Hello folks! My musical instruments (not to mention my pack and clothing) were all recently stolen while on the road. This is an unfortunate reality of traveling through a world where: people meet or compensate for their unmet basic needs via addictions and money ( another addiction for some); artists are not respected as essential members of community/global health and well being.

I have started a page with a crowd-funding group called Kapipal to raise the funds necessary for me to replace my instruments so as to continue working as a musician. Please go to the included link if you’d like to learn more or donate! Many thanks and blessings.
*(Note : I am also more than open to anyone who wants to donate instruments…I need a five-string banjo and acoustic guitar with functional pickups…as well as two soft cases…it’s just a bit more complicated depending on where you are located in this great wide world

Sometimes landing is hard.

After so long floating on air you come back down to ground and look around, beffudled. What’s all this stuff? The things that were once out of sight and out of mind jump out at you from every bush and wait with sardonic leers around each bend in the road (Road? You mean I have to walk? But I’ve got wings!). Not only that , but when your body tells you it’s 3am, the clock tuts and sighs that it is in fact 9 thirty p.m.

I’ve landed, for now, but this time feels like a stepping stone. In less than a month I will be off on another journey, this time to western Canada.

My thoughts spin out of control with plans and planning for plans to change, and questions…

How do I harmonize my desire for major planetary shifts away from destructive industries and energy sources with the drive to carry my music to more people? How do I balance out the compromises with ethical choices? Does it really matter? Ought I not to just stay in one place and turn my attentions to a more tangible contribution to global transformation? Is doing what I love « enough »?

This morning, before the crash and boom of the chaotic running commentary of my exhausted brain begins, I want to pause and recognize the graitude I feel for all those who contibuted to my recent voyage. All those people and other beings who sheltered and fed me and gave me strength and encouragment and love. Thank you! I am truly blessed by your support.

Denmark!? Who ever thought I would be exploring this northern country as winter casts itself over the sky and the sun curls around the edge of the earth ever earlier…?
Jacob Svendsen, one of my fellow participants in the Ireland Listening Room retreat, longtime songwriter and native Denmarkian;), invited me over with the irresistible persuasion of booking me in to a songwriters showcase almost every night of the week in Copenhagen.
Brett Perkins, the organizer of the Listening Room who also happens to live in Copenhagen, colluded with this plan by inviting me to perform at his monthly Listening Room Open Stage.

And so, banjo in hand, backpack a-bouncing, with no Danish to my credit, I boarded a bus in Regensburg, Germany…and then a train (tunnel after tunnel through the mountains with brief glimpses of the ice-laced countryside)…and then a ferry (in the dark of winter evening, water lapping black as pitch against the boat’s sides)…and then another bus ( as the moon rose a brilliant orange and I shifted around in my seat to keep it in view, wondering if any of the noisy German students crowded around me had noticed it)…and made it to Copenhagen thoroughly done with public transportation.

The huge wooden beams of Copenhagen central station arched above me and I felt myself in the bottom of an ancient ship. Why had the world suddenly turned upside down?
Jacob picked me up and we boarded the local train ( so much for being done with public transportation) and made our way out to Alberstlund, what is called « the outskirts of the city » by its inhabitants but feels like a suburb. Except for the fact that it’s very ethnically diverse and full of townhouse apartments rather than individual houses with lawns and picket fences.

My visit started out well with a solid week of congestion and coughing and I basically lay in bed for the better part of each day, filling up on orange juice and echinnacea. Exceptions were made for;the making of sushi with a brief visit to the city for ingredients and tiger balm to assuage my phlegmy self; a bike ride to the only hill in the area for a view of the city (Denmark is very, very flat…and the only hill happens to be a construction debris dump that was covered over with earth); the show at the Listening Room Open Stage (featuring me and the most excellent Belfast musician Michael Cochrane, along with may other talented folks during the open stage part of the evening); watching the film Melancholia by Lars von Trier, beautifully filmed and also pretty unnerving.

