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How did it get so late so soon? It’s night before it’s afternoon. December is here before it’s June. My goodness, how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?

– Dr. Suess

Persistence Of Memory – Salvador Dali, 1931

It’s that time of year when our feeds and minds are full of ways in which we might improve ourselves. Usually rooted in feelings of lack, we use the new year as some kind of barbed yardstick to quantify all the ways we don’t measure up. If I’ve learned anything this year, it’s that these feelings, the deeper ones, aren’t so easily tamed by taking up a hobby, losing weight, or any of the usual resolution suspects.

Earlier in the year, I found a book called When Things Fall Apart, written by Pema Chodron, a Buddhist nun with a wonderful perspective. It both reminded me and helped me newly see that only when we’re okay with the parts of ourselves that we can’t stand to look at or acknowledge can we be okay with anything.

The past year was the most difficult I’ve experienced. It dawned with continued worsening of the chronic pain that’s plagued me for the last few years. In February, I released Stereophile, which felt amazing, but was followed by zero interest from the general public and shops that I tried to get the book and record into. Not helpful was the fact that, due to chronic fatigue and spiritual exhaustion, I wasn’t able to, or interested in, putting forth the relentless effort it takes to promote any creative work. I then found out that I’ve a heart condition that’s going to require surgery later this year. It sounds like a standard procedure, but nonetheless added another thing to the list of maladies. In the early spring, a romantic relationship came to an end, one in which the friendship and familial aspects, just as, if not more important to me than the romance itself, were subsequently decimated in the ending’s wake. Early summer saw some standard bloodwork flag the possibility of a rare form of cancer for which there is no cure. It took until December 1st to get the final word. Turns out I don’t have cancer. Almost a half a year with that question hanging around. Egad. Add to all of this my role as solo householder and single parent to a beautiful, brilliant kid with a handful of her own challenges, and it’s fair to say there was enough cooking this year to leave a body wanting. There were many times I thought I might cave. I didn’t.

While the year was my hardest yet, it also offered great gifts. Revelatory is the word that comes to mind. Were it not for the intensity of the events I’ve listed, I wouldn’t have had the capacity to see where I stand. To own my behaviour and reactions. To begin befriending the parts made previously unbearable. In Chodron’s book, she talks about the importance of possessing unlimited friendliness toward ourselves. It sounds simple, but it’s dead elusive. We’re all so hard on ourselves. Our feelings of unworthiness eat us alive from within. They become the anger we inflict on others. The demons that drive us to addiction. They’re a departure from our innate humanity and basic self-worth. The work I put in this year has given me the ability to start seeing different possibilities. However tarnished by the hurt and suffering we endure, our hearts still shine. Whatever the depth of the darkness that surrounds, we’re still fundamentally okay. In the heat of the moment, clearly seeing what’s up is almost impossible at first. I’ve had recent experiences where I’ve been able to see where certain reactions are coming from, closer to the events themselves. This is usually after the reaction. With practice comes the ability to see it rise and catch it before it goes live.

Also present in 2025 were dear friendships. My appreciation for the support and understanding of a few close souls cannot be understated. Where nighttime reigned, there they were, reminding me of the dawn which was, always and inevitably, just round the bend. If you’re reading this, you know who you are. Thank you so much for always seeing me, and for your patience and love.

I’ve often berated myself for how far I have to go to be “whole.” The tandem filters of self-awareness and the things that hurt have a way of sending these messages. According to the Buddhist view, it’s all right here and available to us right now. With lots of life and twenty years of yoga under my belt, I understand that part. A life lesson revisited, from a perspective only experience can offer. I’m full of gratitude for seeing a bit more clearly. The ground needs constant, gentle cultivation.

If, from all I’ve said here, anyone is thinking that I’m breezing into the new year full of vim and vigor and ready to become instafamous for living my best life…I wish it were true (except for the nausea inducing instafamous for living my best life part). I came into the holiday season crawling across the finish line. The break has done nothing to improve my wellbeing. I’m currently on Herculean doses of meds, none of which are making my days pain free, but help enough to weather the day. I can feel my heart beating its odd time bebop rhythms in my chest and it’s dreadfully uncomfortable. My doc finally found a med that’s helping with the acute anxiety I started feeling partway through the year, which no amount of meditation could mitigate. It’s doing its job and then some. I wake up each morning feeling stunned psychologically and in dreadful pain from the chronic issues. My yoga mat (mindfully) mocks me from its dusty corner. I can’t remember the last time my body felt not only good enough, but average enough, to get through the day without deep discomfort. I list all of this, not for sympathy, but to illustrate how inspired I feel by the budding successes of Buddha-based technique I’ve had. If I can feel relaxed and okay with all of the crazy shit that’s going on, well, that’s an amazing thing to work toward.

