Thunder Road

Following Bruce Springsteen's phenomenal 3 and a half hour performance last week-end, I sat in a backyard in southern Etobicoke, with somebody who has surprisingly become--remained?--one of my closest friends. Richard nursed a beer and I, a cola. We smoked cigarettes in the dark and enjoyed the refreshingly cool summer night while his wife and son slept soundly inside.

I enjoy these evenings, immeasurably. We talk closely about things and people we miss, have known, about the ways we've grown and how we have or haven't managed to achieve what we thought we would when we imagined our lives from a 20-years-ago vantage point, when we sat in another (more central) Etobicoke backyard as another summer neared its end.

We used to be louder. And much, much drunker. Richard refers to the guys occupying the house on the other side of the fence as "the bros.," because they are up until 2 am and speaking in inapropriately loud voices, like he doesn't remember the shed he and Kevin created in Kevin's backyard to be a neighbourhood hang-out, to always be filled with Jack Daniels and Marlboro's and merriment.

One of the things we talked about last week-end was our longing for intensity, how we missed the drama and the abandon we used to get from and share with our friends. About how we are all so much more careful now, about how we share ourselves reservedly, smartly, more occasionally. We both attribute this to maturity; to having experienced the pitfalls of too much openness, the betrayals and bad decisions and the knowledge that people change. But I also mourn drinking a little bit, here. For most of the close conversations in the dark and shoulders I have cried on, there was a lot of alcohol involved.

Seeing Bruce Springsteen was a dream come true, but as I purchased the tickets for his date at the Skydome (the Rogers Centre) it was with no small amount of resignation. I didn't want to see him in Toronto. I wanted to see him in Moncton. And I absolutely would have, if only it had been one year earlier, if only I still lived in Halifax.

The best concert I have ever seen was Paul McCartney, when he played the Halifax Common. Unlike Springsteen, whom I had to come to in my own way, McCartney has forever been a part of my life. I saw him with the person who likely knows me better than anybody in the world, and also with a community of people of all different ages and all different experiences, in a city that I am head-over-heals in love with. A city, too, that rarely gets to experience such an event. McCartney probably swings through Toronto on every tour, but he'd never been to Halifax. All those people, raised on The Beatles, raising their voices to sing along to songs they had known forever, by one of the remaining, living members, of the best band in history. A chance that so many of us never thought we'd get. It was unbelievable, thrilling, unforgettable, and, I suspect, unsurpassable.

But Springsteen, perhaps, would be the next best thing to a Beatle, and every year rumours abounded. With every summer that passed without a formal announcement of an Atlantic Canadian date, Springsteen fans seemed more and more disheartened.

I almost went to see him in Boston, during his tour for We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions. And when I say "almost," I mean that I put a lot of thought into the acknowledged fantasy of seeing him in Boston. I was broke, but my friend Jen and I spent so many evenings at the Granite Brewery, trying to come up with a scheme to get us there. A driver, a vehicle, and perhaps a sponsorship. We did not go to Boston. We sat in the bar and enjoyed his music on vinyl night.

In 2001 I had a roommate, Luke, who had a copy of Nebraska, and that was my in. I never thought much about Springsteen before then. Or when I did, it was with a bit of derision for the anthemic "Born in the U.S.A." that muscled its way into memories of my childhood. I hated the saxophones. I have always hated that instrument; still do.

Nebraska, of course, is a different creature, and surely the best point of entry for someone like myself. The sparse instrumentation and fascinating naratives sucked me in, and I figured out what I'd been missing. I started from the beginning. On those early albums his songs about youth and redemption and love still make me feel possibility. I can appreciate Born in the U.S.A. now, though I don't love the album in its entirety. I do, however, love every last second of Born to Run, including the sax. How could that album be what it is without it? It's probably my favourite Springsteen album, and I still hate the sax.


It's been my experience that music, honest and gritty words, crazy passionate inexplicable love, and being on the road to some place new are four of the five best things this world has to offer, and these things are what the Boss is all about. 
The other best thing is community, and this is what he fosters.

Richard and I sat three rows from the very back of the Skydome, and we got to see the entire crowd. It was only thanks to a giant screen that we could see Springsteen step out into the audience, accepting requests from fans; he was otherwise a tiny dot moving rapidly back and forth. He sweated and smiled and engaged with his audience throughout it all. No way that man's faking it, and after so many years, and so much fortune, we all know he doesn't have to do it.

So if I'd seen that in Moncton, a short drive from Halifax, with all of those people he'd never played for before, in a wide open field, McCartney would have some serious competition.

