improvising musicians, of ample talent and musicality. I am presently feeling indisposed to recant their names and instruments, but suffice it to say it won't be the last I see of any of them, I am sure.

This sort of limb is rather familiar ground for me, and many of you, it's true... Justin does an admirable job of dealing a fruitful deck of players for this engagement; the consequences were good.

***

Our friend, the talented Mariah Burton, (recently) of Oakville, was in town for the prior 24hrs.

This afternoon she and I got up to some shennanigans on the various instruments and spice jars we have around the place. It is always a treat to hear Mariah sing, let alone to have her play double-fisted counter-rhythms with a jar of star-anise and corriander.

If I can figure out a cheap digital way to make me sound more tuneful I/we may post some of those recordings up somewhere, soon, I suppose.

I rather hope, however, that more frequent field recordings of this nature will soon yield a higher standard from yours-truly. More fun, for everyone.

To Quantity!

love,
m.

back to bassics

2007-02-08T23:26:00.000-05:00

Hullo,

What with all this banjo playing I've been up to lately, I feel I'm in danger of forgetting my roots -- le contrebasse!

To celebrate a reaffirmation of the tasteful, tuneful, and well thought-out bass playing I'm otherwise synonymous with, I've decided to begin recording some stuff on the ol' G3.

Improvised explorations of the architecture and furnishings, things like that.

I'll start posting them on the MySpace page, here, to try and counterbalance those sappy, singsong ditties I've cluttered it with.

No obfuscatin', ladies and gents. The real Mike Liston. To quote Lyle Lovett, "Ugly, Ugly, Ugly, Ugly!".

love,
m.

Onwards, Winter

2007-02-04T20:15:00.000-05:00

Hey, Could This Be A Renaissance?

A renaissance of myself writing here on a more regular basis, that is? A return to an age of enlightenment, indeed! O! That I should have more enlightenment to share...

How's the weather where you are? It's pretty wintry out there right now, a solid wind was blowing the chilly, moist air at a fine clip down the streets and into squinty, frosty faces all afternoon.

Post evening-coffee, I was mulling this over, that I have been -- as have many! yourself included, mayhaps, gentle reader -- rather fixated on that which I should or shouldn't or didn't or might've been doing. As ever, but much of late.

Maybe it's more just for my own benefit, but I thought I'd smack out a few things I've done lately and didn't regret. And that way, anyone else who cares to sneek a peak can gossip about me in high-falutin' social circles.

Well, lately I've ...

been selling boots, walking a lot, perfecting my dahl, made some chipati for the first time, took a lesson with a minor bass-hero, Andrew Downing, started writing my first "book" since the age of nine, played my first "solo" engagement with "a band", met lots of very wonderful new people, discovered that many of them hang-out at the TRANZAC club, been told that I have an excellent resume, been told that I've done nothing thus far in my life to build a career on, knitted several balls of yarn into things that people can wear and hopefully not look too-silly in doing so, begun practicing yoga (in reasonably baggy, non-designer clothes), fallen in love with all my old friends who are not here right now, all-over again, kept up on my student loan payments and hated myself for doing so, grown increasingly disenchanted, disaffected and distressed about the current political, social, and economic present, and the long, sordid history by which it has been created, walking down the block to the fruit and vegetable markets and getting back home before anyone even knows I've gone, helped catch a dog that was running away from its mistress into traffic, thought about moving to the Yukon, ordered a book on how to carve tobacco pipes, stepped into the world of experimental banjo technique, avoided stepping in dog shit against insurmountable odds, and stepped lightly around the question of when I might be moving back to Vancouver.

***

You know what's funny, sort of... On saturdays there is invariably a funeral service happening at the church which I walk past on my way to work (I also walk by a synagogue).

Observation of this regular event has given me pause to issue this edict --

For the record:

When I die, I absolutely do not wish to have a long, solemn funeral, where everyone freezes their butts-off outside, waiting to solemnly accompany my solemn (and bleedin' heavy!) casket inside a church (I should hope I don't even need to mention that) of great solemnity, and then parade around the city in a long, solemn motorcade, burning fossil-fuels (i.e., very dead plants, etc.), and accompanied by a cop who is doubtless getting time-and-a-half and trying to appear solemn, to be stuck into the freezing ground somewhere, probably far-too close to the water table for anyone else's comfort.

Please! Go somewhere comfortable and warm, have a great big party with lots of excellent music, those of you who like drinking please do lots of that, and make sure you take public transit!

now go do something you love...

smooch,
m.

Saved By the UGG

2007-01-22T09:21:00.000-05:00

Hey, let's just skip all the apologetics and get down to the writing business, 'K?

If there's one thing that I can promise, it's that I will never promise to not be absent from writing for long periods of time, ever again.

...

So, here in Toronto there is now snow on the ground, at last. {In fact, now that I look closer, I can see that it's flying through the air, as well} A sense of a kind of excited calm has set in with the populace; calm in that the freakishness of a winter that seemed warmer than fall has given way to something a little more in keeping with historical weather patterns, the culture-of-weather, if you will. Excited in that many people seem to be engaged in a ritual of remembering what to do when this sort of thing happens.

A little bit of dirt for all my fellow native West-Coast brethren: They're not as good at it as they might like you to think.

Well, I don't want to poison the well any further, so enough of that.

Moving along, Myia and I are settling into a general pattern of being somewhat unsettled out here. Things are moving along rather well, I suppose, for being here only a few months. I've been pushing life forward in exciting new directions, playing music with various folks, including myself, knitting, cooking, and working at the Australian Boot Company, also known to Vancouverites/Torontonians as "The Blundstone Store".

That's right, it's like some fable where the poor sod who covets something material finds himself transmogrophized into the very object of his admiration. Those years of singing the praises of my boots have landed me in the principal role of pushing the product to a seemingly insatiable stream of folks from the GTA who are keen on joining the same club.

Before I sound too put-out by my fate, I must say that my co-workers are a very-fine bunch, the customers are, by and large, a dream as far as the retail world is concerned, and the product is, well... you know how I feel about the product.

Speaking of product, one which we no longer carry at the Queen West location of the Australian Boot Company (For the uninitiated, the "West Queen West" 'hood is somewhat akin in it's multi-kilometer sprawl to Commercial Dr. & Main St. blended, with all the good and bad that that might entail) is the infamous "UGG Boot".

I get at least several calls a day on average (many more than that in the weeks leading up to the Christmas feeding-frenzy) from painfully-adolescent sounding girls inquiring if I am able to hook them up with the footwear of choice, somehow always in those awkward, stilted tones that attest to the wonderously angst-ridden world that all teenagers (and teens at heart) must inhabit. Particularly when shoe-shopping.

No, I always tell them, trying not to let the glee become to0-apparent, we've shipped them all to our Yonge St. location. You know, just up the block from the Lululemon.

All this derision and new-found fashionista bile I have been spewing over the ineptitude of UGG-struck girls to covet Blundstones instead has resulted in the universe giving me a good-ol' karmic backhand upside the head. More like a gentle slap across the butt with a wet facecloth, in actual fact. It was a warning shot.

Let me explain.

So, I was on my way to a dinner-jazz gig, uptown, in the aforementioned Yonge-St. strip, and I had negotiated both a tram and a couple subway transfers on the TTC (Toronto Transit Commission, yo). I was subbing-in for the wonderful Carlie Howell, who has been my spirit-bass-guide here in Toronto thus far, and who had given me excellent directions to get to the venue.

She had even, bassist-to-bassist, told me which exit I should take from the station, since the northern ones had turnstiles. You know how sometimes when people give you sound advice, you just have to put it to the test, for good measure?

The turnstiles turned-out to be not the horizontal sort I had heaved my bass over top-of numerous times in Montreal, but rather the vertical, iron-maiden/blender-style version. My stubborness would not abate, however, and I judged there to be enough room for both me and the bass in between the bars. We spun through. I felt smug.

The smugness lasted until after the gig, when I returned to the subway station via the same route. This time I confidently approached the turnstiles, but the entrance ones seemed somehow different than the exit ones. Smaller, perhaps.

I managed to get my bass in an upright position inside the turnstile and, after some fiddling, promptly got it wedged half way around, with me on the wrong side. I have to admit, I was impressed. The turnstile only turns one way, of course.

While I surveyed the magnitude and novelty of my quandry, I was being surveyed for my novelty by a small group of girls, who interrupted their friday night plans to offer assisstance.

Naturally, I accepted. Without hesitation, I spent another subway token to use the non-bass-clogged turnstile to make my way around to the yonder side of the fence, and then, with my newfound friends gently guiding her around, received my baby with open arms, safe and whole.

It was only after the adrenaline subsided, and they had gone merrily on their way, that it dawned on me that the whole pack of them had most likely been wearing UGGs.

For shame, Mike Liston.

A la prochaine, et bonne journee a vous, mes amis!!!

love,
m.

Take Me Home, Mountain Road(s)

2006-08-09T14:34:00.000-04:00

Behold, my Aspen Kingdom.

Some of you are doubtless aware that my present habitat is now that of Manitoba, some of you may not be so-informed, and some of you may or may not care. It is with all of you in mind, however, that I now entreat you -- Gaze upon my woody domain! For I am the new Regent of Riding Mountain National Park! Ruler of the Gophers! Lord Protector of the Moose and Other Ungulates/Charismatic Mega-Fauna!

OK, so phantasies of grandeur aside, I am living in Onanole (About 5 minutes or less by bike from Riding Mountain National Park, home of the Prairies' Fave Getaway Destination, Clear Lake!). That's just under an hour or so directly north of Brandon, Manitoba's "second city." I am living with Myia and her parents, Sue and Celes, in their family home. Myia's bro Naryn and his belle Leslie are also regular, if part-time, housemates.

Perhaps you're wondering, "I thought you were in Montreal?," or "Why are you in Manitoba?," or "For God's sake, why would you ever even think about leaving Montreal and the Belle Provence for rural Manitoba and mosquitoes?".

Indeed, you could even be fulminating on yet deeper thoughts such as: "Is it different living beside a National Park in Manitoba than on the Plateau of Montreal?". I'm afraid I cannot respond to that one. Sorry.

I'm working a 40hr week at the world-famous Elkhorn Resort and Conference Center, home of the revitalizing Solstice Spa. My job title is that of "Houseman", and it does not involve tents. That's about all you need to know, really, but I will also tell you that I am getting lots of walking-type excercise, fulfilling my daily responsibilities as the resort staffs' favouritest Gopher.

Your BBQ ain't workin'? Houseman! Your T.V. set got you licked? Houseman! Soiled towels need a-changin'? Houseman! Change the pop syrup for the bar? Houseman! Black bear foraging 'round your front-door? Housemaaaan!

I spend a good deal of my daily deal ferrying people and or things around the resort, and often to and from the other locales around the resort. Such as the trailer/cabin lots where a good chunk of the staff live, and the "Downtown" of the lakeside-townsite of Wasagaming.

This not only affords me a good deal of excellent cardio-vascular activity in the fresh, mountain air [aprox. elevation above sea-level, 475m] but also plenty of "alone time" with which to meditate, scheme, and plot.

Those of you familiar with my dysfunctional musical practice habits will be, perhaps, happy to hear that I have been doing probably the most productive practicing of my life in the Davar living room, and particularly, on the East and West decks. I have a captive audience of butterflies, and trembling aspen [pictured above] who now look forward to my daily bucolic ritual of banjo rolls and bass-shifting excercises with quivering anticipation.

They are always quivering, it seems, butterflies and trembling aspen.

Home life is, in all other ways, somewhat absurdly comfortable. My gratitude to my hosts knows no bounds. Presently, Sue's two sisters are here as well, convening from Colorado and Quebec, and I am confined to quarters as they have comandeered the house into a kind of esthetics salon, to which I am not invited. This iniquity has, however, afforded me the opportunity to get in this much-belated post. Everyone wins.

Until the next, dear friends, keep well!

love,
m.

Long Distance Relationship

2006-06-09T18:50:00.000-04:00

Greets,

I'm in Toronto right now, and NXNE is in full-swing. There are even more hipsters than usual flooding the streets of the Big Smoke, and it's not like everyone just looks like they're "in a band," as per usual, they really are in a band.

Despite having played with Mark Berube last night at Healey's, I hardly feel a celebrity. It's been a long, long time since me and MB played together (see: rusty), but we had lots of fun, and also arena-rock special-FX, courtesy of the soundboard. A bunch of folks came out, just for us, which was an extremely pleasant surprise. It made me feel very special, but also rather undeserving. They came from Ottawa, they came from Hamilton. They skipped-out on the Radiohead show, they cut short Central American vacations.

I kid you not.

Monday I am back to work at the Grand Prix track in Montreal, setting-up a large tented area above the pit, for the benefit of the wealthier spectators. They call it a "paddock," however. Hmm.

OK, I'm out of time. I'll finish up that Big Banking-Big Money Tour journal pronto, por cierto.
Take care.

love,
m.

Rockies, Ho!

2006-05-05T17:27:00.000-04:00

There's gold over them thar hills...

Yesterday we did our setup in Calgary, at the Calgary Olympic Park, appropriately enough. As our convoy of trucks climbed up Sacree Trail towards the Trans-Can, I was broadsided by a bona-fide pan-o-ramic vista of the Rocky Mountains, crammed onto the horizon like so many teeth in my mouth, and bathed in the warm pink wash of the early morning.

Pardon the fromage, but I felt a potent little surge somewhere underneath my ribcage, in a way I don't think I've experienced before. Sure, I've seen mountains before, Rockies, blah, but I suppose I'm usually receiving their welcome on the homeward leg of briefer adventures of no more than a month or two. That slightly antsy, over-tired child state of wanting home, but not wanting the party to stop quite yet, either.

Things are decidedly different this time around, however. I've been gone a bit longer, and am grappling with the new sensation of having left not only one home, but at least two. A successive series of syncretic super-imposed substitutions, as it were.

This has been my awful attempt to co-opt the "natural world" into expressing my "inner emotional state". I never even liked Wordsworth!

* * *

I am determined to provide an authentic, complete account of the RBC 2010 Flag Tour, and so to that end, I resume my recollections. Where were we? Toronto. We had just learned how to assemble our exotic pavillion of tents and Olympianism, and were about to strike out for the Eastern shores...

Ahem, yes. So, the tour's official first site of conquest was to be Halifax, following our inaugural training session in Toronto.

It was great fun learning how to drive a 26' straight truck in downtown Toronto and on the bleedin' 401. And how!

En route to the Maritimes I learned some things. For instance, I discovered that the radio in most of Ontario and Quebec is absolute crap. Top-40 Francophone pop is usually marginally superior to it's Anglo counterparts, but is sometimes actually much worse, since our country's cultural segragation has left much of Quebec's music-making population entirely unaware that the 80's have already happened, and that some production values [re: heavily gated snare drums, wanton tenor sax solos] are truly best left to the discount best-of bins.

Thankfully, I also discovered that New Brunswick has some pretty funky programming. Lots of rootsy-stuff, and also the first genuinely bilingual songs I can remember hearing on commercial radio.

Another lesson was learned when I got lost in a First Nations reservation late one night with a few Schooners in me, and got to listen to a cacophony of canine-telegraphing. It seems every dog on the reserve knew I was there within a few minutes, and they were probably just barking out directions for me, but I was initially a little terrified I was going to be vegan doggie-chow before I found the highway and followed it home. But I must say that all the pooches were very well-behaved and kudos to you, assembled pooches.

New Brunswick was also where the friendliest truckers on earth taught us how to go about filling in the commercial vehicle log books we'd just purchased, following our hefty collective fining the night previous for not having them. I heart NB.

* * *

It was then that we entered the land of the Haligonians, sea-farers, and lobster-wranglers. All of 'em. Now, last time I was in Halifax, it was also my first time. I arrived with high-flying expectations of Maritimer hospitality and joie de vivre, and while I wasn't entirely disappointed, I was really looking forward to this return visit for a second try.

An interesting example of what I feel is a predominant Maritime sensibility of sorts, can be found in the traffic roundabout located up on the north end of Quinpool, by the shopping mall. This thing must have about six different entrances and exits, only two or three lanes, and is totally U N C O N T R O L L E D. There are no lights, I don't even think there are more than a few stop signs! It looks for all the world like the final-term flunk-out project from a city-planning drop-out student. I freaked when I first encountered this modern-day Charybdis, since it is packed full of traffic, and I had little idea how I was expected to get into the darn thing, let alone cross a lane or two and get out where I needed to.

However, I did survive, and on my return trip I noticed something that my panicked mind had quite overlooked the first time -- there is nary the sound of a horn being honked in this absurd traffic circle. It is in fact extraordinarily orderly and well-mannered, and governed by a principle that seems quite alien; everyone merely yields to others as needed, and all is cool. If you ask for right-of-way, or look like you might need it, it is granted with no fuss.

Jesus Murphy!

* * *

So much for my independent study of Maritimers. I got more tutoring, however, thanks to meeting Lauren at the Old Triangle, a Maritime/Celtic pub, located a hungry-man's pace from our setup site down at the Queen's Landing on the downtown waterfront. Lauren was working the bar, and in between my mouthfuls of veggie burger and Propeller beer, and her bartender-during-Juno-weekend-in-Halifax responsibilities we found time to talk about Montreal, music, and mental-health work. Lauren invited me to join her and her Maritime gang in going to the Broken Social Scene show that weekend, and I gladly acquiesced. What a research opportunity!

Anyhow, I certainly had a good-time hanging with the crew, many of them Newfoundlanders, and absorbing some new vernacular, to boot. Broken Social Scene seemed in fine form, putting on an energetic show, bouyed by the energy of an enthusiastic, sold-out crowd which had gathered in the community ice-rink, and the perspiration of anywhere from 5-15 musicians onstage. Theirs is a very hit-and-miss endeavour for my liking, but I have to say that Leslie Feist is a frickin' superstar, and I mean that with no trace of jaded, kill-pop-stars cynicism. She's possessed. Outstanding.

* * *

OK, so that's all I can pull off for today. Quality, not quantity, right! I have lost my voice, incidentally. There is precious little of quantity or quality coming out of my mouth these days.

But here's a taste of what's to come:

-- High-class slumming in Montreal
-- Save the Raccoon Fest in Toronto
-- Afro-Beat & Tobacco School, The Silverhearts in Ottawa
-- A Whole World of Winnipeg
-- Moonbeam, Northern Ontario (Winter, Reprised)
-- Fine Dining in Regina
-- What I Like About Calgary (Deleted)

Hope you are safe and happy. If not, maybe I will get to see you soon and we can talk about it over a beer.

love,
m.

