収束ゾーンでのライフ: Life in the Convergence Zone

I’ve never used a tent on tour which is kind of unusual amongst the people I know in music, but for these Leannan Sidhe gigs I need it. SHITTY CELL PHONE PICS, AHOY!

jfc this is a big tent

i really do not remember this tent being so big

This is actually one of TWO tents I own. The other is older because I bought it used and it’s five people, not four like this one, but I think it’s about the same size actually. But MUCH harder to set up.

fred wants to know wtf i am doing with a tent that big

honestly i have had dorm rooms smaller than this tent

I timed taking it down, which is going to be the part that needs to be done most quickly because of schedules: 14 minutes from fully set up (which it wasn’t in these pictures, a kind of rain cowl goes over the top) to fully packed in the single carry bag. I’m going to do it again later for practice because I haven’t used it since I don’t even know. 2005?

ADVENTURE!

Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil. Come listen to our music!

Up quite late last night with Leannan Sidhe, working out new arrangements for a bunch of their music, since I’ll be guesting with them in Richland, Washington for six shows, June 29th and 30th. I’ve never done anything quite like this before. They have a BAND VAN. I’m told it’s kind of scary but that’s okay. I’ve never had a band van. ADVENTURE!

Hopefully not this kind of adventure.

At this point it looks like I’ll be bringing the zouk, mandolin, and bodhran, doing a lot of different things on different songs. Oh, and vocals – I’ll sing lead on “Song for a Blockade Runner,” one of mine, maybe some extra vox on “Voiceless,” one of Shanti’s, and co-lead vocals on “King of Elfland’s Daughter,” a duet which is on Leannan Sidhe’s second CD but originated with the early Celtic rock band, Phoenix, back in the late 1970s/early 1980s.

Elfland’s Daughter is a fun song on zouk, I gotta tell you. It’s chorded for guitar, but honestly I like how it sounds here better. I’m borrowing some guitar tricks and figuring out how they sound on my instrument, and it’s different, but kinda bitchin’.

I just wish we had a fiddler to do the solo, but half their band can’t make this gig, which is why I’m onboard at all, and is, in turn, why this song made it onto the setlist, because I have three octaves of vox at my disposal which means yeah, I can do Alec’s part, so suddenly it’s back on the radar. And and and.

Really, it was a fantastically productive session. Hopefully we can keep that up in the full-band rehearsals.

Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil. Come listen to our music!

Right, back to Newfoundland and Labrador! Well, okay, St. John’s and Torbay.

We woke the morning of our third to the only rainy day we ever saw in St. John’s, and frankly, it wasn’t very rainy. But we decided to go visit The Rooms, a large museum of Newfoundland and Labrador history and culture.

It’s modelled from the outside as a collection of outsized fishing and fish-prepping buildings that every fishing family would have in the old days of Newfoundland, and there are a huge supply of exhibits – and also a large artspace showing work from Newfoundland artists. There’s also a small bookstore, where I bought a couple of histories; if you go, it’s entirely worth your time.

I took a bunch of photos of exhibits, but I’m only showing one here. Remember Red Dwarf?

Sound as a dollar-pound!

Ah, the shit you could get away with on the gold standard with fixed-exchange rates. :D Of course, you really couldn’t, there were all sorts of arbitrage tricks anyway, but, well, that didn’t stop people from trying. XD

Then we stopped for lunch, where there were bee-shaped light fixtures I posted on Twitter because it was CONTINENTAL DAY OF BEES! apparently, with everyone talking about bees.

Anna is not concerned about your bees.

…before it was time for the folkfest!

The Newfoundland and Labrador Folk Festival really got this whole trip started. Anna found out about it, and had long wanted to hear Newfoundland music on Newfoundland soil, and also, the third book in the Faerie Blood/Free Court of Seattle series is set partly in St. John’s, which means it’s RESEARCH!

Genuinely was, too. We walked that downtown like warders.