My good friend Russell got Candice to play "Thunder Road" as the very last song on the very last vinyl night on the very last night the Granite Brewery was open. I'd been sober for only a few months then, and that night was not so far removed from many others that involved a copious amount of alcohol, camaraderie, sometimes tears, and plenty of talk that sure, might have been bullshit, but was also true, too. "Thunder Road" felt like a theme song there, something that united so many of us.

The best thing about the Granite Brewery was that community just happened, because people liked the look and the feel of the place, and they liked the beer, and they could stop there after work and be welcomed and known. A lot of us had very little in common with one another. The range of ages and experience was remarkable, and when that song came on, we all raised our glasses, and we belted out the words.

So you're scared and you're thinking that maybe we ain't that young anymore,
Show a little faith! there's magic in the night.

I can't think of that song without thinking of this place, that now only exists as something imaginary, from before. I know how lucky I am to have been there.

I didn't think I'd see Bruce Springsteen at the Skydome with Richard. For a very long time I never imagined myself becoming a Springsteen fan. And I don't know that I imagined Richard and I would stay in touch after high school, as we have, that he'd stay one of my closest friends. On the surface, we really don't have that much in common. But in fact, we have decades in common. And listening to Springsteen over pints, after last call, in a bar on Barrington street is not all that different from listening to him in a suburban backyard, four years sober, looking up at stars and distracted by the bros. In mourning, in recalling, that lost intensity and closeness, it manages to find its way back to us.

Son of a Rudderless Boat

I just got back from Ontario. I always leave that province with a little bit more inspiration, a heart that's a little fuller, and some more direction than I had when I arrived. After the sun came down somewhere in eastern Quebec, I tried to help keep the drivers - my father, his wife Susan - awake and motivated by talking and asking questions. We talked a lot, Dad and I, about leaving there to live here. We bitched about the cold, materialist certainty of grey, brick-buildinged Toronto, but we also talked about the smaller places in Ontario and in Toronto itself. Home in all of its personal enormity, as well as possibility in the immediate familiarity of towns and cities and neighbourhoods we could live, if we had to, for some crazy reason, leave this coast. The people we miss because they make us miss them so, because they love us and we love them so.

My dad parroted the old cliche, "Blood is thicker than water." But you know, you get older, it's true.

Watching people get old from afar is weird. Missing the years in between exploring the woods, climbing rock piles on sturdy legs, taking the boat out on the bay, and the slow and cautious, precious steps in smaller rooms than ever imagined.

I am so lucky to have had a relationship with all four of my grandparents. Certainly luckier than most. Even my grandmother - my active, playful grandmother - who died of cancer far too young, at 61, when I was 12 or 13, is someone of whom I have countless fond, funny, sweet memories. And maybe it is only because her absence allows me to romanticise our relationship, but that was probably around the time I stopped feeling particularly close with any of my parents' parents. I suspect it's more likely, though, that being a teenager had as much to do with that. And then moving three provinces away when I was in my early twenties.

Sean and I used to do this thing, when we were together, when one of us got back from a trip somewhere, where the returning person would be asked to state his or her favourite moment. And I know I should, you would think I would, say: Ted and Hayley's wedding, of course. Ted and Hayley's wedding was beautiful, perfect, a darn good time in every way imaginable. But I've got to give the Favourite Moment Award to the only time I cried during my trip to Ontario.

I have and always have had a different relationship with my mother's parents than I do with my father's parents. Neither relationship is more or less significant, just different, because of who they are and who I am.

For a lot of years I don't think I felt at all close to Granddad, my father's father. Neither he nor my father are the best at keeping in touch, and I saw far less of him after his wife passed away. And besides, Grandma and Grandpa - my mother's parents - had the cottage. We'd spend week-ends and even weeks at a time there, with them, every summer. But I really don't think it's just circumstance and proximity. It's my Granddad, too, and I think I have finally pinpointed it. Granddad talks to everyone, young and old, without reserve, without censorship, with criticism and intelligence and honesty. And in turn, I feel that I can speak to him that way. That I would not have to be polite if it were at the expense of being genuine.

My mom's parents, on the other hand, are people I sure as shit wouldn't swear or smoke around. Which is not to say they're especially proper or anything. But when Granddad, a few days ago, requested that I play that song with the line about masturbating, I happily obliged, before imagining Grandma and Grandpa's horror-stricken expressions should I perform the same song for them. Never in a million years.

Grandpa took me fishing on Georgian Bay, taught be how to bait a hook years before I became a vegetarian and had the only fight I remember having with him, which is likely why it seems so particularly painful when I conjure the incident up in my head. Fighting with my grandfather about his going fishing, on the front deck that he built. Self-righteous tree-hugging teenager I was then.

