Lord I'm bad about Net stuff these days.
BUT:
Played 2 gigs with The Friends of Fiddler's Green (SO much fun!!)
Sold mother-in-law's condo (big relief)
Launched the new music show on 91X (I'm a DJ!!!???!!!)
and have Roger Scannura gearing up for a new recording.

 There's a bunch of other stuff too...but maybe I'll leave that so I have an excuse to write more...

Soon, I promise..

Back in the beginning of time, which would be the early 70's really, there was quite a bloom of Traditional Folk Music going around. I got the bug from Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span and, eventually, the Morris On albums.
 So when I came across a nascent Green Fiddle Morris just down the sre from where I lived, I signed on as their fiddler.
As my daughter Moira was VERY young at the time and my wife was working, I'd be seen in the YMCA parking lot, just outside the Fiddler's Green building, scraping away for the dancers as they rehearsed, while rocking a Moira-filled stroller with an available leg. Early multi-tasking if you will.
 Eventually, I got recruited to the Friends of Fiddler's Green, the house band for the folk club and I had to find a replacement to fill my shoes with the Morris as playing with TWO bands at that time was just way too much.
My brother-in-law, Doug Gies had always been a violin player, performing with the occasional Youth Orchestra or two and he and I had played together a few times. When I suggested that playing folk music, specifically Morris Dances, might be something he might like, he agreed and said he'd come down to a practice one Saturday, just to try it out. Which he did. And seemed to enjoy it. So, being no fool, I said 'Why don't you come back next week?'.
And he did. But I didn't......
And he was the fiddler for Green Fiddle for something like 5 years!
 So go to my home page and give him a listen. That's Alan Gearing playing accordion. He became the Morris musician a little after Doug left for Atlanta.

....................

A dozen years ago, I was given a room and a bunch of
synthesizers and samplers by the folks at work to become the CBC Radio ‘Experimental
Audio Room’. As fun a sonic playground as one could wish.

 The idea was to use
midi technology to enhance the sound of CBC Radio with music themes, stings,
and whizbang sound effects and other forms of auditory ‘ear candy’. Sort of
like the famed BBC Radiophonic Workshop of ‘Hitch-Hiker’s Guide the Galaxy’ and
‘Doctor Who’ fame.

While I was toiling away adding sonic baubles and bits to
shows like Quirks and Quarks and Three Minute Theatre, a young Asian associate
producer started coming around to check out what I was doing. Her name was Ann
Shin and she was from B.C., of Korean descent.

 It turned out she was
a poet and she was looking to have her poetry arranged electro-acoustically. I
thought this was a good idea and we did a bunch of pieces together, going so
far as to perform them live a few times.

Later, when the show Outfront was starting up, I suggested
to Ann that we use these pieces as the basis for a show. The poem ‘Breathing
the Air of our Ancestors’ was the start of it.

We won a Gold at the New York International Radio Awards
with this. Cool!

A couple of years ago, a friend found himself in the same position that I now find myself in: ex-CBC.
His solution to the problem: record a CD.

Andy Hermant has long been a force in the background of music in Toronto. But he's also a skilled banjo player. He thought it was time that world knew of this side of his life. So, with the help of his guitar-slinging son-in-law Jan-Paul Campeau, off to the recording studio he went.

16 tracks and the help of a slew of friends later, urban bluegrass/pop instrumental  project 'Smoke This!' was born.

I like the solo I played on 'Nothing's Forever' ( and I also like being able to say rude things about Andy when we introduce this tune in concert. All in good fun! Really!!!)

Please check it out on my home page.

Well, how do I feel about this 'little show that could' being canceled? (It's not actually dead yet. It's got until June. Get your stories in now while you have a chance!)
Obviously, mostly sad. It's where I hung my hat for more than 10 years, hung out with amazingly skilled, talented colleagues and came into contact with literally hundreds of cool, passionate people who had interesting stories to tell.
But to start at the beginning, for those who are not CBC Radio afficionadoes, Outfront was setup to be philosophically the opposite of most other radio shows.
 In most shows, there is a staff (with a host) who hunt down (or dream up) stories that they think might interest their audience. And they produce them the way that 'works' for them. A particular POV develops. It can't help it. A small number of people working together over time will just do that.Then the host, who is the public representative of the show, presents the piece to the listeners.
 In Outfront, anyone with a good story can get on air. The picking of the good stories is/was the one place that the 'entity-that-is-CBC' has real decision-making control. Once your story was picked to be produced, the storyteller is given whatever resources are practical to produce their show. Recording gear, access to studios, the complete attention of an experienced producer, whatever corporate might the show can put behind it to get the story told...they wield it.
 So we got Sudanese survivors, Nanaimo narcissists, Serbian playwrights, Scottish sound-effects guys, poets, painters, soldiers, people who are dying, kids on vacation and at school and parents whose love for their damaged offspring was transformational. A couple of thousand volumes from the 'living library' that is Canada. And each night is just one story. No mixed messages. When it's your night, it's YOUR night.
 Now, it is true that people now have access to outlets that were unavailable to them a dozen years ago when Outfront was being thought up. There are now blogs and podcasts and Youtube. But there's no access to the expertise and assistance of sympathetic professionals who will help you burnish your tale to the point that you can win international awards with it, a trick that Outfront pulls off on a regular basis. (The table at the door is literally groaning under that weight of award statues. We have to stack them to keep them on the table!)
 Oh dear ...listen to me. I guess it's only been just over a month....but I was kind of expecting that I could at least keep a connection to the show by turning on the radio... I guess, after a bit, there's going to be 'no going home'. And how am I going to find a substitute for working with all those great freelancers and their stories. Sigh!
 Anyway, do listen to my story here on MySpace, download this week's Outfront podcast and go to
 http://www.cbc.ca/outfront/pastshows.html
and listen to all the various shows as a realaudio stream. Do it! People have poured their very hearts into this stuff. There's NO shoddy goods here!
 And then kick up a stink about how there's no more public access on public radio anymore.....
WE WANT OUR STORIES HEARD!!!!!!