We also got out to explore Freetown Christiania, which in and of itself could take up an entire post. Basically it is an ex-army base that was squatted by back-to-the-landers in the 70′s and has expanded and become one of the largest urban ecovillages in existence. This year they finally signed a conratc to buy the land from the city for a minimal fee so as to no longer be under threat from the local government. Our first visit there was at night so I didn’t see much but got the sense of a vibrant night-life. The second time we went was right before I left Denmark to return to Ireland and we wandered around for a good couple of hours. The streets are lined by a mixture of re-appropriated army buildings and homes that people have built out of recycled materials. There are no cars aloud in the area, they have their own postal system and schools and a warehouse full of materials – everything from windows to old floorboards and machinery! – multiple music venues and restaraunts…It’s essentially a real utopian model of what a city could be like.

Copenhagen itself is steeped in history and the contradictions of most cities. A few interesting and cool things : the harbour in the middle of the city has been cleaned up to the point of being swimable; bike lanes are as wide as car lanes, and run in opposite directions on either side of the road, similar to car lanes; the parliament building is completely unprotected; more and more of the downtown area is barred to motor vehicles and a tax is being issued for any cars that want to drive in and out of the city to decrease use of individual vehicles.

After the first week I bounced back just in time for a series of shows, starting with Blagards Apotek hosted by another wonderful songwriter, Benjamin Aggarbaeck. I have to say throughout my visit in Copenhagen I was extremely impressed by the sheer quality of all the songwriters I heard. On more than one occasion (and I know i’m not alone here) I have sat through open mics trying to internalize my desire to cringe…not so at these events! The interesting thing about Blagards is that it is completely owned by the employees- the owner passed away and left it to the workers. It’s thus run as a sort of collective.

The following night Jacob and I ended up at Cafe Retro for another set and open stage. The highlight for me of this night was watching someone play the « hurdygurdy »…look it up.

Somewhere in this week I also tagged along to a sound engineering job Jacob had at a local library. Little did we know we were going to be listening to Simona Abdullah, the worlds only female player of the Darbuka! A truly gifted musician, definitely worth checking out.
Another highlight of the visit was biking in to Copenhagen and stopping by the bay of the Baltic Sea! The water and wind felt very healing for my naturally wilderness oriented self that has been contained by cities for most of this trip…

Sunday night we went to a concert by Ben Howard, a musician from the U.K. that I’d been hoping to catch whilst in Ireland, only all his shows were sold out. Amazing concert! The band barely made it over from Sweden as the bridges were all being closed due to a hurricane warning…so we made our way home from the Pompehusset ( an old waterworks building gone venue) with a little assistance from the howling winds.

Monday! Another show, this time at the Underbar for a series called the Monday Night Music Club. Great listening crowd and a really good local band to end off the night called Rovdrift. It was rare to hear people singing in Danish at the events I was at, so a nice change! On that note, I didn’t pick up any Danish over my two-week stay…I have concluded, and been told by many Danes, that it is an incredibly difficult language to learn.

Tuesday night, final show at Tempel Bar- the place was absolutely packed and I was dripping by the end of my performance. Another line-up of great open stagers afterwards and a lovely end to the series of shows. Completely exhausted, I spent Wednesday attempting to recuperate before the Songwriting Guild holiday gathering on Thursday night.

Friday morning saw me on the way to airport, windshields lashed by rain.

I now sit in a little room in Galway, tomorrow off to Wicklow to get in some countryside time before Dublin – Paris , Paris– London (stupid airlines), London – Montreal.

The solstice approaches and I warm my soul with thoughts of snow (here’s hoping!) and wood fires that crackle into a silence that so many humans live without ever hearing.

See you on the other side of the pond.

The train winds it’s way slowly through the jagged peaks of the alps surrounding Innsbruck, following the curves of the shockingly turquoise blue river whose name, Inn, lends itself to the city. Green fields give way to dens pine forests on one side, while the mountains peer down their snow-capped nose-tips on the right…

Houses appear on the slopes at heights one would think beyond the reach of anyone but a mountain goat, red slate roofs  unexpected as wildflowers growing through concrete. Waterfalls cascade down the sides of cliffs, the sky is an unimaginable blue. I am on the train heading out of Austria; next stop, Regensburg, Germany.

I’m not sure why I’ve always felt so at ease in the company of germanic people…I’ve asked myself a few times whether it has to do with the fact that we share the same language root. Or the fact that I studied German language and culture for a couple of years during my brief stint in high school. Or is it some strange karmic confluence, some throwback to another life where I lived in these mountains and knew all the thirty letter words necessary to communicate fluently in several of these currently indecipherable dialects? Who knows.

