oh, what an angry sun you are…and what pretty teeth you have.

travis’ album is in the top 10 on the cjam charts, for the second week in a row. as the kids who like to reverse the consonants at the beginnings of words and then alter the spelling accordingly like to say, yell ha! thanks to everyone at the station who’s been giving it airplay.

my posters are finished, which means that soon my face will be giving people all around town unexpected nightmares and providing generally traumatic stimulus. inserts for the new cd are also in the process of being made. boys keep swinging. dandelions keep singing.

katie, who is kind of like the younger sister i always dreamed of when i used to live in europe and drank a lot of bourbon while watching illegal snail races (that’s a story for another time), played her first show at taloola on saturday. i got it all on video, but for some reason i felt like i should create a special blog for the occasion, instead of putting the footage up over here. if you want to check it out, you can do so over here. i especially like the dark dark dark sing-along, “life goes on”, the song about plastic animals, and the improvised encore that references exploding underwear. i still don’t know how she plays that accordion like she do. i think she has more than one brain. it’s the only way.

shooby doobie dew.

i finally decided on a poster design that truly sums up who i am and what i’m about. behold the glory.

for all intents and purposes, the new album is done. i just need to tweak a few mixes tonight/tomorrow, and then post-production fun and assembly begins. hopefully i’ll be able to start spreading it around by the end of next week. you can read a bit about it over HERE, though i will probably be tweaking the album page a bit over the next little while (so expect it to get even more long-winded), and right now i have no idea what to put up there in the way of mp3s because the album is all over the place. i’ll figure something out. i might put up a few little videos on the album page in the days ahead, exploring some moments that were excised from certain songs, a few of the many things that didn’t make the cut, and how some songs evolved while recording to the point that they ended up almost unrecognizable from what they initially sounded like when i wrote them.

listening party at my place next week? i’m kidding, of course. my listening room, while equipped with a pretty nice hi-fi, could maybe accommodate five people. maybe. and you don’t want to have a listening party with me. i take off my shirt and dance around when i really get into the music. no one wants to see that happen. or do they?

ETA: i didn’t watch the grammy’s, and haven’t done so for years, but i’ve just learned that lady gaga won two grammy awards. whatever credibility and validity the award and the ceremony once had, it is now officially dead.

i am a poster prototype. put me on your imaginary wall, or suffer the consequences.

i have been messing around with poster ideas for the mackenzie hall show. i am no master when it comes to the art of poster/flier creation (i’ve actually never done it before at all), but this is what i’ve come up with. i was tempted to stick with my initial design that featured pictures of me looking completely insane and poked some fun at the “mystique”. then i decided it was probably better to go with something that just tells you when i’m playing and where. i made a collage out of a few of the many pictures bree took of me during the CREATIVE NIGHTMARES photo shoot, and i kind of like the way it turned out. i’m sure it would look sexier ifsomeone with graphic design prowess took a crack at it, but i think it does the job well enough.

i was iffy on the font, so i kept on tweaking it a bit and came up with this revision:

i think that might look a bit better/cleaner/more professional. but then i thought the date started to look funny and lonely at the top, so i did this:

i need to make a decision very soon. as in, before the end of this week. i don’t know what looks best anymore. is it too busy? i think the first version might be, a little bit. does it look better with lowercase letters? i’m kind of torn between the second and third revisions, but i don’t know. what would look most pleasing hanging on a wall? what do you think?

i’ll tell you what i think—i think this album i’ve been talking about is roughly a day away from being done. it’s about stinkin’ time. i just need to tweak a few mixes, finish adding wallpaper to two songs, make sure my projected song sequence works, and then we’re off to the races.

you know how i said i felt like the second half of the album was missing something? it turns out that what it was missing was exactly what i was kind of avoiding—some tiny songs. the album needed a few quick jump-cuts and diversions to mix things up a bit. so instead of adding another 8-minute track (which could have potentially been one of my favourite things i wrote for the album depending on how it would have turned out at the recording stage…but it’ll show up somewhere else before long, i’m sure), i added a few tiny songs. i also added a few songs that were written very late in the game. i find it funny how i went into this expecting to do one thing, and ended up with something that scarcely resembles what my original concept was. granted, this is what tends to happen with almost every album, and you’d think i would have learned by now that it makes no sense to come up with a plan when the plan is going to end up being fairly useless in the end. but this time i really thought it would stick. i thought i would put together a collection of long, dense, unpredictable songs, swimming with dissonance and multiple personalities. and i guess there’s some of that there, but while the multiple personality thing definitely survived, only three songs fall into the “sort of epic” category. several extended tracks just didn’t end up making the cut…it felt like things would get a bit samey if every song was eight minutes long and kept shifting endlessly, with unpredictability somehow leading to predictability. that doesn’t even make any sense, but there you go. of the twenty or so songs i initially laid out as an outline, only two are actually on the album. everything else came out of left field while i kept coming up with new ideas and tossing things aside because they didn’t feel right for this album. there’s at least another two cds worth of material that was written for this album but didn’t make the cut. and i’m talking about new songs that have been written over the past few months, without taking into account all the other songs i still need to tackle. that’s just…frightening.

