Newsy bluesy: Played a Craig Northey Trio show in Montreal with special guest Pierre Smith on guitar (Elvez “the Mexican Elvis”). It was a private party thrown by the CBC as part of the “Just For Laughs” festival. I probably should have announced it to you folks but how was I to know security would be relatively lax. Pierre did a great job filling out the “Giddy Up” tunes and we delved into different aspects of the Odds songbook. It was Jamie Kaufmann’s first gig in the trio and I must say he sang and played his pants off (this made for a splendid finale). Jamie has been playing in the Colin James Band of late and he came in rather handy when it was proposed that I throw in a gig if my own to lead off this leg of Colin James dates at the Mont Tremblant Blues Festival the next day. Thanks to David Himelfarb for putting it all together. The rest of the songs you could probably predict.
Playing for a convention crowd is pretty predictable. Hotel ballrooms sound like shit and everybody is too busy shmoozing to really care. You play for the few in the front who are facing you and dancing around. Paul from “Fubar” tore up the front row with his brilliant rock n’ roll dancing. I think he was even better than the band. When we lit into “I Don’t Need No Doctor” by Humble Pie during the tag out of “Make You Mad” he went positively nuclear. This made it all worthwhile. Tearing his shirt off was a nice touch.
The next night we were in Mont Tremblant with the C.J.B.. for a barnburning outdoor set at the end of the blues fest. Blues fests are weird. I’m glad they exist but they seem to point out a lot of the problems regarding the current state of the blues. Pleeeese NO MORE “MUSTANG SALLY” !!! We’re in a mini-van heading for Wasaga Beach as I type. Last night in St. Catharines Colin took a wander across an adjacent highway during his solo in “Anywhere is Home”. I was working his whammy pedal and trying to play my own part so I didn’t really know where he was when he left the stage. It was an outdoor show beside a road. On the other side of the road was a golf course. I guess he made it all the way onto the golf course and was heading back when I saw him almost get smoked by a car. That would have been an interesting news item. “Yeah honey I was just minding my own business down route 46 and out jumps Colin James ripping off a solo on a strat. There was no way to miss him. I guess this means we’re not gonna get that Little Big Band 3 record after all”.
posted by Craig Northey at 1:36 PM

