Journal

Just got back from the Thundering Women Festival in Thunder Bay. It was beautiful yet again, smaller scale this year, but fitting better in its shoes. This is a strong new festival. Serious good vibes. Leela Gilday was the discovery of the weekend for me. Powerful singer/songwriter, great wit, gorgeous. Leela in a workshop with Sweetwater and the Mush-cow-zee-ek-we-wuk Drummers got the 1/16th of me that is Mohawk reeling. Actually, 1 whole of me was charged up. Leela mentioned that this is the 7th generation since our shores were hit by Europeans, and prophesies say it's time for first nations to rise up and be powerful again. Halleluja. That's gotta be good for everybody. Last year when I listened to MuskowzeeEkwewuk drum and chant prayers I just sat and cried. This year I felt joy surging through me. Holy toledo. Holy medicine. Renewal. Resilience.

I've also been enjoying some time at home, and the opportunity to see music and just hang at my favorite local haunts Casa Del Popolo and Sala Rossa. The Suoni Per Il Popolo festival has been on, and the best part of that for me was seeing the Indigo Trio from Chicago -- Nicole Mitchell, Hamid Drake and Harrison Bankhead. They were so real, it made the Jazz Fest seem like a big plastic display. Such grooves, such flying into freedom, such positive messages in words, such brilliant experimentation, true listening in all their improv. I liked it a lot.

Le boudoir is coming up this weekend and I'm working with the wonderful Madame Jordi Rosen on an accordion piece. Anna Friz is in on it too. 5 of us in all, playing accordions and wearing pill-box hats and red jackets with gold trim. It'll be a lovely addition to this blast of a vaudville cabaret. Check out some Boudoir shots from last year

It's also been great to have a chance to jam with the Lake of Stew again. I miss those boys when I'm away. We'll have a show around here at café Toc Toc on July 9th.

I'm gearing up for a period of mad touring with the Wailin' Jennys. We hit the road again July 13th, landing in Vancouver. By next spring hopefully we will have a new record, and we will have toured practically non-stop, through Canada, U.S.A., Britain and Australia. I'm excited and terrified. Out there.

somewhere in northern Alberta with the Wailin' Jennys

Hmmm. Caught in the moment. This news page is really a journal.

The music industry : It’s a funny thing considering the life blood source of music; The soul swirls that are music; the light sparks that we sponge, captivate and peal out through our breath into music. I am a person. I don’t know why this keeps coming up for me these days. What a strange thing to be a person, I guess.

I love this world. From the freezing cold stadium to the mouse in the drawer on a rainy spring day with worms in the backyard pumping through the fresh laid compost, tulips green and firm and soft and vulnerable.
It’s a tiny backyard in the middle of the city. I’ve heard of fields right now, and sky. Ember Swift has a house somewhere out there.

I planted spinach for early cool spring.

I join this band and the band wins a juno and I get to play in front of 13000 people for 6 whole minutes on stage with a pile of rock legends, and man, what a high was that! Excited people in a stadium is FUN! I was gonna get KD Lang to sign my ass, but somehow even though her dressing room was right next to ours we managed to not cross paths. Shoot. But anyway it was enough to see and hear her perform that night. I was in the presence of greatness, that's for sure.

I got my kicks having my hair and make-up done by cute hair and make-up girls back stage at the stadium. And the B-Children of the K-OS act were SOOOOOOOO good. Amazing dancing.

Lesley Feist gave me shivers and joy with her lovely solo song mushaboom, and dealt so gracefully with some shitty tech problems. We actually shared a dressing room with Ms. Feist so we met for a few moments. Janet the hair goddess had just introduced me to her music the week before, which I'd enjoyed greatly as she shore away at my A-head mop and made me that much more rock and roll.

So now I'm still in Winnipeg working with the girls on some new tunes full of twang, and next week I'll be back in Montreal and then pop over to Quebec city for a (rare) 2 set solo show with Jeremy Jones on da bass. Yippeee!

Life has been running full blast, full speed. I like it! Nice buffer for all the heartbreak songs that keep churnin' outta me.

So finally I have decided to get 500 copies of Burned My Ass made, with the help of Harris Newman at Gray Market Mastering, Sandy Peic at Inspired Design and Audiobec who duplicated it all. Those of you with the first 60 or so copies of the homemade limited edition -- if it quits working lemme know, I’ll send you a new one. Raw music at its newest, Burned My Ass was an urgent creative surge.

A couple of these tunes are being Jennyfied. The Jennys arrangement for Devil’s Paintbrush Road evokes something I’ve never felt before -- It calls up my hobo heritage -- like I’m riding the rails on a clear crisp early summer day, the trains rhythm churning, the wind whisping by and the mountains breathing.

So, anyway, OH MY GOSH, The Wailin’ Jennys -- The show we put on, the work we are doing: It’s like a functional equal opportunity singer/songwriter collective with a hell of al lot of perks including awesome girl band and built-in Juno nominations. It is pretty crazy being a deck-hand on this wacky big ship built by Ruth Moody, Nicky Mehta and Cara Luft -- I mean, I feel like I’m an equal part and so supported, but I'm in awe of these three for making it all happen.

I'm learning a lot lemme tell you -- It’s almost spiritual. Our show in Vancouver I was initiated into The Way Of Hairspray, and the world of eyeshaddow is just beginning to unfold -- a dawn of subtle blends of colour. I’m becoming such a girly girl I can’t believe it. I guess I wanted that. Nice to have these Jenny guides to figure it out with and for. In the meantime it’s nice to get home to my boxer shorts and oversized T shirt. Pure bumming around. Ahh bliss.