La vie de le capital

2006-04-23T15:42:00.000-04:00

Bonjour, mes amis,

Je suis en Ottawa, c'est bon. Right now it's rainy and grey and chilly, but earlier this week it felt like summer had broken wide-open. The day we did setup, down by Byward Market (Marche Byward), people had shed their clothes and my eyes hurt from the unexpected glare of a long-absent sun.

But today is tear-down day, and so we resume with the spring showers.

Uhm, so looks like my last post was from Florida, which means I've lapsed again. But it does mean that if you've persisted in stopping by to catch this update, you are truly a wonderful person, beloved of me and Jesus. So, here goes:

* * *

Well, back in mid-March I was transferred from my travails in gay Floride, back to my homeland. No more tennis tourneys for me, it was time to get serious and get to work on an Olympic-sized event, the [da-ta-da-daaa] RBC 2010 Flag Tour. C'est what? Why, it's a traveling roadshow, an advertisement on wheels, a celebration of all things Olympian and Big Banking.

Here's the skinny (I may save some more of the fat for later): Me and the rest of the boys (5 total, plus a couple indentured -- I mean, contractual -- local labourers) roll into town in our 26', five-ton trucks, head to a downtown parking lot or something suitably large, open, and relatively flat, and unload and construct a pavilion of five hexagonal and three square tents. We then fill the tents, festooned with Canadian Olympians and Royal Bank foo-fah-rah, with all manner of exciting and informative display pieces and decor. Oh, but before that we also lay down a plastic 'sport-court'-type tile flooring. That last bit defies description, in regards to its fun-value.

Then, much to the joy and enlightenment of the local populace, for several days this exhibit -- nay, temple (!) -- is open to one and all to come and be informed and entertained.

Throughout their visit to the RBC 2010 Flag Tour event, all comers are frequently reminded that Royal Bank of Canada is and has been squarely in the business of

"Putting athletes first since 1947"

Glad to know they have their priorities straight!

Anyhow, I'm dripping venom all over the computer in the Holiday Inn Business Centre, so I'm going to move on from all that nonsense. The more I rant, the bigger my hypocrisy doth become.

* * *

So I flew into Montreal, via Philadelphia, and surprised my dear housemates, by conning them into thinking that I was still in Florida, and that my stay had even been extended by a month. It was the pinnacle of my thespian career to pretend that I was still in Florida, while freezing my ass off in a payphone on the corner of St.Laurent and Rachel, in the middle of March, but I apparently pulled it off. I had a girl-on-the-inside, of course, in Alexis, my housemate-in-confidence for the job. It was great to see the Montreal crew for a day and a half or so, and then I took to the road again, bound for Toronto, where a whole shwack of brand-new tent-stuff was just begging to be put together, for the first time.

In Toronto we met the rest of the team: twelve "ambassadors" -- bright, young entrepots of the marketing company which was orchestrating the affair -- who would be staffing the venue once we had gone home to sleep and dream, and two "A.V. guys," who would be filling the tents with the magic of light and sound. The A.V. team, as it turned out, was from Vancouver, and one half of them was Bryce Ferris, whom I went to high-school with. A quality man and a fine technician, to boot.

That training weekend in Toronto was very much a blur of blood, sweat, and tears, 20+ hour workdays, and driving all-over the GTA. I admit there were some darker times. There was hubris, there were cracks-in-the-armour, and there was some rarely-seen, genuine Mike Liston rage. It all was careening very fast to somewhere, and while I couldn't really tell where it was going, I didn't think I liked it very much. I think I just wanted to go to sleep and wake-up somewhere else.

Suffice it to say that a week later, we were in Halifax, about to start the tour for real, and there had been shake-ups and shake downs, and things were on the up-and-up, although it took a few more days to realize that.

* * *

It is now time to go anoint myself for the Hellenic task of deconstructing the reality of our surroundings, and packing it neatly into the back of our trucks. Diesel power! We shall leave that parking lot once more to the plebians and their minor vehicles, and the underclass hordes who gather at the bus-stops downtown shall no-more have our gaudy cause celebre to bedazzle them. Time marches on. Fate, as said the Anglo-Saxons, is inexorable.

Thanks for stopping by, and take good care!

Monumental. Waste. Of Energy.

2006-03-19T16:17:00.000-05:00

Greetings, Gentle Readers.

I shall hope, against all odds, that the tone of my writings herein be not considered too-pessimistic in tone. Really, I love everything and everyone. Today, as yesterday and the day before, however, I am sick. So I think I may be forgiven any gloominess forthcoming. Adding insult to injury it may be noted that I became sick on my last day of setup, thus ensuring that my first days-off in 16 days would be spent in bed. Pity Party.

But don't worry, I'm going to be OK. And -- lest I obscure that plaintive note of triumph -- yes, the setup for the NASDAQ-100 tennis tournament is complete, at least as far as my end is concerned. Finito. Terminado. C'est tout!

In the course of about six weeks, our crew of 6-10 laid out the floors for, and erected, about 40-odd tents, ranging in size from 3m in width to 50. We laid carpet, hung interior liner, fitted doors and windows, built ramps, and setup white picket fences. Our team was only one of many working onsite, of course. It would be safe to say, though, that we worked longer than anyone else. :)

Those with whom which we worked most closely were the lads from CAT Power, purveyors of all-things electrical to NASDAQ-100. They stalked us, feline-like, the whole time. No sooner had a frame gone up, and a few mid-roof fabrics been pulled, then they would be there, hanging spotlights, running cables, and installing air-conditioner units.

It was certainly a pleasure to work with the four core members of the CAT crew. New Yorkers mostly (Save for Matt, the carrot-topped chief, whose drawl gave him away as being from parts more southern), you could hear them coming from a mile away. They exude a certain bigness, them 'Yonkers, and they also laid claim to a certain corporeal bigness, as well, which I confess made the sight of a couple of them cruising around the grounds in one of their golf carts seem kind of circus-like [actually, one day I heard "Send in the Clowns" spilling out over the grounds from the big PA system inside the stadium itself]. But a great bunch, always willing to lend a tool or a CD.

It did seem strange to me, however, that all the appliances they installed appeared to be running from the moment of installation, with the tournament not even starting until sometime this week coming up. The merit of having a 6'x4'x'4' A/C unit running full blast in a tent that doesn't even have all of it's walls up, 24hrs. a day, for a month before anyone is actually going to be in the tent, seemed to me specious, at best.

I popped the question to Matt, who somewhat abashedly confessed that there is no 'master switch' for all the power drops, and that some crews who work in the evening need lights to get stuff done, etc. I didn't exactly feel like this fully explained the situation, but hey. CAT doesn't use generators, the whole shebang is fed off of the Miami public grid. And it's not like this country ever has moments of energy crisis or anything... Wait a second! Suddenly I felt the cold, clammy hand of Dick Cheney fasten around my throat.

***

Umm, in other news I went for a boat ride yesterday. But before I explain further, I should point out that virtually my entire experience of Ft.Lauderdale [where I actually live, as opposed to Miami, where I work] has been limited to the occasional stroll in the middle/lower-middle class urban black neighbourhood which we call home, the two big-box grocery stores I do my shopping at, and the downtown bar/mall area of Las Olas, which they courdon off with police cruisers at night, so that happy-go-lucky patrons can stroll around on the streets with beer in plastic cups. The latter feels like some kind of spring break college movie, but is actually more outlandish than the fictional version.

So, anyhow, yesterday our landlord, Charlie, kindly offered to take the gang out on his modest-yet-functional motor vessel Firewater [also the name of his ad-concept company] for a scenic tour of the Ft.Lauderdale waterways. With two of the crew partying like rockstars in Miami, and two more convalescing at home, it was only Matthieu and I who took up the nautical challenge.

Before long, Charlie's partner Tommy was pushing us off from the dock in the backyard, and we were off. Yes, you see, in Fort Lauderdale you don't so much have expansive backyards as you do a pool and a dock. Adding to the strangeness of it all is that the canal behind Charlie's place is about the width of the average alleyway. Firewater is about 23', so there's not a whole lot of wiggle room, as you steer past everyone else's boats, and the not-so-occasional chunk of Hurricane Wilma flotsam and jetsam.

After a number of twists and turns, we approached a small swing bridge. Charlie radioed-in to the bridge attendant, whom we saw shortly thereafter scurrying out to the bridge-swinging controls in the middle of the obstruction, and in no time we were cruising past the now-swung bridge. Tres cool. We passed by the whole Las Olas dealio from the canal side, and eventually made our way out to the Intercoastal Waterway, which Charlie says you can take all the way to Maine. Damn.

I should also point out that the whole time we were traveling, the houses lining the shores of the canals were getting progressively more extravagant and ostentatious. We even saw the abode of the "Six Million Dollar Man" -- or, as Charlie says he is known to locals in these parts, the "Six Million Dollar Drunk".

We returned the way we had come, and then took the north fork for a change of scene. En route, we also shanghaied Charlie's pal Christopher, who works as a Broadway hair-stylist in N.Y. Christopher was apparently detoxing from a night of excess, but was nonetheless in fine form to critique every boat and house that we passed. Fair enough, it's what you do when you live in the Venice of America, I guess. This canal took us through an expansive boatyards area, which, much to Christopher's wroth, was becoming solely dedicated to the production of "gigantic boats and houses for the people who own gigantic boats". There sure were some mighty large boats, lemme tell you. We passed under the cavernous and Moria-like regions below the I-95, upon whose upper surface I have spent so much quality time these past couple months, and saw a bit of the industrial area that the waterway had now led us to. This reminded me a bit of home, since the industrial waterfront of East Van is much like the industrial waterfront anywhere, I suppose.

On the way back, we passed through a school of fearsome Tarpon (yaaaarrr...), who Christopher said were bottlenecking the smaller fish that were attempting to go back out with the returning tide. You could see them rolling just out of the water, like sea serpents (yaaaaarrr...). Biggest fish I've seen, I think. Indeed, good Matthieu had a very short-lived battle with one of these monsters on a fishing trip a couple weeks ago (The Tarpon won, yaaaaarrr.).

***

Also in other news, I am coming back to Canada. Tomorrow. No, I haven't been fired, but I've been offered another tent gig. You see, my driver's license and vast experience of the Trans-Canada cruise make me something of a luxury item in this company, staffed as it is by many neo-luddites who have not discovered the untold joys that driving an automobile can bring a person in this world.

It's all terribly sudden, but suffice it to say that I will shortly be becoming a real trucker, piloting a cube van (OK, it's not a big-rig, but it'll do, damnit!) from Halifax to Vancouver. In addition to those two fine ports-of-call, we will be laying waste to Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Winnipeg, and Calgary. It's a heck of volte face from the world of tennis-town.

And I have to admit, sick and sickened as I am by much of what transpires down here, I must have developed a certain fondness for my routine, because the thought of leaving in such a hurry makes me a little sad. But the main reason I am going on this voyage is because it affords me a uber-nifty way of paying the bills and paying a much-longed-for visit to the people I love [That's you!].

I will now conclude this obese entry, and say adieu for now. Hopefully I will know more of my upcoming reality soon enough, since the gig starts Thursday. Expect prolific ramblings to follow.

Mis amigos, Canada del Hiverno,
estoy venido.

Much love!
m.

Floridian Wisdom via the Netherlands

2006-03-11T21:43:00.000-05:00

Heya,

Just a quickie for you, this weekend. [It's no weekend for me!]

First off, if any of you have seen my "MySpace" page lately, you may have noticed that there is a picture of me sporting a rather smashing and sporty yellow hardhat. I'd like you all to know that I chose that particular hue of chapeau in honour of my dear friend, Mr.Diederik van Dijk. Diederik, or "Dutch" as we like to call him, is an incredibly gifted musician who, like myself, has once upon a time turned to the pursuit of physical labour in order to pay his way through worldly affairs. I mean, I am not incredibly gifted, I am just lousy with finance, but that's beside the point.

Anyway, once upon a time, Diederik found himself bound for a construction site, and so went to gird himself for the battle. Shopping for a hardhat, he noted that a variety of colours were available, and sagely picked yellow, perhaps recalling the lego toys and whatnot of his youth.

Upon arrival at the worksite, however, our perceptive Dutch minstrel-cum-roughneck found himself roundly lampooned by his new colleagues, who found his choice of hardhat tres cher, indeed. White, it seems, carries the day on the modern, real-world construction site.

[Maybe that was the wrong expression?] Well, at any rate, Diederik found himself dubbed "Big Bird" for the remainder of his blue-collar sojourn. But he was, and still is, a big enough man to tell others this story, and I remain a big enough man to spread it far and wide.

It was with my friend and his lived-experience in mind that I reached into the bag of hardhats at my work, and pushed all other contenders aside, selecting yellow for my own crest, in solidarity with my noble comrade across the ocean.

Funny enough, pretty much exactly the same thing happened to me. Can't say I didn't see it coming. Except, perhaps since I am slightly less big than Diederik, I garnered "Village People" accolades as opposed to Sesame Street ones. C'est la vie. Que sera sera. Et tu, Brutus?

Um, since I am making this a Diederik-themed celebration, I would like to relate the inscription which I found upon the shaker of sea salt I recently purchased. I will not say that it rivals the inscription found upon the inner bouts of Diederik's fabled axe from days of yore, Segovia, which shall stand for all time immemorial as a glorious example of the spirit of luthiery given body and form in prose -- and another reason why globalization without a spell checker is just plain bad, bad, bad -- but I will say that it's pretty damn funny for a shaker of bleedin' sea salt. Here now, without further ado, I give you the "Cerulean Seas":

There is a place where the gentle breath of the ocean whispers
its gifts upon the shore and the ebb and flow of the tides lovingly
caress the silver sands.

There is a time when the diverse elements of the
universe come together in harmony and unite the quintessensce of all
things.

This is the time and place of Cerulean Seas.

We are proud to bring you this quality sea salt. Born of
sun-drenched California shores, derived from seawater, produced with an eye to
purity.

So, sure it loses a little steam at the end, but pretty good for a buck or two, eh?

I'll leave you with that for now, so until the next time may your quintessence be diversely united and your gifts well-whispered.

Good night,
Miguel

... in which Mike broadens his mind:

2006-03-10T21:17:00.000-05:00

Hola,

Many apologies for not posting again sooner from sunny Florida, U.S.A.

Moments on the computer are moments stolen from eating/sleeping time, you see. Apparently I respect that convention more these days!

Regardless, I am happy that many people seemed to enjoy my last ramble half as much as I enjoyed writing it. Thanks for stopping by, its nice to have company over.

This morning, while the gang loaded up on Powerade and cafe Cubano, I (the cheapskate) purchased a copy of the Spanish-language daily Diario las Americas from the newsbox for 35 cents. My long-suffering Spanish teachers in university always told me to do this sort of thing, but I never really heeded the advice. A shame, because it turns out it is a lot of fun to try and make it through an article on Iran's nuclear program when you have a wafer-thin grasp on the language, but a whole lunch hour to kill.

I have begun to spend my lunch hours solo. Hustling down to the beach (the Atlantic Ocean) for 45 minutes does have its merits, but I am switching from hustle to conservation from here on in. I am indentured until May, which seems an awfuly long way away right now.

So, Key Biscayne, whereupon the tennis stadium is situated, is a funny place to drive into in the morning. We leave the suburban sprawl of Fort Lauderdale with minimal fuss -- seeing as we literaly live a hundred feet from the I-95 -- entering a concrete corridor of highway for about an hour. There are glimpses of urbanity on the sides, of course, and palm trees aplenty, but I still can't tell you much more about Miami proper other than what I see from the road. The sign for the Miami Police Department sits at highway level, though, and it is rendered in a fab blue font that makes me think of RoboCop.

Then we hit the tollbooth which guards the bridge leading onto Key Virginia. Once onto the bridge, we've more or less left the rest of American reality behind; with the sun in our faces, we must steer clear of the hordes of road-bike racers and joggers for whom these Keys provide an early-morning training run. Before long, we're zipping over the bridge to Key Biscayne, and here we pass by the U of Miami's marine research station, an impressive looking complex, with a none-too-shabby looking research vessel moored outside.

I may not have mentioned it, but a large chunk of Key Biscayne is comprised of protected park area. The parts that aren't are expensive, tasteless condos, and a few strip mall shopping areas (very modest in size, even by 'Merican standards), such as the one we frequent for a spell every day before and after work. Well, anyway, the tennis stadium is surrounded by mangrove swamp, so its kind of nifty. Smelly in the morning, too. I guess the metabolic processes of the plants are switching over from the night shift or something, but man, that swamp is potent at 7:30am.

Along with the aforementioned geckos (geckii?) we have iguanas, sandbill cranes, pelicans, and numerous other species of birds and insects I can't identify/see. There were some white birds I had not seen before or since, which were apparently uprooted when some workers cleared a patch of swamp right at the edge of the compound, near our work trailer. It was a very strange sight. These workers were moving around with machinery and a backhoe, finishing the job, and these two birds -- which at best I could describe as looking kind of like an albino duck -- were just standing right close by, staring at the operation underway. Not squawking, or flapping around, but they stood watch as their home disappeared, with a kind of stoic aspect I have never seen in a bird before. The Colombian whom I asked did not know the name of the birds en inglese, but told me that they called them "gazas". Like I said, I haven't seen them since.

Incidentally, I'll try and post some pictures of this joint soon, once I can talk to Eric about deactivating the hidden pop-up blocker on his laptop, which foils my picture-uploading schemes every time.

OK, just a short post. It's time for bed. I think I have some ramblin' in me for this weekend, though, so stay tuned. :)

Mucho amor,
miguel

I Pulled the Tail Off a Gecko

2006-02-19T14:48:00.000-05:00

Que pasa, mis amigos?

I'm writing from Ft.Lauderdale, Florida, where I've been for a little over two weeks. As most of you probably know, I'm here until May, doing site setup for the NASDAQ Tennis tournament. Well, site setup and tear-down, really. We have 6 weeks to set up, the tournament runs for 18 days, and then we get 3 weeks to tear it all apart. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

This excursion is full of strangeness for me. You might say I've never been more removed from my comfort zone. So, it's a wierd and wonderful experience, if you can try and find the proverbial silver lining in every circumstance, happening, and misdemeanour.