Gare Central. A muggy morning in Montreal. A city you can really feel. The humidity is only the cover of the book. Here in the train station it is all cool umber marble and large arched spaces. The slightest hint of diesel mixes with patisseries and institutional moulds whilst MacDonalds dominates the smellscape in one big wave. Blind people must go crazy with anger as MacDonalds consumes all indigenous smells with its blanket of trans fat fog. With the franchise light boxes and faux Californian expanses of strip mall stucco come the warm fronts of Taco Bell and KFC. The grease cloud that settles around a KFC has to be the worst. This station feature such a glorious cross section of humanity its a shame that anyone be needlessly deprived of any of their senses. Its late morning and I’m on the backside of a strong coffee and, ironically, the best french toast I’ve ever eaten. One of my lifelong chums lives in the St. Henri district and I spent yesterday walking around and sampling favourite ales and bagels with him. The evening was full of accordion and guitar duets, photographs, musings on the greatness of “No Means No” and the trademark conversation of people who know a lot about each other but will never know everything. It was he who made the brilliant breakfast eaten to the strains of Flaco Jiminez while staring out over the end of the balcony onto rue St. Phillipe. There is nothing wrong with his life.
If you sit still and meditate on the crossing currents and movements of the station a few things come to light. Couples walk in synchronicity. The gay males with button down shirts tucked into matching khaki cargo pants and sporting identically sturdy footwear walk in perfect step. They are unaware that this aspect of their lives is as together as the things they have orchestrated. They are the same height and leg length and are thus able to maintain synchronization for the entire length of the station. The short woman & tall man combinations achieve a different kind of synch. The woman in the sarong walks abreast with her husband but has to operate at a slightly higher steps per minute rate. This means that their strides match each other in regular waves as they cross the floor. They appear to be synchronized for about six steps and then they fall out for about ten seconds and then they match in opposite steps (left when one is right) for six steps and then ten seconds later they are in synch again for six steps. Its like playing 3/4 time against 4/4. Sooner or later it comes around and it all ends in the same place. Children don’t walk in relation to their parents because they don’t share their agendas. They want to pull away and break the flow. They don’t follow the hidden pathways of the station.
The hidden pathways are observed by all with an agenda. 1) Go through the doors from the Metro and cut the angle to the ticket counter on the right or . . . 2) In from the street and a soft ninety degree angle to the MacDonalds. 3) From the ticket counter five paces out, stop look down at ticket, look up and swivel head until platform number is verified, option to move toward food, telephone, washroom, waiting area or gate along four clear paths. The kids run willy nilly to retrieve a discarded bottle cap and check its underside for possible winnings. Their movement requires more complex analysis or, better yet, no analysis.
Here language also follows some unwritten pattern. One must choose between english and french when approaching fresh humans. This should not be an obvious choice. I started to feel it could go either way but have experimented and found people can be led through telegraphed behaviour. Its all in how you perfect your greeting and use your body language. Without a word to the ticket agent or poutine vendor they speak to you in english instead of french. Why? The most obvious reason may be that you are wearing a Canucks cap or carry a camera. If not . . . it comes down to subtle cues. One of my theories focuses on the shape of the mouth. Language shapes your face. A mouth that speaks french for forty years looks subtly different than one that speaks english all that time. Why shouldn’t this be true? I met a couple of trapeze artists the other day and I would bet that the shape of their arms was a dead giveaway. People who have to judge quickly each day as to whether to speak french or english do not have to know whether you are a trapeze artist or a beet farmer. They only have to focus on elements of local or foreign style, confidence and facial cues. I can trick people into a quick exchange in french buy they’ll switch to english after the first parry and thrust . . . once they hear my accent. At least I have relaxed into the culture enough to become invisible if remaining silent. One could be a local simply by wearing a T-shirt with french words on it, sporting a confident swagger and having mastered the phrase, “I can’t hear you” in some Quebecer variant of american sign language. The children in the station will all be spoken to in french. Some don’t speak french but all attendants will assume and start there. Children are yet to lose the flexibility in their joints and in their ability to adapt. Beside me are twins dressed identically. They are women in their late fifties. They have both dyed their gray hair a brilliant red and maintain identical crops. The outfits are floral pantsuits warmed up with red cardigans. Here I can’t imagine why flexibility might be an asset or why variation should be encouraged.This is beautiful and rare. I think about when one of them gets sick and the other one feels it. I worry about the day when one of them loses the other one. I veer off into my own worrying about the day when I will lose the people I share DNA with. What part of me will go with them? I stop worrying as my train is called to the platform. Luckily my immersion in the sideshows of human behaviour functions as fuzzy denial. Denial is the best way to deal with the forebodings of loss that can take over anyone who values the joys of life. The worst thing that can possibly happen is that all this stops one day. To always live in the moment is impossible but something to be aimed at. Sorry Buddhas. Sorry enlightened ones. I endorse the notions but can’t fully achieve results. Speculation about the future and the past are all part of the package. Doctrines and allegories aren’t the way to go either. I just can’t live with the rule books or the massive gaps in logic. There are no pat answers. Its OK because there there are pairs bonds and movement and love and language. There is food and sex and art and music. There are forks of lightning and forks in the toaster. Big and small we experience rituals of tragedy and joy. Some are on the playbill and some are improvised. I meditate on the patterns and shapes. I am hungry again. I have to go pee. This is Grand Central. This is le Gare Central.
posted by Craig Northey at 1:28 PM

