Song #17: Tecumseth (2015 52-song Project)

Tecumseth is a short street in Toronto that runs from Queen West to the railroad tracks.

When I lived in Toronto, I often used it as a cycling route/shortcut from downtown to the west end.

I never lived on Tecumseth, but about 20-odd-years-ago, I had a dream that I had lived there in an old abandoned church with my most recent ex at the time. (That should be an acronym. My MREATT.)

That dream resulted in this song:

This is not a song I've performed very frequently. It's a bit more jazzy than my usual vibe and it never seemed to fit into my sets. I like it, though.

And I can still vividly remember that dream. Even after all these years.

*Because I'm super-busy and traveling and homeless this month, I'm pre-scheduling these posts. That means that I can't provide a link to the song on YouTube, because it doesn't exist yet, at the time that I'm writing this post. But here's a link to my 52-song Project playlist where you can find the song with the final version of the lyrics.

Song #15: Portland Street (2015 52-song Project)

This is a song about the terrible trap of living in over-priced rental accommodation.

Often, when a person can't save up enough to put a down-payment to own their own house, or if their rent is such a high a proportion of their income that they are financially hamstrung, they end up at the mercy of less-than-decent landlords.

Frequently, tenants and landlords end up in awkward agreements – often unspoken – that go like this: I won't make a fuss about you being late on your rent if you won't make a fuss about repairs that need to be done to the house. As a result, tenants can end up living in places with un-inspected and unmaintained furnaces, faulty electrical, bad plumbing, poor ventilation, leaks, mold, etc, etc.

This song was inspired by one such real-life situation, located in this instance on Portland Street in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.

Please see YouTube for the final lyrics.

Song #14: Small World (2015 52-song Project)

This is a song I wrote in 1996 in response to a moment in Toronto when I realized that someone I had known from high school in Nova Scotia, and with whom I had been briefly and unsuccessfully roommates during a university summer, had started dating a guy who lived next door to me in Toronto.

Awkward run-in!

It was one of those big-city/small-world moments. And it brought out all of the elements in my personality that long for hermit-hood.

This song depicts my dream for an idyllic, rural lifestyle, shared with just the right person.

As I am currently enduring a somewhat nomadic month (for reasons I won't get into here—long story), I find myself yearning for this vision of a settled spot, a homestead.

I'm interested to find that my concept of a good, rural home hasn't changed much in 20 years. I still hope for a clothesline, tea, popcorn, a vegetable garden (and the time, energy and interest to tend that garden). And hopefully some good company.

It took me a long time to get out of Toronto.

It's taken me a while to decide what I want here in Nova Scotia.

I'm getting there.

This ideal is something I hope I can create for myself.

Song #13: Four Walls (2015 52-song project)

This song was written in Spring 2014, shortly after I moved into my Tiny Home, just in time for five long, miserable days of snow, rain and sleet.

It's part love song for my house and cat and part break-up song for a relationship that had ended shortly before my move. The references in the song are to off-grid living in a converted trailer. No electricity. No running water.

My Tiny Home c. March 2014

I added a third verse to the song in the fall of 2014.

Here's the song:

Song #11: We Will See Stars Again (2015 52-Song Project)

As I say in the video, I started this song last year and finished it this year.

Blogger seems to be having issues finding the video to embed, so here is the link to watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/U_neXtSjtgY?list=PLNZVYz5bOBsK0_06TEs2ff-BvyefvbdwI

It's inspired jointly by a Garnet Roger's house concert I attended last June and also Tannis Slimmon's song There's a Lift.

I feel bad that this failed to post March 8 – I had some major tech problems and while I thought this had uploaded, it had not. Better late than never, eh?

Song #12: Where To? (2015 52-Song Project)

I wrote this song in 1996. It doesn't have an exact date on it, but judging from the dates of other entries in this journal, it was written at some time between March 9 and March 31.

I wrote the song on my bicycle, bombing around the city of Toronto. I was an avid cycle-commuter there for many years – even in March.

That's why there are no edits on this page where I first wrote the lyrics down – I had already worked all the words out in my head before I ever put it on paper.