I am living in a house down by the river (ok, it's a canal), with the other five guys from the Montreal crew whom I drove down with. It's a curious fraternity we have here. None too motley or ragged, but rather different from my accustomed living accomodations. But, as I said, nothing is much the same...

My daily routine has become exactly that, a well-scripted sequence, and in short order. We work every day, aside from the two we've had off so far, today included. I now inhabit a world of palm trees and coconut rituals, lizards and Cubanos, tent parts and greenbacks. My alarm goes off at 5:45am, and we ship out at 6:30. Those who have sometime had the pleasure of watching me languish around the kitchen in my bathrobe for an hour or more, playing with my oatmeal, would no doubt enjoy my current "lightning-speed" morning dance, as the six of us negotiate the kitchen, assembling breakfast, lunch, and snackables with no time to spare. We commute every morning through about an hour of dense traffic, grinding our way south to Miami, and from there we leapfrog from one island to another, Key Biscayne, where the tennis stadium is.

It really is strange how quickly you can become completely immersed in a new universe, even after just two weeks. I find it bizarre and somewhat alarming almost, to check my mental headspace and see how my whole ontology seems to have become ordered around the machinations of my new work. Essentially, we have two main tasks: The erection of tents, and the construction of floors that support them. There is just enough variety inherent to this endeavour to ensure that -- thus far -- it has become neither boring or perfected.

Purling, plywood, legs, arches, crowns, forks, Bill-Jax, channels, fabric, mesh, stakes, baseplates, r-clips, drop pins, eye-bolts, turnbuckles, 4x4s, shims, wafers, screw gun, forklift, lull, hand drill, sledgehammer, wacker, ropak, level, gables, stepladders, golf cart.

The incredible shrinking universe.

Yesterday Eric, "The Swedish Ninja", spotted a gecko by the rolls of nylon carpet we were about to cover a couple of tennis courts with. Thinking we should move him/her to a safer location, the two of us scrabbled about in the grass for a while, the gecko squirming out of our well-intentioned clutches at every opportunity. At last, I opted for being a little less gentle, and snapped him up between two fingers, some trivia tidbit about gecko tails jingling in my memory as I did so. On cue, I found myself with a soft, warm gecko tail between my thumb and forefinger. It's former owner, looking relatively unperturbed, was still on the grass. I felt a gecko-sized surge of sadness and horror, and dropped the tail, which spasmed around in the grass like a tiny tadpole on speed. It occurred to me that this is an ingenious piece of adaptive evolutionary design, as not only does the gecko have the ability to detatch itself from a predator's grasp at will, but the abandoned tail, thrashing away madly, presents a gruesomely captivating sight that should provide a more than adequate distraction for many a subsequent gecko-getaway, I am sure. In any case, our shortened friend was then more subdued, and acquiesced to being relocated away from the danger zone.

I think I'll close off this initial post, before I become futher discombobulated from the decompression. I'll try and keep up with a more regular pace of writing, in hopes that I can get some kind of narrative flow going... better for all, I'm sure. :)

Oh, and I need to say, I am reminded every day of what wonderful friends I have. Really, I am.

much love,
m.

Bienvenue a moi monde

2005-11-17T15:39:00.000-05:00

Hello You,

As I write this petit flaconsde neige are falling from the sky [ed. note: yes, prepare yourself for lots of italicized "French expressions," as I delve ever-deeper into my inner pretentious side], and my radiator is blasting out heat like the sub-zero temperatures outside are a personal affront. As a countermeasure, I have purchased one of several new acquisitions in de QC-Stylee -- a humidifier, which is presently doing its darndest to restore some precious moisture to the air, my instruments, not to mention my skin and nasal passages. The other, most notable countermeasure, has been the purchase of my very first PARKA, a word the coolness whereof defies description. I remember how thrilled Rae was last winter when he purchased a parka in readiness for his Frostbite Festival excursion, and the strong feelings of jealousy and envy which arose in me. Or how I contemplated eloping with the downy uber-parka Myia's dad Celes lent me when Nick and I went a-Elk-buglin' in Manitoba on the way out... Anyway, these feelings can now at last be put to rest, because I have got me my own piece of the Canadiana winter-pie.
Diggit:

Speaking of precious, I think the climate is bringing a bit of that out in me, but waking-up with a dry mouth to rival your worstest hangover mornings courtesy of "Mr.Rad" is just uncool, no matter how ghetto you may be. Thus, the humidifier.

I bought it off a lass in a street deal at the McGill Rue Sherbrooke gates for 15$ [yeah, that's right, $ at the end. Uh-huh.] and I've been milking it for all its worth so far. Fifteen bucks is like, 30+ bagels at St.Viateur Bagel, or 15 cafe allonges at Cafe Olympico. It's also how much Erin W. and I made busking at the Berri Metro a few weeks ago... OK, maybe a little more than we made, but I digress.

When you go to busk, the precise location you are proscribed for your lucrative venture is designated by the following tres drole sign:

I don't know if it's meant to add a touch of class and nobilite des ancienes to the enterprise ("No ma'am, I do it for the Greeks, not the money... Remove thine loonie and get thee hence."), or perhaps it harkens back to an age when there existed a hence-unseen surplus of pentatonic lute players in Quebec (Until they were all one horrible weekend herded into corrals in the metro and never seen or heard from again...). Personally, I think it's a cool deal from an aesthetics angle, but a trifle absurd.

Anyway, 15 minutes also happens to be the allotted time for each of the two smoke breaks I get when I work at the D.E.E. warehouse. What's that you ask? Why, it's where I've been working, working, working, since I realized that the streets aren't paved with gold in Montreal. Quelle domage!

I'll write again soon, and explain matters further. Hope you are all well!

Of course, I'll be back in Vancouver tomorrow, for a week, so I'll look forward to catching up with the Lotusland Crew immediatment.

love,
m.

High Park, TO

2005-11-09T11:56:00.000-05:00

High Park, TO, originally uploaded by Three Chords and the Truth.

Baa.

Winnipeg!

2005-09-29T16:47:00.000-04:00

Winnipeg!, originally uploaded by Three Chords and the Truth.

Nick & Mike do

Burnaby Blues & Roots Festival

2005-08-13T21:41:00.000-04:00

Burnaby Blues & Roots Festival, originally uploaded by Three Chords and the Truth.

Home sweet home...

picture(3.jpg

2005-07-23T23:45:00.001-04:00

picture(3.jpg, originally uploaded by Three Chords and the Truth.

picture(2.jpg

2005-07-23T23:45:00.000-04:00

picture(2.jpg, originally uploaded by Three Chords and the Truth.

My First Loin

2005-07-23T23:43:00.000-04:00

My First Loin, originally uploaded by Three Chords and the Truth.

Napier and Victoria

2005-06-21T18:26:00.001-04:00

Sitting by the open window, at a computer not my own... strong breeze through the open window, steady traffic down below, congested streets, congested air, congested thoughts.

What news friends? I've been sinking into some Vancouver roots lately, not playing as much music as usual lately (but recording a bunch and making good use of my porch/living room), and generally coasting along.

Starting to flail a bit, however, hope that this [post?] will help clear my head. Things visible on the horizon, and I'm all-a-flutter when I should be getting down to the brass tacks and battening down some hatches, I fear. But it's a good storm a-comin', I think, either way.

If I get shipwrecked, don't worry... look for me washing up on the rocks of Montreal come October.

Tonight is the final performance (ever?) of the Mark Berube Quintet. We'll be dissolving like so much international "puffed candy" over the next few months, with members scattering themselves latitudinally across the globe. Not sinking in yet, but this has become a really nice partnership. Hope those bonds will stand the test of some time. I'm sure they will.

Diederik van Dijk and his merry band of miscreants, Through Glass [featuring Aaron Joyce, moi, and some combination of Sarah Ciantar, Artemis Tsokas, and Michael Simpson] will be opening the ceremonies tonight. Not to be missed.

We're at the Railway Club, by the way. No, I didn't email anyone about this [see flailing, above].

Love,
Mike

Stumbling For a Microphone

2005-05-08T19:20:00.000-04:00

Hey People,

Back in Vancouver, and I am, naturally, at the 24-7 convenience store at Charles and Commercial. Sam is training a replacement for his multi-month cricket sojourn to India and Pakistan, which commences in a week. Things ain't going to be the same 'round here. The Weakerthans are providing the soundtrack; Reconstruction Site is a wonderful piece of work, in my ever-so-humble opinion.

Happy Mother's Day, by the way.

Well, the Mark Berube Self-Improvement Tour 2005 wrapped up without a hitch, despite us sleeping in two hours Saturday morning in Calgary. Ah well, we needed it. We were kind of punch-drunk on stage at Karma the night before, which I suppose must have only added to our entertainment value. Darren Johnson's opening set was a gorgeous piece of minimalist Hank Williams-Louis Armstrong-Tom Waits patois, but he doesn't seem to have a website, so just keep your ears peeled good 'n' ready. Thanks to Walle (sic? sorry!) for the luxurious basement crash pad, and for the (mercifully) broken alarm clock! :) We got on the road by noon and I was home by 9:30pm PST, which seems curious. The tour gods were smiling on us indeed.

This tour was an absolute blur of activity, with little/no time for navel-gazing, drinking, or excessive fraternizing, but it sure did keep us honest! So, when last we heard of our intrepid band of adventurers, they were just setting out from the fortress of Darkness that is Toronto for the breadbasket of Southern Ontario...

The first city to fall was Guelph, home of some of the nicest people you'll meet, I swear. This time out we stayed in town, and superstar Lisa put us up in style in her too-cool pad. Tarah even moved out for a night so Mark could have a cat-free bed, what samaritanism! Playing at the Cornerstone cafe is really lovely: great food, folks, drinks. Show went well, and then we marched through the snow (well, it was flurrying, anyhow) across the road to Jimmy Jazz's where the superlative Nate Coles was hosting an open mic in masterful form. The crowd was sizeable, enthusiastic, and loud, so Mark and I downed our first Stellas in rapid fashion and turned our accordion and upright bass set up to 11. Or at least as high as it goes, anyway. It was a hell of a lot of fun, I don't think we've ever played with quite that much aggression or enthusiasm ;)

I proceeded to spend much of the night sitting in with the fine folks of Guelph, including Mr. Coles, and the wonderful Kitty on cello, who pulled out an impromptu modal jam-athon or two. Here's Kitty's band's website, Johnny Hollow. Damn, if you liked "Seven", you'll love this!!! If not, it's going to scare the shit out of you, probably. I have to say that my open-mic experiences on the road have been fab, with lots of really good musicianship on display. Guelph, I'll be back for you.

The next day we tried for breakfast first at the Vienna Cafe, where the five varieties of sausage were most pleasing to Berube and Tarah, but tickled the fancies of fellow veggies Liston and Lisa not one bit. Sheepish, we left and went to the Aquarius Cafe across the street where a bitter Berube made do with grilled crispy tofu and organic brown rice. Life is full of compromises, Mark.

Bidding a fond adieu to Guelph, we rocked on to London. I'm sorry for repeatedly taking the piss out of this town, but just go and hang out with the elite cadre of Western University's finest socialites , and you'll be frothing with venom, too. :) But this time out we met a whole crew of most excellent folks, so I will try and be more even-handed in future. First new folks we met were the ones who would put us up later in their coolio digs above the bar, the fine folks from the band The Riderless. They have a homemade kora in their place! Two pieces of wood and a bunch of yellow nylon rope. Way cool doesn't even begin to describe it. Many more would succumb to our inescapable allure that Monday night in the surprisingly packed confines of the Alex P. Keaton. Y'all alright! The Riderless and numerous other people we met that night are all headed to Vancouver, so we'll be seeing you soon, dudes. The Riderless are playing at Pat's Pub on May 21st, so go check it out, dig.

London couldn't hold us, so we took our vagrant ways to Hamilton the next night, where we were eagerly anticipating a gig at the magical Staircase Theatre/Cafe . It was a multi-birthday party night for the staff there, and I think a good time was had by all. I finally got my belated birthday wish of having Rob sit in on beer-box percussion with us. It was great to see some familiar faces, and we met some new. Apres show (I think we had two encores and ended up standing on the tables) Rob laid some "next level shit" on us, as it were, and played us video of Watermelon Slim's recent Staircase gig. Check this guy out!!! Former truck driver playing the most hurtin' blues, lap steel with a spark-plug holder for a slide and a homemade mbira! Yes, of course it's good!

From Hamilton we set sail for the [Berube] holy land, Montreal, PQ. We arrived to discover that the weather had been switched by mistake, and it was Vancouver-like conditions (i.e. rain, and lots of it. worse than vancouver, actually). Joy! We had a quick rehearsal with stellar percussionist Patrick Dugas, and then the next day we sallied out, newly augmented, for Patrick's hometown of Quebec City. This is some seriously historical place, lemme tell you. The cobblestones on the streets might be new, but the old fortifications and whatnot are definitely the real-deal! And the people ... fantastic. We had a very early set at Le Sacrilege, starting around 5:30pm. In Quebec City, this is evidently the perfect time to catch a very receptive crowd of people, as they do not waste time heading down to the pub after work. With a place as charming as Le Sacrilege, however, who wouldn't. It had to be the most cramped gig I have ever played, and that includes pit orchestra work, but it was a riot. We didn't need to coax people to sing along on a few tunes -- we couldn't have stopped them from singing the whole damn night if we'd tried! Also exciting for me was the opportunity to publicly flaunt my atrocious French and receive thundering rounds of cheers and applause for my well-intentioned butchery. Well, yes, there was also a lot of laughter, but I'm used to that in English, too.
After the show the three of us got a late-night tour of Quebec, courtesy of Sandrine and Claudia. They even pulled their "local" strings to get us late night eats. Thanks, madmoiselles! :)

Then it was back to Montreal, for our two night stand at the Yellow Door. The Yellow Door is in the Montreal student "ghetto" (a ghetto remarkable the world over for the astonishingly high proportion of wealthy young kids there, subsisting, but just barely...), and is an entirely residential-looking building in a strip of entirely residential buildings. You have the impression you are breaking into someone's house when you load in, but it is a kind of community centre, so I guess that's kind of the feel they want! I'll be honest, when you first see the performance space, it kind of puts you in mind of your high-school band buddy's basement, but then you see all the signed headshot photos of past performers (from the past THIRTY YEARS!)... Stephen Fearing, Penny Laing, Veda Hille, Don Ross, Stan Rogers... It's kind of twisted, actually. Go check out this list, for instance. So, it was an honour! Night one went down well, but it was night #2 that we seemed to get a bit of magic going. The magical Mexicano himself, Alex, graciously recorded the night [He was, of course, putting us up again in his tri-lingual abode], and Courtney Wing and Ann Vriend [stalking us again] both rocked out their sets, as well. Much good times were had, indeed, culminating in a three-way orgy of a finale, that had Courtney and Ann join us for a heart-stirring rendition of Dylan's "I Shall Be Released".

Also thanks to Marguerite and Brian for their respective "artist hospitality" sessions! I am more mooch than friend, I fear.

OK! I'll wrap up the rest of the thrilling travelogue tomorrow -- still to come: Ottawa Part Deux, The 'Soo', and the Thunder Bay Underground!

Much love, give a ring, sorry to all those people I stiffed before I left, I'll buy you a beer.

Manana,
Mike

Prisoners of the White Lines On the Freeway

2005-05-05T15:53:00.000-04:00

Starring: Mark Berube and Mike Liston Colour, 2005 Running Time: 72hrs

Hey Cats and Kittens,

we're at our guardian angels' home in Winnipeg, the Thiessen household. These folks are unreal. We showed up at 5:30am this time, having driven straight from Thunder Bay after our (fantastic-ly fabulous) gig there last night. They just leave the door open and tell us to eat all the food when we wake up. It's stupid.

In a few minutes Mark will start really ragging on me to get in the van and go, so it's just a quick note to say I'm alive and well and I'll be home Saturday night if anyone wants to go for a beer.

Not to jump the gun, of course; we're still playing Karma Local Arts House in Calgary this Friday night, and we have to drive to Regina now. And I have lots of stories from our insane blitzkrieg through Southern Ontario and Quebec. But not now, now we drive. Because we "LOVE OUR PROFESSION"!

Oh, and Simpson, we are most definitely looking good and feeling great.

Love,
Mike

T-Dot Done Drowned

2005-04-24T13:22:00.000-04:00

Yebo,

Cpt. Mark B. and Able Seaman Ben J. and I are digesting a very nice breakfast from Aunties and Uncles over email right now. We're in one of them Toronto-style multi-purpose internet cafe/laundromat/money changing type places. This city is riddled with 'em like fleas on a dog. Speaking of pets and their epedermii, (sic?) Mark B. has been absolutely devastated so far this tour by cats and dogs. It's quite tragic. He nearly checked into a hotel last night, no B.S., just to try and get away from the allergenic scourge. Everybody thinks it's all about sex, drugs, rock and roll, but mostly it's just about finding someone at the end of the night who doesn't have a friend named "Fluffy" at home.

Of course, in London, ON, "Fluffy" might just be the name of your sorority roommate, I suppose. I love that town! [Here, I posted this link last October, too, but some things are just worth doing twice, yo! - http://www.lspot.ca ]

Our show Friday night in Toronto at Freetimes went very well. It's a small, intimate space, and Karyn Ellis seemed to have a knack for getting the place packed. Both Karyn and Ann Vriend played very well, and Mark and I managed to keep the crowd there to the end of the night. This filled our cold hearts with joy and love, as we have played to maybe a few more empty chairs than we would like to have, thus far. It was lovely to see my radical-rootist friends Suze and Agata (sic? again?) , who kept Rae and I so well fed in the summer, tempting us with good foods that were not doughnuts.

Thursday night saw us in Ottawa, at Rasputin's. Dean made us feel right at home, and Anne Davison popped in with her cello, lavender case and all, to rock-out all impromptu on a few tunes with us -- kitchen party! It was one of those particularly "intimate" crowds, but what made it cool was that almost no-one there really knew who we were. A couple of smart girls had heard Mark's tunes on CBC radio and had wisely concluded that Rasputin's was the place to get down that night. Our new pal Anita left happily with a CD, although her date apparently found us somewhat disturbing. I admit that I have become quite disturbed on my new, healthy tour diet of almost no coffee and relatively frequent oatmeal. I should also mention that Anne's lovely partner James Hill was outta-town, as he is on the West Coast promoting his NEW CD. So go to his website now, and checkitout. Thanks for the groovy hospitality Anne, and I hope your recital slaaaaayed, dudette.

