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Fame and stuff like that is all very cool, but at the end of the day, we’re all human beings. Although what I do is incredibly surreal and fun and amazing and I’m really grateful for it, I don’t believe my own press release, do you know what I mean?

– Tom Hardy


I’m just getting settled as a responsible man – but if you split the elephant into little mouthfuls it will be fine.

– also Tom Hardy

Last night, I watched I’m Tim, a Netflix doc about Tim Bergling, aka Avicii, the unfortunately late EDM superstar. I didn’t know much about him, only that he was globally known and that he’d committed suicide a few years ago. The story is achingly typical: a sensitive, high-anxiety kid who found himself through making music. Fame struck. Tim turned to drugs and booze to maintain. At some point, he’d had enough and stepped away. Also achingly typical is that, while to all around him, he was in a better place, he took his life while on a solo vacation to Oman. A bright-eyed kid, destroyed by fame. In the doc, there are voiceovers by Tim while he was alive. He says “Making music was much better before I was famous…”

With the vapour trails of that floating through my head, I woke this morning and checked out a piece about the bluesman Skip James. In the 1930s, Paramount Records paid him $40 to record a body of his work. The Depression hit and Skip disappeared into obscurity. During the blues resurrection in the 1960s, a young John Fahey (one of my guitar influences) and two pals scoured Mississippi in search of Skip. They found him, with terminal cancer, and brought him back into the limelight. Before the disease finally got him in 1969, he gigged for three years, appreciated, beloved and respected for his talent, songwriting and what he brought to the blues. Who knows what might have happened in the thirty odd years between the recordings and resurrection? Maybe three years was enough to not have the life sucked out of him by fame.

I’m no stranger to craving fame. My younger desires firmly embedded that craving when I first started down the musical road. Along the way, I unconsciously wove the need for fame into the validation that we all seek, on both human and artistic levels. It’s something I’m not as haunted by now. I’m more comfortable in my own skin. I still find myself moaning internally (sometimes externally) about working a day gig and not being able to make music full time. This, too, has become better with time. I’ve engineered my life to maximize my creative time, and time with family, while working a day gig that brings in a suitable income, with people I care about. With all this in mind, a friend a few days ago sent me a clip about Philip Glass, the American minimalist composer. Even after achieving success, he kept his day gig as a plumber and a cabbie. The clip goes on to say that, if you’ve got a day gig, congrats, you can finance your music and stay independent. It was a reminder of what an amazing place I’m in.

The kid was away at camp last week and I missed her a lot. I took advantage of the time and worked in the studio on guitar parts for the new recordings. It took a lot out of me. I started a week ago Sunday and worked every day through to tonight (Monday, Feb 2). I was a bit spent as this past weekend dawned, but found the chutzpah to keep on keepin’ on. Apart from the creative juice expended, my feet went weird. We live in a sub basement. The floors are very cold in the winter and the studio nook, at the front of ours, is the coldest part of the unit. I have to kill the HVAC when I’m recording anything with live mics. It was dreadfully cold. I ended up with chilblains across my left toes. If you haven’t heard of them, they’re a nasty business. Abrasions on the skin due to prolonged exposure to cold. This while wearing thick socks and slides. I felt most of the time like I was recording in a walk in cooler. That is, when I thought about how cold it was. Mostly I was just there, digging the wood and wire and the toasty sounds coming out of my amp.

The recordings are going smashingly well. This time round feels different than all the rest. A close pal, who often gets to hear the dailies of the new tracks, said there’s a levity to these songs that wasn’t there before. I feel that. Life is still not without its struggles. It never will be, but the music is good right now. That means a lot. It’s my meditation and place of stillness while we navigate these barbarically insane times.

I hope, when the new record comes out next year, that it reaches far and wide and, at the same time, that I remain mostly anonymous. It seems like the worst time in history to be a famous person. Here’s to success under the radar. Maybe I’ll start looking into getting my plumber’s certification…

K. xo

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“The purpose of art is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenaline but is, rather, the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity.”

– Glenn Gould

Hi All,

I spent last Saturday night, with the neighbours gloriously away, ripping into my guitar, creating some far out sounds for the live set. I’d peeled away everything on my rig early in the summer and got back to basics. A few months and a million stompboxes later, I found a configuration that really worked. Last night was a psychedelic coup de grace. The guitar is the band, really. As it’s just me performing, I’m asking my parlour guitars to perform well beyond the laws of physics that accompany their design and construction. For them to incorporate all the dynamics and colours of the recorded arrangements, while supporting my voice and the story in each song.