I flew from Dublin to Münich almost two weeks ago, was picked up at the aiport and whisked off to the city of Linz where I was to stay with friends and play a few shows. My first impression of the European Union was the marvelous ease with which one can pass from one ‘country’ into the next- no suspicious security guards, no intensive questioning, no need for the nailbiting stress I have beceom accustomed to in crossing the border with the U.S. of A. What an incredible relief! As I walked out of the aiport I kept exepcting another checkpoint around the corner…but there was none. I just walked off the plane, said how long I’d be staying to a polite, serene person behind a counter, and was fancy free. I was in shock!

The drive from Germany to Austria was much the same…no border crossing, just a laughing ‘now we’re in Austria.’ If only it could be so simple everywhere.

The first day in Linz we went exploring the Müllfirtl, an area just outside the city with beautiful rolling hills and farmland.Unfortunately the fog was so thick that it was impossible to see anything, but walking for a few hours on the steep slopes and intensely managed woods ( no branches or undergrowth allowed…though trees are left to grow to be quite old, unlike in most of Quebec’s forests ) was enough to get a feel for the landscape. Through the mist would appear fellow walkers and bikers, voices muffled, quiet as ghosts. We returned home, legs drenched from dewy grass, back to the city down the winding pinhead turns.

The evenings entertainment included visits to a couple of local bars (the two main haunts for lonely hearts) and my instruction in many important Austrian phrases. The downside of going out in Austria is that smoking is still legal indoors and though most places have separate smoking and non-smoking sections, they’re often not really separated by anything more than a sign.

And in case anyone is wondering, no, Austrian is not the same as German. First of all, even if it was, the Austrians would bite your head off if you said so. So I won’t . Secondly, my German is rather scant but I’ve found that when people speak it I can still follow the conversation. With Austrian I am generally lost within two words. Communication with people in Linz was a mixture of English, French , Spanish and broken German. I found it incredibly stimulating to be surrounded by people who speak a minimum of two languages fluently, and usually at least one or two more! The language bug bit me hard, and I hope to get the chance to deepen my knowledge of Austrian and German sometime soon.

I spent a wonderful week in Linz exploring the city and hanging out with some really great people. I was able to return to the Müllfirtl on the last day and was stunned by the beauty and calm of the place, despite it’s being so close to a decent-sized city.

Thursday night I played unplugged at a local resto-bar, the Wirt am Graben, as background to the late evening customers, attended by a group of new friends. Saturday night I had a more formal show at the Wirt am Graben, and was very well received. I felt disconcerted by the experience of singing to a crowd who, for the majority, barely understood anything I was saying, but got good feedback from people afterwards. I felt very grateful for the effort put in to organizing an event for me to perform at in a city where no one knew my music at all. The band after me (whose name I dare not attempt to spell) sang traditional Austrian melodies with modified lyrics, which was quite good despite my not getting any of the jokes.

Having scoured the city for chai to no avail on Sunday ,I finally got some in an Indian restaraunt right before leaving on the train for Innsbruck. I was afraid I might go into major withdraw, having not had any for more than a month at this point.

The train ride to Innsbruck was pretty uneventful, complete with typically gorgeous Austrian scenery. The fog got thicker and thicker as night came on and we approached the Alps. I arrived after dark and was picked up and walked to another friends apartment.

I feel blessed to be on the receiving end of so much generosity of spirit, thank you so much to everyone who has hosted me thus far!

The next morning I packed for a day trip and wound my way through the city in search of a way into the mountains. Ten minutes walking, some gesticulations and broken German inquiries later I found myself on a path up into the Alps. Yes! Oooohhh it felt so good to be alone, sweating in the sun and wind, clambering up the slopes, ducking into caves in cliff faces, hearing only the crunch of leaves and my own breath. The sounds of the city slowly faded behind me as I hiked higher up…and then…what? A town? Up here? How the…

A half hour hike into the mountains I came upon the extremely sleek and modern town of Hüngerburg, which appeared in my path seemingly out of thin air. There I met two people from Hawai’i also headed uphill and so we accompanied each other through the town and up into the mountains again. At about 1200 metres, the peak still a distant dream, I had to turn back to be in town again in time to meet up with my friend, but even so the view was absolutely breathtaking.