Wednesday night the ever-amicable Maria put us up in the 'Soo after a 15-hour 'death drive' from Winnipeg, where Tuesday we had sailed into the Academy Coffee House. People in Winnipeg always say, "where is that?" and I always say "It's on Academy". Crazy.
The jury's out on whether it was a good music night, but when mr.C.R. Avery hit the stage, fresh and sweaty from his own spoken-word feature at Dregs, then things definitely got interesting. We got to see a few familiar faces from our last time out, and I had a first, which was the parent of a friend attending, sans friend. Myia D.'s super dad Celes came out and partied like a rockstar with us. Myia, he was dancing on the tables, I tell you. When you're not around...

Our rest in Winnipeg was, as before, very restful, under the roof of Maria and Howard and Steph. This time, however, we did have one added challenge, which was the new addition to the family, Mr.Squiggles. Mr.Squiggles joins elder statesman Baby, also a cat, in the eternal quest to sneak into Mark's room and mine, and tap dance on our pillows so that we will be pink-eyed and snotty later. Mr.Squiggles, being somewhat younger and more foolish, was relatively easy to catch, however, and learned to his cost that cats cannot fly.

Brandon the night before that saw us in perhaps the most dimly-lit and intimate venue yet. I do mean intimate, as we had people on couches not two feet from us. There were baked goods brought by audience members, 14L of Coke hauled up by the good-hearted and erstwhile show putter-onner Tim, and cans of Lucky Lager donated to the hard workin' band by Brandon's CD pimp and all-round righteous dude, Dan Wilson, bro' of the Spoon Man.

So now we are going to leave Toronto, with it's suspiciously Vancouver-like weather patterns (yesterday, our first genuine day-off, it rained a monsoon down upon our heads, as if to say "we rainclouds don't have the same inter-city grudges that you do" -- but in Sanskrit, just as T.S. Eliot's rainclouds would have rumbled), and we are going to Guelph.

We are going to take Southern Ontario one day at time, and they are going to like it, damnit.

And then Quebec shall fall... Something about this city makes you a little big-headed.

Save me a seat at the Naam, friends, I'll be back soon.

Hugs and Kisses,
Mike

Louis Riel's Hangin' Place

2005-04-17T23:58:00.000-04:00

Yup, that's Regina, folks!

Mark and I have just crashed into the super-swell pad of the uber-amicable and impossibly hospitable John Dufort, here in the Sasky-Capital. I met John last summer when I was billeted with him during the Regina Folkfest, playin' with Rae and Aaron. He's thrown open the door to me again, despite the fact that I don't even have a Regina gig to show for myself this time. Now that's what I call a host with the most (heart).

Our show last night in Edmonton went wonderfully, despite the fact that we almost didn't make it. I blew through the front doors with my bass at 8:15pm and our set started at 8:30, so it was a bit tight, but the extra nervous energy seemed to propel us along just great. The Sidetrack is a big room, so it was very satisfying to manage to hold the audience's attention for more than a few seconds! Beneath Augusta and Ann Vriend sounded great. Incidentally, Beneath Augusta are heading from Toronto out to the coast, and they have a gig at the Media Club in Vancouver, so anyone in Van who would dig an angsty emo-ish Sigur Ros/Coldplay, wall-of-sound type deal, I heartily encourage to check these boys out.

Thanks to Michelle and Sarah, who are now officially my Edmonton wunder-fans. Thanks to Devan and Susan for putting us up at their swank new house. Their cats are trained to come, sit, stay, etc. Frrrrreeeaaaky!

And, last but not least, shouts out to Erin Wallace in Nelson for setting us up with the gig at the Wild Nectar and putting us up. Attendance was somewhat victimized by an end-of-school rager that was going down simultaneous-like, but hey, it was the warm-up gig, after-all.

Erin is bound for Montreal in a couple weeks, so anyone in the Belle Ville of the Belle Provence should most definitely get in touch with this lass, and check out the performances I am sure she will be soon be rockin' there.

Tomorrow night we are in Brandon, the Wheat King city, the second city of Manitoba, the biggest little town in Canada. Soon, too, that hellion of harmonica and haberdashery, scourge of the microphone, C.R. Avery, will be joining us for a show in Winnipeg -- pray for our souls...

Love,
Mike

Wear a Flower in Your Hair

2005-04-15T20:59:00.000-04:00

Salut,

Mark y yo have arrived in Nelson, B.C. The weather and roads were fine until about a couple hours out of Nelson, when ominous but overrated flurries of snow added some spice to the mix.
Mom and Pa Berube sent us off with some sandwiches and other edibles, got us through the rough bits.

It's a cold and grey, miserable sort of evening here so far -- hopefully we can spread a little joy tonight. School just got out for all the hippy-dippy kids of Selkirk, after all. I hear that Chapman Stick-powered band formerly-from-Canmore-now-from-Vancouver, Blue Quarter are playing tonight, and we are supposed to go as VIP's later. Hometown homeboys, yo.

But first we have to pay our dues and play our gig at the Wild Nectar with the lovely and talented Erin Merle Wallace, currently-from-Nelson-soon-to-be-from-Montreal.

This is the world's most expensive internet cafe, no bullshit. I'm splitting.

By the way, sorry to all the people I didn't get to say goodbye to before I left; you're all in great company, I promise.

Be in Edmonton tomorrow, ladies and gents.

Smooch,
Miguel

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

2005-03-20T20:08:00.000-05:00

Hello, One and All

Here I am, at my favourite Internet-Quickie-Mart on the Drive, listening to the glorious Gillian Welch ["Time (The Revealator)"], and doing the email thang en masse.

I'm using my scarf as a keyboarding wrist-cushion, and so-far, so-so-good. All the emails you have received today should not exhibit any wrist-strain, muscular-jitters, or other miscarraiges of execution. If you should find any such errors, please notify the author immediately, and you shall be compensated.

I've run into numerous folks recently who wanted to know what the heck I've been up to. Apparently I've been off the radar for many.

Here's a few highlights from the lowlife:

I've been trying to hold down the fort for several months as Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday "Administrative Co-Ordinator" at the Stanley Hotel, in the temporary absence of the amazing Erin Mathews. Fortunately, I've had the fantastic support of the rest of the very able-body & minded team of full time staffers there on the other days and nights, so I think things have been going well. It's certainly been a challenge so far, but I'm enjoying it.

Once Erin's back, I'm shipping off on the road to play some great tunes with Mark Berube again, this time out to Quebec City and back, which will be a new stop for me. We are once again doing the duo deal, but expect even more harmonies from me this time -- I've been practicing, don't fear!

Very much looking forward to seeing my friends across the country once again! Check the giglist - I've updated it - and I hope to catch you at a show. Naturally, we are currently accepting applications to house and feed us while we are in your town, so don't delay, sign up today!

I've also been doing a bunch of gigs with the likes of Diederik van Dijk in Through Glass, (love those tunes Dutch, and they just keep comin') as well as various jazz numbers, and a few playing the pop-stylings of Mark Hildreth.

Bunch of studio work the past several months; look out for great new albums from Rae Spoon, Lesley Hoyles, Christa Couture, and Marla Rosen, featuring me, me, me. ;) But seriously, I've had a ton of fun working with all these great folks, and I look forward to hearing the final mixes of those soon.

Comin' up soon on the 1st of April will be a show with the well-spoken Trevor Caswell of Kamloops, performing here at the Main. I'll be backing the man up on bass, and the ferocious Aaron Joyce will be laying-about with his lap steel chops. Aaron and I met Trevor last summer on the road with Rae, and we seemed to strike a few good chords with him (a few onstage at the ArtsWells festival, even), so
it'll be good to do it all over again.

Incidentally, Aaron's been writing some killer tunes lately, but more on that later.

Aaron and Rae Spoon will be hitting the road in late April for several months -- keep your ears peeled, Rae is spinning some fine new tunes these days! I'm not booked for any shows with the Spoon man at present, but you might see me out there with him yet.

Or, perhaps you might see me in Europe. Nothing confirmed, but I am currently working on badgering my way into as many overseas tours as I can. If my badgering skills are as sharp as I hope they are, then look for me on the French Riviera come July ;)

Well, soon I turn into a pumpkin, so off to recharge my Mental Health Worker batteries. Do drop me a line if you haven't heard from me in a while -- don't forget, new phone number : 778-322-1580. And I moved back to the 'hood, I'm now at Lakewood & Venables, an espresso spurt from Commercial Drive.

Until next we meet!
Mas suerte!
-- Miguel --

Don't Be a Hoser, Hal

2005-03-19T22:37:00.000-05:00

7:37 pm - Email rampage 50% complete. Tomorrow, the sun will rise on a new day, and a new swath of digital bloodletting will commence.

Open the Pod Bay Doors, Hal

2005-03-19T20:50:00.000-05:00

5:51pm - commencement of email rampage

Somewhere, a lonesome moose calls...

2005-03-04T01:15:00.000-05:00

Hello Nature Lovers,

You've no doubt wandered into these ancient, moss covered ruins to feast your senses on Nature, in all Her glory, not to see what's become of old man Liston and his abandoned journal. Too bad. It ain't dead yet!

No, I'm still kicking. The bass is still humming. And the Stanley Hotel, where I've been playing the part of "Erin Matthews" while she plays the part of a six-year old girl in a Green Thumb production, continues to bethrilling.

Tomorrow I'm going to write the other 100 emails I owe y'all, update the damn gig calendar, and try not to drink a 1lb of coffee doing it. I drink less coffee and alcohol these days, y'know. I'm aging.

'till then,
Mike Liston
Park Mondegreen Interprative Guide

The Other Day I Went Bass Shopping...

2005-01-26T14:44:00.000-05:00

and I was nosing around on the Interweb and found a German string-shop page.
The thing about German is, when you get Google to translate it for you, it really comes alive:

Completely again, degree completely restores, built in France or Italy probably in the first half 19. Jahunderts as 3-Saiter and to judge by the play-pure mainly as such used. Now the Schaetzchen has naturally 4-Saiten and an extra long griffbrett. The flat soil from fine maple is bebalkt with Pappel bars, gives to the clay/tone herkulesgleiche strength again! Purifies spruce cover, also overhauled completely, in French style paints finely again. 106 cm mensur make the old lady playable like a new one. Which one is to say to the sound of an awaking Dornroeschens, the depths - elementary! Tiefgrollend from the underground! The heights, whose former elegance and presence awake daily more.

German : "Where a bass is never just a bass"

And the streets they are covered in ice...

2005-01-16T08:22:00.001-05:00

That's a ball that my buddy Marguerite made in Montreal. It's a-r-t, people. She's fantastic!

Here I am at the Sunrise Hotel, again. Another nightshift. Not many of those lately, although I did get a ton of emails and other stuff done last time I had one of these. There might not be any more nightshifts for a long time, either, because I may just end up subbing-in for Erin "Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday-Days" M. at the Ol' Stanley Hotel until April. It'd be an honour, and I might end up going crazy. I'll end up just like Erin, cavorting around B.C. with Green Thumb theatre. Shudder.

But that'd certainly be better than being out on the Vancouver streets right now, where many are simply not equipped to handle the rain/snow/ice/cold.

What else. Working a ton. Working on a bunch of projects for folks, and I think there will be a very nifty bunch of albums brought out into the world when they are all in the can. Here's some links to lead you on and give you an idea of some of what is running around in my brain these days:

www.christacouture.com
www.lesleyhoyles.com
www.mark-hildreth.com

Been playing more and more banjo. Look out. I feel a gig coming on. Miranda, Eric, and my mom will remember my first and last. This one will be better, I promise, you won't need earplugs. El Caravan got broken into the other night, and some of my stuff got stolen. This is all part of being a musician, I tell myself. I have not yet seen my speaker cabinet and gear suitcase come through the Sunrise lobby, but if I do, I will still be an empathetic person. Also, I am learning how to knit and make soap.

Bunch of gigs coming up, I'll try and update the darned list sometime soon.

Buenos noches,
Mike

Mike Marches into 2005

2005-01-09T04:22:00.000-05:00

Draw, hombres y chicas. Further updates: New bank account (Vancity, goodbye bloated TD/CT [Ed. note: Goodbye overdraft...]), new phone # 778-322-1580. That's right, 778. 778-322-1580. Many, many hours at the PHS (Good for new bank account). No progress on most of the rest of to-do list. No progress on new place to live.

Sorry, peoples abroad. Mike's going to call you and give you a big hug like this real, real soon:

Mike Loves You,
Mike

Here Comes the Plane, Come With Supplies, Now We Don't Die

2004-12-22T22:08:00.000-05:00

Hope you are doing well this time of year, since I know it can be hard for people whose immediate families run into the double-digits. Not so for me. I just get to watch the snow fall.

Except I live in Vancouver, so I watch the fir tree needles grow instead. It's a kind of compromise.

But seriously, I don't think I've ever had a winter season like this where I've had as many friends and family scattered so far and wide. It's not any more lonely than usual, but instead it's kind of exciting. Everyone is getting on with life and living, and I'm proud to know y'all!

Notable : I am taking a month off of drinking, turned 25, finally got my class 5 license (7 years of driving expertise), made a 7 month budget, and am making musical trouble. I have not : Found a new place to live, written people I have meant to write for months, or done 50% of my to-do list.

For anyone I do not get in touch with in time to say "Happy Festivus" or what-have-you, accept my sincere apologies and my sincere congratulations -- You've made it through another year! Huzzah! Let's do it again, and this time, let's hang out more.

Stay tuned. Stay safe. Love your family, and get some sleep.
Love,
Mike

Mike & Creepy Mark opening for Karyn Ellis at the Main. Kudos to one of Mark's sharp-witted students for the photo

Seasonal Dis-Affected Disorder

2004-11-09T21:19:00.000-05:00

Hello! I'm dropping this note here for the benefit of anyone who might thing I've up and ditched them on the communication front. Not true, I swear it. Just experiencing one of those semi-regular crises I am well-known for, I'm afraid!

I'll be back on the phones and email in no time flat, promise. OK, give me a week.

But if you can't wait that long, then come on out to the Marine Club (Homer @ Dunsmuir) this Rememberance Day (Thursday 11th), as I guest in on banjo with my good buddies in A.C. Slater - Vancouver's only death-metal country band. Daaaaaamn straight. They're opening for a singer songwriter w/band, whose name escapes me, but they tell me he's quite the real deal. Show starts around 9pm I think, so be there!

'till the next time, 'pardners.
miguel

Fin

2004-10-26T00:35:00.000-04:00

The latest: I'm back.

Also, today is actually my mother's birthday.

m.

Westward, Ho!

2004-10-25T17:17:00.000-04:00

Mark y yo somos en Grand Forks, BC. We are speeding westward as fast as our paws can carry us.
If you have been waiting for me to email/call/pay you money for several weeks, I promise I will be doing these things soon.

Tomorrow is Mama's birthday. Early happy birthday, mom!

m.

North America's Geographical Center

2004-10-20T18:52:00.000-04:00

... is just a short hop from here, W I N N I P E G.
How's that for a dramatic intro, eh?

I've done my homework for the day, so I'm celebrating. By writing in here. I get heck from Mom if I don't, you know. Glad I did my homework first, though, Mom? Golly, it is fun still being a student after all these years.

So, last thing I wrote we were headed into Montreal. The leaves that week were stunning. If you haven't been to Ontario/Quebec at that magic time, then imagine...

Montreal was amazing. Superlatives aside, we had an excellent time recording demo tracks for Mark's forthcoming album. Mr.Alix d'Mexico was engineering the magic, along with the wonderful Kaitlin, and the superlative Patrick Dougas played the percussion. Between Alix and Patrick, Mark and I both got our heads spun on some great new grooves, of the Arabian, Portugeuse, and just plain funky persuasion. A studio session with a drummer you've never met, recording tunes you're rearranging on the spot... it could have been disastorous, but I think it went faaaaaabulous! Can't wait to hear the tape. Er, datum.

Thanks to the loyal staff of the Tim Horton's across the street for the McGill Music Building for making it all possible. Poss-eee-bleuh, that is.

We drank stout, we ate humous - aye, we ate the humous, eh, Alix? -, we sipped espresso with creme so wonderful you'd think that it was surely-not-coffee-but-stout - but no, it was espresso, yes! - and we enjoyed lentils, in many forms.

I caught up with Mr.Ker and Marguerite of the ArtsWells festival. This time, Ker made me a martini and I drank it, meaning that I have finished exactly one real martini in my lifetime. Thank you, Brian. This time, Marguerite did not make me lots of gorgeous vegan food, but she did make me a mean soy latte in her wicked apartment, so she is "off the hook", as they say in urban culture!

I also played soccer, barefoot, with Mark, Alix, Andrew, and about TWENTY LATINO GUYS. Caramba! But it was fun.
Barefoot + Astroturf = Blisters, but this has been mathematically proven, by me, to be much better than the alternative equation,
Blundstone Boots + Soccer = Bailing real hard in a stupid, stupid way

Yea, I also took in the world-tastic sounds at a Rwandan benefit concert, on my last night en Montreal. Everyone who played was amazing, including Alix and comrade house-mate saxophonist Sebastian's band, Bombolesse. Really, the collective caliber of all the performers was through the roof, and the crowd was big, enthusiastic, and awesome.

And then there was that radio interview/performance with Krysta (sp?) of Concordia Radio. We did not start no riot.

Eventually, though, we had to leave the ville de Montreal, for other pastures. Like, Ottawa!

Oh, no, wait. Before Ottawa, there is Wakefield, PQ! Wakefield is so almost in Ottawa, but it is not... it is twenty minutes nord of the Nation's Capital. Had a good time playing there at The Black Sheep this summer with Rae, so... where have you heard that before... looking forward to heading back.

We were sharing the bill, that is, opening for, The Rude Mechanicals, of PEI originally, now T-Dot. And the, uh, well, superlative Al Tuck. Al says he doesn't have a website, which is too ... oh, no, wait, he's an East Coaster, so he's full of shit. I just checked and he does have something not-entirely-unlike-a-website. Go hence. My god, the man is entertaining and skilful. He's entertainingly skilful, in fact. Despite being entertaining, he remained skilful, even. The Rude's were certainly great as well, but the profound awe with which they spoke of the Tuck'ed one spoke volumes. They're all from the same damn chunk of Canada, after all.