even now, when the thing is practically finished, it continues to shift. an instrumental track that i really wanted to have near the end of the album just doesn’t feel appropriate anymore, so out it goes, at the last minute. a jerky kalimba-led instrumental i planned on tackling is out as well, replaced by a one-minute a capella interlude that was unexpectedly written at about three in the morning a few days ago while brushing my teeth. what is it about late night before-bed activity that makes all of these songs come tumbling out when i’m not even thinking about music?

i think the album is still the most disjointed and unpredictable thing i’ve done in a while, and it’s meant to be, but it isn’t disjointed in the way i initially thought it would be.

here, for no real reason, is one of my favourite moments on the whole album, stripped of its clothing.

as usual, pardon the pajama pants. my sleep is a little askew at the moment. in the context of the song, it’s almost like a beach boys vocal harmony moment or something, which is pretty bizarre for me. but i like it.

on a different note, if you make music and you have a soul, watching “disBand” on muchmusic will probably make you want to kill yourself.

this is the show that gave us the “band” stereos, who are responsible for some of the most repugnant, insipid, shit-caked pop “music” ever produced. and i mean that sincerely. their songs are so horrific, in fact, that they’re actually an insult to most of the rest of the stuff that generally falls into the category of bad music, which now has to be re-classified as “sort of tolerable by comparison”—kind of like that time i went camping in 2002, and some weird jug of a bastardized homemade long island iced tea concoction was kind of disgusting…until i took a swig out of it after drinking a bunch of straight 80 proof liquor, and suddenly it was amazing. but back to “disBand”. you’ve got the treble charger dude acting as a musical guru to people who either have very little talent but are capable of scraping a few chords and banal words together (and, thus, are equipped with all they need to become overnight sensations, assuming they have model-level looks), or actually have something somewhat interesting going on before it’s beaten out of them because they’re not considered commercial enough…and he guides them further down the road to mind-numbing mediocrity. the voice over narration from the “artists”, talking about what they’re experiencing and learning during it all, is so trite and faux-sincere in the faux-est of faux ways, it makes my penis shrivel and attempt suicide.

at root, the whole concept of the “talent search” tv show is a little ridiculous to me. at least with “star search”, back in the day it was sort of about people who actually had some talent. now with “(choose your country) idol” and the like, it’s either a glorified karaoke contest where the singer with the least personality and the most malleable looks takes home the prize, or it’s a search for the next auto-tune-enhanced pop sensation that can be molded into sounding just like that other auto-tune-enhanced pop sensation, and an excuse for people to embarrass themselves on tv.

but this could turn into another one of those profanity-fueled rants, and we don’t want that, so let’s cut it off right there with a picture of monkeys in sunglasses and suits.

there we go.

i’ll let you know when the new cd is packaged/available, and all of that exciting stuff.

let’s all sing in celebration.

travis’ new album is at #2 on the CJAM charts this week already, after barely even being officially available to listen to for a week. that’s good stuff. congratulations t-rizzle!

return of the stinky terminator.

i had an unexpected epiphany last night.

i was leafing through some old typewritten transcriptions of lyrics from songs that were recorded long, long ago (see, since i improvised the songs while they were being recorded, i had to go back after the fact and spend a long time hitting the pause button, rewinding, and playing through ten seconds or so at a time to transcribe the words, which somehow meant in my mind that the song now officially existed), and gradually came to the conclusion that i think i need to pull out some old songs for the mackenzie hall show in march. and i don’t mean papa ghostface or gwd songs from 8-10 years ago that only about three people in the world have ever heard, though there may be a few of those mixed in somewhere; i mean songs from way back, in the days when my “studio” consisted of a keyboard and a cheap tape recorder, and a new album (or a tape full of songs) was finished roughly every two weeks. if you think i’m prolific now, back then it was on a whole different level, and between 1994 and 1998, this stuff was recorded:

i’m referring, of course, to the cassette tapes that are in (and on top of) the two tape cases that are behind the cds, along with some more tapes that aren’t in the picture. they’re all albums that pretty much no one will ever hear, recorded during my “formative years”, as i honed my ability to improvise songs while recording and slowly started to make sounds with my fingers that were somewhat musical. there are a few early tapes where i was mostly reliant on the keyboard’s built-in demonstration songs because i couldn’t really play (though i thankfully moved past that pretty quickly), quasi-concept albums, mock live albums (with the only applause supplied by the performers themselves), “greatest hits” collections, an attempt at a songwriting seminar (ha!), and thousands of songs through which my early musical progress is captured in ridiculous detail. you can even hear my voice change in tiny increments as i experience the strangeness of puberty. it would take me several months of solid work to transfer all of the tapes onto cd, and i will get around to doing that someday before the tapes start to deteriorate to the point that playing them becomes a gamble, but it’s not the sort of thing i would ever make widely available. first of all, there’s something like 300 hours of music there, if not more. some of the very early stuff is pretty embarrassingly bad, and for a while johnny smith (the other half of the west team, as we were known at the time) was a much better musician than i was…though i did play a mean pencil box while he was seated at the keyboard. even when things start to get interesting, it’s all pretty lo-fi, and you can only do so much to make music that was recorded using the tiny built-in mic on a 1990s consumer-grade tape recorder sound better after the fact. but mostly, it’s just too personal to share all that stuff with most people. it would be like publishing your family photo albums for all to see, if you had a few hundred of them sitting around.

