104. Bridging the Divide with Musical Unity. Jo Jo Worthington. Montreal, Quebec. 05/22/23

Join us as we transcend time and space to Montreal, Quebec to play Song Title in the Form of a Pandemy Question with musician, producer, and audio engineer Jo Jo Worthington. Jo Jo shares what it was like moving to Montreal in the early stages of the pandemy and writing her pandemy album, Baptism 1.  We listen to her folk rock tune, the Divide, and discuss the importance of building bridges of unity to create a more just and equitable society for all.

 Jo Jo online

Q1. How was the pandemy THE DIVIDE?
Q2. What was your pandemy BIRTHDAY like?    
Q3. We TRIED OUR BEST, what can we do now mid pandemy? 
Q4. How do you the pandemy is FOREVER EVERMORE in all of us?  

Special thanks to Nardwuar the Human Serviette for inspiring the game, Song Title in the Form of a Pandemy Question. 

Thanks for joining us as we unite humanity through stories of hope, connection, and community in the face of the global pandemy. We are all in this together, and we’re glad you’re here together with us. Thanks for taking a moment to like and subscribe and follow the Pandemy Show on social media (Twitter, Insta, FB, and TikTok). Thanks to Giant Value for letting us know everything is going to be alright, Pieper for the art work, and Becky Nethery for copywriting and website design.