Mr.Tuck introduced Mark and I to the wonderful music of The Jolly Boys. I just about pulled a Tycho Brae Imega and burst my internal organs right there at the Mutton Noir. Holy cow. Go find the lyrics to a tune called "Big Bamboo". It's become a Mark Berube "All For the Children Canadian Tour 2004" classic. But, "Mother and Wife" is pretty damn progressive, too. I mean, great. I mean, boy, I had fun at the Bellavista tonight!

Well, we split Wakefield (thank you very much, Paul!) and headed for Ottawa. Marguerite was in town to see ol' Yael Wand and Christina "Zippy-Zip-Zipped" Zaenker perform, and we were going to go stay with that 'uke-abuser and his partner in crime, James Hill and Anne.

Wouldn't you know it, they were all at the same place. Anywhere else, that's a cosmic coincidence, but in a teensy-weensy country like Canada, it's just par for the bloody course, eh?

Apparently the gig had gone very well. Yael was happy. Zippy was zipped. Much hilarity ensued. Eventually, much to the delight of the children, so did breakfast.

Golly, Ottawa is kind of grim in certain ways. Yet, warm in others. Curious, that. Take those Parliamentarian buildings, for instance. They're beautiful. I don't somehow expect large governmental edifices of stone to be warm and humane looking, but they are! It's great! No, wait -- I've a much better idea, lets make it all doric or ionian or greekish, and paint it all white! There, that's much better! That's a government I'd look up to...

So it was a good time had by all in Ottawa. Thanks to James, Anne, and Marguerite's long suffering brother, John, and his somewhat suffering flatmate, Lee. The end.

Next up: Sault Ste. Marie!

Good night,
M.O.L.

...And Your Turkey, Too

2004-10-10T16:39:00.000-04:00

Happy weekend festivus, whatever you choose.
We've had a few laid-back days here in Toronto... The highlight reel, thus far:

Driving to Kitchener, walking into the bar we were to play at, meeting the waitress, walking out of the bar, driving back to Toronto. It's a rare night that Mike Liston bails on a gig, but you had to be there. Seeing The Deadly Snakes at Lee's Palace. Learning how big Toronto really is. Vegan Thanksgiving Dinner with Bob Wiseman. Playing at the Renaissance Cafe with Herb and R.J. -- hot diggity! Good to see you again, Adam H. Walking back down Queen St., for no particular reason other than I did it this summer too-many times.

I think I'm going to move to Toronto. Just needs to be done.

We're playing the Hammer tonight. Then --> Montreal! Maudite! Poutine! Francais! Falafel! Oui, Falafel!

vive le falafel,
m.

Funny Old Towns

2004-10-08T16:21:00.000-04:00

3:27pm EST, Center of the Universe, Toronto, ON

The tour goes well! In fact, all things considered (5000+ km, several cancelled shows, winter Canada) it goes stupendous!

We're staying in a fabulous house in the High Park region of Big Smoke; that'd be the classier neighbour of Parkdale -- No offense, Kaleb!!! -- where Rae and Shelley and I spent many a happy afternoon eating donuts to the soundtrack of CMT this summer.

After leaving Winnipeg, we drove a bunch. I love the transition from Eastern Manitoba into Northern Ontario, it really feels like a transitional kind of border-land, where big things in the universe around you are changing in profound and mysterious ways. Like, you're no longer in Manitoba. Now you're in like, Ontario. Whoaaah!!!

So in Thunder Bay we hit up the Appollo (Gig #2), which has a suitably frontier-like atmosphere to it. Restaurant at the end of the universe, you know. We were blessed with a great sound-person, Sean, and a small but enthusiastic audience, making for a very succesful sophomore outing. A couple of touring punk bands were also making the bohemian network of lofts above the Appollo their home that night, but those cats were so nice and well-behaved they utterly convinced me that punk is dead, dead, dead.

What'd we do the next day, kids? Drive!!! That's right! And then what'd we do? Drive!!! You betcha! Whoah, I must have slept through this in the summer, 'cuz its a long way from Thunder Bay to anywhere. Sometime around 5-6pm, I convinced Mark to go through downtown Sault Ste. Marie, to say hello to dear Trevor and Amanda of The Downbeat lounge. Trevor is far too-hospitable for his own good, and we were forced to have a beer and hang-out. The nerve of us! We left town refreshed and ready to drive on through the night to London, site of our next gig -- no sooner had we left the city limits when Mark discovered it had been cancelled, due to 'renovations'.

Ever the optimists, we decided to press on and hope for the best. The endless stream of heavy transport on the 401 at 3am is a sight to behold. Its the most orderly traffic you'll ever see, at any rate. In the wee hours, we arrived at Mark's Mexican friend Christel's place, and the next day we had the rare priviledge of waking up in a Western University residence. I'd heard all about Western, but to be there ... wow. What can I say? Sometimes a webpage is worth a thousand words: www.lspot.ca

Christel and roomie Maria (De Madrid) kept Mark and I workin' our Spanish chops the whole time, an unexpected bonus. Wednesday night we made our way to the Alex P. Keaton, a bar, not a man, and before I knew what was happening, Mark had talked Eric, the amicable and talented host, into letting us play a short and impromptu set. Which went very well. Then, as has happened before at these things, I was coerced to perform with several of the other good-folk who frequent the joint, but I didn't mind one bit. Great crew -- thanks Rob, Mike, Leah, et al.! Did I mention Rick, the Big Rock breweries rep. who was in the house, dispensing his wares? Egad.

Eric, persuasive man that he is, then dragged us over to The Salt, or Salts, or something like that with Salt in it, where he told me the best bassist in London, if not the world, was playing. Well, Eric's a man of his word. Stan was indeed laying out some mean grooves on his customized and well-loved P-Bass, backing up a crew of what are evidently London's most in-demand R'n'R players. Hard to give expression to it without the visual impact of the town, really, but it was turning into one of those surreal evenings.

Made more surreal by the emergence out of the crowd of none-other than Mr.Glenn Garinther, missing and presumed dead in the Van music scene for a year or so now. Turns out he's been hiding out in London, plotting his next move. Sneaky guy! Looking good, though, for the record.

It was a mercifully short hop to Guelph the next day, i.e. yesterday. Why were we going to Guelph, you ask? Our show there had been (you guessed it) cancelled nigh on a week-ago. But Guelph had been the scene for one of my favourite gigs with Rae of the summer, and I was determined we should give it a go. And I had a cunning plan ...

It didn't involve much work on our part. We just had to convince my friend Lisa to convince Mark, the owner of the wonderful Cornerstone Cafe, that it was a good idea to let us play there that night. Lo and behold, I think everyone came out happy with this arrangement. We sure did anyway, eating delicious eats at the hippest, friendliest joint around. Thanks to Greg, Kevin, and the rest of the cafe crew, and to all the new folks who bought copies of Mark's record! See you again soon.

So, it's Kitchener tonight. I'm starving, however, so time to go shake down a tree for some nuts and berries.

besos,
m.

Golden Hour

2004-10-04T11:37:00.000-04:00

Oi,
Jezebel, the Berube Bus, is preparing to sail out of Winnipeg, MB. Her swashbuckling crew are eager for more adventure, and I, the Cabin Boy, am scrambling out a quick note before we once again plow the prairies before us.

Well, actually, I guess we're just about out of prairies to plow. Berube introduced me to "the golden hour" last evening -- which, just in case you're wondering, is not something associated with PVC or stilleto-heels -- as the late-day sun sets the fields a-glow. Yes, a-glow. It stirs poetry in my cold heart.

And speaking of cold, it's getting nipply out. For sure. Not on the coast anymore. But when you talk about cold East of the Rockies, discussion invariably turns to how miserable the coastal cold makes you. And there's something to it, I dare say. Anyway, no snow or ice on the roads yet, and that's what really counts.

So we have driven some 2600km thus far, and played one show. A good one, at that, particularly for our first outing as a duo. We miss you, Simpson. That was Saturday afternoon at the infamous Black Dog Freehouse in Edmonton, which continues to reign supreme in my Alberta books. Later that evening we caught a dandy show at the UofA, where our extended family was present: Adrienne Pierce, AA Sound System, Po'Girl, and Nathan all rocked out on stage, while Mark ("Futch") from The Uncas and Dave from The Waifs (and his own gig) kept us chit-chatting out in the crowd. Thanks to Sarah and Michelle for the hospitality on Saskatchewan Drive.

The night before we were looting and pillaging in Calgary. The Western Canadian Music Awards were on, so we showed up to find out why the hell we weren't invited. They'll never make that mistake again. We rolled into town and lounged at Princess Island Park, former site of the Folkfest, and then hooked up with the wonderful Ann Vriend and a few singer-songwritery friends at The Ironwood, where good ol' folkfest buddy John Wort Hannam was conducting crowd experiments. We ran into the likes of none other than Vlad, bassist/impaler for the Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir, as well.

Satisfied with the results, we buggered off to the Brew Brothers taphouse, and saw Vail Halen, and Old Reliable, amongst others. They were good. And in the meet-and-greet part of the evening I introduced Berube to Msrs. Dave Taylor of Regina, and Lane from AA Sound System, Wendy McNeill, and so on.

After all that work, my knees needed a break, so we retired. And that's about all the news that's fit to print. We're receiving lovely hospitality from some old friends of the Berube clan here in the 'Peg, so it'll be sad to return to the world of truckstops and reheated homefries, but when you're a pirate... there's nothing else for it. Aaarrrrrr.

shiver your timbers,
M.O.

A Good Side of Beef

2004-10-01T17:39:00.000-04:00

Yeeeeehaw,
Mark Berube and I are in CALGARY. As you may well know, Calgary is my favourite ho- sorry, city, in Canada. Truth. Love it.

'course last time I was here, folkfest was on... Them was the days.
Yesterday afternoon we left Vancouver and slept in Golden. It was a crisp, cold morning, a pleasant reminder
that I am driving across the country on the late coat-tails of fall, and heading into winter. Knock on that wood!

Anyway, just popping in to say hi. The dates for the tour are posted at Mark's site:
www.markberube.com

Hope to see you out there!
Take care,
Mike

Back in the Mother/Fatherland

2004-09-14T16:04:00.000-04:00

Aloha, it's I. Feeling Septemberly? Feels more Octoberly to me right now, in the burg of Vancouver.

I will conclude my summer recap very soon -- by now I should hopefully be able to remember at the very most what band I was touring with :)

Note about my last post. I look back at that and it looks a mite incoherent. I guess what I was getting at was that, human tragedy aside, what Beslan represents to you depends on many things.

One factor might be whether or not you are a Checheyan who has endured years of Russian army atrocities and total war (in the technical, military sense - some call this a kind of state "terrorism", though that word has become so co-opted to a certain agenda of late, it has begun to lose descriptive power), or if you are an urban Moscovite who has endured years of disinformation, corruption, and bald lies about the "campaign" there.

Or, perhaps you are a North American who sees a striking similarity between the official rhetoric coming out of Putin, and that which has emanated from the south and other parts of late. Putin doesn't have to beat around the, uh, "bush" quite as much of course. He has even less in the way of diplomatic/press freedoms to be saddled with.

So you get a clearer sense of the same kind of tactics being used on you right now by smoother criminals. I'm talking about the racial rhetoric, the calls for unmitigated (by international codes of conduct) warfare against an ephemeral foe ("international terrorists", huh?), the sudden (and largely uncontested in the major media) calls for extrajudicial and summary execution of terrorist masterminds (formerly known as "politicians", outside of Russia), the bludgeoning of your electorate with threats that only your stern authoratarian (and unelected) hand can steer them clear of annhialation (re: recent speeches by Cheney and Putin), and, of course, the enforced forgetting of the historical record.

Don't know if that improves my coherency quota any, but I'll let it rest for now :)

***
So, I'm in Vancouver for September, and staying in my parents' basement. Come by and say hi!

October will see me off on the road again with Mark Berube. This tour is going to be great; check Mark's site for dates, and I'll post them here, as well. The final itinerary should be in soon.

Time to seize this greased-pig of a day and get going!
Love,
Mike

Getting Elected

2004-09-03T21:44:00.000-04:00

I'm not going to spend time talking about how horrible it is that men, women, and children have died in Beslan. It is horrible. I can't really conceive it, but it's horrible.

Since that's mostly what the news will be talking about, I want to add my two cents on some other bits and pieces.

-- Putin is an ex-KGB guy who has repeatedly tried to bolster his credibility via displays of overwhelming military force.
George Bush is the son of an ex-CIA guy who has repeatedly tried to bolster his credibility via displays of overwhelming military force. Both claim that they are making their respective countries safer in the process; neither has convinced many beyond their own circles of any success in this regard.

-- Pundits, politicians, and proselytizers alike have been rather adamant in recent years in their condemnation of any attempt to "understand" the motivations of terrorists. Their actions are purely borne of their blind, evil hatred of "freedoms".

How do people stomach these kinds of arguments, ad nauseum? The kind of politics of asymetrical warfare that Linda Hilton talks about in this article should be getting public parlance on the international stage, but of course they're not. This is not rocket science, people. As difficult as it is to handle the reality, terrorism exists for very real reasons. You don't have to sympathize with them, but denying them the status of rational actors isn't going to help anyone, save for power-hungry politicians and arms manufacturers.

Oh, and the oil industry: But that just goes without saying, right?!?

m.

This just in...

2004-08-30T20:00:00.000-04:00

Look down below a couple posts and you'll find I've finally regurgitated my account of the Calgary Folk Fest. Sorry it took so bloody long. What a surprise, eh.

If you don't want to read it all, just go to this link (it's a 12MB Quicktime file, mind) for a bit of video footage of Rae, Shelley, and I from the "Odd Ball, Corner Pocket" stage : http://www.calgaryfolkfest.com/video/odd_ball.mov

cheers,
M.

p.s. if you see these characters around, be very careful. they have resurfaced and are rumoured to be active again in the Vancouver area, possibly causing mischief on Bowen Island as well and across Canada in October. Go to www.markberube.com for more information on how to protect yourself.
<--- 3 bad men

Dear Sir or Madam

2004-08-18T22:54:00.000-04:00

Mike would like to apologize for his extended abscence from the electronic frontier.
He wishes to assure you that he is sparing no expense to update the site with recent exploits of the Rae Spoon tour.

Thank you for your continued patronage.
the management

City of Champions

2004-08-12T00:07:00.000-04:00

Yup, it's Edmonton! This last weekend it certainly was, at any rate.

However, I am as per usual getting ahead of myself. I haven't dished the dirt on Calgary Folkfest yet, or any of the fun gigs we had after that.

I also haven't done the old email thing in some time, and I am afraid that people will start to doubt my sincere love for them in short order.

Truly, a delinquent Mike.

So, Calgary... I really should have done this sooner. Ah well, here goes:
We checked into the Calgary Westin hotel around 4pm on the Thursday of the festival, and promptly began to feel like rockstars. It's a pretty decent hotel. By that I mean that it's rather far and above anything else I've ever stayed in. Although the Calgary Delta that my friend Sara let me and Bottleneck stay in that one time comes close... So, yeah, it's on the ritzy side. Things like marble in the bathrooms, a 24hr. pool/hottub/sauna deal, and both a a black and white piano in the lobby. Just the kind of stuff I need to be creative, y'know!

What makes this kind of hotel experience all the more awesome is that you are of course constantly running into/rubbing shoulders/staring at all kinds of other performers/stars/personal heroes. To some extent, the residency is the ultimate equalizer, you could say... although the flip side is that you are always wondering if the person next to you is just plain good or perhaps frickin' amazing. Like, are they on your tier of folkiness, or are they from another dimension? Lots of folks were, let me tell you.

OK, so we settle into our room, and head down to the "island" to check in with the site. The island which the festival takes place on is about a 7 minute walk from the hotel. It takes about 45 seconds to cross the bridge over this arm of the river. It's great. You kind of feel separated from the city, but yet the downtown core is literally spitting distance. Not unlike the feel at the Vancouver fest, I suppose.

So, after a bit of hassle with the check-in, and a trip back to the hotel, we are inside! We are sporting sexy artist passes! In short order, I am eating food, for free! Life is very good at this point.

There are no workshops Thursday evening, just a mainstage concert, and this is already well underway by the time I emerge from the food tent. Actually, I basically manage to miss everything that night until Stompin' Tom, the headliner, which is really too bad. I mean, I can now say that I have seen this venerable Canadian legend from P.E.I., but to be brutally honest... I could have skipped him. Dude is borderline offensive at times, and you can't exactly say that he has the tightest band around, which is probably mostly due to his rather freewheelin' style of bandleading. But, there is something entertaining about him even at the worst of times, and he sure is committed to the Canadiana thing.

With the first part of the evening wrapped up in this fashion, we were back to the hotel to festivise. Or did we? Here's the problem, you see, I can't keep it together to remember these relatively simple things anymore, apparently. OK, so yeah I remember now. After Thursday night we hung out with Julie, Sophia, Jess, Megan, and the rest of the Calgary crew at a charming little pubhouse, where a great deal of fooz and pool was played.

The next day, which was Friday, I honestly can't remember what we did that day. Probably went for lunch somewhere. Exciting? Probably was. But you can bet that I was back at the mainstage to catch my favourite Scottish sensations Shooglenifty in the act. Their performance that night didn't strike me as being incandescent or anything, but they would make ammends at the volunteer party they played at the next night. The North Mississippi All-Stars followed the Shooglers, and most definitely "fried-it-up-and-threw-it-down", as we were fond of saying in the ol' van. Then I got my first-ever live taste of Great Big Sea, the Newfies that everyone seems to love to hate. Well, I'm sorry, but these guys know how to put on a show. And they're tight. And they may not necessarily write songs that will live for a thousand years, but they play a few that have already been around for a hundred or more, and I think they deliver the goods. So quit yer bitchin'! End rant.

On the way back to the hotel I had my first of many Michael Franti encounters. He was wandering along a scenic route back to the hotel by himself, chatting randomly, as is his wont, I am told. Naturally, I did my best to embarrass myself as rapidly as possible. Those of you who know me at all well should have no difficulty imagining my inane efforts in reasonably accurate detail, I'm sure.

Back at the hotel we discovered that Po'Girl had materialized - Trish, Ally, D., and Shelley. Trouble! I am pretty sure that I didn't imagine this occurring. No, I think they really were there.