The first thing to understand is that like the Maritimes in general, and to some degree Quebec, this is a musical culture. That means music is something people do, rather than just watch or hear. It has cultural importance in a way that it doesn’t, say, here where I live; recorded music might be omnipresent, but if you do it, you aren’t generally thought of as a contributor – with the occasional and possible exception of classical. It’s frivolous, or worse. (I’ve been called a parasite at farmer’s markets for showing up to play for free.)

Basically, you have to have a special kind of magic to be accepted as that, which is something I’ve been working on.

So when you see festivals like this, don’t think Folklife. It’s not like Folklife. There’s one of these pretty much every week in the summer, when the weather permits, and people play all winter, too, and this event isn’t “for the tourists.” Tourists are welcomed, and they get them – from as far away as, you know, New Brunswick. Toronto? Well, sure, a few, once in a while.

Cascadia? Not so expected. Or that’s certainly the impression I got from the degree of shock we got at being from so very far away.

I promised a lot of video this post, and you’re getting it. This is a minute I shot to try to capture atmosphere.

Note most of all that this is not an old-people audience. Old people were there, absolutely, do not get me wrong; but this isn’t A Generation’s Thing, this is something people just do. I didn’t get a good shot of the headbanger pit at The Once’s show, but the fact that it was unironically and unapologetically there, I think, communicates the difference.

The next day was another glorious sunny day on the tropical island of Newfoundland:

And we always thought Alan was joking

Mornings at the Festival have a lot more participatory/educational programming, scattered over many tent platforms; we learned about Acadian chair-dancing podorythmie, sat in on a session, and! I even got a surprise chance to perform:

photo by Rick West, courtesy of the Folk Arts Society of Newfoundland and Labrador

…doing my story-and-song bit about how not to become a pirate, wrapped around Paul and Storm’s song “Ten Finger Johnny.” (I of course credited Paul and Storm.)

People were coming up to me two days later saying they loved my pirate song. That was awesome. :D

But the biggest part of that day, of course, was not in St. John’s, but heading up to Torbay to see the first Great Big Sea show of the 20th anniversary tour. It was also Torbey 250, their 250th year celebration. We met up with Krista and Sile, local fans Anna knew through GBS fandom…

Actually from dinner the night before…

and got there super-early…

Queue position… 12 through 15?

Which meant we got set up here…

Front and God Damned Centre

…for the show. Now, non-GBS people won’t know that Murray Foster wasn’t their original bassist; that was Darrell Power, and he left about 10 years ago because he just couldn’t deal with the touring anymore. And Murray’s great; the boy had a lot to contribute. But we were thinking, just maybe, for the 20th, right here where he lives, maybe, just maybe, we might see Murray show up. For the 20th.

Then a gust of wind blew this literally to our feet:

I am not even lying

…the Great Big Sea setlist for that evening. Now, if you’re not a GBS fangirl, you won’t know that EXCURSION means “Excursion Around the Bay,” and that it’s in the encore, and that it was Darrell’s signature song. They’ve still been doing it since he left, but, well, in the encore? That was kind of a big fucking hint right there.

But first! Other bands! Repartee opened; they’re good, and a rising thing in Newfoundland right now. Lots more experimental and synth-rockish; I liked a lot of what they were doing, and went to their tent later; when she found out I was a musician too, we traded CDs, or, as she put it, “really expensive business cards.” It’s true. :D

They were followed by The Trews and Jimmy Rankin. Both acts were quite good but not my thing, so we’ll skip past those. Cute roadie, tho’:

…but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know what that labrys he’s wearing means…

And then, at last, Great Big Sea! The boys put on a show heavily on the trad and heavy on the goddamn well rocking – it was very much a show straight out of 1999, in a lot of ways, which, as far as I’m concerned, is perfect. To be honest a moment – their last couple of albums, while wildly successful, have really been moving towards country/folk. And, while I wish them the best of continued success – that’s not what I care about.

I care a lot about a lot of original music. I like their older originals, which were more in the Newfoundland style, and less in the western/country style. But not where they’ve been headed. So for them to do it up old-school for the home crowd? That made me extremely happy. And if I had to go to Newfoundland to see that kind of show again?