for me, though, it’s great to have this stuff, and it’s great fun to listen to. i can hear myself at ten years old (and—on a few tapes—younger than that, before the “official” documentation began) singing about cats while failing miserably at playing anything pleasing on a keyboard, and starting to find a somewhat coherent musical voice from there. at the time, i basically thought i was making albums like you would in a recording studio. i came up with titles for the improvised songs, wrote them on the tape jacket, used a stopwatch to time the tracks, came up with names for imaginary musicians who played other instruments (which were really just keyboard sounds i made myself), and there was an album. another few weeks later, there was another one. some of the fake musician credits kill me. thomas larousage was in charge of string arrangements and such things in the early days, and left the group for a while only to return some years later, after fences had been mended. bob darren played piccolo on one song and i wrote, “thanks, bob, for lighting this one up.” because he made the whole song, you see. daniel stymie was a mainstay in the early days, until he left to do…whatever it is that imaginary session musicians do when they leave the nest. ferdie schnick showed up sometimes to contribute brass parts. every few albums it seemed i would fire most of the imaginary band and come up with new names. it’s too bad, in a way, that i didn’t keep this up. i mean, i could have been coming up with ridiculous fake musician credits on my cds all these years, instead of being honest and specifying that i’m playing everything.

i could write a book about those early days of cassette tapes and sweaty discovery, but the point is that the music i’m making now wouldn’t be possible without all those years i spent fumbling around, trying to figure out how in the world to get out the music that was inside my head, and i’m really glad i was so obsessive about capturing almost every moment of that on tape. it really is like having a few hundred photo albums, instead of just a few. there’s a pretty staggering amount of variety, in terms of music and subject matter, on all those tapes. there are some really dark collections of songs with titles like there’s a death in the family and the dark side (whoa! it’s self-explanatory!), but then there are completely insane albums like the mad laughter of starving asses and kleenex desire, with songs about barney the dinosaur, mr. rogers, and bill clinton’s genitals. “the dick that never was” is still one of the most poignant ballads i’ve ever recorded, even if it will forever remain a well-guarded secret. aside from the fact that i just mentioned it here.

there’s a song called “mary”, from 1994, with johnny smith behind the keyboard and me bashing away on a pencil box with a red pen. he sings the lead part while i add harmonies and background interjections, alternately trying to sound like david bowie, a falsetto supertramp voice, and a woman. it felt like that moment when your teenage garage band suddenly stops sucking and you somehow manage to play a song that sounds like the music you hear in your head, prompting you to walk around for the rest of the day feeling like you’re experiencing a waking wet dream. only, i was ten years old, my “band” consisted of me and my pappy, and our drum set was a green pencil box. that didn’t mean a thing. it felt like the most epic four minutes of my life. there were a lot of moments like that, when we couldn’t believe what was pouring out of us, and today it’s impossible for me to overstate how glad i am that i recorded all of it. when i think about a few things that i wiped out years ago instead of waiting a few days for a new blank tape, it almost causes me physical pain. i recorded over some things that are irreplaceable, like most of an hour-long rudimentary audio play called “mad dog mcgee” (there’s a long story all on its own), and some of my sister erin’s cutest early musical moments. but there’s nothing i can do to bring those things back…i just have to accept that i was a tape whore, and i made some poor decisions as a result. at least i only did that sort of thing a few times. but man…talk about wishing you could go back and do it differently. half the stuff i recorded in place of those things wasn’t even worth having recorded. lesson learned, i guess—always back shit up somehow, someway, even if you don’t think it’s essential at the time.

all of this is my long-winded way of adding a tiny bit of back story to my epiphany, which was: “holy shit. some of this stuff is surprisingly good for how young and unskilled i was at the time!” i was looking at some lyrics to songs from 1995—the year during which the only instrument i had at my disposal was this thing:

that’s not my own personal keyboard in the picture, but it’s the very same model i had.

anyway, that led to the realization that i could actually play a few choice songs from those days at mackenzie hall, for something different. there’s some seriously dark shit on some of those tapes, and it’s pretty funny to hear little johnny singing about death, madness, broken relationships and castration, before i knew much of anything about those things. playing a few of those songs would just feel…right, somehow. plus it’s a bit of a kick to be able to play something you “wrote” when you were still technically a kid, without being embarrassed. some of the lyrics i came up with back then boggle my mind. i don’t know if i’ll tackle epic dark ballads like “i’m a victim (or so i’m told)”, but i think something like “zach’s life” would fit into the set seamlessly. it’ll make sense when/if you hear it.

here, for your amusement, is a song from those days. instead of a dark tale of…darkness, it’s something completely ridiculous.

Little Johnny – The Stinker

this is off of an album called think it over, which came about halfway through 1995 and the “yamaha period” (1996-1998 was the “clavinova period”, when a much better keyboard came into play and johnny smith became an integral, full-time collaborator, whereas during the initial phase he was more like an occasional guest who would pop up for a song every once in a while). i’m not sure of the exact date, but it probably would have been before august, which would mean i was eleven years old at the time. like pretty much everything i did up until 2002, it was improvised out of thin air while recording. there are two main voices in the song—a somewhat hammy version of what at the time was my “normal” voice, and the voice of the “stinker”, which is mostly unintelligible. oddly enough, it’s probably also the closest i’ve ever come to rap. one line delivered in the crazy voice seems to be: “looking at my excrement / he’s eating like a wench”. dig how i have to pause at one point to set up the split mode with fake guitar/bass, and to get the drums going. also, dig the he-man underwear references. i really did have he-man underwear. and a he-man electric toothbrush. oh, to have he-man clean my teeth again…

here’s proof that, even 15 years ago, i was making radio-friendly pop music. it’s been in me all along.

