Okay, we’ll kick this off with the weather…..freezing cold, snowing, raining, freezing rain, sunny, cloudy, pluses and minuses all over the map, exploding pipes, sinkholes, warming trends, arctic air masses, blankets on, blankets off…..we’re screwed! Somebody make up their mind!!!! This keeps up I’m whipping out the 3″ summer sandals…..winter be damned!
…..and my lovely purple crocuses are out….sprouting in places I don’t remember planting them. I think the squirrels and anything else that’s been rooting around in my gardens have taken the liberty to relocate some of my bulbs. The birds have also been disposing rose hips seeds out their back ends and I have tiny, wild rose bushes sprouting up everywhere. Yes, I realize we had a bit of snow and freezing rain last week but I for one sense that Old Man Winter is done with us….at least until the end of the year. I’ve set up new (for me) outdoor furniture on the deck with the hope I’ll be enjoying my morning coffee out there very soon. Some of the detritus has now been cleared out from under my deck so this weekend it’s time to start the yard cleanup. Fingers crossed Mother Nature goes along with the idea. So far, sun and decent temps are scheduled.
It’s so quiet in the house you can almost hear it…..the quiet I mean. The steady tick of the clock, the occasional gurgle of the hot water radiator and the hum of complete stillness. The outside world seems so far away, almost non-existent. As I sit typing this it’s like I’m on the inside looking out….a rather surreal feeling….like one of those movie scenes where the person is standing still and everything else is whizzing and swirling by at record speed. Watching and waiting. A sense of calm yet anticipatory. Of what I don’t know.
It’s snowing!!!! Not those big, fat, fluffy flakes where one can almost cover your face. But it’s snowing…. Sigh. The grey, dull days of January with just a mere hint that the sun actually exists…..which begs the question, why doesn’t Bell Canada hold their “Let’s Talk” campaign on Blue Monday? That makes infinitely more sense than say, Robbie Burns Day. Why in heaven’s name would you pick the 25th of January for mental health awareness??? According to a number of sources, the term “Blue Monday” was coined by holiday company Sky Travel in a 2005 press release. Cliff Arnall, at the time a tutor at Cardiff University, had come up with a light-hearted formula to determine the most depressing day of the year which commonly falls on the third Monday in January. It’s now a worldwide phenomena. Everyone has jumped on the bandwagon and the term is used repeatedly by companies and organizations (there’s even a BlueMonday.org) and stories in all sorts of media abound. Newspapers recommend taking the day off, there are various sites that will calculate, on a yearly basis, which Monday is going to be “blue” so you can prepare…..the power of suggestion. Although the entire idea is considered pseudoscience by the scientific community, Blue Monday is not going away anytime soon. Did you know mosquitoes are attracted to the colour blue twice as much as any other colour?
Well…..here it is already…..2017! Blink and both Christmas and New Year’s Eve are over, a fait accompli. Phffft….gone! Tout fini! Finito! Done and dusted! ….and here we are…. Has much changed? No, not really. Resolutions? Nope. Heading to the gym? Not on your life!!! The dance floor suits me just fine. Focus? I’m working on it. Oh look, a shiny thing……
We’re back!!!! Tales from the city….clubs, parks and more birthday festivities. Speaking of birthdays, I swear everyone was born between June 1 and September 1. Growing up my birthday was always sort of tagging along at the end….a fall baby. All my friends celebrated anywhere from March through to August but it as especially busy during the summer months.
Well, another week has just blown by and we are already half way through May. Where the hell is spring? I do believe Mother Nature has taken a detour. However, the beginning of “festival” season, music in particular, has started with a bang. CMW is the lead-in with the SING! Toronto Vocal Arts Festival running parallel and beyond. A bucket load of music is on tap this summer and folks are going to be hard-pressed to know which way to turn. So much to choose from and it will be happening all over the city, clear out to Hamilton and back. I’m not even including all the long weekend jams that happen in parks hither, thither and yon. Pick a few favourites, either local or long distance and settle in for the ride.
I first met Fergus Hambleton in person while I was performing with my trio, Graye featuring Todd Miller and Lawrie Ingles, at a small club on Yonge Street in Toronto called Rocky Raccoons. It was a mid-week jam night and we were going to do a few songs when I looked up and Fergus was sitting in the front row taking in what can only be described as a “loose” performance of one of my original songs.
As much as it’s a sappy platitude from the late music legend Andrew Gold, there’s no other way of saying thanks to those who have stuck by me year after year. I have over 2800 ‘friends’ on my Facebook profile. This isn’t a boast. It’s a matter of fact and it’s not to point out the quantity. I’m the rare exception in social media who actually knows most of the people I’ve friended.
This week I’ve been discussing a reunion of my old cover band Spare Parts with the original participants – Maureen Leeson (vocals), Duanne Welsh (drums) and Geoff Wilson (guitar). We were a ‘thing’ from 1993 through 1997. By thing I mean a true-blue working act at clubs across southern (and north-eastern) Ontario getting paid to make people drink beer, dance, grope inappropriately and puke in restrooms. Achieving all four in an evening was considered a success by bar owners and audience members alike. More times than not we could do all four or at least fashion a passable trifecta. Oh, and we were really fucking good at what we did which might be why we were employed every other weekend for four years straight.
Bullseye Records of Canada