Worth. Every. Goddamn. Penny.

Here’s what the audience is like before they’re really worked up:

Hear us? We just took over on some songs. Alan would lean the mic out, like y’do, and let us go for a bit. Straight out of the Great Big DVD, honestly. It was fantastic.

And then, well, it’s encore time, and…

…guess who steps out of the fuckin’ shadows…

HI DARRELL! :D

And he does exactly what we expected:

Aw, Yeaaaaaaaah.

And we were right there.

I’d really intended to wrap up the tour with this post, but it’s so long already, I just can’t. So next week: one more day in St. John’s, some more performance video of awesome, and some closing thoughts.

Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil. Come listen to our music!

And so we left beautiful Montréal!

G’bye, island! G’bye, Montréal!

We took viaRail overnight to Moncton, and had a sleeping room, which is actually a room, which means we had a room on a train, which is kind of amazing – like, there was enough floorspace to pace if you wanted to – but sadly I was not able to photograph it well.

But seriously, floor space and a closet and our own washroom and AC power and a fold-out desk. And two bunk beds. And a door. With keys. ♥

The Quebec countryside is pretty and mostly farms. Here’s one:

And then the sun set, prettily:

So we watched that for a while, and I wrote a little in my paper journal (but not as much as I’d meant to) and we went to dinner, which was fantastic, and where I discovered I’m rather fond of ice wine, which would also be fantastic if it wasn’t $90 a bottle.

Yikes.

Back in the room, Anna wrote into the night.

…while I headed back up to the lounge car to – well, my plan was just rehearse. But I picked up an audience, and it turned into a little late-night concert! Small but enthusiastic, which seems to be kind of a theme for my shows this trip. Hopefully I can turn that into larger and enthusiastic at some point, but small crowds are great if they’re actually involved and paying attention.

Right after the show, the train stopped and a chunk of it separated off to go to Gasbé, which is where everyone in Quebec goes for vacation. Seriously, everybody. But we kept going, after dropping them off, and awoke to the low forests of New Brunswick!

Facing east, difficult to photograph

We went up to get breakfast (and found we’d missed it, thanks to our phones not picking up the timezone change – hello, Atlantic Time!) but got something in the lounge car instead. And a surprise concert by someone else!

Joanna Barker

After her show, we chatted and traded CDs. She was also playing her way across Canada, but doing it entirely on the train! She’d started on Vancouver Island and was heading back home to St. John’s. Guys, I so need to do this. Seriously.

It took me a while to figure out this name:

Not みらみち. Mir-ra-ma-shee, as in “where you’re tied up to a tree.”

Around noon, we arrived in Moncton and were met by our gracious hosts, Pauline and Neil and the adorable Miss B! Who totally looks and sounds like Boo from Monsters, Inc. They took us home, then out to THE FOOD OF THEIR PEOPLE! Poutine Rapeé.

I have to admit my first thought with the rapeé was that it was a sweet, and that the outer coating was sugar? But it’s a savoury – the outer layer is potato, and on the inside, smoked meats! It’s very much like hombow, only because it’s boiled (very traditional, you say?) it kind of has a slime layer. Which you scrape off, and then it’s actually pretty good!

Miss B and Dad, Neil

Seriously, she’s Boo incarnate. We kept waiting for her to shout KITTY!

We had a whole day, so Pauline and Neil drove us around to show us the countryside. New Brunswick is unsurprisingly also lovely countryside:

Click here for closeup

Click to enlarge

…albeit infested by GIANT LOBSTERS:

Acadian! Lobsters! Of! Unusual! Size!

She’s Et, Jim

Et too, Anna?

And then back to town and off to do a house concert! Again, small but enthusiastic; there were some last-minute cancellations due to the best weather of the last two years and impromptu camping and other outdoors excursions. But, again, enthusiastic. It’s a theme, really. At least one person took some video, hopefully I can get it from him! I need to get off my ass and ask about that… XD

Right about here I started figuring something about the differences between cultures and how much they do or do not value music.