Grandma held me up the window at their condominium in Brantford to watch the trains go by, read me books, sang me songs. She was always singing. Her voice has this integral, soothing, sing-song quality even, so that when I imagine her voice it always sounds like a tune, and which my mother has undoubtedly inherited. These two Sellar women, they have always made me feel safe.

No one knows what people will take from them. They just put themselves out there the best they know how. There are incidents I remember so vividly as speaking so clearly of their individual characters, and all the while they are and were carrying their own histories and relatives who began long, long before I did. It is probably in their sons and daughters that I know them best.

In Burlington, Ontario, my mother and I had a brief visit with Grandma and Grandpa at the retirement building they now reside in, until they or someone else determines that they are no longer capable of residing there alone, without assistance. That time is coming soon. Grandpa moves slowly, Grandma can't remember to take her medication. They don't want to let go, and who can blame them? The visit was less personal than it might have been, because my mother and I brought along an old friend of theirs, who had moved his travel plans around so that he might spend the afternoon with Frank and Jean Sellar before leaving for China. Gerry, this friend, lives in England, and hadn't seen them in twenty years. In the meantime, he had lost his mother (who lived to be 97!), his wife, and, tragically, his youngest son. At 70, Gerry is a good fifteen years younger than my grandparents, but must nevertheless be feeling his age in ways that he didn't a decade ago.

"China!" Grandpa exclaimed. "Aren't you tired?"

"Frank," he said, "Of course I'm tired. But I want to keep going, for as long as I can. Because I know all too well that one day I'll have to stop."

Granddad was in the hospital for two months earlier this year. He was fainting all the time, and no one could figure out how to stop this from happening, and no one wanted him to leave the doctor's constant care. Except for Granddad, who figured that if he was going to die, he would much prefer dying in the comfort of his own home, being able to see Dog Lake from his bedroom window. He and his wife Anna live at the end of a series of unpaved roads, a half hour drive from Kingston, Ontario. Granddad is lucky to be able to afford this financially, and to have a healthy, willing, and able wife to assist him.

He is still fainting all the time. It is such a terrifying struggle to help him down the stairs, even on the lifts that have been installed there, as I witnessed on Friday, when the four of us finally did help him downstairs and into the living room for the first time in two weeks.

But he doesn't seem old at all.

A few months ago, I wrote a song about my grandmother's death. More about my grandfather, really. Outside of the condominium they lived in in Mississauga was a small house that was always locked. Granddad and I would take walks around the grounds - the garden, the fish pond, until we would finally come to that house, and peer into the windows, imagining what it was used for, or who lived there. The first and only time I ever went inside was for the reception that followed my grandmother's funeral, and I sure wished it had remained a mystery.

The song came up in conversation with Anna when she, Dad, Susan and I were sitting around the kitchen table on Friday morning. "You should tell your grandfather about it," she said. And I really, really wanted to, but I just didn't know how appropriate it would be. "It's sad," I said.

And so, "It's sad," I said to Granddad, as I took out my guitar, upstairs in his room, just a few hours before I was to leave this province and these people that I am made of.

But some things are sad. Lots of things are sad. I couldn't get through the song without crying, but I couldn't stop either. Granddad was tearing up. And Anna, too. She was Grandma's best friend. And she is Granddad's wife. And no one, no matter how much they are loved, and needed here on this earth, gets to live forever that way.

It was a moment. I'm so glad I could let my grandfather know how much I love him, and that I could see how much he loves me. And if I have to say good-bye, I'm glad I could say that too.

And then he asked me to play the masturbating song.

Dad and Susan and I outwitted a tornado in Ontario, beat a hurricane in Nova Scotia, driving all night. We told stories about ourselves. My father's voice is so much like his father's.

We opened windows and played cds to stay awake when we ran out of questions, or one or two of us passengers began to fade.

We listened to Kev Corbett's brand new album, "Son of a Rudderless Boat." We heard "The Driving Song," taking the same route, as though it was written for us. And we listened to "Son of a Rudderless Boat," and with new ears I felt light and lucky, and so happy that it was my father up there in front of me, driving me home, persevering, saving us from the storm. "Row hard, in this rudderless boat," I was thinking, as the sun began to rise somewhere in New Brunswick or Nova Scotia.