So, here’s to us at the dawn of another calendar year. May we find more kindness for ourselves and each other. May childlike wonder and the wisdom of the ages be with us. May you and I continue to tread this chapter lightly, finding our way through the thick and thin of being, while the world rages on and time flies by.

As always, thanks for reading.

K. xo

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Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary…(The Raven, 1845)

I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of Beauty.

 – Edgar Allan Poe

Hi All,

Hope everyone is well and leaning into the shift of the seasons. We’re in that weird place where the pants that worked at 8am no longer do at 3 in the afternoon. With the shift, I can feel the Stereophile cycle winding down. The experience since its release in February has been a lot of things. Mostly, it’s been a means to connect with people in real time. Whereas in the past I’ve used my records/writing substantially as a means to professionally promote myself and the work, this time I’ve done very little of that. Some of you lovelies bought the record and book hot off the press. You da best. Since then, I’ve given a bunch of books away to folks I meet here and there. It’s been a means to communicate and exchange.

Grip the Raven is the second track on the record. Inspired one snowy Sunday morning while sitting in the window at the local. I’d just before writing the song come across the story online of Edgar Allan Poe’s pet raven, Grip. The bird was Poe’s companion, never far from the author. After Grip’s demise, Poe had him stuffed. Bought privately at an estate auction after Poe’s death in 1870, Grip now lives at the Free Library in Philadelphia. Fitting he should end up among the books as his permanent place of rest.

While the black bird makes an appearance in Grip the Raven’s chorus, the song, like all my songs, is about a bunch of other stuff. Layered along with the namesake are all of the things happening in my life at the time. The observations, the sifting, the love, grief, rage, care and tenderness any sufficiently sane human might feel, magnified through the lens of a sensitive musical soul.

Speaking of magnifying lenses (groan), I’m currently reading The Uncollected Sherlock Holmes. It’s a gathering of speeches and writings (including letters to his dear Mum about his pains around killing off the great detective), where Doyle waxes about his Sherlockian experience. The book is peppered with outside info around the publications of the books, woven into Doyle’s musings about the creations as they happened. For any Sir Arthur nerd, it’s a really, really great read. In it, I discovered that Doyle touts Edgar Allan Poe as the master of the modern detective story and cites him as a major inspiration…

~ Random Sidebar and Second Magnifying Glass Reference: I’m writing this on a Saturday in early September, sitting in the window at the same local that Grip the Raven was penned in. It was cloudy this morning. Now, the sun has come out and is slow-cooking my person through the glass. When fall arrives, the earth’s axis sits differently and the early afternoon sun comes mercilessly into this particular spot, incinerating anyone caught unawares like so many ants. End of Random Sidebar ~

Having read about Doyle being a fanboy of Poe, I did some digging. I found out that The Murders In The Rue Morgue (1841) is the first story to feature the OG sleuth, C. Auguste Dupin. I logged into my Toronto Public Library account stat and had the book sent to my branch. I’ve yet to tuck into it. I’m working on finishing The Uncollected Sherlock before getting started. I don’t know if I can hold out til then, but, so far, so good.

Grip the Raven is one of my favourites on Stereophile. It’s one of those that turned out sounding like it did in my head when it was written those many moons ago. It was also a first crack at arranging strings. The celli move the song along like a drumbeat, rumbling underneath the singer/songwriter as the tune moves through. The mood is on.

Subscribers: Please click here to listen. Soundcloud player n/a via email send.

Here’s to music. Here’s to Arthur and Edgar. Here’s to the matchless literature of the Victorian age. Most of all here’s to me finishing this blog before I become the desiccated remains of my former self while sitting in this damned window.

As always, thanks for coming along…

K. xo

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Hi Friends. Hope you’re all well and warm. At long last, Stereophile is done!!! Please have a listen to the audio below. Also on this page are the credits and story that unfolded while making the record and book. Buy links are below the player. Hope ya dig…

Purchase your copy via PayPal or eTransfer me at kdub@kelvinwetherell.com
It’s $20 for your digital download of the record and physical copy of the book
Canadian residents buying in person (at shows, etc.) please add $2.60 for tax. Total $22.60.
Online purchases are $1.75 to ship anywhere in Canada. Total w/tax and shipping $24.60.
Global shipping fees to be determined according to distance and packaging requirements
Once you’ve placed your order, please email us, along with your address, at kdub@kelvinwetherell.com and we’ll send you your copy of the book. A download link to the record will be sent to your email address.

If you live in Toronto, I might be able to hand deliver the book and give you a hug. It depends on where you live, or if you like hugs.

Thanks so much for your support!