I'm quite fond of this song, though it feels like it belongs to another time in my life – but perhaps I'll be a cycle-commuter again at some point...

On the video, I misidentify this song as having been written around 2005 or 2006 – I think because that's the first time I can remember performing it – it took me a long time to develop the guitar skills to play this song the way I wanted to.

For some reason, Blogger won't let me embed the video. So, here's the link:
https://youtu.be/ZuNcvBgA_Es

Song #10: Comin' Round the Mountain (2015 52-song project)

This is a simple little song – one of many I wrote for a doomed relationship I tried to have in the late naughts.

Some of the lyrics and imagery are direct lifts from the old folk song "She'll be Comin' Round the Mountain When She Comes". The third verse is based on the idea of a dream in which all of one's past lovers come back to show you how what goes around comes around and your deserve every ounce of misery and failure that you're experiencing.

At its inception, this song had a completely different chorus (which really feels more like "B part" than a chorus) which I can't remember now. I obviously didn't like it very much because I didn't play this song very often until I wrote the current B part sometime in late 2013 or early 2014.

Song #9: Shame is the Name of the Game

Most of the songs I've posted in this project so far have been fairly fun and positive. In eight songs I've only done ONE break-up song. Those of you who know my music will know that this is not really representative.

I guess I've been trying to cheer myself up and it seems to have worked. Which means that I think I can risk a downer today, especially since it is so beautifully sunny:

This is a very simple little song that I began in August 2004 and finished in September/October of the same year. Going through my 2004 journals, I'm a bit shocked by how many great songs I wrote that year, many of them never recorded. This is not a song I play often in public performance. I've tried it, but it doesn't go over that well, frankly. It's a bit slow and depressing.

It is, however, heartfelt and very meaningful to me. Putting it up on YouTube is kind of perfect, actually, because if you get bored you can just go do something else. In a live situation, that would hurt my feelings – but in the virtual world, I'll never know unless you tell me (and please don't). 

This is another song with a reference to Paul Simon, though I wouldn't have thought he was that big an influence in my musical life. The line "I've crapped out" in this song is defintely a reference to the line "4 in the morning, crapped-out, yawning, longing my life away / I never worry, why should I? / It's all gonna fade" in the bridge of the title track of Paul Simon's album, Still Crazy After All These Years, which was one of my favourite records in my stepdad's collection when I was a kid. 

*As usual, view the song in YouTube to see the typed final lyrics.

Song #7: Golden (2015 52-song Project)

Happy Day After Valentine's Day!

I was tempted to post a break-up song today, but I have decided on a love song instead. If you were hoping for a break-up song, I recorded an entire album of them in 2008, called Love Bites (available on iTunes, CDBaby and Bandcamp). That album could have been a double album – I had the material, just not the resources to make Love Bites bigger. And sadly, I've written more break-up songs since 2008. I'm sure many of those songs will no doubt be included in this project at some point. But not today. No, today will be an old, sweet love-song of mine, Golden.

This song is not dated in my journal, but I know I wrote it in late July 1996. I was camping at Agawa Bay on the shores of Lake Superior with my then-partner. He and I were both in our early 20s and probably like a lot of smart, high-achieving young people we both tended toward perfectionism. Neither of us liked making mistakes.

It was a difficult trip – it was my first real camping trip (not counting a couple of nights with the Girl Guides and a couple of nights in the Sierra Nevadas with my dad and sister when I was 10). I was in a place that was very precious to my partner from his childhood. We had terrible (wet, cold) weather for the first three days, I felt sick and was very grumpy.

I felt bad about being so cranky. My then-partner made a mistake that he felt really bad about (which he asked me not to talk about ever again, so I won't). I wrote this song as a way to try to figure out and accept fallibility in our relationship. We do not always behave the way we want to behave, but that doesn't make us less worthy of love. (Sometimes our behaviour makes us impossible for another person to be in a relationship with us – but let us leave that for other songs.)

The title of the song was inspired by the way the sun would come out at sunset every day – even on the wettest, most miserable days. We would take a walk on the beach and a beam of light from the sun would seem to track us along our walk. I know this is just a function of the way human eyes perceive light, but it felt like magic, like grace.