Cascadia’s not particularly music-hostile. Some places genuinely are, and not just fundamentalist environments either. (Singapore is, from what I’m told, rather music-hostile. Just as an example.)

But it’s not a thing that people do, in general. And it’s a little weird if someone does do it; it’s a little spooky, or a little magical, and a bit discouraged, socially. Recorded music is everywhere, but performers are… not generally welcome. I’ve been treated very roughly at farmer’s markets where I’m supposed to be playing, because the farmers – as one put it, too my face – think I’m a “parasite” for not being, well, a farmer.

For not being productive, really, because what I make isn’t important. And it’s socially okay to make that very clear. I’ve had people ask what I was happy about, and when I tell them about it and it’s some music thing, they abruptly changed the subject.

That’s not the norm – in that it’s not the most common reaction – but it normal, in that it happens often enough to be unremarkable. It’s not worth noting.

Unless, of course, I’m explaining the differences between places, like I am now.

So it’s not suppressed – and classical is outright approved of – so there are instrument stores here, and some very good ones! (Dusty Strings in Fremont, Seattle; American Music in Bellevue both come to mind.) But, well, they’re niche. They’re quirky. In a positive sense, absolutely! But… quirky. Off-beat. Off-path. Certainly not something you’d find sharing a big-box store parking lot with Costco or, oh, Home Depot.

…oh.

Yeah. It’s like that.

Every instrument store I went into starting with Montréal and heading east had more variety – not necessarily total stock, but overall variety – than anything I’ve ever seen before this trip. Even the small ones.

That only happens if you have economic demand. And that economic demand tells you, as clearly as can be told without being there, how far down that difference goes. Music is productive; music is something people do.

I’ll talk more about this later. Thank you again, Pauline and Neil, for having us in – and next up: St. John’s!

Also in Moncton:

OMG DO WANT. Godin. Particularly the A5 (5-string) version. Droooooooool.

Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil. Come listen to our music!

So we got on a train from Toronto and went to Montréal! I hate airplane travel but love train travel, and this was quite a bit like the Cascadian rail that I take from Seattle to Vancouver all the time, with two minor differences: 1. the foot was much better, but 2. no lounge or separate dining car, which means I was essentially just in a seat for those hours.

For most people, they’d take the better food – and it was fabulous – but I’d rather have the ability to get up and walk to another car. I hate sitting that long.

Taking pictures from the train didn’t work very well because the sunlight was on the wrong side. But we saw this:

hi lake!

And this:

seems familiar

Which reminded me of this:

oooooh rite

And then once we got there we saw this:

unf

…and I went Hel-LO, Montréal! And then we went to dinner with Vicka and Pywaket! And I determined that in fact, rabbit is super tasty, as was the gelato and chocolate at Suite 88 up on the Plateau, which is where we spent most of our time.

Montreal looks a lot like this!

And also has this, which is where Anna and I would buy all the things if we lived there:

home of the bass ukelele, which I desperately want

Next day was up early for Festival Mémoire et Racines in Joliette! And Em picked us up from Hotel Lord Berri and took us to her favourite Quebec poutine-and-steamed-bun-hot-dog place on the way. I realised I’d forgot my phone so most of this are sadly just off my phone. But!

Anna was particularly happy to see these guys:

Les Charbonniers de l’enfer

…because they never travel all the way out to Cascadia! So she got to see them live. In a tent! And sang along like this:

i did not understand the lyrics

The big OMG SQUEE for me was that some of the musicians were having little pickup sessions, and they’d get together and play at this one building outside the green room, and other people could sit in on this ring of tables around them if you wanted, and play along. So of course I did that, briefly playing with the new spoons I’d just bought:

Picture courtesy Em F

…and then with my zouk, which I had of course brought up from Montréal.

And that went over so well that I got called up to the main circle to play.

O.o

Honestly, it was one of those, “…me?” and “is this really happening?” moments, because this is one of those bullshit daydream fantasy events that doesn’t ever actually happen in real life, except hi, it was happening right then.

