Labrador Creative Arts Festival update

I'm almost halfway through my time here at the Labrador Creative Arts Festival. It's been super-interesting so far. 

Of course, everything at the festival is weather dependent! We arrived without difficulty on Tuesday night, but most of the day Wednesday I spent (with about seven other visiting artists), waiting at the Goose Bay airport hoping that the weather hold would lift and that we'd be able to fly up the coast to the north. 

I was scheduled to be in Nain overnight, but alas, the weather remained windy and we were unable to fly. That meant having the morning off yesterday and I used the time to write a song called "Weather Hold". (Stay tuned for that, I'll try to get it up on YouTube one day soon).

Yesterday afternoon I had a workshop with an adult basic education class. Today was full-on: six half hour workshops with kids from K-3 in the morning and this afternoon, an hour-long workshop with some of the students visiting from the coastal schools.

Here is a picture of one of the flip chart pages from my morning sessions:

We wrote TWO songs together in just a  half hour! Amazing!

I've been trying to get a little rest this afternoon. This evening, we'll go out to see two more plays - we've seen four so far and all of them have been funny and/or moving! The student actors/playwrights really put their hearts and courage into their work.

So far, so wonderful! Our billeting families, our drivers and the festival organizers are taking really good care of us! 

I'm looking forward to the rest of the Fest! (Hey, that rhymes! Maybe I should write a song about it...)

Labrador Creative Arts Festival 2014

I haven't been writing much here because I've been on a performance sabbatical this year for wellness reasons. I'm happy to report that I'm feeling quite a lot better than I have been – and just in time!

In four days, I'll board a plane to Happy Valley-Goose Bay, NL to be one of the artists at the 2014 Labrador Creative Arts Festival.

The LCAF is a drama festival for students in Labrador. I'm going to be facilitating some voice workshops and singing some songs.

It is an amazing opportunity. I didn't ever expect that in my lifetime I might get an opportunity to go so far into Canada's north.

I've got some new merino wool long underwear and new warm socks.
Thirty-eight cm of snow fell in Happy Valley-Goose Bay last Saturday
and it's been below freezing since then. For me, it's going to be
a sudden infusion of wintery-ness!

I am very excited. I'll be posting about my experiences here and on Twitter – whenever I get a chance.

And when I get back, I have some other exciting projects planned for 2015 that I'm looking forward to sharing with you!

Community Songwriting

It's been a long time since I've posted here. I've been taking a sabbatical this summer, concentrating on community events, the Pennybrook Festival, setting up my tiny house, and writing about that and other life experiences on my personal blog.

It's been good to have a break. And then, this week, I had a noteworthy songwriting experience that I feel like sharing.

A few weeks ago, I was invited by my friend, Leif Helmer, to sing a song at the launch of the Petite Riviere Community Park. Petite Riviere is just five minutes down the road from West Dublin, where I live. There are a number of songs that I've written about our area that I could have sung at this event.

But, about two days ago, I had the idea that I should write a song specifically for this event, a song about the Petite River and about the park and the community there.

I felt that I didn't know enough to write that song, so, I went on Facebook and invited people to share their stories about the river. I was given a bounty of experiences, memories and perceptions. I felt very blessed to be trusted with people's thoughts and feelings about their home. Several people said, the river is my backyard.

I did my best to capture many of the ways that people interact with the river and the animals who live in and around it. Of course, I had to leave out a bunch of things! The amount of information I received would have filled a 45-minute saga! I felt it was better to go for a more typical four-to-five minute song.

It was a little nerve-wracking to perform such a new song, but I was pleased with the way it had turned out and felt honoured to have the chance to share it. And I was very pleased to hear from many of the people at the opening ceremonies that they were moved to tears and laughter. That's my favourite part of being a songwriter and it was an additional pleasure today to help celebrate the hard work of all the people who helped to create a new park in our community.

Bravo, everyone! Thank you for inviting me to help mark this event!

Spring Shows: Rose & Kettle and West Dublin Hall

This spring, I'm performing at my two favourite Nova Scotian venues.

I'll be performing on Thursday, April 10 at the Rose and Kettle Tea Room at the Cole Harbour Heritage Farm Museum (471 Poplar Dr, Cole Harbour, NS B2W 4L2). I'm looking forward to this immensely and I'm excited to be sharing the stage with Shawna Caspi.

Next, I'm performing Saturday, April 26, 8pm at the West Dublin Hall: an unplugged and uncensored evening of music to raise funds for some solar panels to install at my new tiny home. The WDH is at 10 Huey Lake Road, West Dublin, NS. Doors open at 7:30; show starts promptly.

After these two shows, I'll be taking a sabbatical for an undetermined length of time.

Interview: Chris Kay Fraser of Firefly Creative Writing on the Importance of Taking Creative Breaks

Welcome to this interview with one of my favourite creative friends and colleagues, Chris Kay Fraser of Firefly Creative Writing.

Originally broadcast at 7pm EST on February 12, 2014. We hope you'll tune in – LIVE or LATER!

Inside Llewyn Davis OR The Tragic Story of the Misunderstood Folk Musician

PLEASE NOTE: In the discussion of the content of the film Inside Llewyn Davis, this blog post contains SPOILERS.

I went to see Inside Llewyn Davis last week at the Oxford Theatre in Halifax; an old school theatre without stadium seating and with a balcony (my fellow and I sat in the balcony).