I clambered down, half running as a result of the slope, and stumbled back into downtown drunk on mountain air. Everything seems brighter when you’ve spent the day hiking.

We wandered around the city and walked along the Inn river, taking in the mountains from another vantage point.

And now here I am…on the train to Regensburg. Bathed in sunlight, rocked by a hundred different threads of thought and emotion…

Bis dann! Tchus.

I spent the past week on an island in Ireland writing music with a group of 10 other singer-songwriters…heaven on earth? Close to it…

The Listening Room is an event organized by Brett Perkins that takes place in a few different locations each year, including California, Denmark and the island of Inis Oirr, the smallest of the Aran Islands in the West of Ireland. The goal is to allow singer-songwriters to take time away from their everyday lives for the sole purpose of refining their art; to collaborate with other artists, to push their perceived musical limitations and throw themselves into a context where “all” they have to do is create. The result is one bloody intense and magical week.

At this particular retreat we had songwriters from Canada (aka me), the U.S., Denmark, Ireland, the U.K. and Norway. Each morning we gathered for our morning circle and were given an exercise to serve as jumping-off point for our writing of the day. We then were assigned a partner for the day and went off on our merry ways to attempt the day’s challenge. An example of what we might be assigned; go out and walk for 20 minutes in complete silence together and then write for 10 minutes…then listen to what each of you has written and write what the text brings up in you. Take it from there.

If any of you are in doubt, I tell you now that co-writing is no easy task, particularly when the people you’re expected to collaborate with are complete strangers. Songwriting is perhaps one of the most intimate and intimidating experiences you can share with someone and as a result has a way of bringing up a multitude of insecurities and personal quirks. However, once you’re able to get past the discomfort, adjust to the idea of compromising with one another, and relax into the unknown , the birth of something beautiful is inevitable.

Personally I have very little experience with co-writing and so was feeling pretty nervous and also quite excited about trying it out. Despite the fact that every single day some ghost from my past was convinced that I was doomed to collaboration breakdown, every day produced a new song that I will be adding to my performance in the near future! Thanks to Parisch Browne, Melissa Greener, Penélopé Chung and Jacob Svensen for the fun and growth that working with each of you provided!

Thanks also to Brett for his work in organizing these events and to all the beautiful people I met on the retreat…I hope to share time with you all again in future.

On our day off (largely consumed by rehearsing with various partners for our Friday and Saturday concerts on Inis Oirr and in Galway respectively) I was able to explore the local castle and the Shipwreck of the Plessy, a 50 year old hulk of steel that was grounded on rocks off the coast of the island during a storm, with no hands surviving ( needless to say, quite a few songs were inspired by the story…).

All in all well worth the trip …

And the adventure continues!

The time since the Earth Activist Training PDC has been full to overflowing!

On the Heartroot Farm front we have been blessed with many visitors and, as a result, lots of movement…The balcony of the main house is in the midst of being redone with cedar from our woods,; the garden has been a constant marvel of production and source of nourishment (we’re getting into storage season…the freezer is almost full already!) ; we’ve re-arranged (taken down and put up) the fences so that the animals are no longer right behind the barn (which will give us more space to expand the gardens, access to the pond, etc); we have a new pond right by the barn, as per some of the permaculture designs sketched out by the EAT students, and have come up with a plan to expand parking without infringing on the space by the barn or the fields…

With the help of the lovely Megan, who’s been living here the past few months, we managed to clear out the extension – to – be performance/workshop space and are moving towards beginning work on the earth floor. We also had a wonderful week during the Perseides, in which we tested out our cobb oven on some bread!

I’m sure i’m forgetting some important things, but you get the picture. Lots going on.

As for myself, aside from helping out with all these projects, I’ve been performing pretty much every weekend and getting to see what it’s like to support myself fully from making music. So far I an enchanted! I get to travel around, meet new and (mostly) interesting people, see new places and do something I love in exchange for food, housing, good conversation and financial support! Hell ya!