It was epic. I played along for a while and eventually introduced a set that featured my Mystery Tune and got a round of applause from the core group over that. They liked both the tune and the whole set! But didn’t know it either – until now, anyway. :D

Anyway, once that broke up, we went over to the crafts area and bought dinner and I had a kind of hilarious language fail moment. Apparently there’s a thing in bilingual people where your main language is Language A and the second language you speak is Language B and All Other Languages become Language B.

So if you walk up to a vendor you discover is Francophone-only but you didn’t know they were Francophone-only you might just panic and spew, “chotto matte gozaimasu, atashino tomodachi furansugo hanashima ANNA-CHAN!”

And then they ask if you have any English and you go O.O and “…I have some English” and you ignore the question about your native language like you don’t understand it and run away.

so embarrassing XD

The evening concerts were great! I wish I’d had my proper camera; the iPhone doesn’t do well in low and evening light. But this is what Bernard Simard et compagnie looked like:

only, you know, larger

And this is what … I think these are still they, anyway, I’ll edit this when I’m sure… Belzebuth sounded like, recorded on an iPhone!

you can hear Anna in this next to me :D

And that’s a whole lot of photos! Next: MOAR TRAINS! Only with better photographs, and a surprise concert ON A TRAIN, and Moncton!

Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil. Come listen to our music!

Hey, everybody – I’m hip-deep in soundtrack and book and also some equipment upgrades and tour setup stuff so I’m mostly taking an internet break this week. But I’ve finished another new song for the Free Court of Seattle soundtrack! I wish you guys could hear it, it’s awesome.

Are you coming to Westercon? I’ll have an announcement once they get back to me again to confirm, but it’s pretty confirmed. ^_^

Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil. Come listen to our music!

Set out early north from Portland – well, early for me, like 10am – and I have photos and hopefully video from the Portland show! I hope to post a couple… if my camera stops being stupid. (Right now, it’s all BUTTER BUTTER BUTTER BUTTER and I don’t know why.)

On the way back, southwest Washington looked totally like the flat parts of Skyrim. I’m not even making that up. Thanks to a snowfall, you even had the increasing-layer-of-snow up the slopes of the foothills. I took the scenic route north – Jackson Highway / Toledo / Silver Creek / Morton / Route 7 / Route 161 – and it took forever but gorgeous and I have photos! I hope.

But since we don’t have that, at least not yet, please enjoy this parrot dancing like a maniac to dubstep.

Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil. Come listen to our music!

Hey, minions! Back up in the Lair for a couple of days before heading back out again. Thank you again, Sidhehaven, for having me in for a show, letting me crash in your yome, and for showing me such kind hospitality!

Anybody willing to host a house concert in February? I’m loving the house concert tour thing, I want to do more of it, and I already have one offer on the table in North Seattle. Please, let me know!

You Think You’re So Clever With Your Lens Flares, Abrams!

Sherry said I really should do a web single of the song I premiered at Sidhehaven. I’m going to work on that after the current tour and see what happens. I hesitate in part because I tend to revise songs a lot as I perform them out, and they improve for that, and this one’s new.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t do a version now and then a revised version for the next album. If I can get somewhere I like with it, I’ll likely do that.

Sidhehaven Gremlin says Hi

At home, now, I’m mostly replenishing supplies and the like – repairing a cable, dumping recordings to hard drives, things like that. K’ Wiley gave me some advice a few weeks ago about making up lyrics stickers, and wow, people reallllllllly like those! I’m out of several and have already printed up more for the Bainbridge Island show on Friday:

You get a MINION sticker if you bring a friend. :D Or if you help out with the merch table (thanks, Annie!) or something like that. I want to make buttons but nobody seems to have a button maker I can borrow!

That’s it for now. Come to the show on Friday, and don’t forget the new fan mailing list download. This isn’t going up on Bandcamp or Cracksman Betty or anything. So if you’re on the list and didn’t get a download code, tell me! I’ll fix it. :D

Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil. Come listen to our music!