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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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For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream

– Vincent Van Gogh

Let all the children boogie

– David Bowie, Starman

Saturday, October 4/2025. How did that happen? Here we are, rising to meet darker mornings and lighting the candles sooner in the evening. Or, in my case, the candles and the blue Christmas lights that I hung for the season around our mantle at home when we moved in to ours five years ago. They never got packed with the rest of the holiday swag. They were too cozy and amazing to not have all year round.

Today’s pic was created by my dear kid. She had a pal over a few weeks ago. I was pickin’ and singing’ while they were drawing and making slime. I guess she caught the music vibe and this was the result. I love how I look like a young goth boy and that I have no feet, floating along like a ghost. The goatee is on point and the Bowie tee is the coup de grace. Funny thing is this was how I looked in my twenties. The kid nailed it. I guess, apart from the black hair and eyeliner, not much has changed.

The new recordings are well underway. Vocals and acoustic guitar. The bare bones of five new tracks prepped and ready for an as yet unbooked drum session in the wilds of Belfountain, Ontario. I have some string and organ parts fleshed out for these ones. There are five more songs in the queue for acoustic guitar and vox bits. Ten songs feels like a bit much, but I can’t decide who won’t make the final cut. Well, there are about twenty-five hanging about. These ten feel like the strongest, culled from songs old and new. Some of the older numbers don’t feel lyrically congruent with the immediate current. The first four tunes came easily in the studio. Number five flipped me the bird. It’s one of the simplest guitar bits, but the one with the most grace and black space between the notes. These almost always require a different touch. For the audio nerds, I also went down a preamp rabbit hole, working on the vox and acoustic guitar chain, all the while working on getting the part recorded. It’s all moving forward nicely, with no shortage of madness and that feeling of absolute connection that keeps me returning to the music well.

Stereophile continues its journey. I’m working on getting the book into a local bookstore on consignment. An old friend of my brother’s contacted me through my YouTube channel, after listening to the record. He described it as dystopian. That concerned me and made me feel like I got it right. The lyrics are full of our potential for great love in a landscape that’s not thriving. I’m learning to live with these and all the pairs of opposites. The conflicting internal elements that are part of my everyday experience. Of feeling okay with not feeling okay, in a world where it so often makes sense to not feel okay.

I recently saw an FB post about Laurens van der Post, a South African educator, writer, philosopher and conservationist. He’d spent time in the desert with the Kalahari people. One night they asked him if he could hear the stars. When he said he couldn’t, they thought he was joking or having them on. Upon realizing he was serious, they were sad. They knew that someone who couldn’t hear nature must have the greatest sickness. This really hit me. We gaze at the stars, but have any of us caught up in this western living ever heard them? I remember sitting on the steps of our old place on summer nights. It was on a hill in a quiet neighbourhood. I could hear the garden growing. It made sounds. It was one of the most beautiful and stilling things I’ve ever experienced. We now live on a main street in Leslieville. There’s no more of that. In fact, last night while trying to track the acoustic guitar parts mentioned above, the traffic bustling by only a few from the front door made recording a terrible pain in the ass. I’m aware it was late rush hour on a Friday, but there it is. When she calls we have to answer.

Anyhoo, back to the stars. Imagine that. Imagine hearing them. I don’t often enough extol to good stuff modern life offers. There’s a lot to wonder at. I do riff quite a bit on how much we’re losing to modernity. Not hearing the stars is another reminder. It also reminds me that we’re connected to these brilliant lights in the sky. We’re made of the same love. While we reach and listen for the starsong on high, may we hear the same murmurations inside.

Let all the children boogie…

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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Out of sorrow, entire worlds have been built
Out of longing, great wonders have been willed

– Nick Cave, Are You The One That I’ve Been Waiting For

And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair

-Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

With summer’s end approaching, the Khalil Gibran quote above is fitting. I’m rereading Gibran’s The Prophet, a well-worn standby. No one else comes close to putting divinity and unspeakable beauty into words. I’ve spent countless hours this summer barefoot in the grass at the local park. Much of that time has been spent singing for the people. Much of it has been spent writing & reading, and much of it spent starfished and gazing up at the sky and trees. These have been this summer’s meditation.