Of course I’m also having to learn a lot about balance…figuring out how to be a morning person but still play the late shows, ride the greyhound, etc. But all in all I feel I’m managing to find the right rhythm.

photo, adrien aubert

Some of my recent performance highlights were; the Windsong festival in Powassan, Ontario where I was one of two emerging artists at a day-long festival in Michael, Fleur and family’s backyard, and got to share the evening with some really lovely Canadian folk musicians (Royal Wood, Chris Velan, Catherine Mclellan, among others); Entre Chien et Loup in Lac-Mégantic where I played with 6 Pieds Sur Terre and a major thunderstorm forced all the audience to come huddle around us in the gazebo , lending to a wonderfully intimate and celebratory circle of music!; a house concert in Hull in a loft full of glowing faces, and morning yoga by the river;  a full-house performance with Adrien Aubert at the magical Magasin Générale in Notre Dame des Bois; playing at La Bourgade, a local restaraunt and fromagerie, with Théo Forest Laplante, where we will be again tonight!; the list goes on!

I feel I’ve been caught up in the flow of some whirling rainbow, a constant flux of colours, movement,slowly learning to dance with it all…

Blessings.

Well well well…

Here I am again, carving out a little pause for myself to reflect and write some kind of narrative to my past…weeks? Months? Anyways, here I am.

“Let the beauty we love be what we do…there are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground…”
This quote is a trace from the Earth Activist Training course Permaculture Design Intensive (and from the poet Rumi) with Starhawk and co. that just ended out here at Heartroot Farm. This quote encapsulates, to a certain extent, why permaculture design, and this training in particular, has been calling me to share it with our space here for a few years now. Words that describe what I have dedicated my life to, and why I am taking steps to share my songs, to share music, and my love of the earth, with as many people as possible.Let the beauty we love be what we do…

The Earth Activist Training (EAT) sets itself apart from many other permaculture courses by it’s addition and emphasis on the importance of social permaculture. The inclusion of a more intuitive, magical approach to the web of life is something I see as essential to the work of healing and the creation of sane ways of living with the rest of nature.

Students spend two weeks learning and applying the principles of permaculture design, moving through the cylces of air, water, energy, soil, invisible structures, etc. At the end of the course participants receive an official permaculture design certification.

What’s permaculture design? Well for starters, here’s a link to the principles (though different people promote slightly different versions). Essentially it’s a set of principles, that one can apply to any kind of systems design (be it community based, agricultural or other), that mimics natural ecosystems in order to create regenerative (agri)cultural practices that still provide for human needs and desires. The name comes from Permanent- Culture, the idea that we can create systems that are “sustainable” to the point of “permanence,”not in the static sense, but systems that are adaptive enough to include the constant variable of change.

Simple, no? Well yes. And no. For many of us it takes a whole new way of thinking and looking at the world around us to begin applying these principles in an integrated way. What I love about permaculture is there is no ONE way of doing it…it’s not a set of techniques, but a way of proceeding from the point of observation to that of creation and receiving feedback that can, and must, be applied differently to any place or set of circumstances.

I attended EAT in 2008 at Manzanita Village in California and have been plotting to bring the course to Québec ever since. It just so happened that this was to be the year.

This was the largest organizational undertaking I’ve done solo (in conjunction with the EAT organizers, but on my end at least I was organizing alone for the most part) so far, and I am learning much in retrospect. Hosting 20 unknowns for two weeks in such an intense learning environment is no small feat.

Some of the hands on projects we worked on as a group included; a cobb oven (cobb being a form of natural building that involves a mix of clay, sand and straw); the sheet mulching of two spiral beds for our home garden, which has now taken the form of a triskelion; an temporary aquaponics system; a composting toilet; the beginnings of a windbreak and fedge (food/hedge) along the roadside of our property; design for the overall property and three specific sites therein…

It was beautiful to watch the process of this group of people learning and growing together. Beautiful to feel their intentions meshing with that of this land and to see so much care and attention put in to the designs and implementation of projects, to join in song every morning and night together, to hear and share stories of our lives…

Thank you to everyone who made this experience possible.

Blessed be.

The summer neglect of this blog is excusable…

The outdoors are flourishing with life (including our good friends the horse fly and the mosquito) and calls to me every morning.
This particular morning, the morning of the longest day of the year, I woke to the moon shining so brightly through my window that I couldn’t help but keep my eyes open, drawn like a moth to its glowing face.