For those of you who haven't heard of this film, it is a Coen Brothers film. For those of you who haven't heard of the Coen Brothers, Joel and Ethan Coen, I recommend you look them up and watch a few of their finest: Miller's Crossing, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, O Brother Where Art Thou.

The Coen Brothers excel at making movies about people going on quests, about people searching for something, a MacGuffin, often with unexpected results. As the blind prophet says in O Brother Where Art Thou: "The treasure you seek shall not be the treasure you find."

In Inside Llewyn Davis, I couldn't decide if Llewyn Davis was seeking success, or seeking to gain the love or admiration of another human being. I think he ultimately fails at both quests and at the end of the movie, he has given up in despair and is looking forward to a lifetime of drudgery and a lonely, miserable death.

Watching this movie was an intense experience for me.

You see, Llewyn Davis is a folksinger. As the film follows him through a week in 1961 in Greenwich Village, with a detour to Chicago, we see him fail to connect with Jean, a woman he has impregnated, with a cat, some fans, his friends, his sister, another cat and his fellow musicians.

He fails to connect with them in a variety of ways, through cynicism, neglect, rage, contempt, crudeness, selfishness, abandonment and insult.

The only thing he seems to do right is sing and play. Yet he fails to find success as a musician, too. He plays to enthusiastic applause at the Gaslight, but he gets no money or respect from his world-weary, disinterested music publisher/agent. When he auditions for a club owner in Chicago, the response is: "I don't see any money here." When he's invited to play at a session, where his contempt for the bubble-gummy song he must play and sing oozes from his every pore, he takes the quick cash as a session player rather than go through his publisher for a piece of the royalties. He needs the money right away to pay for the abortion Jean is demanding.

All of this misery and failure rests on something that happened before the movie opens: the suicide of Llewyn's former musical partner, Mike, who jumped off the George Washington bridge. Did he jump, I couldn't help but wonder, because he couldn't bear to spend another day in the company of Llewyn Davis?

And, at the same time, Llewyn is somehow a sympathetic character. I identified with him and felt for him. He sang with his whole heart and had a beautiful voice and fine skills on the guitar. But he was missing the diplomatic skills one needs to succeed in The Business. I could relate to that.

The final scene at the Gaslight shows musicians who are obviously meant to be The Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem and Bob Dylan, musicians who went on to be stars of the 60s folk revival. Llewyn goes on to get punched in the face in the alley behind the Gaslight and to sit there, staring into his future of shipping out as a merchant marine.

I can't help but think that Llewyn's main problem was that he seemed to think that he was the only folksinger in the world who was sincere and singing from the heart. He didn't realize that many of the people around him were equally earnest and equally worthy as humans.

Essentially, Llewyn was embittered by the lack of recognition and love in his life.

I came away from the movie feeling that I never want that to happen to me. I offer up this plea now: "May I never be bitter and always accept with equanimity the amount of recognition I do or do not receive in this world." And "Please may I always remember that I'll take connection, love and kindness over recognition every single time".

PS: Just a word to say that while I loved this film, I was very away of how it totally failed the Bechdel Test. Perhaps that was intentional, reflectly the misogynist time and culture in which it is set. One scene that particularly stuck out to me is the scene where Llewyn is talking with the slimy owner of The Gaslight. This guy reveals that he has slept with Jean. "If you want to play at the Gaslight..." he says. Though presumably that only applies to women. No wonder Jean is so angry and hostile. She lives in a world that makes her do something disgusting to receive the same privilege that a man can get just by playing and singing half-decently.

Lunenburg Folk Harbour's First Songwriting Camp

It's been an intense few days. Wow.

Co-facilitating the first ever Folk Harbour Songwriting Camp with Kev Corbett was a full-on three days of heart and craft. In trying to teach some young folks how to find out what they had to say and how to say it well in a song, I learned a ton. I learned a ton from our participants. I also learned a ton from Kev, who's a stellar musician.

We went over structure and lyric-writing technique. We listened to songs by masters of the craft. We worked on figuring out guitars and PAs and our voices. We were lucky enough to have visits from David Myles and Rose Cousins, who shared some of their songwriting secrets and gave feedback on some of our participants' tunes.

And we wrote. It was a jam-packed few days.

I think the most poignant moment for me was toward the end of the third day, when I shared this quote with the camp:

“Singers and Musicians are some of the most driven, courageous people on the face of the earth. They deal with more day-to-day rejection in one year than most people do in a lifetime. Every day, they face the financial challenge of living a freelance lifestyle, the disrespect of people who think they should get real jobs, and their own fear that they’ll never work again. Every day, they have to ignore the possibility that the vision they have dedicated their lives to is a pipe dream. With every note, they stretch themselves, emotionally and physically, risking criticism and judgment. With every passing year, many of them watch as the other people their age achieve the predictable milestones of normal life – the car, the family, the house, the nest egg. Why? Because musicians and singers are willing to give their entire lives to a moment – to that melody, that lyric, that chord, or that interpretation that will stir the audience’s soul. Singers and Musicians are beings who have tasted life’s nectar in that crystal moment when they poured out their creative spirit and touched another’s heart. In that instant, they were as close to magic, God, and perfection as anyone could ever be. And in their own hearts, they know that to dedicate oneself to that moment is worth a thousand lifetimes.”
– David Ackert, LA Times

That's why we do what we do. It was an honour to help our young participants more fully join the ranks of the world's brave songwriters.