Around the time I wrote this song, I took a songwriting course
with Peter Linseman through the Toronto Board of Education.
The notes in black ink above, were ideas that arose from that
course that I added to the song after I played it for that class.

Here is Golden:

As usual, the final lyrics are typed on on YouTube. Open the video in YouTube to read them. 

Song #6: Stage Fright (2015 52-Song Project)

This song used to be in heavy rotation in my repertoire. I wrote it in 2002 – as I was coming closer to the end of a ten year span of not performing my songs in public.

I found this song in one of my journals while looking for Black & Blue, as song that had been requested for this project that I couldn't remember how to sing.

While going through my journals, I found a track list for a proposed album that I was going to record, entitled "New Shoes". On that track list was the title Stage Fright. I looked at it and thought, "That looks so familiar! But what is that song? Stage Fright? Stage Fright..."

I kept flipping through my journals and soon found the entire song. Instantly it came back to me. I really, really like this song. I think I only stopped playing it all the time because it didn't feel as true for me as it once had. I stopped feeling mostly anxious both as a performer and in my life. And therefore, the song dropped out of frequent play.

A couple of notes on the lyrics

 I'm pretty sure that when I borrowed the first part of the line: "Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned," I thought it was written by Shakespeare, though I realized subsequently that that line was written by William Congreve.

I still don't know where I heard the line "Freedom is picking your cage," but I did hear it somewhere. A google search has not given me any clues. Anyone have any insights about where I might have heard this (deeply cynical) line sometime prior to 2002?

I still think it's a really good song. It makes me want to feel anxious and cynical again just so I can feel more authentic when I play it. (Kidding. I kid.)

As usual, the lyrics are on YouTube. Click on the YouTube logo at the bottom right of the embedded video to visit the song on YouTube and see the typed, final lyrics.

Song #5: This Little River (2015 52-Song Project)

I seem to be having some technical difficulties embedding this video, so here is a link to watch it on YouTube.

The Occasion

I wrote this song for the Petite Riviere Community Park's opening ceremony held in October 2014. The park is a beautiful reclamation of former industrial land near the mouth of the river in Petite Riviere, Nova Scotia. The park has been gorgeously landscaped with indigenous plants by Rose-Marie Lohnes and her team at Helping Nature Heal.

I was invited to sing at the opening ceremony by my friend Leif Helmer, who was instrumental in the creation of the park and is also the founder of Little River Folk (where I've helped out and served on the board) and other community endeavours too numerous to mention here.

When Leif invited me, I figured I would sing River Road, a song about the neighbouring LaHave River which I know many people in our community appreciate. But, as I got closer to the ceremony, I decided that I really wanted to write a song specifically about the Petite River, if I could.

Just a couple of days before the ceremony, I put a call out on Facebook for people to share their stories about the river. Many of my friends and neighbours contributed their stories, thoughts and feelings, and I scrambled to write this song.

The Process

Here's the first draft:

You can see how I tried to squeeze in as many stories as I could: about the group of seven painting the Petite, about a child falling through the ice. There were many other things I would have liked to have included - about the artists, especially the painters and rug hookers who thrive on the banks of the Petite, about some of the stories of daredevil stunts that have involved the river and its many bridges. 

But in the end, I knew that I couldn't fit everything into the song or it would be a 9-minute-long epic! It is only a little river, after all.

Here's the final version:

Because I wrote the song at the last minute, I didn't actually know it very well when I performed it at the ceremony in October. There were a few flubs for sure, but I made some people laugh and some cry. Any performance that does that is a success in my eyes. 

Still, it's nice to present a more polished version now.

The Details (and the In-Joke)

This song contains several "insider" references on its lazy inner-tube ride down the Petite.

The reference to "whitefish" in the fourth verse is a tip of the hat to the Petite for being one of only two rivers that forms habitat for the endangered Atlantic Whitefish. 

The otter in that same verse was desired for its rhyme with "water" obviously, but I did get a river resident to confirm that river otters have been spotted on the banks of the Petite.