(apparently, if you type “stinky terminator” into google, this page comes up right at the top of the results. that quick. if someone ever ends up here through typing those two words into a search engine, it’ll be a beautiful thing.)

songs for stringy-haired lovers.

i can’t believe i didn’t hear about this sooner—chad kroeger (he of nickelback fame) has a secret identity that he’s kept very heavily guarded.

by day, he’s the leader of nickelback, and writer/singer of deep, soul-probing power ballads.

but by night, he transforms into…

the paddle pop lion!

he refuses to discuss it in interviews, but i think chad should just embrace his true nature and own it. it would probably win him some new fans.

in non-nickelback-related news, i kind of feel like posting a few things that aren’t going to make it onto the new album, for various reasons. some of them will eventually show up elsewhere. ah, who am i kidding…i’m sure all of them will see the light of day at some point, even if it doesn’t happen until i put together another sprawling collection of out-takes and stuff. maybe a couple of them will even end up fitting on that gargantuan thing called THE ANGLE OF BEST DISTANCE. for now, here they are, still fresh and fairly fragrant.

electric blue felt like a contender until i actually finished recording it. then it felt like it was missing something and didn’t go anywhere interesting enough to justify inclusion on the album. still, i do like the fact that the rhythm is driven entirely by multi-tracked leg slaps, and the natural chorus effect achieved by recording two acoustic guitar parts slightly out of tune with each other is something i had never thought to try before. i guess “i’m running on roller skates to get to you” is about as close as i get to bona fide love song lyrics these days. but isn’t that more meaningful than singing, “baby, i love you, there’s no one above you, take my hand, i’m so bland”? i would hope so.

Johnny West – Electric Blue

i feel like it just never quite finished finding itself. i tried recording drums and some electric guitar, but that seemed to take away more than it added. oh well. you can’t win ‘em all. i did at least leave in a bit at the beginning where i mutter “what the fuck?” after messing something up.

twisted fingers was the song i was going to end the album with, until i wrote a tune called “in my time of weakness” and realized i liked that one a lot better as an album closer. it was nothing personal; i still like twisted fingers quite a bit, and would have kept it on if i didn’t come up with something that felt a bit more appropriate as a parting shot. this song initially showed up here in much shorter form, as the sketch i came up with while messing around with a new compressor (you read about it back around october…of course you did…this is the most exciting spot on the internet today, and you know it). but here it is in its full/finished form.

Johnny West – Twisted Fingers

purple seahorse earring would work well enough as a happy little segue, but it doesn’t feel essential enough to be there. i do dig the slide ukulele bits, and the distant-mic’d, double-tracked, hyper-compressed piano. it’s fun messing around with sounds like that.

Johnny West – Purple Seahorse Earring

i was also going to put up a 10-minute song called “paralysis of analysis” that probably pinpoints where my concept (if you can call it that) for the album began to take shape, but that one still needs some work. it’s also long as hell, and though i will finish it at some point soon, i know that no matter how well it turns out in the end, it doesn’t belong on this album.

and that’s enough of that. if i keep going, pretty soon you’ll be able to take all these out-takes and form an e.p. out of them. it ain’t time for another e.p. yet (though a few months ago i flirted with the idea). there are quite a few other things that aren’t going to make the cut—some of them much more interesting and suggestively-dressed than these three—but many of them still need to be mixed and/or are missing a bit of wallpaper. i can’t let you see all of my naked walls. that wouldn’t be right. fear not—none of these out-takes are really giving anything away. the songs that are going to be on the album are a lot more adventurous and have better-defined abdominal muscles.

i still feel like the second half of this album is missing something. it just needs one song to give it a kick in the ass and shake things up a bit. i keep writing new things, recording them, and pushing away things that up until recently i was sure would make it onto the album. apparently it’s going to keep shifting until the last possible second. i’ve said it before, but i think it’s worth repeating—none of my cds really feel like proper albums to me. they’re just snapshots of wherever i happen to be when they’re recorded. i couldn’t spend a year working on an album, or it would turn into about five different albums. as it is, this one has taken longer to get finished than i intended by quite some distance, though it isn’t because i’ve been labouring over it for months; the bulk of the work has been done this month, with a bit done in december as well. as time goes by (a kiss is just a kiss, you know), i realize more and more that i’m never going to craft the perfect 10-song album that’s 35 minutes long…it just isn’t in me. actually, the problem is that there’s too much in me, to the point where an album like that would feel so lightweight that there would be no point.

so things will continue to be sprawling and lengthy for the foreseeable future. tha’s just the way it has to be if i’m going to have any hope of someday getting relatively caught up with all the songs that need to be given their due. but hey, in miami, burger king is starting this thing called “the whopper bar” where you can buy a beer with your burger instead of a soft drink. that has to be some consolation.

when cupcakes attack.