**I didn't format the lyrics like I usually do, not because I'm lazy, but because I asked Kev to send then to me so that I didn't have to listen over and over and over again and type them out myself (because I'm lazy), and he was happy to oblige, and I like they way they looked, in paragraph form, so I kept them that way.**

Son of a Rudderless Boat - Kev Corbett

Grampa sailed a dory; he fished upon the sea. And though he knew what he was for, he didn’t know just what to be. He lost his arm at a logging camp. And up ‘til he died, he still chopped his own wood. He told me a story ‘bout going out with a new guy in the boat and when they got out on the water new guy just sat there and choked, so back inshore later on Gramp says, b’y, you can haul that fish yourself. We’re all scared out on that water, but next time you can swim, or you can help. He said, gotta work hard, gotta pray hard and just try to keep it strong and if you want to work with me man, gotta pull that weight along ’cause by the Father and by the Son and by the Holy Ghost, by the angels and the saints and by the heavenly host, by the fields of grass that bore me, and the sea that awaits I know I got no control, but I will fear no earthly fate. From the ocean we did come, and to her we shall return. She puts the fire out in us when our souls cease to burn and so to find true love and tend it is your only hope. Just give up the ghost, man. You’re a son of a rudderless boat.

My father tried his hand out as a fisher of men It was at least one job for a papish boy from the steel plant back then but he jumped that ship, I guess, left his robes upon the ground and I, for one, am glad he did, musta seen this gig comin’ round. He’s a student of his time, a renaissance guy to be sure. He lets me hoist myself, but my ears ring with his words: Son, I pray that you grow to be a very gentle man with Respect for those ‘round you and respect for the land ‘cause life don’t owe you another 10 seconds, you already got today but I believe it comes around if you treat the World that way and everything you need to know you learn from watching others fall but you’ll rejoice in their successes if you really heed the call. You’ll choose the high or the low road when life has you by the throat. It’s a choice we all get to make. We’re all sons and daughters of a rudderless boat.

I’m learning to love the Winter. Spring ain’t too far away.

So my paddle hits the water and I’m off among the trees. And I’m just lucky to be here, living like this in times like these I feel the weight of the whole world in all the choices that I make under the gazes of our mothers, and environmental stakes. By my unborn children, by the lepers in the streets, by the world already drowning in pools around our feet, may we come to patch this leaky boat that we’re all here sinking in and stop making up some right to throw the weaker ones in. By the earth and air and fire and water lapping at the shores all our spirits are the same and all our hands are on the oars. May we come to fix this tired old world before we drown in smoke. I’ll do my part. Row hard, in this rudderless boat.

Merry Christmas (I Love You)

The best Christmas album to come out in this millennium is, I think, Hawksley Workman's "Almost A Full Moon." In this, he celebrates family and friends and the holiday season. This song in particular speaks to the warmth and love that exists despite the unexpected and tragic events that happen in the world.

I'm not going home for Christmas this year. "Home" in this instance meaning where my mom lives. I won't be waiting up with my brothers until midnight or one in the morning to sneak downstairs to open stockings that "Santa" has just recently filled for us with Archie comics, clementines and Kinder surprise eggs. I won't be going to Burlington to see Grandma and Grandpa and Aunt Barb and Uncle Peter and Sam and Alex, and to not eat turkey and cranberry sauce but scarf down mashed potatoes and stovetop stuffing. I won't be hearing Grandpa's recitation of "Twas the Night Before Christmas" or singing carols with my mom and whomever else can be convinced, around the piano.

My brother Geoff will likely not be there to wait up for stockings either. He's just moved into a new apartment with his new wife Patricia. And my brother Ted won't arrive in Toronto until 11:30 am Christmas Day. There was no Chester family dinner at the Old Mill restaurant this year. And Sean lives in PEI this season, so my Christmas mix making was even independent of him.

But on Christmas Eve I will be seeing my brother Ted and his fiance Hayley at my Dad's house in Porter's Lake, where he lives with his wife Susan. Christmas always manages to feel Christmasey, wherever I am. I feel blessed.

I meant to write all kinds of blog entries about Christmas songs this month, but shopping and work and house cleaning has left me with little free time, and, I suppose, I just haven't felt the exactly right kind of inspiration for writing as much as I'd like.

Friends and family near and far: I wish you all Happy Holidays. I wish we could all be together. You're dear to me and in my thoughts and my heart.

Merry Christmas (I Love You) - Hawksley Workman

If god takes you he leaves
a huge footprint of love
and kindness behind
which is where you once stood

And I know you're afraid
to get on the plane
after what happened that day
and selfishly I want you here in my way

But animals come
and animals go
and love is just a laundry line
we hang on until

we're dried out by the sun
and when you think your turn is done
you end up getting dirty
and it's all again begun

Now words i think are just
a noisy dirty wind
makes the trouble we get in
so why do we speak

Now we made another war,
that's what men are good for
men with stupid insecurities
and not a lot more

And satisfied they try
its written about again
but who the hell reads history?
apparently not men

'Cause nothing's guaranteed
except the politics of need
did the Romans see the ship go down
or were they asleep?