So, anyway, there was a party and I met plenty of cool people. We decided to take our cool party back up to a hotel room when the main one shut down and I found myself hanging out with Megan, Grethe, Josh, Mickey, and Hunter. Now, Josh, Mickey, and Hunter politely introduced themselves as members of Rhonda Vincent's band. I hadn't even really looked at my festival guide yet, and had no clue who Rhonda Vincent was. Nonetheless, that the boys all hailed from Kentucky and Tennesse, and spoke with the accents to prove it kind of tipped me off that something might be up...

But I had no idea that they were super-flippin'-outrageous hot musicians!
This was very clearly manifest on the mainstage Saturday evening, when they proceeded to tear things up with smokin' straight-up bluegrass pickin' and singin'. You know your band is "good" when you (Rhonda) are both a lead singer and mandolin virtuoso, all of your "backup" players are also solo-grade ninjas, and two of them can sing lead vocals, too. Bwah.

Rhonda and Mickey givin' 'er

So, I guess that means I'm talking about Saturday, at this point. First of all, however, let me make clear that Southern Comfort is not a drink for human consumption. I had purchased some of this bourbon-flavoured varnish-remover back in ol' Wells on a mis-informed whim, and decided that hanging out with some southerners would be an appropriate context to kill the mickey in. Well, as Saturday morning revealed clearly to me, there is no appropriate context for "southern discomfort", save perhaps the garbage can. End rant #2.

Yup, so I missed all the morning sessions, got me and my tattered digestive system down to the food tent for lunch (managed to get a glimpse of the "Rankin Sister's family picnic" on the afternoon mainstage), and then drifted around a bit prior to our afternnoon concert set.

Which went great. Diona and Shelley O. (Chilli) were both in full effect, and it all sounded almost like we rehearsed together, I think!

I should mention at this point that beer in the performer's area was an unholy $4 a plastic cupful, and that Carolyn Mark and her friend J. are almost certainly the two funniest people in the universe. They were entertaining as MC's on the mainstage, but even better in the beer garden.

After the aforementioned Rage performance, we got to see the venerable Earl Scruggs & Co. shake their thang. Quite the legend. Definitely some rather hot players on the stage. But you can't help but feel a bit like you're seeing some exotic circus creature paraded out for your amusement, in violation of some kind of code of musical ethics. The band isn't exactly doing bluegrass, per se, and neither is it really a showcase for Scruggs Sr., around whom the whole ensemble is supposedly contrived. Hard to express in words.

Still, we made Rae go backstage after the set and get his banjo head signed by The Man. I myself got my pass signed, but owing to it's laminated properties, the mark of Scruggs has since vanished.

Then I saw the first of five Spirit of the West performances I would see that summer. That's right, five. More later, but suffice it to say that most of my cynicism evaporated and I came as close to falling back in love with them as I'm comfortable admitting :)

Michael Franti and Spearhead then proceeded to politically funkify the good dezinens

of Calgary. And they liked it, too. My first time seeing the man in action (well, actually that afternoon at a workshop was the first), and it's a heck of a show. Carl on bass solidified his place in my bassist hall of fame, for sure.

After the show, cue up another "volunteer" party! Yes, ostensibly for the volunteers, but I freely volunteered to party, as well. I think Shooglenifty were throwing it down this night, and it's this kind of environment they shine in, I think (i.e. small, dark, sweaty, boozy).

Or maybe that was the night before. Anyway, I wandered into a smaller "acoustic jamming room" to discover a hot little bluegrass session underway. Man, them pickers was good. After watching entranced for a while I realized that there was no bassist present. Now, I don't think I've ever played straight-up bluegrass, but maybe the Big Rock had emboldened me or something, but I went and grabbed ol' Kate, and dove in. Thing with bluegrass is, the changes are simple, but they go flying by pretty fast in a flurry of banjo rolls, lemme tell ya.

The most terrifying moment, however, was when none-other than both Mr.Franti and Mr.Carl wandered into the room to check things out. I started sweating that much harder. To my amazement, however, Carl made a universally recognizable gesture to indicate that he was digging on my hillbilly groove, and some of my fright was alleviated.

The bluegrass was so powerfully addictive that I lost track of time, and when I finally emerged, several pounds lighter due to perspiration, the beer was all gone and the party was toast. I forced Corb Lund's ace bassist, Kurt, to take over, and went looking for survivors.

Eventually, I had to conclude that things really were in the can, however. It had come down to me and an equally crushed-looking Michael Franti wandering alone around the nearly empty lobby. I asked Michael where the cool party was, and received an unexpected complement when he replied that yours truly had apparently been the "cool party", back at the bluegrass session. How 'bout that. Man knows how to kiss butt better than anyone else out there!

Just when all seemed lost, I ran into John Wort Hannam's bassist, Trevor, and Corby's drummer, Brady, and his girlfriend Brandy (cute, eh?). We closed the night/opened the morning with some 24hr pool action, and then I called it quits, having cleaned the bluegrass residue off of me.

This state of affairs, and the lack of Southern Comfort from the equation, meant that Sunday morning found me relatively compos-mentis and ready to inhale music. I boogied-on over to a workshop featuring Shooglenifty and a band out of Winnipeg I had heard lots of buzz about, Nathan. There wasn't, strictly speaking, a lot of interaction between the groups, but both turned in fine performances. The respective drummers were most able and willing to get in on the complimentary action, and I was stoked to see that Nathan's Daniel Roy can rock the timbales as well as the tic-tac grooves. I decided right there that we were going to make friends with Nathan, and as it turned out, we would have two more festivals to make it happen.

Then Rae, Shelley and I got to shake it on the "Odd Ball, Corner Pocket" workshop stage, along with Msrs. Paul Kelly, Andy White, and Chuck Brodsky. Wow, talk about good company. Chilli and I did our best to complement some of the other performer's tunes, and boy was it fun. Every time Chuck Brodsky played, I just wanted to listen, though. His tunes had a really refined simplicity to them, and a delicate sense of pacing, it just didn't make sense to clutter them up or try and improv on them. Andy's material, on the other hand, really seemed to draw everyone on the stage in, and I didn't see him complaining!

Apres that, I caught a bit of her majesty Veda "Vegan Sucks, Man!" Hille, the Weakerthans, Scott Meritt, and Thea Gilmore over at another workshop stage ("Absolution.com"). Wish I could have seen more from all these folks, actually. Gives me a reason to wake up in the mornings, I guess.

The Rae Spoon performance schedule concluded with the, uh, aptly titled (or unimaginitively) "Queer as Folk" stage, over in the far flung corner of the festival. It was Rae, Aaron, and moi, alongside the ever-so-queer poets Billeh Nickerson and Mariko Tamaki. The timing and placement of this stage made it feel a little ghetto, but we all had a good gay old time. Billeh kills me. I'm never going to look at zucchini or nail clippers the same way again. Go pick up one of his books and see what I mean.

At various points in the beer garden I also met Arlene Bishop and Blair Packham, for the second time. The first time was a ridiculously drunken episode at a Brad Roberts gig in Vancouver 5-6 years ago, which involved vodka shooters and memory holes the size of Antarctica. Well, imagine my delight to learn that that they not only remember me, but have a picture of me from that fiasco on their fridge at home. Woo-hoo! That's called networking, kids.

Youssou N'Dour was about as spectacular as I had been hoping for. Damn! His band grooves like a bunch of Senegalese virtuosos should, but when they step up for the odd feature, it's madness, I tell you, madness...

Lucinda Williams made a believer out of me. I don't think you get the half of it from her records. They're good and all, but live her voice is something else. Nothing else like it. Oh yeah, and a great band, too. Purveyors of the most minimalist, groovy, raunchy country-fried chicken around.

James Keelaghan had the misfortune to go on during prime beer-'n'-networkin' time, but he's someone I'll have to make a point of paying closer attention to in future. The ensemble of him, Hugh of SOTW, and Oliver Schroer was nicely understated, but more than capable of taking the tunes in all kinds of directions.

Too-bad that Michael Franti and the crew had shipped out for Golden, B.C. that morning, because Sunday night sure was a party. The ridiculously groovy Mighty Popo got things more than going, and SOTW closed it down with gig #2. I got to hang with new friends and old, such as Mike Stack, No Guff, french-hornist extroardinare and Schubert Oktet veteran Michajah Sturgess, volunteer stagehand Oliver, and Calgary waterworks expert Megan. Definitely my best Calgary experience ever. Probably for a while, I imagine!

So, that's all I can remember for now. I'll try and get some pictures up soon.
Now I have to get to work on the rest of August, before that just begins to sound like one monster fish-story.

Signing off,
Mike

Back in Business

2004-08-04T21:58:00.000-04:00

Yup, switched hosts, it's looking good, and I think things are rolling, once again.

If you should get strangely bounced emails or whatnot, or I say some wildly innapropriate things, just remember that it's only temporary technical difficulties.

Notice the lack of ad banners now. Nice, no?

Apologizing for the Inconvenience

2004-08-02T17:58:00.000-04:00

Howdy folks,
just to say that I am switching hosts, so this whole shebang may be mute and comatose for ... an hour? a day? a week?

When this happens, my email won't be working either. So consider yourself warned. Rent some movies, make plans.

See you soon,
Mike

Who Represents?

2004-08-01T20:20:00.000-04:00

[Ed. note: Hah, what a tool. He is obviously hopelessly unaware that the building fire alarm will be going off at around 5am, and then he won't be acting nearly so cocky]

More Tales from the Wild West

2004-07-28T16:38:00.000-04:00

[Nope, not from our trip... Eric pulled it from the internet as part of his great "research mike's new bow quiver design" project]

The Rae Spoon collective is back in the land of espresso and Lululemon, and I'm celebrating with an internet orgy. Actually, they have Lululemon in Calgary, and pretty much everywhere else that disposable incomes are found. They also seem to really like fried shrimp in Calgary. But I'm digressing. I promised more exhilirating tales of Western Canadian small-town touring, and I shall deliver:

Where was I? Ah yes, we had just left Jasper. Then, we got gas and went back to the hostel, because Rae still had his room key. Don't blame him for trying, he had the "Blueberry Room" (Aaron and I were in the "Cranberry Room").

Soon enough, we were in Wells, BC. Home of the ArtsWells festivus. Wells is not a particularly big town, but it sure does seem to have a big heart. Our afternoon set on the Saturday was played at a stage set up on the field of the local school. We had a grand time, got some valuable practice swatting mosquitoes whilst playing, and were super-well fed (all weekend) by the amazing Marguerite, who has mad vegan cooking skills. Truly mad.
I think other people made stuff too, but you never ever saw Marguerite leave the damn kitchen, so she gets the super-kudos. Aaron and I dug Trevor Caswell's solo set, and obnoxiously decided then and there that he needed a backing band for the evening concert.

Poor Trevor couldn't stand up to us, so that's exactly what he got. The Joyce-Liston axis, aka " Hearts and Minds", is an unstoppable force of nature. Yael Wand can tell you that, too, which is funny, because she basically lives in Wells and was playing at the festival as well... Ok, I let the cat out of the bag.

So, anyway... We had a bunch of fun rocking out with Trevor in a most sensitive manner at the nightime stage/mosquitoe army training camp. And then we had good times rocking out with Yael and our good buddy Christina "Zippy" Zaenker on cello. We had all four of us done an album back in the spring, but not ever graced a stage altogether at once. So it was joyous, even the mosquitoes rejoiced. Yea, they revelled.

Our set with, of course, Rae, capped off the good times for me and Aaron. By this point it was so cold that our fingers would freeze while playing songs, but it added a certain urgency to the performance, I thought.

C.R., Shane, and Mike McGee, along with the Doctor and Paul also tore it up that night with their spoken word/pfunk salad. Rockin', boys. The night would be long and full of drama for all, with medical emergencies and uncertain accomodations, but I spent it stone-cold sober and was in good shape to face the morning. And what a morning/afternoon. We had food, we had fun, we had dodgeball in the sun. Well, in the gym. Dodgeball is a great cross-generational bonding experience, we have decided. Thanks to Joyce for going out and spending the $12 to see that eponymous movie, thus ensuring he was stoked enough to engineer the dodgeball tourney.

Then there was a parade through Wells and Barkerville, and I met a camel named Dundas. He liked me, I think.

Later that evening, Aaron and I fought a pitched battle in an "international" One-Minute Play competition, held at the Wells Casino. Our entry, which we did not write, but took some artistic liberties with, was an existential nugget that began with Aaron asking me "How is an egg formed?". We got third place.

After the play-bloodshed was over, the Rae Spoon Three took the casino stage and played as hard as our little acoustic hearts could stand. Those Wellsies sure know how to dance up a storm, alright! Then they incited us to go on a tour of the town, playing a couple impromptu "sets" at the cafe, the campground... The night would eventually end up with another parade and a high-speed police chase.

Gee, a lot happened in that little town. We had a lot of fun, as did pretty much everyone else, far as I could tell. I'll fill in more details later, if I remember them.

Then Prince George. Played a nice little theatre style space above a bookstore. Yael opened things up, so Aaron, Zippy, and I all got our second kick at the can together. Went pretty well, I thought. Wellsies were in full (volume) effect that night too, I couldn't tell whether to be intimate or interactive. Nice dancing, folks. And big thanks to Nicole for putting us up and driving us to the bar afterwards and feeding us breakfast!

Having had enough of this part of the province, we "schooned" our way down to the Okanagan, where we crashed with Rae's "Cousin Pete" and his cute, young family. We taught the kids who were old enough to walk all about life in the van, and gave them a hands-on tour of the folk-star experience. They didn't want us to leave, so I think we got through. Start 'em young.

I was the Nelson virgin in the group, so we took care of that next. Funky little town, that Nelson! Rather distinct sense of culture-clash, betwixt the dread-heads and the red-necks, not to mention the tourists, but seems to be a lively, functional brew, if a bit quirky. We kicked around town plenty for a couple days; on the second, I decided to kill multiple birds and warmed up for the gig with a couple hours of (surprisingly) lucrative busking, aka playing with myself. I doubt many folks could really hear my scattered noodlings above the traffic noise, but so much the better! The more left to the imagination...

Our show that night was at Charlotte's, and the space filled up pretty nicely. What was meant to be one longish set was extended into a repetoire-devouring monster, courtesy of the delightfully-demanding audience. I felt really good about this show, myself. When we were finally permitted to leave the stage, the open stage got under way, so the fun was far from over.
We saw a bunch of familiar faces from Vancouver that night, and met some friendly new ones. One of these was Erin Wallace, who piqued my curiousity with a fab Martin Tielli cover. This led to a discussion whereupon it was decided to venture some jazz standards upon the unsuspecting crowd. Turns out that Erin is a fantastic singer in that idiom too - hey, she's got a gig at the Kaslo Jazz Fest - and it also turns out that I can butcher some tunes in my sleep, no matter how many times I play them! Nonetheless, I had a fun time doing the bass-vocal duo thing, not to mention playing something decidedly un-country, for a change. No offence, Hank and Lyle, but a little Rogers and Hart doesn't hurt, once in a while.

Onwards, to Cranbrook! We had a fine time at Finnegan's Wake, once again, but a scary time afterwards. Word to the wise: A bar called "Shotgun's" is *never* a good thing. End of cautionary tale.

Nanton, AB: The town "where history lives" -- and taxidermy parties all-night long. We played a charming hotel there, although I confess it did take a little time before I got comfortable, seeing as the room's most striking features are about 20 rifles and shotguns in two massive glass display cases, and the more-or-less well-preserved remains of a veritable Noah's Ark of critters who presumably had close encounters with these aforementioned devices, or their close-cousings. Not content with just stuffed and mounted heads, this mute lineup at the bar featured elaborate dioramas and esoteric poses, as well. Anyway, very friendly, living, breathing folks there, although apparently all the farmers were out in the fields. Someone's gotta actually do all the stuff that Rae writes songs about, I suppose.

***
I'm wrapping this heinous recap up at the ol' Sunrise Hotel, and it seems most of the residents are far more energetic tonight than I am. It's great to be back at the PHS after more than 3 months, though! Feel like I never left. Some folks even remember me, thank gawd.

Coming Attractions: Ode to the Calgary Folkfest, Island Hopping with Po'Girl.

Live in the Downtown East-Side,
Mike

And, the Foulest Summer Weather in Canada goes to...

2004-07-20T22:02:00.000-04:00

Those of you in Winnipeg may beg to differ, but in my books it's Cowtown.
One day sunny, the next day raining, the next day its sweltering, the next day bonafide lightning storms in the middle of the day, and so forth...

Drives a band to distraction. In our case, however, it has merely driven us to Rae's Gran's house. Here, I can write unmolested, drink way too much tea, and digest fine home cooking while our laundry spins away beneath us. Although she is something of a sugar-pusher, we're enjoying putting on the pounds in this fashion. It's somehow more wholesome than doing it at Donut Time, at any rate.

In a couple days the folkfest will start, and then we will be in full-on schmooze mode. We will need these extra calories, because we are going to be so friendly advancing our collective careers it's going to take a chiropractor to sort us out when it's all over. Eric and Myia, I'll be getting my Shooglenifty CD signed, you better believe it. Maybe some body-parts, too.

So, if only for the benefit of my pathetic memory, I will now attempt a recap of the past... while:

Toronto Pride finished up superbly. We had a ton of fun playing with the likes of Adam Hay, ace drummer, and a fine singer, too. Good times were also had by me hanging with the likes of Dave, Leslie, Jen, and Alan. Not only does Dave play a mean tune, but he makes an ever-so- slightly-mean sangria.
Best quotes of the weekend, in no particular order:

    "Michael is so cute!" - Random woman at Pride kid's stage
    "Your hands move so fast..." - Random guys after Pride kid's stage
    "That was very good" - Neil Young, phoning Pride kid's stage manager during our set

Zoom, back to Vancouver. Went to Deux Soleils with Aaron for the FolkSlam my one night back, and ran into none other than the fabulous Jess Hill, who is soon to depart on a grand voyage. She's got a gig or two more up her sleeve before she leaves, though, so keep your ears peeled.

That's when A.J., Rae, and I hit the road. I can't remember much about Twin Butte, but we all had fun eating Mexican food. Jennika, who we'd met at North Country Fair, came out to the gig with her two daughters. This was fun, first off because Jennika is really cool. But what made it even better was that she worked at a stables in Waterton, just 20 minutes down the road, and offered to take us horse riding the next day. We were so close to bailing-out on this, but boy are we glad we didn't! Jennika took us for a 30 minute trail ride, which means I've spent about 32 minutes lifetime on a horse now. My horse was "Grey", Aaron had the dashing black "Amigo", and Rae had, uh, the short horse, "Dan". Jennika's youngest came too, but I can't remember her name. My horse refused to leave the trail, even when I commanded him to, and eventually wouldn't listen to me at all. But we had a fabulous time, and all aggreed that we were now legitimately country musicians, without a doubt. Aaron and I wore shorts and had fly-bites to prove this new status for about a week.

