Back A Ramblin

walkin up Yarmouth Street downtown Guelph, with the sun a settin, and a crisp fall air refreshingly invigorating my old weathered bones, Woody Guthrie was singing loud on the ipod, guiding me up the street.

Tom Joad Part 1 came on and within the first couple lines something just clicked.

the past couple years i’ve been battling exhaustion and burnout which finally inspired me to take the last few months off from performing…and a great few months it’s been.

i’ve just been singing at home every day, writing music at a rate unknown in years and learning Townes and Prine covers. it’s felt great to just purely enjoy music in a most selfish way.

but something clicked walking up Yarmouth Street this past Saturday evening on my lonesome. a big smile appeared across my face as i realized the nomad in me was once again strong, i finally felt ready and excited to perform again.

good thing as i was on my way to my first in gig in months at the Woolwich Arrow. Rich Burnett joined me on guitar and lap steel. it was great to be back on stage again. we were a little rusty at first and it took a bit to get the rhythm and momentum flowing but before long it was just like riding a bike again…with pint hand.

i got rid of my car a couple of months ago. to cut expenses, but even more so to reduce my carbon footprint and heighten the adventure of touring.

taking public transit sure made the journey more epic. i took the subway down to Union Station then hopped on the GO bus to Guelph and in the process saw things i’d never seen before like the Amouries smack dab downtown Guelph. also met some interesting folks and stopped in a great used bookstore, Macondo Books, and picked up a Sam Cooke biography to keep me company on the way back home.

through it all, Woody Guthrie was right there inspiring me to follow through on my desire to tour Canada coast-to-coast on the steel rails this winter. it’s time to see the country from a different angle. and get a good parka.

it feels good to be back a ramblin.

Grasslands National Park & Holy Piss!

One of my favourite things to do with a day off while on tour is to head for the hills.

On one particularly ridiculous Canadian tour a couple of years ago (driving 20,000 km’s in 7 weeks) i made a stop at the Grasslands National Park in southwest Saskatchewan. It turned out to be one of the most memorable nights of my life.

There’s something incredibly special about driving down dirt roads in the middle of nowhere Saskatchewan. All you can see for millions if not billions of miles is endless wheat fields.

The national park is just a few hours southwest of Regina by car and it takes driving down some dirt roads and through a ranch of likely the largest beef cows you’ll ever see to get there.

My first thought upon arriving at the park was wow, not too many people around here. None in fact. The next was hmm, there sure are a lot of bullet holes in all these signs here. Whatever i was exhausted so set up camp for the night.

After setting up my tent on a ridge, overlooking the entire valley, a coyote party erupted just over the ridge. This gave me second thoughts on sleeping in a tent alone in the middle of no where, with no cellular service, no homes nearby and well shit all those bullet holes!!

So another night of sleeping in the car. Awesome, just what i needed.

Exhausted, stiff and half asleep i stepped outta the car in the middle of the night to total silence, or more truly to a hum of the earth, like i’d never experienced before. No cars, airplanes, city sounds, or anything. Just a peaceful buzzing.

In the middle of taking a nature call my eyes finally fully opened to the sight of a massive sky, where i could see the earth rounding in every direction, not just full of stars but packed with billions of them. There was no dark sky to be seen, just a massive blanket of stars. Unbelievable.

This was likely the most powerful and astonishing few moments of my life to date. All i could think of was how overwhelming a sight up there and how deprived us city folk are from experiencing its full beauty and power. That’s what’s up there?!

And all this happened while taking a leak. i like to keep things classy.

* Here’s an interesting article about the Grasslands National Park.

** And some poorly shot video from the park put to my song Years (from the album theroadinbetween):

* next post, coming soon…Bedroom Sessions – Henry Adam Svec: Folkorist

9/11 and Meat Song Tuesdays

It’s 9am and by some miracle i actually make it to my Canadian political science class on time for once just for the professor to rush into the room, all up in a knot (more than usual anyway), and announce “something tragic has just happened.” With sweat pouring down everywhere and arms a flailing she claims a passenger jet just crashed into the World Trade towers.

Class dismissed!

So i rushed home, turned on the tube and sat speechless as Dan Rather explained the scene. Holy shit was all i could think. Then, HOLY SHIT!!! live on television another plane flies into the other tower. Sitting on the edge of the couch i fell silent with the occasional outburst of “un-fucking-believable!”

An uneasiness swept across me as you could feel the world on edge…was America just gonna start bombing shit out of grief and anger? Were we on the verge of nuclear war? What the hell was happening?

This also just so happened to be the first night of my new weekly gig in downtown Windsor at The Coach & Horses as well. i kept asking myself, do we still do it? i decided what the hell, if potential nuclear war was upon us we may as well get the libations flowing, play some tunes and enjoy the company of friends.

With my good friend Mark Cassar joining me on the bass the evening got started off as soooooo many others had and have since. Nothing out of the ordinary. Until mid set when the power goes off and the emergency lights flash on. Someone runs downstairs to inform us they’d heard an explosion outside. Folks start freaking out imagining a plane had just flown into the Chrysler Building across the river in Detroit or something. i calmly pack up my guitar, “i ain’t leavin’ it down here!”

Eventually i was herded up to street level and out onto the sidewalk with the rest of the patrons. Turns out a transformer had blown and left the downtown core in darkness. Everyone’s nerve’s were a wreck. It all provided for some uneasy drunken laughs.

While out on the street, i figured what the hell, may as well make the best of the situation and pulled out the guitar and continued the show on the street. i’m not a huge fan of busking but this was different and turned into one of those magical moments.

Eventually they let us back in to grab the rest of our stuff. A few of us cozied up to the bar, lit some candles and drank for a while, while longer laughing and just digesting the day. It turned out to be a great night! And definitely goes down as one of the most memorable days and gigs of my life. It was a day that everything changed. Fear won the favour of the day and still grips and dominates today’s political discourse.

What grew out of this single extraordinary night was an amazingly tight knit community of folks. The weekly gig had a four month run and nearly every single person that attended the 9/11 show was there every week following til its end. We’d all been through one unbelievable experience and it formed an instant unique bond like i’d never been part of before or since.

That was the day Meat Song Tuesdays was born!

More on the inspiration and story behind the name of this particular weekly gig in next week’s post.

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* next post, coming soon… Behind the Song: Steak in the Raw