Each year, I always feel a sense of back to school energy. It’s a time of renewed focus and creativity. This has been a season of retreat, healing and (some) relaxation. Fall is a welcome one this year. I’m excited to be working on new music and keeping the Stereophile flames fanned. I’m writing today to share Dark Horse, one of the tracks from the record and book.

The oldest song on Stereophile, Dark Horse was written years ago, while house-sitting. The words and music started to come to me while sitting amongst piles of bird shit. Say what? It’s true. I was housesitting for a wonderfully eccentric, elderly neighbour, Nancy. She’d been an opera singer in Ireland in her youth. She married a U of T prof and they spent many happy years together before his passing. Nancy, in her later years, kept birds. Not wanting them to be stuck in a cage, she let them fly free about the house. They shat everywhere. She was happy to let sleeping turds lie. There was no shortage of crusty droppings lying here and there.

From these avian-based beginnings came Dark Horse. I’ve been working with depression all my life. At the time the song was written, I was particularly aware that a sensitive being, one prone to chemical imbalance, is also often one that’s very aware and insightful. While the lens we see life through can cause difficulty and be sometimes very messy and devastating (to us and those around us), it’s also something very special. It allows us to see and feel deeply. Nick Cave’s line in today’s first quote always hit me. Pain and longing, when brought forth, have willed great wonders.

Dear Subscribers: If you’re reading this via the email drop, the Soundcloud player doesn’t appear in your email. Click here to listen to the song: Dark Horse

As the years went by and Dark Horse stuck around, it began to take on new meaning. I’m close to someone with a number of different neurodiversities. I see a great awareness, insight and creativity in them. These traits are not limited to those of us who have experienced depression. So many of us with cognitive and emotional challenges look to art to allow us to process. To come back. Our sensitive natures often result in us feeling diminished by the heaviness of the world. Not just its obvious atrocities, but the ever growing isolation we’re feeling, and the general direction of disregard in which the speed of life is taking us. I’ve recently read, in don Miguel Ruiz’s The Four Agreements, that we’re all, as he puts it, living in hell. This hell is based on all the societal and familial agreements we’ve made with ourselves, those that beat the wild bits out of us, with an aim at domestication and burying our true nature. I don’t disagree. We’re in the throes of global human tribulation. Our masks are suffocating us and very few among us have found the means to shed our personas and all that we’ve learned, to go with an open, authentic heart.

The chorus lyrics in Dark Horse:

Don’t you know you’re not alone
I want you to know you’re not alone

While I’ve always been happy with the song’s verses, the chorus lines are crucial to keep in our hearts and minds. When we’re down in the dark hole of anxiety/depression/ADHD/OCD/basic human sadness, etc., and it feels like there’s no way out, they’re a reminder that we are not the first or the last to feel this way. Reconnection is always available, if we can find the wherewithal to drop our false notion of feeling like a burden and reach out. These words have for me more recently been a much needed reminder of our interconnectedness. We are not alone. Each of us is made of the same light, separated at birth and finding our way through this strange and beautiful place, so often feeling solo, when we are anything but.

Interestingly, for all the years Dark Horse has been around, I’ve never until now recorded it and have never performed it live. I’d like to record a simple live video version of it here at home. Maybe in the fall. It’ll land in the live set at some point. This year has been quiet on the gig front and, for the first time in decades, I’m happy and comfortable saying that. That said, I’m feeling a bit itchy. We’ll see what autumn brings.

May we all find our way back home. Back to ourselves and each other, and the love that waits patiently, with open arms, for our return.

As always, thanks for reading. Enjoy the track…

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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Taken New Year’s Eve on Busy Street, just before meeting the man in the shiny jacket.