Next to fall was Medicine Hat, where there was a promotional mixup. Perhaps for this reason there was essentially no-one at the show, but I'm pretty sure the fabulous proprietors special-ordered some of their friends in and we played a few sets for the very attentive audience. They also refused to let us leave hungry (We drove on to Calgary that night), and that's how Aaron and Rae officially ushered in the era of the "Meat Sweats", never an issue when ol' Chilli was around. Incidentally, the official dessert of Medicine Hat is a sort of rhubarb sponge cake called "Kuegel" or something like that. It sounds like "Cougar", though.

Then we played Karma, in Calgary. It was great to see my friend Lou from Red Deer out there, also sporting a new haircut. Super-fan Sundhia and fiancee Charles again made up the bulk of the audience, and I think the gig went fine. It is getting harder and harder to find somewhere to play in Calgary these days!

Next on the list, Jasper. I thought Jasper was like Banff - wrong! The terrain is even more spectacular, and the town itself is much much smaller. Best of all, most of the locals I met did not exhibit that dread disease "Tourist-Town-Service-Industryitis", which claims so many every year. The outstanding Scott put us up in fine form at the local youth hostel, and must have put something in the communal chilli that evening, because the Downstream was packed that night. Great crowd! Thanks, Tony, for having such a cool bar!

With the sounds of merriment still ringing in our ears, the Meat Sweats limped onto the highway the next morning around 6:30am, and high-tailed it for Wells, B.C. ...

But, my dearest readers, that and more shall have to wait for tomorrow, as it is time for Gran to go a-bed.

'till the next time,
Miguel

Stampede Speed Blogging

2004-07-18T15:45:00.000-04:00

So, they say I can't do anything fast, eh...
Under three minutes to go on this terminal, at the Planet Cafe in Calgary, but I'm going to "fry it up and throw it down", as we say in the Meat Sweats these days.

Nelson was a truly entertaining town. More about that later. The gig went great, I busked by myself and made, like $20 (not bad for solo acoustic bass noodling), and a good time was had by all. Got to jam some standards with a super vocalist/songwriter Erin Wallace at the bar apres show, as well.

Anyway, now we're in Calgary and life is good. Playing in Nanton tonight.

30 seconds.

Love you all,
Mike

Coming Up for Air

2004-07-14T19:45:00.000-04:00

...in Nelson! Sorry to be incommunicado-extrodinaire, but it seems that the density of internet cafes in small-town BC/Alberta is significantly less than that which we experienced cross-Canada. Anyway, now we're in Nelson, which seems to be way-cool, and not short on the interweb at all, to boot.

So, for those of you not in the know, Rae Spoon and the Meat Sweats (Me and Aaron Joyce on the steel guitars) are ping-ponging around the Westernmost provinces like crazed folky golfballs until the end of the summer.

We also got some folkfests coming up on the radar - Calgary, Edmonton, Regina (and Rae's playing Ottawa solo) - so look out for those, too.

Current tour highlights include playing at a cafe in Medicine Hat owned by perhaps the nicest folks in Alberta, busking on the streets of Calgary, not going to the Stampede, playing for a very full and very friendly room at the Downstream in Jasper, and all the fun we had in Wells and Barkerville, BC during the ArtsWells festival.

Gotta split for now, but I will be back soon to fill in the gaps, I promise!
Stay tuned, dear readers.

Love,
Mike

Toronto is SO Gay

2004-06-26T14:45:00.000-04:00

Hey everyone, it's Pride Day in Toronto. Check out my new "haircut". I'm doing a test to see if I can pass for a lesbian or not. Kidding. I wanted to maximize my ventilation capacity for the hot summer touring ahead, so hair was very, very carefully removed from scientifically selected locations along the side of my head. By me. This had nothing with a mishap involving a mental lapse involving a trimmer.

So, with our "time off" in Vancouver, a.k.a. home, Rae and I amused ourselves by doing things like: Take Vannie to the mechanic. She'd been complaining bitterly about a piece of fried chicken caught in her windpipe, and soon our worst fears were confirmed: New transmission! All things must pass, I guess.

I also got to go to the Naam with my Faam, celebrate Andy's birthday at the Backstage, and celebrate Artemis' return to Canada with a "backstage" threesome down at the beach with Diederik. Hey, she's getting hitched, let her have fun while she still can, I say.

Touching down in Toronto, we had no sooner hit the ground than Super-Kaleb arrived in her pimpin' sedan to haul us off to our gig at C'est What?. En route, we had to negotiate the howling bands of Portuguese who were roaming the streets, howling, howling. Rabid, I tell you. European soccer nationalism is a lot more palatable than North American nationalism, though, for some reason I have yet to quite figure out. So, we scooted by Dave Mansell's place to pick up his wonderful bass for "me to play", as sayeth old Ham of Endgame. Dave is so super. He has been working more on singer-songwriting lately, as opposed to bass playing, which is sort of a shame, but since he writes great tunes, good for him! Makes it easier to steal his bass, at any rate. Check out his site here.

C'est What? is just a fabulous little bar. And it's closing down. Sheesh. Feels like Vancouver already! Despite the abrupt lack of any Chilli to ground us, and me getting to "know" (in that biblical sense, Diederik) Dave's bass all over again, Rae and I did our best to entertain the crowd who had mainly showed up to hear Royal Wood perform. I think we converted a few. Now, sometimes you hear just one song at a soundcheck for another band, and you are so sold on them instantaneously. This was one of those nights. Rae had played me Royal's EP before, and I liked, but live, this dude is something else, dude! His ace band delivered four-part harmonies along with a very tight sound, but those songs are pretty damn strong just by themselves. Think a bit of Rufus, a bit of Buckley, perhaps a dash of Hornsby, and some Sexsmith, too. Sound familiar Mark B.? =) As a tribute to Crispin, soundman and booker, and C'est What in general, they brought the legendary Kurt Swinghammer onstage at the end of their set to deliver a "poem". Now I saw Kurt (Go to his site, now! Do it!) open for Ani D. several years ago, and I know he did some stuff on ol' Joel Kroeker's new album, amongst millions of other things. But I didn't know the man had soul power. Well, he does. He did his best James Brown/Tom Jones, and took the band on a one chord ride that was a little longer than they expected I think, but quite entertaining. I'm sure Crispin felt edified.
I'm super-sold on Royal Wood. Go, hear him now at www.royalwood.ca, before he gets super-famous.

Last night we rocked on over to the Drake Hotel, for an opening set with The Skarlet O'Haras. One of their last gigs before they part ways apparently. The Drake is actually a pretty cool digs, although you hear lots of comments about the "Death Star of Gentrification" from folks around Parkdale. Yes, it is gentrification. Yes, it is chi-chi. But as long as they keep hiring charming, cute bartenders like Robin, I'm going to look the other way and embrace neo-liberalism! Wooha! We met Awna's parents (Insert plug for Barley Wik here), who are fantastic, and had come just to see us for her Mom's birthday. Awna and the rest of the girls are rockin' their way back across western Canada in fine form, I am sure. Also met Adrienne and Brent of Brent Bain, amongst other things. Nice folks.

Anyway, it's time for me to run and fly to our first Pride set! Looking forwards to it. Should be entertaining. It's funny though, how most queer folks I know are actually lukewarm on the big event, per se. Anyway, more ruminating later. Time to get folky.

Love,
Mike

When a Tree Falls on a Bassist in Northern Alberta, Does it Make a Sound?

2004-06-25T21:54:00.000-04:00

Yeeeeehaw! Currently writing from a computadora in Toronto, but the good news is that Rae Spoon and both Good Time Drivers made it back safe and sound from the tour. It was close at times, but we gone done it. Of course, we live for danger, and are back at it, but part one is in the bag.
So, a brief recount of the way things went down:

On the way from Thunder Bay to Edmonton, I stopped off in Winnipeg for another visit and found out why Winnipeg mosquitoes are so famous. Jumping out of the van I thought "ah, a cloud of gnats". No Mike, no. Not gnats. The trick is, if you don't stop moving, you are much more likely to survive. Spend too long in one spot though, and you're food.

Meanwhile, in Brandon, Chilli and Rae nearly got tornadoed. That's right. Tornadoes.

Anyhow, with these first major obstacles to our safe return surmounted, we pressed on. Ain't nobody gonna cramp our style! One more night was spent sleeping in the van, outside of Saskatoon at a "Killing Spree Oil Dog" (a.k.a. Husky) truck stop. These big trucker stops are fun, because you get to feel like a trucker yourself, sleeping parked next to big rigs. And then you wake up and have breakfast with real live truckers, and peruse the trucker-oriented gift shoppe. It's definitely a perk of the job, let me tell you.

Edmonton was fun as ever. I really do like this city! The bill ended up being a surprise: Us and Bottleneck, as "co-headliners", and C.R. Avery, and a duo from Calgary called Dynarouge. It was quite amusing that Bottleneck and C.R. were playing, and that we didn't know, since they're also from Vancouver and ours truly has played with both of them. Anyhow, show went well, although C.R. didn't show up/didn't know about the gig. Bottleneck are sounding great. Got a new website too, I notice.

Well, the next day was Friday, and that meant that it was the first day of NORTH COUNTRY FAIR for us!!! I bought some herbal deoderant to celebrate (I was threatened), we dined at Cafe Mosaics (as per usual), and hit the highway.

Joussard, on the shore of Lesser Slave Lake, is about 3.5 hours north of Edmonton, and we drove through a bunch of burnt-out forest to get there. It sure looks pretty creepy. Hasn't grown back nearly as much as the post-fire land we saw throughout B.C., just acres and acres of tall black twigs.

Joussard is a hamlet. Not a town, but a hamlet! Very exciting. There is a store. I am not sure if there is much more in the way of commerce, but this is irrelevant because they have the North Country Fair! And you should be jealous.

We checked in, got our gear locked up in the gear trailers (they "schlep" it out to your performances for you! kind of like they do in my socialist utopian fantasy version of Vancouver), and were escorted to the performers campground area, Sleepy Hollow. You have to cross a little river/brook/trickle thing to get there, via a cute little bridge, so you know that vampires won't be coming in. At least not that way. Once there we quickly encountered our dear friends Scott Cook and the Anglers (Darryl, Duncan, Tyson, and Chris), as well as C.R. We would spend quite a lot of time in the company of the Anglers this weekend. They're indordinately amicable chaps, and quite good musically, to boot! Listen here.

North Country was a time of firsts for all, such as 2:30am set start-times. This is a nifty new thing, and it's fun when you're playing at summer solstice weekend towards the north end of the country. The sun has barely gone down when it bloody well starts coming right back up again. By the time our Friday 2:30 set was done dawn had begun. Needless to say I did not sleep much this weekend. We saw numerous cool new bands (new to us), such as the Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir, Genticorium, and the Cracker Cats. New to me were the Bills, though I've heard them on the radio before. Rae knows their crack fiddler, Adrian, and he became the latest victim of our fiddle abduction spree. He found himself playing with us for our Saturday 1:00am set. He rocked it, it was good.

Another first for me was almost being flattened by a tree. I was waiting for C.R. to get out of the outhouse in Sleepy Hollow on Saturday afternoon, when abruptly the fabulous sunny weather we were enjoying started to get ugly with no warning. This terrific wind blew up, sending people at the mainstage running for cover. The outhouse, etc. are sheltered under this bluff with trees and stuff around, and I was glibly remarking to a couple of gents from the Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir that you couldn't feel the wind where we were standing. Hah, tempt fate why don't I. A minute later there was a splintering kind of sound and I turned to watch a rather large tree, about a foot-plus in diameter and god knows how tall, falling towards me. My one lame reaction was to kind of lift my hands up like I was catching a basketball or something, and not a great big musician whackin' log. Alcohol may have played a role in this choice. Anyway, the thing smashes into the ground less than two feet away from me, causing my beer to froth over from vibration. It also misses the outhouse, right behind me, sparing C.R. from the most ignominious of deaths imaginable. Some other guy nearby got nicked by a branch, and another woman had been about to hop into the shower, which the devil-tree clobbered on the way down. Damn thing could have had a hat-trick if it hadn't been in such a hurry. The rest of the day I felt like a minor celeberty, as people would say things like "Did you hear about the tree? I heard there was a guy standing RIGHT THERE..." and stuff, and I would smugly nod. I didn't have to sign autographs or anything, however.

Trees aside, weekend went great. Our late night sets were amazingly energetic I thought, and Rae rocked his workshop performances. We hung out with a lot of great folks that weekend. C.R. had myself and an improvised crew up to play during his 2:00am set saturday, and that was a blast as well, if messy :) Sunday night, with our work behind us, we hung out for the volunteer party, where the Cracker Cats and the Anglers laid down awesome sets, amongst others, and a good time was had by performer, volunteer, townie, and all. We met Talia and Laura of Gypsy Eyes exotic imports, and these guys rock. They introduced me to Thai rum, however, which tastes like rye with the mellowness of a rum. Could be the start of a, um, beautiful relationship.

The next day we went for it and drove back to Vancouver, with C.R. in tow. Good thing too, 'cause at that point we needed some of his crazy energy to fuel the long haul home. When we did get back to Commercial and Broadway at 2am, we all did a little dance and yet couldn't quite believe that we were there. Anyway, we're not anymore. We're in Toronto. Time flies!

I'm getting less lucid by the minute, so good night.
Got a big day at Pride tomorrow :)

Felicidad,
Mike

At the Edge of Ontario

2004-06-15T01:24:00.000-04:00

... there is Thunder Bay. Just about to crash for the night at Jen and Vaiki's pad in T.B., Northern Ontario. Did you know that so-called Northern Ontario is actually pretty damn south as far as most of Canada is concerned? Apart from the rest of Ontario which is even more south? The lies which this trip has uncovered to mine eyes...

So, we've been hanging out with Jen and her friend Nancy, swapping tunes and stoking the fire in Jen's wonderful backyard. Might have been a concert, but we ended up with a much cozier affair. Last night in the "Soo", Trevor, Amanda, Maria, Donna, and numerous other Soo-folk kept us merry at an excellent rainy day BBQ session. And the night before that we played half our gig to an audience of exactly 0 (zero) at the Raintree in Kitchener (With the exception of Velma, Wondrous Western ex-pat waitress) . So you see, we have been taking it a bit easy lately.

But, the night before that... Guelph! Who knew that Guelph is a really funky little town? Agriculture, yes, university, yes, and good vibes. We played to a packed house at the Carden Street Cafe, definitely a tour highlight. Hung out with some friendly folks at a random house party afterwards. Thanks Lisa, et al.! And had dinner with the funktabulous Ridley Bent and his fab parents beforehand. The next day saw us at another farmer's market, where I ate a raw-foodist "burrito", and we met more cool people who had us over for a vegan BBQ session later. Righteous, Guelph, Righteous.

The night before that we filled Hamilton's Staircase Cafe with some delicate sounds. One of the more coffee-house-esque sets of the tour, but a good one. Rob runs a good joint with love and enthusiasm, and he plays a mean train beat on a empty case of beer, to boot.

Well, this post is way past due, but before I conclude for the time being, I gotta give a shout to Kaleb and her long-suffering housemates for putting us up in Toronto for like, a week in total on our way out and back. Gotta do that now, before we fly back yet again tomorrow :)

OK, time to split Lugz before I blow my last few bucks.
The final chapter of Tour Part I coming soon,
Mike

Raccoon Killer Strikes Again, Sideways, in Toronto

2004-06-06T19:05:00.000-04:00

(No, that's not Spadina. It's Commercial Dr. in Vancouver a month ago. Photo cred.: Frances Tycho/Paul Wohlsteter)

Congrats to us, we're now back in Toronto, prince of cities. Shelley's partner Michelle has come out to meet us halfway in our return trip, so we are all happy. Now maybe "Chilli" will stop tearing out the throats of hapless waitresses at crappy restaurants! Bad cuisine in Canada can sleep soundly now that Chilli is placated.

Montreal was over in a flash, wish we could stay, but no dice! We all split up to meet up with our various sundry friends, and then reconvened at the Casa del Popolo for a deelightful show. If live music is not thriving in Montreal you would not know it from looking at the Casa's calendar. Packed! And the turn-out on the wednesday night was pretty darn good, too. Abigail and Annabelle both had great sets too, if I do say so. Durn it, we were so impressed with Annabelle's high and lonesome fiddling skills that we made her play with us all night and then kidnapped her for 3 more days. You gotta be cagey around folk musicians. Brian learned this the hard way when he let me in the door for a beer and before long he was hanging out with lesbians and I was sleeping on his couch.

Oh and I found some girl from Victoria's wallet on the street. Hope she got it back and her trip didn't suck.

So then the merry band of minstrels sojourned off to the hamlet of Wakefield, QC, home of the "Mouton Noir". Nice room. Everyone and their dog who's anyone in Canadian folk music seems to have played there. We dined at Chez Erik (Erik is a fish, with good taste in food), and returned to Wakefield the next day to lounge by the river. This was a very inexpensive way to spend the day. We needed to lounge because we had had to drive into Ottawa at 4am to play on the local TV breakfast show. Truly surreal. We setup, and then spent over an hour lounging (a foreshadowing) in the cafeteria, plowing through the free Tim Horton's coffee and donuts cart that was parked there. And then these 12 wanna-be supermodels from the Urban Male Magazine ("UMM Babes") showed up and sat down at the booths next to us. No, I'm not making this up. I know it wasn't an early morning hallucination, because Rae, Chilli, and Annabelle all saw it too. That gave us something to talk about. So we played our tunes, one at a time, painfully, over an hour or so, trying to be (as) photogenic, and then hightailed it back to Wakefield.

When we were rejuvenated/sunburnt, we proceeded back to Ottawa for a hot, steamy, and intimate set at Rasputin's "folk cafe". I've heard lots about this place from Rae, Mark B., and Lesley (who has a site now) over the years, so it was great to see the place finally and meet Dean, who is the man. Abigail met up with us, and Annabelle graciously gave her a chance to flog her musical wares at the show as well, so yay team.
Thanks to Cox and Excedera for being the lucky winners of the "host the smelly band" contest!