I shouldn't expect to live
and I shouldn't expect to die
but I wouldnt mind being beside you, dear
on that laundry line to dry

And for my grandma and my brother
my father and my mother
and you my sweetest lover
to you all I will say

Merry Christmas I love you
and god is above you
Merry Christmas I love you
and god is above you

Merry Christmas I love you

Get in the Car

The first time I went to Whitehorse I went on a whim. It's probably the coolest thing I've ever done.

I'd been living in Toronto for over a year and I'd ended up there accidentally in the first place. I had taken a plane from Halifax to Toronto with a friend of mine, and we were planning to hang out there for a couple of weeks before hitchhiking across North America, but stuff happened, and that trip never did.

There's a thing I notice that happens to me when I spend too much time in Toronto. I start to think about myself like I did when I was a Torontonian, and I receive the things that my family and friends say to me in a different way than I do through telephone wires. I start to think that things like hitchhiking through the United States just to see it and with no real destination in mind, or much money to speak of, are kind of crazy. So I did an equally but oppositely stupid thing: I stayed in Toronto and I got a well-paying job at a call centre.

I did, however, meet a pretty great guy while I was in Toronto, and though he promised to move back to Halifax with me, I got impatient with the waiting and with the crappy customer service job, and so I spent a couple of months traveling across Canada on a Greyhound bus. In stupid Vancouver I made the decision to travel further north before heading back east. I didn't know anyone in the Yukon or have any idea what it was like out there, but I figured I had nothing to lose, and all kinds of time, and so I went. I took the Alaska highway north to Whitehorse.

Being on a Greyhound bus in Canada was not so whimsical; it was something I'd been planning for several months. I had friends in Sudbury and Regina and Vancouver and Victoria and Kamloops and Montreal and Sydney, and I wanted to see them all and the places they had come from or come to before I settled back down in Halifax.

I have never been able to sleep well on buses, but I love them anyway. I love four o'clock in the morning at the side of the highway outside of an Irving or an Esso. Stars and the moon and the sting and smell of winter. My fellow, non-smoking, less anxiety-ridden passengers sleeping soundly in their uncomfortable seats. I move in slow motion, half asleep, exhausted, but invigorated by the cold and empowered like a secret by the blanket of night and the nothing else in sight. What an enormous country I live in. It's twenty hours from Whitehorse to Edmonton.

"Get In the Car" is a song that Kim Barlow wrote for her album Luckyburden, a concept album in which she tells stories about the fictionalized residents of Keno City, Yukon, a town just outside of Whitehorse that boomed briefly and his since become a virtual ghost town.

I don't seem to have much in common with the girl who is the subject of the song. I especially don't know what it's like to live in a town as small or as rough as Keno City, and to spend my teenage years desperately wanting to see something bigger. But I sure do know what it's like to want to get the hell out of a place where I feel stuck and uninspired. And I sure do know what it's like to be young and hopeful and excited by adventure. And I sure do know what it's like to miss Mom.

I promise to actually write about Whitehorse here one of these days.

Get in the Car - Kim Barlow

"Get in the car," Chrissi said, "Let's get the hell out of Dodge."
Steve jumped in fast with a few things stuffed in his backpack.
And they fish tailed down the dusty road, eight o'clock on Saturday morning,
Fresh out of high school and leaving.

"Where are we going?" Steve said, "Are we going to Whitehorse?"
Chrissi laughed, "Hell no, Whitehorse is the biggest town I've ever seen."
Warm sand, rock stars and bookstores, food that doesn't come in a can.
We're going to LA, follow our stupid dreams.

Nothing left to stay for everyone we know is crazy,
They just drink and work and fight,
Let's change our names it's time we're moving on.

When they got to Liard he asked her, "Where'd you get the car?"
And he studied the fading bruise on her cheek and she said,
"My dad won it at poker last week."
And they floated with the hippies and the tourists who had
Flower vans and RV's, romantic notions pointing north.

In the wee hours, and the stars were shining, they nearly hit a young moose,
Running down the middle of the highway.
But they passed it in the passing lane, neither of them said a word.
Both of them were thinking of their mothers.

Nothing left to stay for every one we know is crazy,
They just drink and work and fight,
Let's change our names it's time we're moving on.

Alaska Highway, mile zero, the end and the beginning.
They stopped for a pee and nailed their graduation photos to a sign.
Chrissi leaned out the window and screamed, dust swirled in her hair,
And Steve knew he would follow her anywhere she asked him

Get in the car,
Get in the car,
Let's get the hell out of Dodge.