it has just come to my attention that the 82nd academy awards are being broadcast on television on sunday march 7th, at 8:00 pm. that’s an hour after i’m scheduled to start singing and playing stuff at mackenzie hall. i think that would be the most hilarious possible excuse not to attend my show; “uh, well…i don’t want to miss the oscars on tv. sorry dude. can’t make it.” i don’t think it gives me much reason to reschedule the show (i figure the people who really want to see me play live will be there regardless of what’s on the idiot box), but i do think it’s a pretty funny thing to compete with. you’ve got an awards ceremony that happens once a year and will almost definitely be full of almost no surprises at all (at least in terms of who wins what), and then you’ve got a live show that’s also only going to happen once this year, in all likelihood, where no one really knows who’s going to take home the award for “best mid-performance monologue”. you can always videotape, or dv-r, or—hot tamale—TiVo the oscars. i’m not sure it works quite the same way with a live gig, unless you get someone to capture the whole performance with a video camera and then they give you the tape. the oscars have the edge in terms of star power and production values, but i have a grand piano and a melodica. who will come out on top?

i’m not saying people who want to watch the oscars should come see me instead. people should do what they want to do, like on any other day. i just think it’s funny how it worked out. personally, i haven’t had much interest in watching the oscars in years. it was all downhill for me after brad pitt thanked the makers of kaopectate sometime in the mid-1990s. i did tune in last year, for the first time in many years, mostly because i wanted to see mickey rourke take home the “best actor” award. he didn’t, but i did end up writing “the penultimate kiss” on a 70-year-old parlour guitar in bed while chewing on melancholy licorice, so at least something came out of it. in general, i think the whole thing is kind of a joke. half the time the actors/artists who really deserve some recognition don’t win these days if they’re even nominated at all, the majority of what hollywood has been doing in recent years doesn’t really interest me to begin with, and once again i realize i’m probably in the minority here.

maybe i should have a post-show academy awards house party or something to capitalize on the occasion. it would have to be at someone else’s house, though. someone with a big living room.

album-related stuff keeps moving along. turns out there are two songs i still need to record, not one. one song needs to be remixed with the vocals a bit lower. another few songs need to be mixed. then i need to find out if the sequence i have in mind flows well enough. then it’s insert-printing, cd-making time, and it goes out into the world for whoever wants to hear it. things should probably be finished by the end of the week, and then i just need to take care of post-production matters. so it’s quite possible that the thing will see release sometime in the first week of february. that’s not as soon as i wanted to get it out there, but it’s probably going to be a better album for being given a bit more time to find its own identity. it could have been many things that would have been different from what it’s turned into. it could have easily been an insanely-crammed cd on par with CHICKEN ANGEL WOMAN, in terms of the number of tracks and the runtime; i ended up having to shave things down from about forty new songs, which could have led to a double-cd if i hadn’t been more judiciously juicy. but it ain’t quite time for things to get that epic yet. it could have been a much stranger, more difficult album, but i gradually realized that it was better to just let the music go where it wanted to go, instead of going out of my way to be obscure.

i still think it demands more of the listener than anything i’ve done in a while, but it isn’t impenetrable. there’s a lot of melody, and a lot of catchy moments. they’re just leavened with more curve balls and tabasco sauce than is usually the case. the catchiest, least-messed-with song on the whole album is sung to jesus, if you can believe it, and it’s not all that ironic. another song that would probably be the first “single” off of the album in an alternate universe is made up of equal parts catchy piano pounding, demented falsetto singing, and synthesizer flatulence. there’s an instrumental track that isn’t over in a flash, and is probably as close as i get to ambient music. there are three songs that are about eight minutes long apiece and keep tearing themselves down and rebuilding until they simply dissolve. there’s one song that was written in a dream. there’s a closing track that isn’t like anything i’ve ever done before and seems to sum up the whole album without really summing up anything at all. i won’t be able to say how successful it is as an album until everything is finished, but i like where it’s going so far.

there’s also no proper cover art to speak of, aside from the album title. that might come off like some kind of anti-album-art statement, but really it’s just what feels right in this instance. and i’m too lazy to try and figure out what in the village of intercourse i’m supposed to do for album art that would seem appropriate for the album title. maybe every six years or so i need to put out an album without proper cover art.

there really is a village called intercourse, by the way. it’s in pennsylvania. something about the idea of a sign that says “welcome to intercourse!” cracks me up.

a female domestic fowl is called a hen. now go forth and spread the wisdom.

dig the progression/evolution in montage.

this is my way of informing you through random images that OH YOU THIS has officially been reissued. it looks significantly less cheesy than it did the first time around, and now comes with a booklet containing some period-specific pictures, and present day musings. i didn’t realize until it was too late that there are two typos in the booklet, but they’re merely errors of punctuation that i failed to catch on my end (an extra period in one place and a comma where there doesn’t need to be one), so i don’t really mind too much. i don’t think it makes much sense to drop a bunch of copies in the big black box at dr. disc, because i still don’t think the cd is one of my sexier moments overall, but if anyone wants a copy let me know and i’ll gladly give you one.