Holy Smokes! Things are SO different from this time last year!
 I'm not a CBC producer anymore. I'm not in Toronto. And life is just a whirl of activity.
I mean, my kid's getting hitched next week, I'm looking for...whatever comes next..and then there's all the other family stuff that I'm now 'available' for. (This means I'm Barbara's chauffeur/manservant pretty much 24/7 now!)
Anyway, just to keep a toehold on the things I think I'd like to be known for, I thought I'd start in again with the blog. But not only that. I'm MUCH better with sound than I am with words...so my current project is to upload a new song/ tune/ audio piece at least every week to MySpace. Maybe more often.
 And also post links to the radio work of mine that I'm quite proud of.
Just so folks can hear what it is that I do.

So the first piece of music is now up.
It's a traditional East Coast song, "She's like a Swallow' sung by my buddy Mary Knickle. I've treated the whole thing a bit electronically.

And for this week's radio pick, something right off the wall: my friend Richard Marsella was trying to get an offbeat children's show on CBC radio. We broadcast a sample on Outfront.

http://www.cbc.ca/outfront/listen/2008/08-02-27.html

Sorry, CBC Radio only puts these up as RealAudio streams. However, please give it a listen. It's worth the hassle.

More coming in a few days.

Actually, I believe that sounds vaguely rude…but it'll stand for now (OK, I'm going to quit now before I lose my PG rating.)

So we're in. Still a ton of boxes to empty but some of the rooms are actually semi-habitable now. And the storage area is only mildly bulging at the seams. Wait until I get all my musical instruments in. Then we'll really see how we're doing.

It's VERY beautiful here. The light and the air are wonderful. It's a chore to commute to work every day. Even though the train passes along the lakeshore for large chunks of the journey, it's not the same as looking out and seeing that horizon or hearing the sound of ducks. And the commute is just long enough that you realize that a chunk is being eaten out of your day. I'm sure I'll get used to it. Heck, the transit commute in T.O. was not that much shorter and it went by in a flash. Didn't even notice it.

Life is still very much up in the air at the moment. At work, all my freelancers are wandering all over the map for the summer and it's hard to come up with stuff to work on. I spend all my time chasing people to see what they have.
And I'm steering clear of gigs for a spell. I have one rehearsal with Taliesin on the weekend for a single gig in August and from then on there's nothing until the annual Friends of Fiddlers Green weekend after Labour Day.
I'm down to one 'reason to pick up my instrument' per month! THAT's thin on the ground for sure!

Maybe I should go buy a new amp to console myself…….

It's early afternoon on Sunday and the weather is just strange. Out of the front of the house, to the south, there's a cloudless sky and beautiful sunshine with birds singing.
At the back of the house, huge black clouds with constant rumbling thunder.
I'm in the Twilight Zone!

So here I am, age 55 and I've never had to own a car..
Can this be North America????

Well, yes...as I am about to discover.
Toronto is great as you don't really need wheels unless you need to get out of town. And that's what car rental is for.

But I'm about to move 'out of town'.
Now, I'm going to get to work every day by train. It's 15 minutes walk from the new place. An hour trip and 5 minutes walk to work.
Downside: a choice of only 3 trains in the morning and 3 back in the evening and it's a little pricey: $30 per day.
As opposed to now: 55 minutes subway commute at $5.00 per day.

But I'm assured that I'll need a car for other stuff. I'm sure I'll find out soon what that 'stuff' might be..
I have NO idea what kind of car I'm going to get. I suspect maybe a 4-5 year old Honda Civic would do the trick.
It's the cost that blows me away.
$10k for the car plus taxes and stuff and then insurance which will hit me up a HUGE amount ($4k?) because I'm a 'first time driver' as far as they are concerned. Being over 55 might help a bit.
Anyway, I'm looking at getting up to $20k just to get into the game. Yikes!!!!! To think it costs my entire family $150 a month for all our public transit needs here in TO.

But it's time to grow up, I suspect.

More later on the expense involved in living out of town. I never realised..