We chased our pleasures here
Dug our treasures there
But can you still recall
The time we cried
Break on through to the other side
Break on through to the other side

– Jim Morrison, Break On Through

He approached me through the drizzling rain, his jacket a twinkling shine large silver, green and red sequins. I think he was wearing antlers, or maybe they were alien antennae. It was dark. I was high on painkillers and THC oil and probably shouldn’t have been out in public, for I was not feeling at all fit for human consumption. He, in a gentle voice, said to me “Hi, good evening. We’re hosting a free event tonight. We have musicians set up and they’ll start to play in a few minutes. You’re welcome to join us.”

I looked through the open door into the event. Cartoons were playing on a large screen on one wall. The lighting was low and attractive. I felt a pull to go in. “Will you be here for the countdown?” I asked.

“Yes, we’ll be here until 1am.” he said.

I thanked him and kept on. This was on Busy Street, a short, charming stretch of road that runs behind the Value Village in Leslieville. It reminds me more of something out the the Bowery in 1970s New York City than something you’d see in modern day Toronto. While I walked home, I opened a discussion in my head, lobbing the pros and cons of going or not going. I felt like it was somewhere I should be, to ring in the fucking new year and all that.

“The fucking new year?” I can hear you saying to yourself. Where’s he going with this? Is this going to be a pile of major bitterness?” Well, yes, and no.

In the past, I’ve been the first one to hit the socials and ring in the annual turnover with all the righteous platitudes. This year was different, for two main reasons: the first is that I’m more and more sick of social media all the time. The clickbait, the phony, staged bullshit and, most of all, the desperation. We artists posting like crazy, our creations there for a nanosecond, then evaporated into the mists of digital nevermore. I get why we need to do this and admire those of us with the wherewithal to continue to do it without choking on the puke in our mouths.There are so many breathtaking bits of artistic heroism out there, but it’s so disappointingly momentary. And the sheer volume of it. I’m not good with too much of anything. I’d prefer less and social media is the not the landscape where less is the order of the day. It might help us all if I decided to shit or get off the pot. To go all in with it, especially with a new record to promote, or to delete all my accounts and go dark. The second reason is the deep depression that I’ve found myself in, and fighting against. It’s been here very intensely for the last year, ramping up towards year’s end, as my chronic pain issues have increased and become more debilitating. I’ve become, this season, acutely aware that the pain from my hip surgery and trashed nervous system may be things that I may have to live with for the rest of my life. Aware that management, rather than a curative solution, may be the new reality. It would require an acceptance and a process of grieving that I’ve been struggling with accepting for weeks. I’ve tried everything, and spent thousands in different therapies, working on a solution, all to no avail.

That said, I can’t help but wonder if my pain would lessen if I were spending my days doing what I love doing, instead of spending hours a day working at something that I’m not naturally inclined to excel at.

Yesterday I found myself cringing at the litany of posts on facebook and IG, with all the things everyone accomplished in 2024. Again, I’d usually be the first to champion my deeds. I don’t want to disparage anyone who worked their magic to make shit happen. This stuff is hard. I felt the way I did due to the stark reflection of my own feelings of failure and not meeting the sky high mark of my perfectionist standards staring back at me. I feel like I barely survived the year. My biggest accomplishments were taking Ava, my daughter, to New York City for our summer holiday, and, against the odds, finishing Stereophile (the record and the book). The latter took two and half years to complete. There were days and weeks where I was too damaged to make any progress. There were times where I worked longer sessions, in the timeless flow of creativity, only to suffer the physical effects of that, having to then take weeks off to heal. I had best laid plans to gig like hell last year, only to wake one night in February, from my second show of the year (which was great), with my body screaming at me to stand down. I listened, and stopped all work on the live shows, knowing that I couldn’t finish the record and gig concurrently, along with being a present Dad and solo householder with a day gig.