Credits
Kelvin Wetherell – Vox, Acoustic Guitar, Les Paul, Bass, Piano, Organ, Drums, Percussion, String/Vocal Arrangements
Howard Ayee – Bass on Grip The Raven and Dark Horse
Kaleb Hikele – Piano on Kinder Things

Produced, Recorded and Mixed by Kelvin Wetherell
Acoustic Guitars recorded by Kaleb Hikele at The Townhouse
Mastered by Howard Ayee

All Songs Written, Composed and Arranged by Kelvin Wetherell Copyright 2025

The Stereophile Story
On an unseasonably cold and grey day at the end of April, 2022, I pulled round the last corner of an east end townhouse complex, checking each address and looking for the mailbox with the music stickers plastered all over it. After successful location, with acoustic guitar in hand, I knocked. Greeted by friend/studio owner (and fabulous singer/songwriter!) Kaleb Hikele, we navigated the barking of his dear doggo, Bear, and headed down to the basement to get to work. The idea was to record five of my songs with just my acoustic. I didn’t know at the time what the heck I was going to do with them. There was certainly no idea that they’d become part of an eight song, full length record and book. Over two days we succeeded in tracking five songs. I was down with most of what I played, then, in the true fashion of (usually unneeded) songster angst, I thought everything was shite. I needed a break from what I’d tracked.

Enter the studio upgrades. I’d just been turned on to the world of plug ins (digital instruments, recording hardware, etc.). I’d been recording at home for years. My beater of a laptop, eight years old at the time, therefore prehistoric in terms of technology, couldn’t handle the new oomph I was throwing at it. I’d recently reconnected with my old mate, Howard Ayee, who’d produced on of my records back in 2009. It was great to reconnect with him. He’s responsible for my new plug-in-fanboy-geek-out status. He was forever dangling the many new carrots that make modern recording truly awesome. I bought everything he sent me. I also bought a new laptop, which, after six months of agony trying to figure out why it wasn’t recording properly, made me so irate that I shelved the recording for months and spent the summer barefoot and busking at Jimmie Simpson Park here in Toronto. I returned the craptop and swapped it out for a new one. I got it set up and was off again…

I spent 2023 recording in bits, whenever energy or will permitted. Some of my peeps reading this are already aware of my chronic struggles. I’ve been living the effects of a botched hip surgery and was diagnosed with fibromyalgia in early 2023. At the end of that summer, I tore the medial meniscus in my knee and could hardly walk. My personal stars were not aligned and it felt like the universe was giving me the boots over and over. Still, we persist. I kept going, working my day gig and being a present, single Dad and solo householder. I kept up with my live playing and preparation, always wanting to keep my pickin’ and singin’ chops in shape, or “match fit”, as Jimmy Page calls it. 2023 was a great year for gigs. I played a bunch of out of town stuff and made some great friends. I was not much concerned that the progress of the record was not swiftly moving. In November, I decided to start creating the book that would accompany the record.

The written part of Stereophile, affectionately known as Booky, is a collection of lyrics and images that my daughter, Ava, and I created. The first drafts were created in a free, Word-light type program. My old friend, Alexis Campbell, recommended moving the creation of the book over to InDesign. I did so. She also let me use her Adobe suite, without which I couldn’t have made the book. I then spent many days wanting to fire my laptop through the sliding glass doors that lead out to our back garden. Anyone who’s used Adobe in the past can attest to how frustrating their proprietary, weird-ass way of doing things can be. Still, we persist. No laptops were harmed in the making of the book or record. Bit by bit, I was making progress. Through days of pain sometimes so severe I couldn’t think straight, the record and book were happening!

Sleep, eat, parent, work, parent, record, rehearse, repeat. So it went for the next year. The sonic elements of the record were the easy part. I’ve made many records and written many songs. Writing and designing the book were new, as was working with the plugins. These were steep learning curves, happening while I was in full creative singer/songwriter/arranger/producer mode. I loved building the colours around the acoustic spines of the tracks. I worked extensively with strings and choral vocal arrangements, as well as digging in and creating unique sounds out of whatever was available to me, digitally and otherwise. The parts came fluidly. If an idea wasn’t cooking, it was scrapped. I didn’t wrestle with stuff not working. Usually, the parts sang themselves in my head. It was a matter of extracting them and finding the right sound, the one that fit with the track.

Also new to me was mixing a full length record. I’d released a few singles during the pandemic years and beyond. Mixing a full record is a different beast. Another learning curve. I mixed as I went. There was little to do when the tracking was done. I tweaked a few of the acoustic guitars and made some small changes. It was then time to master.

With Howard on board to master the record, we set to work finding the right chain of gear to put the final stitches into the Frankenstein. It was a looooooooooooooooooooong process. I’d always left mastering to others. I was fully involved this time. It meant going back to the songs and massaging the vocals deeper into the sonic landscape of the arrangements. I also had to tweak some of the levels on the instruments to sit better in the tracks. We wrapped the mastering and the end result is a beautiful sounding record. When I was able to take myself out of the recording and listen as just listener and not creator, I was touched. It felt like the singer was in the room with me. The sonic wormhole surrounding the vocals were what I had first envisioned. That coming to pass was a feather in my cap. While mastering, I was working concurrently on finishing the book and getting it printed.

