Bush Pilots Fly to the Rainbow
My last time at the Rainbow Bistro in Ottawa's Byward Market was for Kyrie Kristmanson's night with Melissa Laveaux a couple of years back. As this weekend was coming together, I asked TEDx Ottawa organizer Allan Isfan and Bob LeDrew, who is looking after the musical side of the conference, if they could find anything for me to do on Saturday night. It turns out, this was the night of an annual Ottawa Food Bank benefit hosted by local hotshots The Bush Pilots. Their musical tastes run similar to my own and you could hear whiffs of Steve Earle in their playing.
The created a space for me at the top of the show to do my presentation and I couldn't believe how attentive and appreciative the audience was. A bar can be a tough crowd but they were just amazing.
Emcee Slo' Tom played Voyageur a couple of times during intros and Pilots leader Rob Bennett was going to wait until he got the whole band up but I convinced him to take a solo turn first. As it turns out, Rob (pictured) actually is a bush pilot so the pieces of the Beaver DHC-2 bush plane on the rosette really meant something to him.
Thanks to Rob Bennett, Bob Ledrew, Allan Isfan, Susan Murphy and the Rainbow soundman.
Posted at 11:27 PM
Return to the Ottawa Folklore Centre
For all I complain about the relationship this project has with government, Ottawa has been very very good to us. And there are so many wonderful, supportive friends of the project in this town that any time I get an invitation to do something in Ottawa, I always extend the visit and add a few more personal and public events.
Such was the case this weekend as I've been invited to speak at the TEDx Ottawa Conference on Sunday. But that's an age away and gives me lots of time to do some other things. So, for example, knowing a few weeks ago that I'd have some time on Friday evening, I called up Arthur McGregor at the Ottawa Folklore Centre and asked if he thought we might be able to pull together some kind of event and simply said "Sure!" Arthur has been tremendously supportive over the years and today's event was just another example of that. With just a few weeks lead time, he got the word out to a nice group of people who came down to meet Voyageur and watch the presentation in a corner of the store. These kinds of events aren't large or glamourous but there's something very heartfelt and intimate about them that really makes them worthwhile.
As an added bonus, Ruth McVeigh (pictured) – founder of the famed Mariposa Folk Festival – came out to see the guitar that she's been hearing about for years and it was great to finally meet her.
Thanks to Arthur McGregor (as always), the OFC staff, Ruth McVeigh and Terry Skeet for taking the pictures.
Posted at 9:06 PM
Challenge for Change
I didn't mention in my last post that I can't sleep on planes. Well, I can't. And that made it even more of an adventure to pick up a car at Pearson Airport having just done two trans-Canada flights in 36 hours and make my way to Queen's University in Kingston Ontario. Although I was practically seeing gremlins on the side of the highway, I really wanted to make sure I didn't miss the opportunity to present the project to students at the Challenge for Change conference.
Between catnaps at rest-stops on the 401 and lots of coffee and TimBits, I managed to make it just in time to make good on my invitation from teacher Alan Macdonald, who had organized the event for a group of 200+ students hoping to create projects for the greater good. I was just one of several people – artists, activists and others – who were there to prime the pump of ideas that the students could develop into full-fledged projects of their own.
In spite of my bleary condition, the presentation went really well and Voyageur was played by student Will Van Allen as well as by Alan Macdonald. Following the keynote presentation, I also did a few breakout sessions with smaller groups where there was lots of good discussion to help invigorate me for the trip back to Toronto.
An hour and a half nap in a Belleville Tim Horton's parking lot made all the difference to arriving home safely!
Posted at 3:34 PM
Fantastic Fort St. John
A little over a month ago, I got a phone call from Brian Kirschner, a businessman in Fort St. John BC who runs the refurbished Lido Theatre. He'd heard about the Six String Nation project from friend Richard Redfern. In no time, he was offering to bring us to town and build a show around the guitar using local musicians.
A month is a pretty short time to pull something like this together but Brian and his colleagues pulled it off with flying colours for this past Monday November 23rd. From our end, it was a bit of a whirlwind that started with an early flight to Vancouver, another flight to Fort St. John, a quick scout of the theatre to figure where we'd run the portrait sessions, a lunch/dinner break, an on-air appearance at The Bear FM, a couple of TV interviews, the 2-hour show itself and a few hours doing portraits until 1:00am!
The show was great. 13 musicians each took the part of one of the provinces or territories – either because they were from there or because of some personal connection. Many were accompanied by Dave Tolley playing cajon (and sounding like a full drum kit!). I finally got to meet Dayna Manning (pictured), whose music I'd been familiar with from the Folkyo CD and was introduced to Ken and Randy of the brilliantly named country band Deere John. However, the highlight of the evening had to be the all-cast finale rendition of Neil Young's "Keep On Rockin' in the Free World".
We ran the portraits on the stage after the show but that wasn't the end of our visit. We were back the next morning to shoot folks who couldn't stay late after the show – including Mayor Bruce Lantz, who recently lead the charge to declare Fort St. John "Music Capital of Northern BC". Hopefully, his portrait with Voyageur will lend some weight to the claim!
We wrapped up the portraits just in time to repeat the presentation about the guitar for 200+ middle school students from across the street. Brian and I had talked about trying to squeeze in a couple of school visits while we were there but this actually worked much better since we just left everything set up and brought the school to us.
Richard Redfern, who got the whole ball rolling in the first place, treated Doug and I to a wonderful farewell dinner at Jackfish Dundee's Pub and then it was back into the air for our trip home.
Thanks to Brian Kirschner, Byron and Lisa Stewart, Richard Redfern, Diamond J. Terrence and everyone at Bear FM, all the musicians who played Voyageur and all the people who came to the Lido in Fort St. John.
And thanks yet again to Air Canada for taking such good care of us in our travels.
Posted at 2:50 PM