I like to run. There are few things better than a run on the first day of some time off. We have chosen a regular summer and spring getaway spot that we’ve been weaving into our lives for the past decade. It is now a huge part of our collective memories and full of ritualistic behaviours. Each mundane element of home life is elevated to the status of magic rustic ritual: midnight trips down the trail to the outhouse, baths in the sulphur smelling water, two mile bike rides to use a telephone, and hanging wet clothes on the line. Perfect. Because we can’t go there too often the time is sacred and has only ever been compromised by the armour piercing projectile called “Craig’s schedule”. Last year we took an epic journey across North America and for the first time missed our summer time in our little hideaway. This year’s time has, therefore, increased its evocative value by a factor of two. Each dive in the ocean seems more transformative. The moon seems bigger. The sunburn seems to hurt less. The late night barking by a pride of sea lions seems like such a privileged disturbance. How beautiful the chain reaction reaching each rural mutt down some beautifully convoluted ladder of evolution. Its like a deviant Darwinian version of the emergency signal sent out in “101 Dalmatians”. One lies in bed half asleep and smiling. Awaking just as rested as if it never happened because each sleep is deeper.
This brings something powerful to the first run at the beginning of the hideaway days. Some run in groups. In packs. This is fun and social and provides for a feeling that bonds are being properly formed. When one is weaving drunken into the street with a “new best friend” and future plans are being tossed in the air like helicopter seeds its logical the bond may be transitory. If you’re running up the side of a mountain with every blood vessel widening and each sense sitting upright in its own battle station it seems like each word uttered means a little more. An economy of speech is necessary to adapt to physical limits. There is a tiny suggestion of shared enlightenment as you collectively exert yourself, stirring the same brain chemicals. This is constructive behaviour. You will feel better when it is over. If you are using it to recover from a hangover this reality is compounded. In this way there is little you are embarrassed to have said during a run.
The benefits of pack running being noted I must now endorse the solitary version of the pastime. In my world “the loneliness of the long distance runner” has less of a forlorn ring to it. I suppose there is no difference if you choose to walk alone but it seems to strip you more slowly to your elemental core. Its harder to imagine yourself as a Greek messenger taking life saving strategies from the brain trust in Athens to the battle front out on the bleached plains. The extent of your exertion can be directly figured into the success of the emerging democratic nation. You have an excuse to wear less clothing when running. This helps in that feeling of reaching your elemental self. Before Lyme disease and the West Nile virus running naked through the cool woods loomed large in my idea of a good time. One’s inner reflection seems magnified by the movement through an idilic setting. Our family hideaway, although rose coloured by fond memories, is possibly situated in one of the most physically beautiful places on earth. I have only visited twenty or so of the world’s countries, and spent way too much time in North America, but I would still cast a semi educated guess that what I say could be true. When most people enter a holiday paradise thoughts run to, “how can I stay here forever?” Some attempt this and find out that paradise isn’t just about natural beauty. They stay long enough to hate the seasonal visitors they used to be. Their smugness rings hollow. They discover that they need to somehow find more money to stay there if they have not developed skills in ceramic arts, jewelry making or the weaving of dream catchers. Money is easier to come by in places shored up with dirty concrete. So...we come back to the place once or twice a year.
The first solitary run on the first day plunges me into a state of self reflection that is almost overwhelming. My endorphins fire life’s questions to a white hot point. Everything comes into question and I keep running until I have enough answers and at least one elaborate roadmap for the future. In previous years much of my musing revolved around schemes to stay there so I could always run like a deer this through paradise. Later I settled into a comfortable understanding of this place’s value to my life. I realized that temporary stays were more valuable to me than a permanent residence. I’m a city mouse (see past musings). Now my runners reflections don’t even dally on those ideas. They are free to work themselves into the finer details of a year of being behind the 8 ball. Anyone who is busy knows what it feels like to constantly feel in a state of unraveling. That first run on that first day does more to make me feel that its all going to be OK than just about any of the year’s rituals (Christmas seems to be about the worst “unraveling accelerator”). The more unraveling I’ve done through the year, the better the hideaway run will be.
My runs through the woods near my house seem more centred around claiming perspective over that specific day or week. I can run out of the house and come back with a song idea or a parenting strategy necessary to get through that day -- for some reason running never helps me remember the birthdays of people I love. When I’m on the road the first run in a new town (or a town I’m familiar with but don’t live in) can yield great results but in the end I go back to a hotel room and remain too long in that “alone” state. My reflection treads water until it dreads what happens when you stop and sink. I can chum around with band members to keep it all positive but I can’t get that quick “idea into action” feeling I get from running instantly back into the family fold.
After the hideaway run you enter a group of people who are all wanting to feel a lot of the same feelings you are now emanating in a virtual corona of light. Isn’t that what we all want? Everyone to feel the way we feel? They are ready to go with you where you want to go. You are ready to go with them where they want to go. You will go home to the struggles and the unraveling with the realization that you can make it back to this day more and more often. Every now and again, when everybody’s schedules accidentally converge, you can feel it at home too.
I like to run.