I didn’t go back to that warm and welcome room last night. I got home and barred the door, wept buckets for my broken body and battered mind, for the state of the world, and for what feels like the most disconnected and isolated I’ve ever been from everything. The attraction to that open door and the warmth within was the connection I’m missing and yearning for. Playing live music does this for me. It’s my primary source of feeling connected. It’s not just playing the music. It’s meeting people. It’s the hangs with friends old and new. It’s the natural high after the gig, that carries over into the days after. At that gig in February, which was through So Far Sounds Toronto, and in the basement of a local chap’s house, there was a queue for the bathroom after the show. One high point of the night was chatting with a girl in line. She was from Brazil and a few years new to Toronto. We didn’t get into anything deep. We connected. Plain and simple. Or not plain. Divine is a better word for it. The web of our humanity grows vaster and stronger with each of these interactions. We come away from them more beautiful for the experience.

I passed out last night listening to a live take of Roadhouse Blues. I woke this morning and listened to Break On Through. That lead to finding a clip from the Classic Albums series, where the people involved in classic records talk about what went into creating them. Often, if the engineers and musicians are still alive, they’re the ones involved. In the case of Break On Through, the engineer felt like Morrison had a Sinatra vibe, in that his vocals went from a crooner-type delivery to a soaring, visceral growl. When he showed Jim the vocal mic he’d be using, the singer was chuffed and said it was the same mic that Sinatra used. This is the stuff. I love it. Music nerdery at it’s best.

As I sit here at the local and write this, I’m feeling good. I’m writing and riffing on all the good feelings of creativity and connection. A dear friend sits beside me. People pass by, many bleary-eyed from last night’s revelry. We see other friends passing by. We meet new ones. It feels good to be here and feeling fine. Who knows what this year holds, what divine paths will cross and what wonders may come. Finishing the record and book are a massive victory. I hope to make a success of Stereophile. Mostly, I hope to connect with others via live music and real time social connection. Here’s to having the physical ability to do so. Here’s to the undeniable worth of us connecting through music. Here’s to seeing you out there sometime soon.

As always, thanks for reading. And Happy Fucking New Year 😉

K. xo

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“There’s one thing you can’t lose and it’s that feel
You can pawn your watch and chain but not that feel
It always comes and finds you, it will always hear you cry
I cross my wooden leg and I swear on my glass eye
It will never leave you high and dry”

– Tom Waits, That Feel

It’s been a minute. I usually attempt to pen these bits every other Saturday, when my daughter, Ava, is at her Mum’s. I sit down at the local, fresh cup of mud in hand, and try and make some sense of certain thoughts and feelings that have been rambling through my mind.

This week has been a very intense go. My day gig responsibilities are at peak requirement, to the point where I’m waking up at night going over the task list. This is never a good sign of work/life balance. The music is going well, though that’s generally an all consuming state. I’m okay with that, but having one foot in it and the other in the land of Responsible Adulting is a tricky dance. If you’ve read any of my other blogs, you’ll know that this is a recurring theme. Apart from all this, there’s the darkness of winter coming on. And, of course, there’s that thing that happened this week down south that I’m trying desperately hard to keep ahead of. Ahead in the sense of not falling prey to the vitriol, hatred and division that’s coming in from all sides.

There’s that sense of We and Them that never sits well with me, where we feel compelled to pick sides and point fingers at the “other”. I struggle with this myself: On one hand I’m down with following the Yogic/Buddhist approach of our interconnectedness, where we recognize that there’s a President Elect lurking somewhere in all of us, and we do what we can to be kind and open to all beings. Christ was on to something when he said “Forgive them Lord, they know not what they do.” We all have blind spots, where we are out of personal and universal alignment. On the other hand, I sometimes feel like all manner of retaliation, from slaps to armed revolution are appropriate steps to deal with those I share a foundational disagreement with. The fatalist in me feels that a global cataclysm, like the space rock that wiped out the dinos, is the only thing that will save us from ourselves.

The darkness that turning the clocks back ushers in each fall this year feels metaphoric for the spiritual darkness that’s fallen deeply upon us in the wake of the US election. These post covid years have already been dark. We’re missing so much, now more than ever. Social media, the rising cost of living, corporate piggery run amok, greed, stupidity, ego, mental illness, all of these and more layering our days, robbing us of our ability to see our commonality.