With a cheap, greasy breakfast in us, the very-ripe members of the Rae Spoon Collective headed west, to Kingston. Except I thought it was east for a moment, but no-one killed me, although I think they were going to. That's where we all studiously avoided the outside world, dividing our time between watching CMT on the hotel beds and doing hours of emailing.
The "turnout" at the Merchant McLiam, a fabulous kind of Irish-y pub, was reminiscent of dear old St.Andrews, courtesy of the hockey game, but at least we could see the throngs in front of the big screen TV, from where we stood, unmolested, at the back of the room. Nonetheless, a few fell victim to our siren call, and one CD was sold. Joey the Wonder-Waiter kept us fed and beer-ed, and my one Kingston associate Ted even showed-up and proved that somebody out there does care. And I got to play a few tunes with Annabelle which was most fun. I mauled them, yes, but I had fun.

This morning we decided we'd had enough of that Annabelle in fact, and dumped her at the VIA station. She's a busy woman, just look at her site. So she probably will be able to amuse herself with the various soundtracks, films, and art-noise projects she's got flying around. Hopefully she didn't take the breakup too hard.

And in we sailed on the 401 to Toronto. What fun! After dropping off Chilli with Michelle at Rebecca and Noah's place Rae and I encountered what appeared to be a dead raccoon in the alley. No, it moved, so I thought it was a kitten sunning itself. When it didn't try and move out of the way of Vannie, though, I got out to look closer and discovered that it was in fact the one thing worse than a dead raccoon; it was a half-dead baby raccoon being chowed down on by flies. They had already had a go at its eyes, and it couldn't do much more than move its head occasionaly. So, this vegan earth-boy attempted something new, and tried to do the humanitarian thing with a chunk of concrete which the compassionate Noah provided. It really made me feel like bringing up my brunch burrito, but I do have one piece of advice if you attempt this yourself, and that's go for a big chunk, because otherwise its much, much worse. shudder. Anyway, we did lay the little guy down, and now he's sleeping in a cardboard box wrapped up in newspaper.

Anyway, more happy pet stories coming your way from this children's prose master, don't worry!
Going to go decide how to not spend money in Toronto now.
Love,
Mike

Kiss the Cod

2004-06-02T16:57:00.000-04:00

Quelle suprise! Just got into Montreal. Lovely sunshine-rich afternoon, rush-hour hubub on the streets and roads, and as we were all internet starved, our first action has been to rush into the nearest internet cafe we could get our paws on.

We were playing in St.John, NB, last night, but first, let`s go back to last wednesday...

The show at Toronto`s Cameron House was delightful. Saw a few folks I hadn`t seen in a year or two or six, like Frazier and Dave. What a charming trio of bassists we made! The Cameron felt like a small theatre, which is actually what they were using it for right up until we did soundcheck. Anyway, that show went great, and it felt wierd leaving T.O. the next morning - after 3 days there it had begun to feel like home. Saw the Creaking Tree String Quartet while there, awesome set! Check these guys out here. We`ll be seein` ya at North Country Fair (a contingent that keeps on growing!).

The morning after the gig we shipped out and Capt.Liston took the good ship Vannie through 3 provinces in one day: Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick. All fell before us.
We passed out at a massive Irving truck stop (actually called "The Big Stop"), and cruised into Halifax the next afternoon.

Halifax is a marvelous place, with bars littered all over a steep hill by the waterfront(hmmm... smart city planning), more schools than you can shake a stick at, and a genuine citadel right downtown, too. It's great! Our wonderous host Mel and Oliver the wonderdog kept us well entertained, letting us in on such secrets of the city as the farmer's market on saturday afternoon -> I had the best and cheapest Mexican food of my life 3 stories underground at a Haligonian craft/food fair. Took in the sights at Vertigo, Halifax's premier gay bar, and then saw a rock band by the name of Mad Hat, a cool power trio, at this veritable multiplex of bars. Grungy rock bar, sociable 30-something bar, booty-shaking gangsta bar, and sit down and eat bar. All in the same building and seamlessly connected (although an intermediary bouncer made me remove my hat when I went into the dance club), just in case you experience an identity crisis while clubbing and suddenly remember where you have to be.

Gig at Ginger's went swell, thanks to all who came. Phil and Casey, you guys rock. As did Amy Campbell and the Johnson Sisters, who both openend. Fantastic sounds.

Then we were off to Moncton, where we were introduced to the sweet folky-pop sounds of one Jason Haywood, who, together with his pal Alex Madsen on slide geetar, gave a great opening set. Met some more new folks at this gig, and then after the show we trucked across the street to the charming little pub known as the Navigator, where Alex was hosting an open stage. We banged through a couple tunes and met more great folks here. I coerced Alex into letting me play with him, and he led me and the magnificent Rob on drums through some great material. Thanks guys! We had some great conversation with these Monctonians well through the wee hours.

That evening saw us reach St.Andrews by the Sea, home of the legendary Salty Towers B&B. Basil Fawlty/Jamie Steele, proprietor, amazed us with his formidable array of talents. He's not only the owner of the coolest B&B around, but a college lecturer, a gutbucket bassist, and he sometimes walks around town with a great-honkin' whale bone. Manuela/Sarah was an equally excellent host, hanging out with us and explaining the local lore. Sadly, the no-one showed up to our gig on the porch, so we did what we were really itching to do and went to the Siren's Nest (the only bar in town, and it had only been serving liquor for a couple weeks) to watch the game. Everyone was there, no surprise. As in Moncton, we ended up hanging out with these folks well past bedtime.

St.John, NB : Lots of refineries! Industry! We made the mistake of eating some bad and hideouly overpriced "Califonria-style mexican" food here which put us in a terminally bad mood. Oh yeah, and there were no posters up for our show, nor was it listed in the paper. Woops. But the few folks who were at Studio 112 were most kind and gracious, so thank you!

Shelley logged some more hours on the road after the gig, and good thing too, because it took us most of the next day to make Montreal. I'm actually finishing this post in Kingston, having started it several days ago, but I'll fill in the rest just as soon as I finish writing some postcards.

Time to go soundcheck!
Cheers,
Mike

Mike vs. T-Dot

2004-05-25T13:05:00.001-04:00

Rae Spoon and the Good-Time Drivers (Mike Liston and Shelley "Chilli-Oh-So-Spicy" Okepnak) are currently berthed in beautiful downtown Toronto. I'm at an upscale internet cafe where the guy next to me is checking out some really loud porn. Look below for a picture of my delighted countenance.

We've had a few fun, smelly days of coffee, doughnuts, and no showers since leaving the Soo. The gig at the Grassroots Cafe in Peterborough, a co-operative, was small and intimate. Fine place to go for some vegetarian/vegan cooking, for sure! A torrential downpour pressed home the fact that our van does, in fact, leak. We spent most of the day holed up in the cafe, drinking a lot of coffee. No offence to P-Town, but we fled after the gig and made it to Caleb's place in the West end of Downtown "Tah-ronna" late last night.

Shelley and I spilled out onto the street this morning in search of the 3 essentials: coffee, internet, and cheap food, only to discover that we were in the ghetto. No worries, before long we were in the trendy designer strip. We preservered and found some fantastic falafel not too-far past Spadina on Queen St., in a little fast food strip mall. Lots going on in Toronto, and I have to say I haven't seen a single poster for our gig tomorrow, so I think some serious handbilling is in order.

I'm going to go cruise some more now I guess. Look, but don't touch! I don't think I have ever been to Toronto this broke before, so it's quite imperative that I stay at least 50ft. from all used record shops, or Rae and Shelley may soon be asking me why I no longer have any clothing, but several expensive slabs of vinyl.

After the Cameron House on Wednesday, we go post-haste for Halifax, Quebec be damned! Postcards from the Atlantic a-comin' your way soon.
Ciao,
Miguel

2004-05-25T13:05:00.000-04:00

Queen St. Gangsta No.1

Saturdays in The Soo

2004-05-22T14:27:00.000-04:00

Welcome to Sault St. Marie, pop.45,000 or somethin'. "Affectionately" referred to as 'The Soo' by the local folks. The indigenous name for the area has nothing to do with Jesuits, but rather refers to the shallow rapids nearby; fortunately, the local tourism brochure informs me, the Black Robes did eventually bring sweetness and light, giving the Soo it's "true name, referring to Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ".
Thanks, boys!

Anyway, remarkable cynicism aside, show here was great last night. Played at an uber-cozy little lounge, The Downbeat, helmed by the wonderful Trevor and Amanda. This joint is not much bigger than, say, your average Subway franchise, but by the end of the night it was well past standing-room only. And Trevor still didn't seem impressed by the turnout. Apparently they play Rae's CD every day at the 'Beat, so a number of people there had heard the tunes before... I guess that's as close to Radio Stardom as you can get, playing folk! :) After the gig I was coerced to play some fooz with a few friendly folks. Diederik, I put some of your recent coaching to good work. Thanks to Marco, Rich, Lauren, and Catherine for the company (and karaoke)! Catherine is a singer-songwriter, incidentally; her site can be digested here.

We've been driving for a few days since we left Winnipeg. Thanks to Jen and Vaiki for the hospitality in Thunder Bay! A brief respite on the Northern Ontario road, where the highway is narrow, and the truckers live large. We have a "No Speeding = No Tickets" edict in place, enforced by tasar gun, but so far no psychos have got up our tailpipe or anything. Our van just doesn't look like it's built for speed, so folks is understanding.

The Pyramid in Winnipeg was a great show. Nice big room, possibly the biggest room I've played with Rae and Shelley. Winnipeg is a cool town! I hear it gets real cool in the winter, so I can understand why people would flee (Jeff, Shelley, and many other musicians I know), but it is tied with Edmonton in my books for most livable city we've played so far. Thank you so much Myia D. for your expert guidance in all things 'Peg. :)
Lots of music here, and two folks need mentioning: Lindsay Jane and Vanessa (and Ella) put us up and entertained us during our stay - check out Lindsay's stuff here, it's great!

Our last night in town Myia got us out to see the Scott Nolan band, and they were real hot. We'll see you guys at North Country Fair!

Both Lindsay Jane and Scott are going to be in Vancouver sometime soon, so check 'em out.

Well, looks like I'm getting more verbose as time goes on, hope someone is reading! :)
Next stop, Peterborough...
Take care,
Mike

Regina Gone Wild

2004-05-15T22:38:00.000-04:00

Hah, just kidding. Rae Spoon and the Good Time Drivers (we're the rhythm section - get it?) are currently lounging around in downtown Regina, Saskatchewan, eagerly awaiting the start of tonight's show at "The Easy Alibi", formerly known as Cafe Ultimate. Internet cafe in the front, bands in the back, and liquor in the middle.

Speaking of liquor, the band price for a bottle of booze here is an even twoonie.

Unfortunately, that's about the hippest thing about Regina we've discovered so far, this bar/internet cafe notwithstanding. Saturday afternoon the whole downtown was dead. dead. dead. Fortunately for us, a local gent by the name of Dave spotted our BC plates when we pulled up this afternoon and started chatting to us. Pointed us to a cozy little veg. restaurant, The Heliotrope, where we had smoothies. This helped kill a good 40min., which is good in downtown Regina on a saturday, believe me. The only other people our age we saw were slumming it in the park skid-style, or trying to bum cigarettes off of us.

Rae's friend Dave Taylor, who will be opening the night's entertainments (we're playing with a couple Ontario bands, The Two Minute Miracles, and Sons of Daughters) informs us with his local expertise that the suburban growth of Regina has bled the downtown dry. Funny. I always thought that suburbs were only supposed to develop *after* your city center gets a good head of steam up, but hey...

Well, in the course of typing this, various sorts have wandered in, so there's hope yet! Rika and Chevelle (sorry girls, I'm sure I spelt those wrong), who saw us in Saksatoon last night, have made the trip down to get seconds of the Spoon experience.
Thanks also to Carla and co. for putting us up last night!

We're off to Brandon and Winnipeg next. I've enjoyed my taste of Saskatchewan, but I'm looking forward to something big again, and the 'Peg will do just fine!

mike

Cowtown Boogie

2004-05-10T17:01:00.000-04:00

Hey folks, I'm a-checkin' in, as promised. Currently at "The Planet" cafe in good ol' Calgary. We played at Karma Local Arts House last night. Three sets for a largely empty room, (thanks to local super-fan Sandhia) but 100% of the four strangers who were left in the place at the end of the night bought CD's. Hey, 100% is 100%.

Had a really good night in Cranbrook on Friday night at Finnegan's Wake. Lovely old house-turned-Irish pub. Friendly folks. Saturday we helped David Lang and Tolan McNeil open the Ship and Anchor's open stage here in Calgary. Kind of like a more boisterous and younger Railway Club, with everyone going full-tilt at 3 in the afternoon. One doesn't realize that perhaps as much in Vancouver, but out here, Saturday night starts early!

So we're just vegging with Rae's sister and her very patient housemates for another day or so, and then we'll be right back at 'er, bringing the "folk-country" to unsuspecting ears everywhere :)

OK, time's up on this terminal, talk at you soon.
Mike

1968

2004-04-30T22:34:00.000-04:00

Just jumping in on all the "Iraq=Vietnam" foofarah. Opportunist me.

I chanced upon a small photo-essay book a few years ago called "I PROTEST!" by a combat photographer by the name of David Douglas Duncan, who was holed up with the 26th Marine Regiment at Khe Sanh, Vietnam, in February of '68. It was pretty ugly, from the sound of it. Anyway, in the text essay he penned (while still stuck in Khe Sanh, waiting for reinforcements) as an intro to the photography, he wrote some words which echo loud today. There's all sorts of truisms which I could say but I won't. You draw your own conclusions. Without further ado, Mr.Duncan:

***
Admit it - and dislike it - or not, but we Americans appear to be sinking into
a quagmire of grim impressions being created about ourselves - by
ourselves - which may soon cast us in the character of the bullyboys (the
neo-Aryan master race) of the coming generation. We seem determined
to impose our will and way of life upon most of the rest of the world,
whether or not they want it, appreciate it, or ask for it. We justify this
dispatch of military and economic missionaries in the name of
nation-building, and the protection of our vital spheres of interest across
the face of the globe, everywhere - especially if anyone can produce even
circumstantial evidence that Communists (of any color or breed) might be
interested in the place. I protest selling fear, of anybody, as
America's foreign policy.
***

mike

T-Minus 6 Days...

2004-04-30T19:38:00.000-04:00

That's it! It's over! Friday next week the Rae Spoon Trio will ship out for Cranbrook, the first of many conquests on our way to Halifax. Hopefully we won't be too wrecked from the tour kick-off show at the fabulous Railway Club, Thursday May 6th.

Hope to see some faces out at the gig... if you're not going to be able to make it, drop me a line so's we can hook up sometime in the week!

mike

"When I go hunting for whitetail, it's for food and sport," he said. "Here, when I go hunting, it's personal, very personal."

2004-04-25T21:34:00.000-04:00

I could be accused of pushing my dogmatic agenda here, but I really did find this article illuminating. I also felt a little sick, but that could be lunch or something else.

May I suggest this article, www.riverbendblog.blogspot.com/ ,and www.empirenotes.org as a chaser?

Happy edumacation.

Ray Condo, R.I.P.

2004-04-18T19:20:00.000-04:00

Fortunately, it's not every day that I get to say things like this...

Well, Friday's "Rock 'em Sock 'em" gig at the WISE Hall turned out to be a wake, in memory of Ray Condo. Ray passed away in his sleep the night before I think.

Here's an obituary, retrospective of sorts.

So, the mood was a little strange at the show. Didn't know Ray myself, but it turned out a number of folks I knew who attended had been fairly close. Nonetheless, everyone aggreed that Ray had been a hard-partyin' dude who would have wanted nothing less than a full-on show as a legacy, so Rae Spoon, etc. did our best to oblige. Sarah Wheeler and the Bughouse 5 put on great sets... particularly enjoyed the 'acoustic' version of Sarah's group, with Julie playing upright and Dave on some mighty-fine dobro.

The first chunk of summer tour dates for Rae + Shelley + Me's conquest of Canada are up on Rae's site, by the way - I'll see you out there!

take care,
Mike

Mo' Gigs

2004-04-12T22:22:00.000-04:00

Few new shows added - doing a couple sets of choice jazz with NOAH WALKER over at J.J. Bean on the drive, Thursday @ 7pm, filling in for the impeccable Michael Patterson.

Friday sees the RAE SPOON ALL-STARS [well, a bunch of them] at the W.I.S.E. hall. It's the "Battle of the Rae/ys" as we face off against such erstwhile acts as Ray Condo, the Bughouse Five, and Sarah Wheeler. It'll be bloodier than any American "re-building", I guarantee you! sorry, poor taste.

O.K., but really you just wanna know how to get to the CHAMELEON CANADA gigs on Tuesday and Wednesday, right?
It's going to be great, you'll love the Oktet. You'll wish Schubert wasn't 174 years in the ground.
*~ Tuesday is at 2pm in the U.B.C. School of Music Recital Hall.
*~ Wednesday is at 8pm in the glorious Penthouse of the Graduate
Students Society building, located not too-far from the Music building,
actually.

If you're still clueless at this point, then go hither: http://www.maps.ubc.ca

Word!
Mike

2004-04-11T05:53:00.000-04:00

Rock!
Just got back from the Hawksley Workman/Metric/Joel Kroeker triple bill at the Commodore tonight. Gosh, that H.W. sure knows how to work it. Striking a balance like only he can between the epic and the very pointed, the raw muscularity and the deft, nimble nuanced. Yeehaw.

Metric clocked in with perhaps the hardest workin' set I've seen in forever - Kraftwerk and Devo get hambushed by Stereolab and the Breeders?

Joel's set was fantastic by all accounts. I missed the damn thing thanks to a prior rehearsal, but he sounded so fired up as I came in on his last tune, Cohen's "Hallelujah", that I thought he was going to hurt something. bravo!
check out his new album, its great.

a bed,
mike

2004-04-05T16:21:00.000-04:00

Hello folks!

Here in mondegreen land a few changes have been made, as you can see.
I've got this new improved journal format here, which will be handy when I'm on the road with Rae this summer - You, dear readers, can add comments to the posts, thus making this a holistic, 'interactive' experience for you, and me.

So stop by as often as you like, and don't forget to write!

Love, miguel