posted by Craig Northey at 10:25 PM

Halifax. We flew for most of yesterday and I slept most of the way. I will sarcastically call the guy sitting beside me “Chuckles”. Chuckles was in my seat when I boarded just before the doors closed. I smiled and quietly said, “Hi. I’m sorry but I think I’m in 35A”. He did not reply or make eye contact but slowly closed his book, stood up and moved to the aisle to let me through to the window. I noticed he was reading a book on professional poker playing and assumed he might just be practicing his game face. It may be he felt I should be blamed for him ending up with a middle seat. This would be a full flight across almost the whole country and I wasn’t going to be “nice” enough to give up the seat our travel agent had worked so hard to secure in advance. If he had appeared the slightest bit infirm or worthy I would have capitulated. He, however, appeared healthy and surly.
If you fly a lot you notice an armrest hog right away. I checked it out and confirmed that he had also taken the other guys arm rest. I guess the middle person should get two for having to sit there? At one point he raised his left knee and put his foot on the back of the chair in front to sit with his left knee up above, and slightly across, my tray table. Space invader (He’s a momma papa comin'’ for you ... for all you Bowie fans).
His cell phone rang about ten minutes into the flight. I first thought, “wow. they ring up here.” Then I was reminded of the people making in-flight calls during the 911 incidents. Then I thought, “if they’re telling us not to use cell phones on the flight perhaps they may actually interfere with navigational equipment”. Then I thought charitably, “perhaps he just forgot to turn it off”. Then I thought less charitably, “all these actions are leading me to the asshole judgment”. He actually snorted quietly when I smiled and said, “I’m really sorry to disturb you but I’m going to have to get up to go to the bathroom”. Rolling his eyes he slammed up his tray table and made the extreme sacrifice. My “thank you” was met with silence.
The in-flight movie was “Old School”. I thought, “I don’t care if its all cut up. Will Farrell will always be funny”. During the most sophomorically funny bits I looked over to see what Chuckles was doing. He was watching solemnly. His facial expression hadn’t changed. CompleteIy wooden. I had tears rolling down my face as I was in the perfectly exhausted and captive frame of mind to enjoy the slapstick elements. He took off his headphones soon after this scene in what I assumed to be an attempt to further assert his power over the infantile rabble around him. He was above this movie. I knew now that he was either an asshole, a hit man or a poker player extremely dedicated to his art. This was like Ghandi practicing celibacy by sleeping in the same bed with a woman but not touching her (just an interesting idea). Chuckles was using this opportunity to practice his poker personna --bullish, resolute, unemotional, selfish, serious, cutthroat, arrogant and detached. Maybe the book he was reading suggested certain techniques of practiced visualization and he was just trying them out. He was prepping for the big cigar chomping, high stakes, nail biter taking place tonight in some Halifax back room. Here he would use his in-flight hours of asshole discipline and meditation to stare down maritime mobsters, lobster poachers, off duty naval officers, Irving Oil executives and other cantankerous pirates.
As he wordlessly snatched the newspaper from out of the chair back in front of me and moved stone faced down the aisle of the plane I hoped there might be trouble in the back room tonight. I hoped he got to test his metal against some serious heavies. That way my discomfort would have been worth it. He may know when to hold ‘em but who knows if he knew how to fold ‘em. Maybe when the big dogs bit into him today's training wasn’t going to be enough for him. This might be a good thing. No one should get positive reinforcement for skills in thug kinesiology. If he had to learn it from that book then he was already out of his league. Ironically the school of hard knocks can produce some pretty nice folks. This guy was probably working his way down from being born with the silver spoon in his mouth to a wiseguy with a chromed revolver.
Good luck Chuckles.


posted by Craig Northey at 10:24 PM

A hail of marbles onto plate glass . The clouds of the prairies come down and cave in the skylight. Repaint your cars. Order more coffee to give you something to do with your hands. You can’t go outside. Nature will sternly strip you of all your excuses. A metaphor of reckonong crosses your mind and is gone. The afterthought is solumn and still. Resignation brings release. Its all out of your hands now. Its all going to be somebody else’s fault. Its all so inevitable and unpredictable at the same time. Biblical weather.
posted by Craig Northey at 2:17 AM

Sorry...and Vote for Me! I haven't been posting as real life has taken over my time and mind. Some quick notes:

the Bob Kemmis "Arena Ready" album is done and mastered! Almost three years of falling between the cracks and voila. Its fantastic. Watch Bob's site for its release information.

Hope to catch you on some Colin James dates. Check out his site for details.

I've been producing a secret band that I am trying to help get a leg over in the musical bedroom. More on that later.

Ruby the dog is settling in wonderfully and I think of little else when my mind wanders.

"Giddy Up" video is still immersed in jello but I'll at least get it on the site in the coming month. Promises promises.

Watch for Brent Butt's new CTV sitcom "Cornergas". Its excellent.

VOTE FOR ME TONIGHT!!! VOTE FOR ME TONIGHT!!! VOTE FOR ME TONIGHT!!! VOTE FOR ME TONIGHT!!!

If you go to www.96x.ca and click on the "X-rated" link you can vote for "Take a Hit" and get me a lot of airplay.



posted by Craig Northey at 12:18 PM