HOME SWEET HOME! I returned home safely from my Big Adventure driving through Saskatchewan and Alberta, playing 17 house concerts in 20 days. And what an utterly unexpectedly wonderful adventure it was! Louie proved to be pretty useless as a second driver, continually veering off the road to chase squirrels, so I was solo for that formidable responsibility, but he was still GREAT company. Someone warm and furry in the passenger seat who never required engaging conversation, sharing a bathroom, or demanded the ever present CBC radio to be turned down, cannot be underrated. And thanks to Bill Werthmann's life saving hint of chewing ice chips to stay awake, I wasn't plagued & tormented by my usual Drowsy Driver Syndrome.
Read MoreI'm hold up at home preparing to do a solo tour of house concerts. It mostly involves learning to play harmonica in the fine folk tradition of it being the only way to add a soloist and still be solo. It's a whole new skill set requiring, unlike the other wind instruments I've played, sucking AND blowing, and the coordination of knowing when to do which. Trickier than you'd think, though millions have mastered it before me.
Though I will be performing solo, I will not be traveling solo. Louie, the handsome boy above, is coming on the road. Not the most practical way to do a tour of house concerts, given the tolerance required from the hosts, but I figure if I get stuck in a prairie snow storm for days on end, he'll keep me alive with his body heat. It's worked for the ferry line up in the winters all these years. Plus, it will be good to have someone to help me with the driving!
Summer always seduces me into kind of a suspended state – days on end of warm sultry weather lulling me to think it will ALWAYS be like this. Like living in LA without the oppressive humidity, smog and crime. It’s so cliché to say “I LOVE summer” – who doesn’t! – but man oh man. Last Sunday Julia, Bill, Jane and I played at the Harmony Arts festival in West Vancouver – on a stage just a few feet from the waves lapping behind us. A cool breeze blowing off the water – families and couples all cuddled up together on the grass. It was heaven.
Walking the dog at 9:00 tonight. It was mild, almost warm, and still light! Halleluya! You’d think, given the earth’s continued revolutions around the sun are a pretty sure thing, (earthquakes knocking it off its axis notwithstanding) that the arrival of spring would be less of a surprise to me. But in fact, every year I marvel and swoon. It really did come again! Well, it’s ludicrous to complain considering we only recently had of our week of winter, with the snow on the mountains finally providing the vista we had hoped would greet the Olympics. But the reality is, I run cold, and live in a north facing house in the shadow of a huge hill, so I spend the winter with a primal hunger for the heat of the sun in my bones. So now I’m high as a kite on the promise of it all.
Hello my dear friends!
Most have you were notified back in November that the new CD was finished and almost available. Of course I intended to follow that up with the confirmation that it IS out, along with Christmas - then New Years Greetings. So much for intentions. So by now I'm on to the second pressing, which in fact allowed me to correct the glaring typos etc. that I committed in the original booklet. Mistakes like, oh - repeating an ENTIRE song! I guess working 24 hours straight to finish it wasn't such a smart thing. Oh, but by now, those of you who have been on my mailing list for awhile are accustomed to a regular serving of typos. Perhaps you even find it comforting! A few of you have begged me to send my posts to them for proof reading first. But noooo - my childish & chronic "I can do it myself" - and usually impulsively at 2 am when I don't WANT to wait until morning - approach reigns. Here's what son Mike had to say about the botched booklet:
It took 8 years to set aside enough time to record this music.I started it the day after Julia left for University last year. With a few detours for other projects, and requiring more tenacity and fortitude than I ever thought I could muster - The CD IS FINISHED!! YES!!!!!
It's titled - "Find Our Way", a title which eluded me until the final day of mixing. And though I feel like I've been run over by a truck (with a preemptive apology for my insensitivity to those who actually have been run over by a truck), I am SO THRILLED. Not just to have finally climbed that mountain, but (thankfully) with the finished product as well. (Pride is not one of the 7 deadly sins is it??) It was the hardest and most rewarding thing I've ever done.