Transcript

0:25

Good day and welcome to the pandemic show stories of the pandemic for people living in the pandemic. No one is alone on the pen. Demi show Thanks for joining us. As we unite humanity through stories of hope, connection, and community in the face of the global pandemic, we are all in this together, and we're glad you're here together with us. Welcome back to the Pan Demi Show. Today we're fortunate to get to transcend time and space up the St. Laurens to Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Who are you? My name is Jojo Worthington. Jojo, thank you so much for joining us here today on The Pandemic Show where we work to unite humanity with stories of shared experience around the Great pandemic and I am recording this interview on the traditional territory of the Hoho and Sinabi and Chung Anton, people on the Upper Canada Treaty territory. Jojo, you've released an amazing album during the pandemic. Baptism you've also been producing, I bumped into jojo at the Janice Jo Lee Ancestor Song album release party earlier this spring in Toronto. Ontario and jojo produced this awesome album. Jojo. It was so great seeing you at the Janice Jo Lee album release, and you did an, you and Janice and the whole band and everybody involved did a great job on this album. Hmm. Yeah. I, I loved working with her and like everyone, she had involved her whole band, like everyone was just so fun to work with and so kind. Yeah, it was a pleasure. I'm rocking that album every week. I love it. The music's great. The lyrics are great. The positivity's great and we were fortunate enough to have Janice Jolie on the show in season two of the Great Emmi where she helped us battle white supremacy. jojo is here today to play. Song title in the form of a pandemic question based on her art rock album, baptism one. mm-hmm. Jojo. Your previous music can be described as synth pop folk, but this latest album, it's. Art, rock and Art is the name of the game. I think where we are now, mid Pandemic, the great reopening, we're all looking to reconnect with community and energize our souls and going out to music and cultural events, I think is what is doing that. Can you tell us what it was like working on Baptism One during the pandemic? Yeah. Well, I had so much time to myself, during the pandemic and I wrote. Almost all of the songs during that time. and the divide especially is like very specifically about how different people reacted to Covid 19. And just, I just really felt it in my heart, like literally the divide. Between people, especially among my family. So that one, like really that one really especially I wanted to release during the pandemic. and here in Montreal, I don't know. Exactly what it was like in Ontario or the other province has been in Montreal and Quebec was quite strict. the restrictions, we had a curfew and it was really hard to just meet new people. I had just moved to Montreal in 2020, like May of 2020, so it was like, Right when it started, and I really didn't know anybody here and, and I felt very lonely for, quite a few months just because I, I didn't know anybody and. I couldn't meet anybody either. So it, it was, it was very, it was very isolating for sure. Yeah. And that comes out in the tracks on your new album. Yeah. Baptism I find that really powerful and relatable how you, wrote these songs and they helped you deal with all the different feels of the pandemic in the moment. And I think that's a really helpful way to not carry the ba, the emotional and mental and all the baggage of the pandemic forward into our lives as a limiting factor. I know myself, I was very helped, mentally, emotionally by writing poetry around circumstances around the pandemic as well. Like my first pandemic was my mother's dementia journey that started in 2018. And the, the pandemic seemed to be almost secondary to her, her health situation and. Yeah, so writing, writing down, expressing our feelings, what a healthy way to move through the pandemic and not carry the baggage word. And I, I love that art is now coming out to help us all, all the fans and the audience process our own stress around the pandemic, loss around the pandemic. And let's start off by listening to, the great divide before we start our game here today. Alright. Ladies and gentlemen of the Pandemic, the Divide by jojo Worthington. I can feel the drift between us and on the other side grown up. Thinking that it's you up finger. Himself into the house. Sit. And crawl. Are we. There are so many delusions and there are so many truths sometimes. What's gonna happen to finally reach himself? Are we. Because I don't know what to do. I dunno how to reach you. I'm feeling so afraid and every day the faces change. I don't. Know what to do. I dunno. I'm feelings. Thank you, jojo. Wow. What a powerful song about the pandemic and your experience, our first question here today with with Jojo Worthington song title in the form of a pandemic question. Mm-hmm. How was the Pandemic? The Great Divide? Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think just everybody's different. Opinions, conspiracy theories about the vaccine, how to stay safe. it just seemed like there were kind of two side it's to it. So you had some, some debates within your own, like all of us, we all had people with different opinions and perspectives in our family, and those seem to be some of the hardest ones to, to deal with because they're our loved ones. Exactly. Yeah. That's why it was so hard. And, yeah, I just, I, I just, it made me feel like very frustrated and sad at the same time. and at the time I actually, I had had written this song in April, in 2020 and it didn't ha, it had completely different lyrics. and I didn't really know where I was going, so I kind of just like put it on the back burner. And then in 2021 I was engineering for my friends band tragedy, Anne. and I was in Toronto working with them and I was staying at their house as well, and I just got off the phone with a family member and was kind of feeling those same feelings again, and suddenly, like the words just kind of like came out. it just happened very quickly for that song. So that was the last