Not lost on me is the election falling on Guy Fawkes Day, the British celebration of the thwarted Gunpowder Plot, which, in 1605, was an attempt to blow up the Houses Of Parliament. That said, Fawkes & Co.’s impetus for the plot was to gain more tolerance for Catholics. I see election falling on November 5 not as religious, but symbolic of how satisfying it would be to blow up the current political model. To establish anew a system where one didn’t have to cast a ballot for which crass, double-talking greaseball will do the least damage.  

We need to remind ourselves how Adolph Hitler was able to take the reigns in Germany in the 1930s. It was by the lack of awareness and inability for the commoners to inform themselves and not see past the poison they were being fed. Some may find me comparing Hitler to our current leaders off. With the current state of the world, I’d urge those with misgivings to look deeper. If things feel like they’re getting shittier, there’s a reason for that. It’s okay to be very fucking angry right now with the attitude that’s coming from America, and also with what politicians and the corporate model are doing to our own country.

After the election this week, myself and some friends, other creatives, talked about the outcome. The consensus was mutual: to go deeper into our respective modes and continue to create beautiful things. To continue live in that place where we are truly free, if only for those moments between our adult responsibilities. To bring Light & Love to the world, through art. To continue to foster the feel that Old Tom Frost refers to in the lyrics above.

It’s hard to keep loving and see the light, when around us is so much horror and disregard. May we continue to fight the good fight, without and within. May we learn to see ourselves in the basest actions of others, and for our basest inclinations to wither, in the spirit of connection, goodness and unity. May we harness our rage and use it to foster the highest in us all.

Lastly, and awesomely, Stereophile will be finished this week! I’m sending one final mix tweak to Howard today, and the accompanying book of lyrics and images goes to print early in the week. It sounds and looks grand. It’s very beautiful. I can’t wait for you to hear the finished work. I’m planning the official release for the new year, but you’ll all get dibs on the first listen. I’ll keep ya posted.

As always, thanks for being there.

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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“Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.”

“Are you a politician asking what your country can do for you or a zealous one asking what you can do for your country? If you are the first, then you are a parasite; if the second, then you are an oasis in the desert.”

– Khalil Gibran

I’m sitting in the window at the local, in my usual spot. It was an adventure to get here. I live a block away. I’ve been staying at an Air BnB, courtesy of my own voice and advocacy with our local Metrolinx community rep, referred to herein, for the sake of anonymity, as “M”.

After five sleepless nights over a seven day period, due to overnight Ontario Line work on the Queen Street bridge, my continual, kind and firm communications with M resulted in Metrolinx footing the bill for the Air BnB stay. I’ve been dividing my time between sleeps there and working from home during the day. What a pain in the ass. It’s proven to be a trade off of which flow is more tiring. I’ve let our rep know that I’m grateful for her going to bat for Ava and I, but that there’s much left to be done to ensure peace for all of us living here and elsewhere, affected by the ongoing work, especially after learning that the project’s end date has been extended from 2027 to 2031 (Eglinton Crosstown, anyone?).

A friend of mine recently appeared in a Toronto Life piece, entitled Train Wreck. She’s a local dog-mum and lovely person. She, along with a few others, tell their stories. These all involve how the company has repeatedly shat on us. Lies, deceit, deflection, all underscored by greed and ego. So-called Captains Of Industry sneaking and bullying their way to impotent grandeur. A CEO in our current premiere’s (lower case intended) pocket. A CEO to whom the same premiere has given a $750,000 raise between 2017 and 2022. That’s our tax dollars at work. Padding the bank account of a wretch, who’s led a campaign of dirty pool and cut corners.

Inevitably, this is where one usually gets called out, claiming the necessity of better transit and NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) leanings. I’m all for better transit. That’s not what this is about. It’s about transparency and spending the right amount of money on ensuring the peace of mind and wellbeing of the locals in the communities in which this project is happening. Metrolinx has not done this. The Train Wreck article outlines all of this: damage done to people’s properties, foundations, possessions, the sleepless nights, the constant runaround from the company, the lack of transparency.