It’s been an intense few weeks, with the record and book so close to completion, my day gig at peak requirement, Dadding, householding, all the things. I’ve also been releasing a ton of old stuff stored up in my body. I started seeing an osteopath recently, as the next step in managing the chronic pain issues I’ve been beset with. After each treatment, I’ve had the most feverish dreams. We’ve a ways to go, but it’s nice to feel a bit better. I’ve also been reading some great stuff about trauma and the nervous system. I find myself in the throes of the abovementioned old stuff shaking the foundations. Revisiting that which infects and informs our way of being is never easy. I’m grateful, but, damn, it hurts.

On Sunday morning I woke a bit groggy and fuzzy and poured myself into the studio to finish up the final tweaks on the premasters for the record. I sent the last three tracks off to my pal Howard, who is mastering. He leaves tomorrow for a week abroad. We’re trying to put the squeeze on these last few, so I can listen down while he’s away and, hopefully, tag the masters and wrap up the recordings.

The book needs one minor tweak and then it goes to print. Working on finalizing that in the next two weeks and having the first run printed.

It took Howard and I far longer than I expected to nail down the mastering chain. To find the right alchemy of sonic toys to best represent the mixes. There’s been, for me, a huge learning curve at each step of the record. This is the first full length I’ve recorded and mixed on my own. It’s the first time I’ve taken such an active role in the mastering of one of my records.

The first track on which the mastering chain came together is actually the last track in the running order of the record. The closer. It’s called The Beautiful Season. It’s about a lot of things. As always, I’ll leave the painting of the pictures to your own imagination when it meets the song.

Here it is. It’s best listened to through a good set of headphones or phat speakers. Also best served loud:

The Beautiful Season

(If you’re reading this via the email drop, the hyperlink won’t work. Please visit the website page to access the link)

Thanks for coming along…

K. xo

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“Fak, these blankets smell nasty.”

– Me

I bunked off work early yesterday with much excitement. Last week I’d tracked vocals for Tattoo, the last song I need to add anything to. It was a bust. The intro is the most sensitive as far as needing quiet to record. The recording of vox and acoustic guitar for this record have been anything but quiet. We live only feet away from the streetcar and main street traffic ripping by, to say nothing of the orange men on the DeGrassi Street train bridge, whacking away at the the Ontario Line all hours of the day. I was able to make the rest of the vocal tracks happen, along with traffic noise and life sometimes audible on the vocal tracks, but Tattoo needed some real quiet.

I moved my vocal mic into the anteroom outside of our bathroom and reran the studio leads accordingly. I then headed off to Canadian Tire and picked up some moving blankets, at a friend’s recommendation, to help buffer the noise. I got home and excitedly hung the blankets and got my MacGyver vocal booth cooking. I noticed that the blankets were a bit stinky. I thought it was because they were just out of the package. After a special afternoon visit from a friend, I had some dins, went for my usual night walk around the east end and arrived back home, not sure if I’d record then, or spend the night kicking back and wait until today, when I was fresh with Saturday’s promise, to lay this final track down. The latter won. With the lights down low, I went slack and took in all the proper British crime drama that my inert, self-flagellating self could handle.

I woke this morning with my lungs and sinuses on fire. Our place is not that big and is open concept. The whole place bore the funky smell of yesterday’s newly opened blankets. I checked the material label for contents. Turns out some sod thought it was a good idea to put propylene in the blankets. I’d heard of this chemical before, but didn’t know much about it. Turns out it’s shite and should not be huffed in. Small wonder, on the heels of lifelong asthma and two recent, back to back respiratory infections, that I felt like crap after sleeping with these olfactorily strange bedfellows.

A quick shower and some brekkie, then off to return the offenders. I’m at the local now, having a coffee and feeling good about getting the Tattoo vox done. I’ll go old school and hang up some blankets and go for it. When the recording is done, I’m planning some studio upgrades. I’ll add the acoustic treatment to the list and get something dope cooking for future vox and acoustic geetar recordings. It’ll be crucial, as I’m planning for the next round of recordings to be live, off the floor solo voice and acoustic.

In the meantime, I’d like to share the premaster of The Pass, which is the first track on the record. Some of you have already heard it and have been in touch with your praise, which makes it all worth it for me. Thanks so much for that.

Hope ya dig.

The Pass

K. xo