Morning Glory / Alewives

Andy was almost falling on the floor he was laughing so hard as he relayed the story of how his latest song title, "The Greatest Show on Earth" had come to him. He was thinking about the ridiculous claim our employer, Sam the Record Man was making in their use of "The Greatest Store on Earth" as their motto. The. Greatest. Store. On. Earth. It is pretty funny. It's fucking ridiculously, screamingly, fall on the floor funny if you are in the right mood for and are the right kind of person for that kind of funny.

It reminded me of the night Tim and I wandered around Richard's neighbourhood, in the midst of an evening spent drinking Jack Daniel's in the shed behind Kevin and Richard's house - the shed the two of them had built and decorated with empty pop cans, empty cartons of Marlboro's, and an enormous confederate flag poised above a sign in support of the local Reform party candidate, both intended as a joking affront to their liberal-minded friends. By the time I caught up to Tim, he was keeled over on the curb trying to intake oxygen amidst his laughter as he pointed at - unable to speak - the street sign declaring "Gaylord Avenue." It's just fucking stupid how funny that was.

The first time I heard Alewives, I thought: I bet this is what Morning Glory would sound like now if they were still a band. The first time I saw Andy on stage, his guitar hanging loosely over his shoulder, leaning into the amplifier, his back - probably intentionally - to the audience, I was reminded of Tim. They both carry themselves in this casual way that I suppose the term "indie rock" has kind of become synonymous with. They both look so free-spirited and authentic and like they don't care about anything except the rock and roll they're playing. But before there is the practicing, then the nervousness, the serious consideration of song order, and afterwards, "Did everyone notice where I messed up?" "Do you think that new song went over well?" "Do they like me?"

It was super fun being an Alewives fan with my friend and roommate Sydney. We're both music nerds, but our tastes often differ. Not entirely unreasonably, Sydney once said to me, "Not all pop songs have to sound like Brian Wilson could have written them, you know." She's way into Blondie and Tori Amos, and I guess I don't really get those guys. And yeah, she thinks my tastes are a bit too precious and predictable, I think. But we both really, really love The Replacements. And I knew that she would love The Alewives. Not that they're all derivative or anything, but they come from the same place. They have the same sound. And nothing says high school like that sound.

It was, oh so appropriately, Tim who first introduced me to The Replacements, when he put "Bastards of Young" on a mix tape he made for me when we were in grade twelve. He gets credit, too, for Pixies, The Lemonheads, NOFX, and for a bunch of local bands reserved for a future blog entry.

My friends Tim and John were the core of Morning Glory. They wrote the songs, and played guitar and bass. They had a couple of drummers - first Steve and then Dave. They had a band room in Tim's basement, where the drum kit was permanently set up, and I sat against the wall and listened to them rehearse for hours. I knew all the words to "Sadfish" and "Where Am I?" and "Here I'm" and "Spaceship of Life." Once they played a show there. They named the practice room "Potatoland" for the evening and bought a flat of beer that we all guzzled down, across the street at the vacant "White House" (a house used as a real estate office, where we would often go to smoke cigarettes) during intermission, and presumably unnoticed by his parents. Man, Tim's parents must have been pretty cool.

Morning Glory got to play some shows down-town, in all-ages venues like The Silver Shack and Classic Studios. Abby, Jackie, Paul, Brandon, Sean and I were the most hardcore Morning Glory groupies, and we'd take the subway down-town to cheer them on, to be in the midst of this scene that felt incredibly cool. We'd sing along and hoot and jump up and down and then help carry their amps and instruments.

Classic Studios was the venue they played most often, it seems to me. It was a dim, open room with low ceilings, below Ossington Avenue, a stone's throw from the Queen street Mental Institution, and it shared its address (it was something-and-a-half Ossington Ave.) with the fish and chips restaurant upstairs. The place was owned or managed by a conscientious, well-intentioned man who seemed genuinely concerned about the kids - such as myself - who over did it. He knew he wasn't serving us alcohol, but he didn't seem to be aware of the convenience store down the street where under-aged kids could buy bootlegged liquor.

Going into the city, to these shows, taking the subway home in the wee hours of the morning, drunk and exhausted, I always felt so grown up. I felt like I was looking at my future. My cool, hip, rock and roll future.

For my 29th birthday Sydney made me an Alewives t-shirt, and a matching one for herself. We talked about making an Alewives zine, but we got too busy with other stuff, or we got too lazy, and then she moved away to BC. I loved going to those shows with her, like I loved waiting at the bus stop and standing right up at the front of the stage with Abby.