I sit in a cabin in Kilaloe, Ontario, on the precipice of activity, in the space between inhale and exhalation, holding on to the moments of…nowhere to be, nothing on the agenda.
The birds sing, the frogs gulp, the beavers work tirelessly to flood the one road that gives access to the five or so properties on this stretch of clay and Canadian shield.

In the past four days I have; performed at Shaika Café with my brother Andrew James and our friend Blanche Israel- the second time we’ve performed together, and just harmonious a combination of voices, instruments (guitar, cello, banjo) and personalities as our last show at Mariposa Café; played for two and a half hours at the Old Chelsea Farmers Market, underneath a tent in the middle of a field, surrounded by kiosques full of local food and wares…no better place to be on a Saturday morning! If you haven’t discovered your own farmers market, I encourage you to do so…they are always full of friendly and inspiring people, projects and amazing food! At the market I was introduced to an Irish Bazouki , an 8 stringed instrument (no, not a slightly larger cousin of the leprechaun) with an amazingly round sound and vibration, by the owners of the Artisans de la Terre farm from Notre Dame de la Salette; Staggered sleepily in to Ottawa to play on a bill with two wonderful women composers, Erin Saoirse Adair and Lora Bidner, at the Alpha Soul Café- I am happy to see the same faces returning to my Ottawa shows, and the new voices tuning in to some of the more ‘sing-alongable’ melodies of my songs…; played a few tunes for the Unity Church of Ottawa’s Sunday morning gathering with the above-mentioned Erin; quietly and reflectively plucked out some new tunes and poetry at The Hermit Lab of Kilaloe for a lovely crew of people with fascinating life stories; paid a visit to the Morning Glory ecovillage in Kilaloe; dug a trench two feet deep and 50 long for an electrical wire…I’ll leave the rest to your imagination.

It’s amazing how time occasionally seems to stretch to allow us to do the activities of a month in the space of few days.

I am trying my best , though I know it’s futile, to mentally prepare for the two weeks to come, where Starhawk will be giving a permaculture design course, earth activist training, at Heartroot Farm where I sometimes live. This is an event I’ve been organizing for some months and have been conspiring towards for a couple of years now since I took the course in Manzanita Village in 2008.

And so , I leave this screen to walk where the breeze is cool and listen to the rustling leaves before life sweeps me up into activity again.

On this solstice I hold in my heart the desire to find the strength to accept the fire and the light in me and to let it shine without inhibition.

I highly recommend using this for anyone whose current lifestyle involves travel via oil-based methods…The website http://www.actioncarbone.org/ allows you to download a widget that you can install on your webpage to encourage other people to use the calculator and offset their carbon emissions. There is a lengthy and in depth explanation on the site of how and why this service is being offered by them…

Definitely doesn’t make up for the necessary lifestyle changes we all must be working towards, but a good step in the weaning process.

Check it out!

Ok so I’m a little late on this one…I’m not the best at these blog things I admit. It’s just not quite the same as putting pen to paper for me…In any case, at the beginning of the month Théo and I did another whirlwind tour of 4 days, performing in Ottawa, Toronto and Montréal (at Umi Café, Free Times Café and a house concert respectively) before returning to the farm in the Eastern Townships.

The fact that my main accompaniest has an organic beef and dairy farm has indeed proven to have certain…ehem…constraints. Unlike children, one cannot simply convince 40 bovines to take a roadtrip. Telling yourself that you’ll be able to put up with their whining and back seat arguments is no solution. No amount of books on tape will keep these fuzzy mammals entertained. Not to mention the parking fees.

All that to say, I’ve taken to a model of hit and run performance, where I book three or four shows into three or four days (last weekend we did four shows in three days…), which appears to be the maximum comfort limit for asking someone to replace him as daily caretaker. The result is the I feel almost perpetually on ‘tour,’ either in extreme extroversion or in the three R mode (recovery, reflection, rehearsal).

It’s quite the life. I have to admit I find it extremely fun, despite my qualms about participating in the oil economy with all the required transportation. I hope to find a solution to converting my car this year…open to suggestions. That or shrink Canada, I’m not sure which is within my budget.

My apologies and thanks to all my wonderful friends who feed and house me on my travels and whom I rarely feel like I have enough time to spend catching up with!