in other news, that album i once planned on having finished before 2010 came along is getting ever-closer to the finish line. three or four songs need some work and/or mixing, one song needs to be recorded, and then we might be done. i’d say you should expect to see it appear sometime in the next few weeks. i’ve decided that i’m going to go ahead and print the lyrics in booklet form once again, just so the words are there for whoever wants to read them. i first typed “for whoever wants to read hen”. seriously, who doesn’t want to read female chicken? i know it’s all i dream about at night.

absolutely, kind of, arguably, possibly, potentially live.

so, i bit the bullet, and my teeth hurt. or, in non-artillery-speak, i just got back from booking mackenzie hall for sunday, march 7th. there’s no turning back now. at least it’s far enough in the distance that i won’t start to feel the nerves for a little while.

i asked some people whose opinions i respect what they thought of my idea for a show, and pretty much no one agreed with what i wanted to do. at all. actually, they were in very strong disagreement with just about everything i planned on doing. they said there was no way i should just eat the cost and play for free…i should at least try to break even, since i’m already giving my cds away for free as it is. they said there was no way i should play for any longer than 45 minutes at the most, or else i would start to lose the audience and people would get bored. i should always leave them wanting more (doesn’t the fact that i never, ever play my own material live sort of do that already?). they said there was no way i should throw out the idea of having someone else on the bill, because you always have to have at least one other person play to justify having a show. they said it would need to be bigger and better than the last time i played my own stuff live (at the fish market/fm lounge back during the field assembly cd release show), and i should maybe put a band together or do something really ambitious and exciting, otherwise i would end up puncturing this balloon of hype that has built up around me with a less-than-life-altering performance, revealing for once and for all that i am actually just a normal guy who happens to write and play music.

i considered all of these things, and it got to the point where i was thinking that maybe i really am going about it all wrong, and everyone else is right.

then i remembered that i didn’t get to where i am now by listening to what anyone else thought i should do with my music, and i didn’t build up the audience that i have by doing things “by the book”.

so. if people get tired of listening to me play and sing after 45 minutes, they’re welcome to leave. you’re under no obligation to stay if you’re not having a good time. i wouldn’t stay at a show if i wasn’t into it on at least some level. i’ve walked out of shows before, just because they’ve been way too uncomfortably loud for me and i didn’t have earplugs with me, or because i didn’t enjoy the music. maybe that’s rude, but it’s also honest. there’s no point in subjecting yourself to something you don’t enjoy if you don’t have to. but i try to avoid doing that sort of thing, so i generally just don’t go to a show in the first place if i know it’s going to be (a) ridiculously loud, (b) musically not my cup of coffee, or (c) both of those things. pretty simple. and in this case, it’s not like you’re going to pay to get in and will be able to use the excuse of wanting to feel like you’re getting your money’s worth. so feel free to take off if you feel like you’ve heard enough, but i’m going to keep on playing until i feel content that i’ve hit all the musical places i want to touch on, or i’ve simply run out of energy/vocal power.

also, maybe this is because i just don’t go out to see shows anymore, but i don’t see what’s so revolutionary about playing for 90 minutes or two hours, with no one else on the bill to pad out the show. people have been doing it for decades. hell, for some artists/bands that would be a rather short show. just because most local artists don’t make a habit of doing that sort of thing, that doesn’t mean i can’t. and that’s not an egotistical statement; it’s just an observation. i’m not saying i won’t fall flat on my face, but if you don’t try, how the hell are you supposed to know what you’re capable of? for me, a 30 or 45-minute set is pretty flimsy. that’s not even as long as one of my shorter full-length albums. i have way too much material to even attempt to shave things down to that extent and still feel like i’m getting across even a fraction of what i have to say musically. the set at the field assembly show, as well as it went, was kind of like abbreviated foreplay. i figure if this is the one big show i’m going to play this year where i actually dig into my own material (and that will probably end up being the case), i might as well make it count. that means playing a lot of music. if people can sit through one of my cds that’s 75 minutes long and not get bored, then i think they might be able to tolerate a live show that lasts for longer than half an hour. just sayin’…

if people want to see/hear other artists and bands play who aren’t me, they can skip my show and go see them wherever they’re playing. with how frequently everyone else plays gigs around town, i’m sure they won’t have to wait too long for an opportunity. if, on the other hand, you want to see/hear me play my own songs, this is pretty much the only place that’s going to happen anytime soon.

if people want to hear the songs exactly the way they sound on cd, well…that’s what the cds are for. it seems i’m in the minority here, but for me the whole point of a live performance is that it’s not the same as the album. it’s about stripping the songs naked, or giving them different outfits to wear, and getting at what makes them tick. it’s also about interacting with the audience, and creating a dialogue of some sort. if i feel that it’s not working and the performance isn’t where it should be, i’ll be honest about it and tell you as much. and then i’ll try something else. there was a song at the fm lounge performance back in june that totally fell apart, but instead of letting it ruin the whole set, i just apologized, threw it aside, and went on to something else. it’s almost a given that i’m going to eventually fuck up at some point. i’m not someone who’s never going to hit a wrong note in the course of a performance. but i don’t think there’s any sense in trying to put together something that’s some polished-to-death spectacle. i’d rather try to play some music as well as i can, and have some fun doing it, and hopefully create an atmosphere in which whoever else is present can also have some fun. if that doesn’t live up to the hype, whatever the hype is, then that’s fine by me. i think hype is pretty stupid and ridiculous anyway, to be frank. get up there in front of a group of people with very little amplification and no band behind you, no effects pedals or trickery, just you and some songs with nothing to hide behind, and let’s see what you can do. either you can play and pull out something interesting, or you can’t. that’s the bottom line for me, and hype is just hot air at the end of the day. hot air can’t sing you a song. it doesn’t even smell nice. good music played well will win over flash and bright lights for me, every single time.