The mention of "Sperry's" in verse six refers to Sperry's beach, a small beach on an outcrop of sand that faces the Petite River on one side and the Atlantic ocean on the other. It sits across from one end of Risser's Beach and is one of five amazing beaches within a ten-minute drive of the community of Petite Riviere. Sperry's is considered the "local" beach. It is accessed by an unmarked road and tourists are generally not told how to get in.

With thanks to Jennifer, Stephen, Bernadette, Susan, Rose-Marie, Dana, Tara, Leif, Anne, Margaret, Scotty, Stacey, Angela, Stephanie, Sharon and Annie for their contributions to the writing of the song.

Song #4: Chainsaw Boots!

I wrote this song in the summer of 2014, while I was splitting up my firewood in my steel-toed, orange Chainsaw boots.

I don't have a scan of the journal page for the song, because I never wrote it down, just made the words up and learned it by repeating them over and over again (with occasional tweaks) while I chopped up my wood. The first time I wrote out the lyrics was in the comments on the YouTube page, so you can see them there.

This song is a great favourite in my home community of West Dublin. If I don't wear my boots to the firehall breakfast, I'll almost always get asked where they are. And when I do wear them anywhere, I'm sure to encounter at least one person who'll say "Nice Boots!"

I hope you get an orange, steel-toed kick out of this song.

Song #3: Rockabilly

I wrote this song during the first Creative Marathon I ever did, which was back in the summer of 2006. I can't remember the exact date of that CM, but I think it's safe to assume that it was shortly after I attended the Hillside Festival in Guelph, which is always the last weekend in July. This song is based on my experience of seeing Luke Doucet perform Bruce Springteen's I'm On Fire at Hillside that year. I hadn't heard that song in years, and in that way that certain songs have to lock into our memories, it took me right back to high school.

My mother taught at the same high school I attended for Grade 11 and 12 (living in a rural area, there was only one consolidated high school, so there wasn't any way out of that happening). I decided to handle this situation by being a really good student, studying hard and not making any waves. I didn't drink, do drugs, skip school or date. I just put my head down and got through it.

I don't regret it; I got an awesome scholarship to U. of T. out of those diligent years and came through university debt-free. But, it meant that I didn't work through any wild rebelliousness when I was in my teens. And that has come back to haunt me once or twice.

I've never recorded this song because I couldn't get the performance right for my record in 2008 and there's also the issue of arranging the rights for the cover of I'm On Fire that this song segues into. Hopefully, I won't get sued for posting it on YouTube.

52-song project for 2015

Dear Friends and Folks,

I've been on a performance sabbatical for the past year, which you already knew if you read this blog (I would say read regularly, but as I haven't been posting very regularly, that would be impossible). 

It's been a bit of a rough year for me. I've been struggling with peri-menopausal symptoms and depression. It's been the kind of year where I never knew if, on any given day, going up on stage would be a delightful experience or a torturous one. That made it pretty daunting to book gigs months in advance.

I decided that life is too short to put myself through that kind of uncertainty and difficulty. I decided it was okay to give myself a break.

And I'm thinking about letting that break continue for a while longer. I have only one show booked in 2015 so far, and if that's the only one, that's fine with me.

However, I'm still (always) writing and I want to continue to share my songs. In addition to writing new songs, I have hundreds of songs that I've written in the past and have never recorded – some of which I've forgotten I ever wrote!

(Like this one that I posted to YouTube many years ago – I came across it a few weeks ago when I was posting another song to YouTube and realized I had totally forgotten that I had ever written, recorded or posted it! And it's a pretty good song.)

Sooooo, I've decided that in 2015, I'm going to create a 52-song project. Every Sunday, I'm going to post a video to YouTube. In some cases, there will be a corresponding blog post talking a bit about the Song of the Week. I'll be sharing a mix of brand new songs and songs from the near and distant past.

I would be delighted if you cared to give your "Thumbs up" to songs or comment on them. I'll use your feedback to help me select which songs to record on my next album — which will hopefully get made toward the end of 2015 or in 2016!

To join in on this project, please subscribe to my YouTube Channel (or "Like" me on Facebook if you prefer) and get ready to listen to (and vote on) an original, interesting song every week.