The design of the book was going amazingly. I added a dedication, table of contents, afterword, all the things to make it feel like a proper book. The printing then became an epic situation, due to a ghost in the machine. The first run of books did not look like the proof I signed off on. Something happened in cyberspace that made one of the images look wacky. This required another few weeks of back and forth with printer and Alexis, figuring out what the issue was. It was mad. Finally, out of the murky mist, the final proof was good and off to print we went. I received the first run of books in the middle of February of 2025, which is the same month I’m writing this. With the book and record done, here I am, getting it set up for all of you to read and hear.

The creation of the book was important to me. As I mention in the afterword, I wanted you to have something to hold. Something tactile and real, to compliment and help heal the disconnect of all our modern digital trappings. As a kid I used to love pouring over an album’s liner notes, reading all the details about what went into making it; the names of the band members, the lyrics, the artwork, where it was recorded, and the little tidbits of random info that made you feel like you were on the inside of something.

So, here we are. A new record that I never thought I’d make. My first book, the first of many, I hope. Against the odds, with the help and support of dear family and friends, these creations happened. In hindsight I’m aware of the Herculean effort that went into completing this phase of my artistic life. There were days I wanted to die, not because of any garden variety artistic crisis, but because living with intense chronic pain, along with prolonged use of pharmaceutical painkillers, have a way of taking their toll on a body and being. It’s hard to stay ahead of the black dogs of depression when sitting still hurts. Still, we persist. I made it. It was no small feat. The record and book are beautiful. I hope the songs on the record hit you. Here’s to creativity and connection.


K. xo

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They’d all died, but just for a bit. One of them, a doctor, had gone over a waterfall in her kayak and was submerged and lifeless for a half an hour. She recovered and carried on with no cognitive impairment. There were others. Their details were different, but they all flatlined. I learned their stories recently in a Netflix doc.

They all felt profound bliss. They all had the same look in their eyes; a shine that those of us who haven’t died and come back are missing. There’s a knowing in that look. These people experienced a fleeting insight into the big question: What happens when we die? In most cases, these people were met on the other side by a loved one or guide who told them their work wasn’t done and that they had to go back. Imagine feeling that freedom and having to come back to our Right-Side-Left-Side-9-to-5-Cancel-Culture-Social-Media-Fame-Whore-Post-Pandemic-Great-Big-Mess-Of-A-World after having had a glimpse into the union we yearn for all our days.

Recently, a friend posted a memory about the anniversary of a friend’s suicide. It got me thinking about the folks in the doc who had died and come back. In each case, their temporary deaths were the result of an accident or ailment. What happens to a suicide? If we die by our own hands, do we get bliss? Or do we cross over somewhere further down the river, where the sky is darker and the general feeling bleak rather than blissful?

While all this was going on, I was revisiting a song I wrote a few years ago. It’s called The Hemingway, so named after Ernest and family, who were no strangers to despair, addiction and murder of the self. While writing it, I kept in mind the story of Kevin Hines. In the throes of delusion and illness, Kevin launched himself off the Golden Gate Bridge in an attempt to end his life. As soon as he was airborne, he felt one overwhelming emotion: Regret. He instantly wished he’d not done it. By the time he hit the water, he was falling at 75 miles per hour. 240 feet down in four seconds. He broke a bunch of bones, but he survived. He now travels the world to share his story, to help others through their dark nights, inspiring many to seek the psychological support they need, in a global society that still harbours a dim and emotionally unintelligent view of mental illness.

The Hemingway is a place that I imagine we end up, filled with the same regret Kevin Hines felt. How many of us have committed suicide and felt the same regret after arriving on the other side? It must be a terrible destination. A terrible way to spend one’s time. The song is also a reminder to me in my own struggle with depression, anxiety, trauma and daily, intense chronic pain. That, even when I feel like everything is going to shit and it’s all hopeless and wretched, and I want nothing more than the hurt to stop, I’m likely to end up spending eternity wandering The Hemingway’s lonesome halls. A fate that, unlike our earthly troubles, which rise and fall over time, might be forever.

The lyrics to The Hemingway are below. I hope they in some way help or inspire. You’re not alone. You’re cared for more than you know. Reach out. Call a friend. Call a crisis line. Drop me a line. We’re all in this together and we need to take care of each other.

Love,

K. xo

Resources
Suicide Prevention Canada – Call 988
Distress Centres of Greater Toronto – 416.408.4357 (GTA) / 905.459.7777 (Peel)
Canadian Association For Suicide Prevention (contact resources at link) – https://suicideprevention.ca/im-having-thoughts-of-suicide/