To me personally, it’s about much more than the above. I look at the bridge, only a few feet from our front door, and it’s a representation of what’s so wrong in our current climate. We were long ago drugged by TV. Add social media, dopamine and smartphone addictions to that list. We are idle and distracted while this elected official robs us blind, giving our money away to cronyism and for his own personal gain. It’s Corruption 101. There’s the attitude that we live in a democracy. That this provincial leader was appointed by the vote. The only problem with this is that there are a lot of gullible people out there. There are two types of people who voted for this person: Those too stunned to understand the damage he’s doing, and those who know exactly what he’s doing and stand to gain financially from it.

I understand very clearly now why Che Guevara took up arms against dictatorship and stood up for socialism. If you’re gobsmacked by me comparing the attempted violent overthrow of past dictators to our relatively docile Canadian landscape, I’ll say this: I’m very grateful to live in Canada and enjoy the benefits of safety and help from the Guv’nor in the form of things like the Canadian Childcare benefit. As a single Dad and Musician, this alone has helped me make ends meet. I’ll add that, while the premiere and CEO made mention here have not sent out men in black to murder their naysayers, their modus operandi is more insipid. These are people who will gladhand us and smile sweetly in our faces, while dipping an unseen hand into the national coffer. These actions and lack of care paint an ugly picture of suffering. I see Southern Ontario floods if the greenbelt is sold off to questionable developers. Yes, we need more housing, in particular, more affordable housing. Do we need it on the greenbelt. No. Any developer considering building here is part of the problem and is only looking out for themselves. I see the billions of taxpayer’s bucks being lost to the private sale of alcohol. Funds that could be spent on healthcare and education, instead of the decimation of these. I see the suffering of people in hospital emergency wards across the province, sitting on floors for lack of space, at the hands of a politician working hard to privatize health care, no doubt in alliance with those willing to practice private care and rake in the dough. For anyone with a lick of sense and curiosity, all of this is so obvious.

I was happy to come across both of the Khalil Gibran quotes above. The former means more to me than the latter. There were many times over the course of writing this where I felt sick in my heart. I needed to express all of this, but it’s energy I’d rather be spending on connecting us, rather than expounding on the ills of our society. Ills which, if we all had the capacity to care for each other first, and temper our lust for money, would not exist. It gets harder and harder to maintain a peaceful reconciliation of this stuff, especially as we’re seeing the cost of living skyrocketing, while the wealth divide increases and the middle class becomes obsolete. While I continue to advocate for my family and community, I’ll look for the the strength to kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love. To cultivate my Muppetite For Destruction. It’s a tall order in the face of modern life and all our challenges from without and within. May we all find the strength to continue to tear down all of that which doesn’t serve us, and to continue to love one another.

K. xo

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Pic by Marcel Lanteigne

“Grace is what matters in anything – especially life, especially growth, tragedy, pain, love, death. That’s a quality that I admire very greatly. It keeps you from reaching out for the gun too quickly. It keeps you from destroying things too foolishly. It sort of keeps you alive.”

– Jeff Buckley

Rolling around in bed of a Sunday, I met the day with the usual thoughts: yesterday’s news, the past, the future, today’s todo list, music, the record, the book. More present than these was a terrible level of chronic pain and whether or not I have a future playing live music. I watched a YouTube short of artists from Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, to Chris Cornell, to Brandi Carlile, to Adam Levine, talking about the late Jeff Buckley’s influence and incandescent glow. The clip ended with Buckley himself saying the first few words of the quote above. Not long after I sat down in the window at the local to start this writing, I came upon the full quote. Undoubtedly, someone had asked him why he called his debut album Grace. There is was, in full form, after my seeing snippet of it just hours ago.

