I was tired so I went on a little pilgrimage. I’ll explain everything HERE.
I’ll have some summer shows posted soon.
I’ll be teaching a Songwriting Course for Teens at UBC in Vancouver in July.
I have a new little poem published over at Bentlily.
I have a new digital collection of previously released songs entitled – ready for it? – ‘Songs’ on sale for $4 HERE.
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I used to love to explore my grandparents’ attic. Boxes of old photographs, dusty unused postcards, little spoons in tiny padded boxes, folded up scarves waiting to be worn again (but never were).
I remember the rain smacking against the windowpanes as I rummaged through the stuff, coughing on dust, jolting at a dead spider or bumble bee that had come in somehow through a crack in the wall. There were crinkled letters and food stamps from the war, pocket books and 1940s coins, crocheted toilet paper doilies and rusty keys, shiny frames with broken glass.
When I wrote Long Dark Summer – a song based on what I imagined a letter might look like from my grandmother to my grandfather during the war – I thought of my grandparents’ attic and the images I saw in the old water-stained photographs.
My grandmother had a large garden too — raspberries and carrots and beans and bright flowers — and the garden made it into the song as well.
Click here for a free download of Long Dark Summer.
I wrote “How Things Are” while reading “A Handful of Earth”, a sweet little melancholy memoir about a woman working in her garden. The images of her curtains, fire-red poppies and parsley found their way into the lyrics.
I’m off to the coast for a week so I thought the next summer song should be a driving song.
All Along the Highway is up for free download until the end of next week.