The kind of authentic, energetic rock and roll that Alewives play makes me feel nostalgic, and not in some bullshit I'm-too-old-to-rock way, just as a reminder of how and why music matters. It reminds me of discovery. It reminds me of the way something so simple can be so awesome, so intoxicating, so fun. It's about the moments when I'm not asking, "Do they like me?" "Why does that work?" "What happened?" We pick ourselves up off the floor or the curb and we go back to work or back to our friends, and that old, sinking, other kind of reality sets in again.

Thank God for three-minute rock songs and sloppy boys with electric guitars.

Annabel

When Tom Glenne hosted the open mic. at the Free Times Cafe on College st., in Toronto, he would often give this spiel that went something like [serious paraphrasing], "You could all be sitting at home watching the hockey game on television, but instead you came out here to listen to live music." And it would make me think about how amazing it was - this tiny gesture - this going outside, to experience music and community, whether I was performing or just taking it in. And of course I would have to suffer through some whiny or boring or even embarrassing performances, but these amazing things happened there, too. I think above and beyond the individual songs and songwriters I discovered was this sense of community that was created in this very organic way. People met future band mates and friends on these Monday nights, arriving as early as six o'clock in the evening to ensure themselves a spot on the list that was almost always filled by the time the evening started at eight. For several months I was in attendance almost every Monday, lugging my guitar home to Etobicoke at the end of the night in time to get barely enough sleep to face Tuesday. Showcases were also held there, one evening a month, featuring four open mic. performers in what was often their first real gig. It was something that the open mic. hosts organized. Musicians waited for their own turns attentively and quietly. It was such a welcoming environment for songwriters, like myself, who were fairly new at performing in front of an audience and even at playing their instruments. More experienced musicians often used Monday nights to try out new material in front of an attentive audience.

Despite my long and comfortable relationship with the Granite Brewery and Ginger's Tavern, in Halifax, I have only ever been a kinda sorta regular at their own Monday night open mic., "Stage Fright," mostly just because Monday has historically been the one evening I have wanted very much to just go home after work. I am not someone who goes home and comes back. I stick it out or I go to bed, and the hours between six and ten seem like a lot and Monday is usually my most sensible day for thinking that way.

But there is clearly a community of musicians who have come together and out of "Stage Fright."

Tonight, Bend the River released their first CD, Revolt of Angels, which they actually recorded in the venue over the winter. The songs on this album were all written by Ronok Sarkar, with the exception of one song co-written by Ronok and the band's drummer and "Stage Fright" host RJ Donovan. The band also includes Adam Fine, Jonathan Andrews, and Matt Myer, with assistance from Evan Kolvoord, Bill Travis, Erin Costelo, and Kevin Corbett. Opening for Bend the River were Erin Costello and former open mic. regular, Jon McKiel. It's unclear to me exactly how all of these musicians found one another, but it seems that Monday nights at Ginger's was indeed the springboard for these friendships and collaborations.

It was an amazing show, let me please state that for the record, even though that's not really what this blog entry is about. I can't wait until these guys are so fucking HUGE, and I can be all "I told you so," 'cause the world is just a terrible, unfair, stupid place if that doesn't happen.

I made some friends at the Free Times, I found some people to sing with, to share gigs with. I appreciated the camaraderie and the recognition. It is some thing to be known, to be "regular."

And the musicians themselves. There is something so intimate and lucky about being in that room, being so close to someone so earnestly, and of course in the best instances, so masterfully, playing their songs like that. Live! You never know what will get lost or altered on the recording. You never know that they'll even make a recording. An original song is a magical, unique piece of work that changes every time it gets played.

Kat Goldman, when she was Kathy Goldman, used to play at the Free Times. She was my favourite. Her lyrics aren't on the internet and thus not so easily paste-able, and so I promise to painstakingly type them all out when I get the chance. But not tonight.

Annabel - Kat Goldman

Closer to Fine

I saw a wonderful show on Thursday evening. The Three Handsome Devils - Evan Kolvoord, Ronok Sarkar & Bill Travis - were reunited for the first time in at least a year, as Evan's been living in his home town of Austin, Texas of late. I met his girlfriend Nicole that evening, and I was surprised to hear her express how exciting it was for her to be able to see him perform these shows the way that he has over the past month or so, during their Nova Scotia vacation. I guess he doesn't do much of this in Austin. She offered a vague explanation about him having done all of that there so many years ago, also alluding to how his creativity might be kind of stifled in the presence of all of these people he's known his whole life. I kind of get that. What she also said, though, and I think more significantly, was that Evan seemed to feel more inspired in Halifax. She recognized a very creative and collaborative community in this little city. It's so interesting how the spirit of a place can affect the way a person relates to even the things that are the most important to him- or herself. I think she's right about Halifax.