people who feel really bad about me not making any money can give me a hug or something. i like hugs. they feel nice. or they can take some cds with them, or talk to me. the fact that there are people who listen to the music and enjoy it means a hell of a lot more to me than making money off of them or selling x amount of copies ever would. eating the cost and playing a free show is my way of saying thank you to the people who have supported the music. playing live causes me a lot of anxiety. i could happily never play live at all for the rest of my life. and if i’m honest, i’d rather not play any kind of show anywhere, but rather concentrate on recording all the new songs i need to get out instead. but for some reason, some people apparently would like to see me play out in a public place, and i don’t know if i’m going to have the audience that i have right now forever. a year from now, things might go back to no one being interested in what i’m doing. thus, i realize i should probably play a solo show while enough people are interested to justify doing it. so this is my way of saying, “alright. i’ll put myself in a situation i’m not entirely comfortable with for you. but i’ll do it in a way that i’m somewhat comfortable with. and that means no tickets are going to be sold, and no money comes into play on the audience’s end. come if you want to come. if you don’t want to come, then don’t. i’m going to be there playing music either way.” it’s also a gift to myself—it’s me saying that i won’t play “the game”, whatever the hell that is, and i’m not going to do things the way other people do them just because that’s the accepted way of doing things and i’m supposed to follow suit (according to who? and for what reason?). if that limits the amount of people who are going to be into what i’m doing, so be it. finally, it’s me saying once again that i don’t do this to make money. i never have, and i never will. if you want to know who i am and what i’m about, and not what some writer who doesn’t know shit about me wants you to think i’m about, come on down and find out.

i also still can’t really think of any other local band or artist you could put on the bill with me who would make a whole lot of musical sense, aside from rihanna, who isn’t exactly local. so that pretty much takes care of that. someone did suggest to me that i try to find someone else like myself to open the show—someone in windsor who doesn’t play live, who doesn’t fit neatly into any genre/category, and who produces a new full-length album every few months. the jury’s still out on that one.

in other words, i respect the thoughts of everyone whose opinions i’ve asked (i wouldn’t have asked them what they thought otherwise), and i thank them for giving me some things to think about, but i think i’m going to stick with my plan. if only ten people show up because it’s a free show and no one else is on the bill (a free show? the horror!), that doesn’t bother me. and if some people don’t want to come out because it’s not at a bar and they can’t get drunk and rowdy, i probably wouldn’t want those people in the audience, because they wouldn’t be listening to anything i was doing anyway. it’s not going to be a loud, rowdy show; it’s going to be an intimate thing that’s more like me playing for you in a rather large living room that happens to be a hall with a really sexy grand piano in it, instead of an actual living room. if you come out expecting a spectacle, you’re going to be disappointed; as we’ve hopefully established by now, i couldn’t care less about flashy bullshit. that’s not what i’m about.

there will be ample time before, during and after the show for people to socialize and chat with me, or themselves, or their chairs, or whatever they feel like doing, and there will be free non-alcoholic refreshments (including a cooler full of boylan bottling co. soda—likely the best bottled pop you’ll ever drink, in my humble opinion) for anyone who wants them. though i doubt i have many fans who are not of drinking age, it’ll be an all-ages show, just in case. i don’t like how a wall is often erected between the artist and the audience, where the attitude is “i’m here to perform for you, and then we’re done”. it seems a bit too much like musical prostitution for my taste. so there will be no wall at this show. i’d like it to be more of a communal thing. if you want to talk to me or ask questions, even between songs, go for it. i’m not some big shot rock-star-in-the-making who thinks his shit doesn’t stink. i’m just a hairy guy who stinks up the bathroom like everyone else. anyone who disagrees with the kind of show i want to play is certainly entitled to disagree. but i’m still going to do it my way.

now that we’ve got that out of the way…if there’s anything in particular anyone would like to hear, i think it would be kind of fun to do a “requests in advance” sort of thing. i have so many songs i plan on playing, if i took requests at the show there’s no guarantee i would remember the words for things i hadn’t prepared (i don’t tend to play many of my songs again for any reason once they’ve been recorded to my satisfaction, though i would obviously be making an exception for the show). this way, i can get an idea of what people want to hear ahead of time, and make sure i remember—or remind myself, if need be—how those songs go, so i can sprinkle them in amongst the things i’m already going to do. so, if there are any specific songs anyone would like to hear, let me know. if i see you at the show, i’ll probably play them for you, as long as you don’t request something that would require me to shred my vocal cords to pieces with guttural screaming (not that you would have heard those songs anyway). and if you’re not there, maybe i’ll play what you want to hear anyway, and then put it up here on video. i know, for example, that meryl would like to hear the heart-wrenching ballad that is “highest G”. murad, if he was there, would want to hear something off of CHICKEN ANGEL WOMAN. kacper, if he was there, would want to hear one of my most moving love songs, “dr. squid bids a problem patient bon voyage”. and so on. even if you request something ridiculous, i’ll at least consider it. i do have a soft spot for certain kinds of cheese. just wait until you hear some of the covers i plan on playing…

it won’t be a cd release show, because the new album should be available several weeks before the show itself, but there will be copies of the most recent five or six cds for anyone who wants them, along with some box sets in case anyone wants to dig a bit deeper. the box sets do not look like this, but this is what they will have inside of them:

pardon the not-so-slick-or-spatially-correct collage. what’s included there is really just the tip of the ice berg, but it would be a good starting point for whoever wants to know just what i’ve been up to over the past little while. there’s also room for expansion in some of the box sets, for future cds and such.