I chose it today because of it’s timeliness. I’m on the verge of releasing Stereophile, my record and small format book that’s been, mostly due to stress and trauma-based chronic pain, the longest process I’ve experienced seeing a project from start to finish. That I’ve made it this far is a massive victory. In the face of daily adversity, I did it. I’m not without a huge sense of gratitude and pride that it’s all come together so wonderfully. The current issue lies elsewhere.

Earlier in the year, I did two shows. They checked all the boxes: connection, vibration and decent pay. The latter is an often shat upon aspect of art. The commercialism of it. The “desire” for money in exchange for scraping the guts from the skin of our souls, collating it all within a song and sending it out there, with a hope for connection and validation. With the pain I was experiencing, along with my day gig, parental engagement, domestic requirements, and the record and book hanging unfinished from the bleak February trees, it was too much. I took a step away from the live stuff.

As the record got closer to completion, I revisited the live thang. I started tweaking my live rig, simplifying everything. Getting back to the very foundation of the solo acoustic troubadour (plus some dub delays thrown in for cosmic measure). The setlist was revamped. I added some new songs to the running order. I say new songs, meaning these are new to me. I realize none of you have heard Stereophile yet, so those songs are new to you. I’ve been living with them for so long and they’ve been in studio process for so long that, in the meantime, new joints were written. I’m never short of fodder for the mill. It’s all good stuff. The new songs make the setlist that much stronger.

While all this was happening there was, in the back of my mind, the little voice, asking me whether or not all this preparation was going to come to anything. I’ve not yet parsed out if it was the kind, authentic voice or the voice of trauma and discord disguised as a helping hand. Whatever the case, I’m very much aware that I’ve learned to distrust my body’s ability to muster the energy required to deliver a killer live show. To give every ounce to the music and not feel afterwards the mingling of joy for being where I should be, doing what I love, with feeling like I’ve been rolled over by a tank. In the moment, there is no pain. I’m in the music. It’s only post gig that I feel my body and brain collapsing.

The usual default is that this is old guy shit. That’s not the case here. I aware enough to know the difference between the possible limitations and afflictions of age and the underlying forces causing my chronic issues. I’ve been smart enough, after years of booze and drugs, to start taking care of myself. It’s an insight into how insipid stress is, and how both experienced and generational trauma can make a mess of good things.

I recently went to see an osteopath, whose work is intuitive and deep. I’ve seen her twice and it’s so far promising. I can feel shifts. I’ve also recently dialed back the pain meds I’ve been relying on daily for a few years. It was going well, until it wasn’t. I was limping across the finish line at the tail end of this week.

It’s been a weekend of reflection and making lots of music. I’ve been pickin’ like a hero and also leaning back and breathing. It’s my daughter Ava’s eleventh birthday this week. I had a ball going out and getting her prezzies, then wrapping them yesterday. There’s so much good in my life. I’m surrounded by abundance and Love, in this mad age where we blunder along, so often lost in survival mode and all manner of distraction.

I hit our local park two weeks ago, on a tired afternoon, knowing that I needed to sing. I packed up the busking rig and headed across the road. Barefoot, I let ‘er rip. It was so good. It was the reminder I needed. I was doing what I was put here for. I’ve been back out a few times since. I’ve met a bunch of folks who confirmed and validated me. They reflected back to me what I was offering. I left each experience higher that I’d been prior.

That high has always been there, after every show, after all these years. It’s a constant. I know any of you out there who play music for people know what I’m talking about. I’m not sure what the future holds. I’m afraid. Afraid to commit to a string of live dates in the face of the distrust I feel for my physical wherewithal to see it through. I don’t feel a pull towards being a digital creator. Real time is where it’s at, where we see and feel each other. Meeting, music, smiles, hugs, farewells until next time. This is the stuff.

I’ll keep on going like it’s going to happen. The live set will continue to develop. I’ll continue to look for friends/players who want to form a musical gang and play shows together. I’ll keep working on managing the sometimes unmanageable pain. With courage, humour and, hopefully, grace, I’ll rise to meet the road ahead.

Thanks for reading.

K. xo