When I moved back to Toronto for a little while at the very, very end of the 1990's, I became acutely aware of the fact that no one ever danced at rock shows. They stood there maybe swaying, almost imperceptibly. It was notable because everyone danced at rock shows, in Halifax.

The show - The Handsome Devils show - was intentionally but earnestly like a lazy Sunday afternoon in a friend's kitchen. The three songwriters played one another's songs around a checkered tablecloth atop of a bar table that sat in the centre of the stage and held a fruit bowl from which audience members were invited to - and indeed did - help themselves.

It looked, for a bit, like the show might not happen. The small audience that finally arrived did so late. I guess these lazy late arrivals - a natural fit for this city after all - must be accommodated despite all of the tomorrow mornings that follow these evenings in much too rapid succession. Evan took to the street with his ukulele and improvised songs about his surroundings in an attempt to lure people into the venue. It was mostly unsuccessful that way, but people stopped and listened or at least offered warm smiles as they continued on to their own engagements or homes.

I remembered how when I was younger I used to find these spaces and people and moments even in great big, grey Toronto, and how songs on streets made the pavement and the commute something almost magical. Individuals connected by voices and music and being outside, in it with the world, which is really a very joyful place.

For two summers, my friend Justin and I used to busk outside of Futures Bakery at Bloor & Brunswick sts. I would play guitar while he did tricks with his devil sticks. There was a woman who worked at Futures who would give us free coffee everyday, which was my favourite thing about playing there - knowing how she appreciated hearing this through the open window enough to encourage our extended engagement by offering caffeinated beverages as incentive. Otherwise, we made a little bit of money - enough to share a package of Drum tobacco and get wasted at the Bistro every Wednesday night before heading down the street to watch One Step Beyond play their acid jazz to a roomful of hippies who did, indeed, dance freely.

At some point during every day we were out there, Justin would insist, "Play the mountain song!" And I would never ever tire of appeasing him by playing "Closer to Fine."

I imagine that "Closer to Fine" remains a song that is sung around campfires and in basements and on street corners like that one, though I don't think I've heard anyone play it in years. It's one of the first songs I ever learned how to play on guitar, courtesy of John Duncan IV (who also taught me how to play The Lemonheads' "Confetti" which is the second song I learned to play on guitar). Everyone I was friends with seemed to know and love this song, and because hardly anyone else knew how to actually play guitar, they all thought I was pretty awesome at it.

I've taken issue with the word "fine," rallied against its connotations even, sort of equating it with the settling sentiment. But I think I've reclaimed it of late. There is nothing wrong with fine. She's so Fine, "I'm in love with her and I feel fine." Fine I thought, was like an excellent meal, an ironed suit; Intentional, precise. Really, though, I don't think "fine" is that considered, and certainly not the way it's expressed in this song. Perhaps it's like happiness is this imagined higher level that hasn't been attained and maybe doesn't even exist. If fine and content are the best you can get, so what? I feel way better, fine and inexplicably easy than I do during most of the minutes of my life that are spent looking for what it is that I lack.

"Closer To Fine" - Indigo Girls

I'm trying to tell you something about my life

Maybe give me insight between black and white

The best thing you've ever done for me

Is to help me take my life less seriously, it's only life after all

Well darkness has a hunger that's insatiable

And lightness has a call that's hard to hear

I wrap my fear around me like a blanket

I sailed my ship of safety till I sank it,

I'm crawling on your shore.

I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains

I looked to the children, I drank from the fountain

There's more than one answer to these questions

pointing me in crooked line

The less I seek my source for some definitive

The closer I am to fine.

I went to see the doctor of philosophy

With a poster of Rasputin and a beard down to his knee

He never did marry or see a B-grade movie

He graded my performance, he said he could see through me

I spent four years prostrate to the higher mind, got my paper

And I was free.

I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains

I looked to the children, I drank from the fountain

There's more than one answer to these questions

pointing me in crooked line

The less I seek my source for some definitive

The closer I am to fine.

I stopped by the bar at 3 a.m.

To seek solace in a bottle or possibly a friend

I woke up with a headache like my head against a board

Twice as cloudy as I'd been the night before

I went in seeking clarity.

I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains

I looked to the children, I drank from the fountain

There's more than one answer to these questions

pointing me in crooked line

The less I seek my source for some definitive

The closer I am to fine.

I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains

I looked to the children, I drank from the fountain

There's more than one answer to these questions

pointing me in crooked line

The less I seek my source for some definitive

The closer I am to fine.

We go to the bible, we go through the workout

We read up on revival and we stand up for the lookout

There's more than one answer to these questions

pointing me in a crooked line

The less I seek my source for some definitive

The closer I am to fine

The closer I am to fine

The closer I am to fine