part of me is tempted to put up some posters poking fun at the hype with absurd invented quotes (“johnny west is really one of the backstreet boys…the truth comes out at last…so come on out and hear him sing the old favourites—backstreet’s back!”), and another part of me doesn’t really care about promotion at all. but i should probably put some posters up around town in the next little while, at least saying when i’m playing and where, if only because i’ve never in my life done that sort of thing before, and i guess it’s a good idea to let people know when you’re playing a show. i’m not going to be putting up a facebook event or spamming people with reminders. from what i’ve seen, roughly 80% of the people who say they’re attending an event on facebook don’t actually show up, so it’s a pretty piss-poor barometer of how large of a turnout to expect. i really have no idea how many people i should expect to come out to this show. if 30 people show up, i’ll be happily surprised. if 80 people show up, someone will probably have to catch me so i don’t faint. i will put one or two messages up on facebook to establish that i’m playing a show, and then again to remind people as the date draws near, and that’s about it. self-promotion is not my bag.

to summarize: for anyone who’s been wanting me to play live for a while now, this is your chance to get a concentrated dose of me-ness. if i do this sort of thing again, it probably won’t be until 2011 at the earliest, and if this show goes well, it’ll probably be another solo one-man-show affair with no one else on the bill. so if you’d rather wait until i have a full band backing me up to flesh out the songs and some popular band opening for me, you might be waiting until i’m dead. ’cause that ain’t gonna happen anytime soon. and if you’d prefer to wait until i play somewhere else on a friday/saturday night where you can buy booze and yell “freebird!” during the set, it probably won’t happen this year.

i will not be playing my own songs at the outside the factory gates cd release show on february 19th. i might take the lead for some cover songs and obscurities, but for the most part i’m just going to play a bunch of different instruments and back travis up. if you want to see me do my own thing, you’ll have to come to mackenzie hall and suffer through the terrible fate of not having to pay for anything. there may be a double-headed show at taloola sometime later on in march, where i will play my own solo set after playing with travis, but it won’t be anywhere near as far-reaching as the mackenzie hall performance, and none of the songs from that show will be revisited/reprised, nor will there be a real piano present like there will be at mac hall.

then i’m getting back to the 79 albums i need to work on recording, and i’m going to forget all about playing live in any capacity for a good long while. in the words of the departed michael jackson, this is it.

oh, michael…you always knew just what to say.

so if you have any interest in hearing me strip things down and turn some things inside-out to see what their guts look like, musically speaking, by all means come on out on march 7th (that’s a sunday—the day of rest and not competing with friday/saturday shows) at 7:00 pm and watch it happen. it will be a rather casual affair, with at least one intermission period during the show. i imagine (if you’re in it for the long haul) we’ll be finished sometime around 10:00, so it’s not going to be a ridiculously late night. you might want to show up a little early, sometime closer to 6:00, if you want to chat for a while before the show, or to make sure you get a seat in case all hell breaks loose and it’s a full house. when i say the music starts at 7:00, i mean it really starts at 7:00; if you show up at 9:00 figuring things will start late like most shows tend to, you’ll end up missing almost the whole thing. i’m not going to sit around waiting for the place to fill up before i start playing. and again, if there’s anything in particular you want to hear, let me know and i will probably play it for you. i will also be accessible after the show to anyone who wants to talk to me or throw balloons filled with mouthwash at me.

don’t actually throw a mouthwash balloon at me, though, or i will kick you in the shins so hard you’ll see the face of god. i don’t like getting wet when i have clothes on.

the stock rises…or at least it’s off the floor now.

i have a designated room where cd cases (both with and without cds inside) go after they are assembled. it’s also where i store inserts and other various relevant things. i call it the stock room, though it’s really just a room with a bunch of random cds and things in it. i used to type letters to people in there on the old manual typewriter, until it got so crowded that i couldn’t even walk two feet without the risk of tripping over something and breaking about 34 cd cases with my fall. the table and desk that i use to store things on were long ago maxed out, and for a while now i’ve just been storing things on the floor, in boxes and in piles. now i’m running out of available floor to use. in other words, it was time to get a shelf of some sort.

this is what the room looked like a few days ago:

and this is what it looks like as of 3:00 p.m. today:

it’s very strange actually being able to walk around in there now, and having some amount of organization. but it’s nice. you know what else is nice? having a song pop up on the soundtrack of one of your dreams that you can’t resist recording for the album you’re working on, even though it has nothing much to do with anything else that will be on the cd. dream songs are fun, especially when they’re performed by the blue nile and accompanied by a very strange music video/short film.