It’s been a great week at home. I’m back on a plane this afternoon, then back into town next weekend for the massive crazy Folk Alliance meeting here IN MY TOWN! So exciting. Ah Montréal! Gorgeous freaks everywhere.

Woah Jenny! My life has just changed, big time. This is good. This is very good. I got this call from Ruth of the Wailin' Jennys while I was out west that Cara Luft had moved on into rockin' solo land, and the band was looking for somebody and would I like to audition. So in between dates with Spoon and Teixeira I flew into Toronto so we could try eating and singing together, (the two most important things in the world), and peoples, it was LOVELY! And NOW, badababoom, I'm the new Wailin' Jenny! Can ya believe it? I can't really. But I am super hyped. We have A LOT of shows coming up, before which I have A LOT of songs to learn. OOOooh I love singing harmony though. And the songs are SWEET! And the team is a TREAT! Dreamy dreamjob. Check out "our" site! (tee hee) www.thewailinjennys.com

Well, I'm doing a teeny limited edition underground release of some of the new songs I'm so thrilled to play these days. There are six tunes, and it's called Burned My Ass. I recorded it super raw and bare after writing the songs this summer, so I'm really happy to have a record of that urgent creative moment. Email if you'd like one. Still, I may dress up these songs and take them out above-ground at some point... Can't quite figure it out. I'll let you know. We'll be at Casa on thursday night. Me and Spoon and Mr. Brad Holy. Should be a great night. Life is good my friends. I thought I'd burned my ass, and yes there were some tough times, but it looks like everything is going as per the absolute ideal now. Yay universe. Thank you thank you. So, I've put up an MP3 of one of the tracks, with some layers added in by the delightful Awna Teixeira who I've started working with in earnest. Looks like we may have a new little band, starting with a west-coast tour this november. Don't have a name for it yet, just our exotic and hard to pronounce last names, but anyway, here's one of her tunes as well. So exciting!

Back from west coast. Spoon just gets better and better. And Po'girl was such a treat to be sharing the bill with. In Victoria trish (also of the Be Good Tanya's) came up and sang harmony along with Awna Teixeira of Barleywik on the Sault song (this old timey tune I wrote on the fiddle), and it sounded sweet. I got to try out some new tunes, very cathartic. Po'girl ended the whole night by inviting a huge pile of people on stage to sing Penny Lang's "Ain't Life Sweet." One of those gorgeous feel-the-love moments that I've only ever encountered in the folk realm. Then I went and played fiddle at pride in Vancouver with Spoon after spending the night on Caroline Marks dining room floor. What a fine dame. What a trippy thing to play a show on one hour of sleep. We burned the barn. I also busked in Victoria with Barley Wik. And Awna and I ended up playing a show in Langley BC organized by the lovely Happy Kreter. Felt good. West coast is GOOD!

Just got back from a much needed canoe trip with best buddies. Ah, Algonquin, your choruses of loons, how I love thee.

More things I loved about the THUNDERERING WOMEN FESTIVAL:
-- 'Kay, JANE SIBERRY PLAYED MY GUITAR!!!

In a workshop on the friday afternoon which was beeoootiful, and also in her concert... She left ma geetar humming in a tuning I have never done: 4 D's and 2 G's tuned in a pallendrone. What a gushing moment when she played full through and sweet as hell the "You don't need anybody" song that reminded me how I used to feel, the sway and swoon, so full and popping when I was a young teen. It was just what I needed to hear right then, same crazy sensation, except I'm so way mature now so it meant even more. :) Lawdy, shoulders do I stand on. And lady played MA GUITARRRRRRRRRRE.

Also, what i loved was the Ladybird Sideshow girls all of whom are solo wicked, and combined, God those sweet sweet harmonies (Lisa Winn put up these pics! Sorry, that's not the guitar). Special moments jamming late in the beer tent with them all and Serena Ryder pulling out the tunes everybody knows. There was a gaggle of hilarious boys strutting for the pretty ladies with their high spirited pop covers -- Good acoustic version of that "HEYA" song that seems to whizz by in every car these hot summer days.

And of course, the most ENCROYABLE Barley Wik from Victoria, who literally swept me off my feet here in Montreal, piled me into their van, and camped me up the lake Superior, which, by the way for you Thunder Bay destined tourists, was SO gorgeous ... pretty much something like what heaven oughta be like, that massive lake, those rocks and trees, the sandy beach, the jam around the campfire. Such great tunes, such good feeling.

And Sweetwater made my day, and there was a gorgeous Fruit Trio jam, those Aussie's know how, poor Emma Wall with her broken leg, what a cutie, what a trooper.And meegwetch, wise women healers of MuskowzeeEkwewuk. They played prayers. I cried and had revelations, realized I couln't lie to myself about some big huge things anymore. It really works I tell you.

And SO MUCH MORE.

I missed Spoon though, fuck. Gender schmender fender bender. He was busy playing up a storm at Toronto Pride. Looking forward to Victoria coming up.

Speaking of which, here's a pic of moi from backstage at Lion D'Or for Le Boudoir. That was the middle of June already!. Ayay, time is flying by. I'm busy with 10 zillion projects. Okay, 7.