song I wrote that is on the album because, And like two months later, no, one month later, we were recording it. So it was very last minute to add it to the album. I, I identify with this pers with your observations and your perspective, because I think about season one of the pandemic. Mm-hmm. Some of us were getting called cheaper. Some of us were getting called rat liquors. We had, we had a, you know, an. UN and an unimaginable amount of cooperation around the world to try to communicate, figure out about this virus, deciding that a vaccine is a potential solution. And everybody seemed like, let's get these vaccines and make this thing go away. Mm-hmm. And even the people later that became like anti-VAX types for either political reasons or. Just for their own whatever reason, they were all pro-vaccine. Like, let's get these vaccines, let's get this behind us. And it didn't really shift the whole time. It's almost like at the beginning of the pandemic, all the, all of us people, we were caterpillars. And then during the pandemic we went into a chrysalis and now mid pandemic with the great reopening. We're all kind of coming out, hopefully something more, more beautiful. But there is a lot of toxicity in our society and I think it really started when financial supports for people withdrew. There was a debate and controversy and difference of opinion. In the first year or two of the pandemic, but I think it wasn't until like the Serb in Canada, or as BA Johnson calls it, the curb in Canada, the quasi universal basic income. When that ran out and the financial. Financial worries and the financial woes entered the equation. I think that's when things got even more bitter and charged. Mm-hmm. And it makes me wonder, like we learned so much that we can do radical changes in short amount of time as a human population with people started working virtually. This would've been unheard of if it wasn't for this great pandemic to the amount of cooperation around vaccines. Like there was so much cooperation, so much. Massive change in society. Mm-hmm. Why did it take a pandemic for that to happen? And I think the pandemic did AC exacerbate and illustrate all the divides that were happening before covid 19. Racial inequality, income inequality, challenges around rec, peace and reconciliation on. So, yeah, it did illustrate so many divides and I'm hoping now your album and all the other art, especially in this time of being able to gather again, is gonna help bring us back together and. It's okay to, like, I think we, to have a healthy system, you have to have different opinions where people disagree, but we have to be able to do it civilly in a civil manner, in a respectful manner. And I, I think when you disagree with somebody, you don't change your opinion right away, but it influences your thinking moving forward. What an what a powerful song, the Divide. And how do you think we're coming outta this divide of the first going into season? We're in season four of the Pandemic Now, and the us the crew of the US S Vector, my Star Fleet International cosplay group was over for our five year anniversary barbecue on Saturday. And I, I was kind of being flipping like, oh, well, least the emmis behind us. And Manny, who was sitting to my left, said, what are you talking about? Hundreds of people are dying from Covid every day still. So it's, it's. You know, it's not in the front of our minds, like every day on the news, like this is how many people are sick. This is how many people, had the vaccine and didn't have the vaccine. But it's still out there in the background as we come outta these first three years of intense personal restrictions, societal restrictions. And I think no matter what government was gonna do, they couldn't have got it right. But at least in here in Canada, they made sure people weren't gonna lose their houses or lose their apartments and had some money to buy food for the first little while of it. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's, it's funny, a lot of people think like Covid 19 like is not around anymore. It's still very present. it's good that the vaccines help like a tremendous amount and. Not as many people are getting sick as you know, the beginning of the pandemic. But yeah, it's for sure still very much a thing. People are, are dying still. Yeah. It's so unfortunate. Um, I wanna live in a society where we care about more vulnerable members in our society. Yeah. And I'm thinking. It's four years into this pandemic, I'm looking around, has the ventilation issue, which could really help us move forward in a positive way, has that really been addressed? And I don't think it has. Mm-hmm. I don't see a lot of action around preparing us for the next one or healing from this one, or addressing the problems from before. But it's great that people are talking about it. Mm-hmm. I think the financial aspect of it and the income inequality, like the prices have gone up. People are struggling, interest rates are going up. It's getting more expensive to live. I think we need to reevaluate resource distribution. Are these billionaires really helping? The majority of us, I, I don't think that they are, but no. Moving on to our next question here today on the Pan Demi Show with jojo Worthington in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. What was your pandemic birthday like based on your song birthday? Do you remember your lockdown birthdays? Yes, I do. I had a really nice birthday actually. my roommates took me to, which is a region about an hour and a half north of Montreal. And it's a really beautiful hiking and camping region. So we went camping for the weekend and just like got outta the city cuz the city was like so gray and uh, just not fun to be in Yeah. So I did that and then my next birthday, I went and saw Dune with, with a couple of people and that was extremely inspiring and so much fun. I love the original of Dune, but I did appreciate the remake and yeah, science fiction, is an important genre, helping us think about the challenges of the. The current, the future and the past. Mm-hmm. So were you bubbled then with your roommates? So you're like, well, we're all bubbled together. Let's go, let's go camping to get outta the city where we could have a little bit more freedom outside. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I, when I first moved to Montreal, I had some roommates, um, living right downtown. so that was kind of my only. Only viewpoint of what Montreal was for a while. but they were awesome and we did lots of fun things together. We, yeah, we went camping, we went, we went hiking, tried to get out of the city as much as possible and take lots of bike rides. So that was nice. Was it nice with reduced traffic to be able to drive around Montreal? Cause it is a big, global, busy, bustling global city. For sure. Yeah, definitely. Did you find you spent more time reconnecting or connecting with the land and nature? It sounds like you did getting outta the city. Yeah. I tried my best to because. We were stuck in an apartment like the three of us, and we all were working from home, so it was quite close. Like we got to know each other pretty quickly, but high density living. Yeah. yeah, spending time outside as much as possible. Going to the parks. Montreal has some really nice parks, so I did that a lot. on the plateau, up on the mountain. Yep. Yeah. John Mos Park. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Was Tam Tam shut down for a year or two and back open? Now that's a good question. I believe I still heard the Tam TAs going on, um, on the Sundays, you have another great song, gets Me Moving and Grooving. Try our best. I think we all tried our best during the pandemic, what do you think needs to happen now for us all to try our best to make the world a better place? I think exactly what you're doing on this show. They've like uniting people like your show's all about unity and. I think that's, that's the best thing we could do is that if we try to understand people better and try to listen rather than, quickly jump to conclusions or like quickly become angry, just listening and trying to understand one another I think is the best that we can do, because that's how we create unity. So exactly what you're doing on this show, I think it's amazing. Thank you, Jojo Worthington here today on the Pandemic Show, working to unite humanity here with us, with stories of shared experience. You didn't probably perform much during the first couple years of the pandemic how did you deal with that, getting your creative expression out to your fans? Yeah. Yeah. I didn't perform like all the venues were shut down and nobody was really going to shows anyway. Um, and it was really hard cuz I love performing and I had planned on going on to the US to tour a little bit. and I had to cancel all of that. So, yeah, it was hard, but a lot of, yeah, a lot of people did go live like on Instagram or something. I didn't feel, I didn't feel like I wanted to do that. Like it just wasn't for me to do like an online concert. I think I did one privately for somebody and I did a few. Instagram lives where I kind of had my own little show where I, basically listened to albums that I really liked and just did a ton of research about the album and just like talked about each song. just because one of the things I missed the most about the pandemic was, was going to shows and listening to music with other people. that was, that was like one of the biggest things I missed. So, I had a little show on Instagram, like, I think I did it three times where I, I listened to an album and I talked about each song and like what the recording artist was doing, where they recorded it, background stuff. and that was really fun. I, I really enjoyed doing that. Interesting. Thank you. Jojo. Yeah. Now, is the pandemic forever, evermore. Based on your song Forever. Yeah. Evermore on your new hit album, baptism one. Yes. I mean, I think we're, we're humans and we're very vulnerable. and I think, you know, this is, this was a taste of what. A worldwide pandemic is, I think it's definitely possible that we have another one in the future. Perhaps worse, perhaps not as bad because we have this experience now. Yeah, I think Covid 19 is always gonna be there, but I hope that like other illnesses we've dealt with in the past, it'll eventually be nullified and it won't affect us anymore. but yeah, it's still very much covid 19 is still very much affecting people and just because things are open and the majority of us are okay, it doesn't mean that. It's just gone forever. It could get worse again. like Manny at the u s s Vector five year anniversary meeting said people are still dying every day from it. And I was even talking to my dad about it yesterday and I said, I wonder if this is like, in years from now when you're like, you call somebody up, Hey, do you wanna go, wanna go walk the dogs or go to the baseball game? Oh, I can, I got covid. I'm just not feeling well, and it's gonna be like, oh, I got the flu, or I got a cold, and it's gonna be one of those kinds of things. But the initial overwhelming, the whole hospital system and all that, like those days are behind us and mm-hmm. It's, I'm really interested in how are we gonna create a more just and equal society moving forward, because it seems like we've kind of backtracked with this whole pandemic seems like, well we know the rich have gotten richer. Mm-hmm. The working class have gotten poorer and I think greed is a big explanation for it. It's really fascinating. I think it will be forever, ever more, and it'll always be, it's gonna be etched in popular culture with fantastic albums like yours and, and other artists and, and books and poetry and all of those types of things. And yeah, maybe we'll never have all the answers, but hopefully it's gonna, we're gonna come outta this in a more positive trajectory. Then we came into it. But that still remains to be seen. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And like you said before, I hope that we do treat our elders and more vulnerable people with more care, especially those who live in nursing homes. I think the pandemic affected the most because like for me, my grandma was in a nursing home at the time, and. She was not allowed to leave her room for months and months. And that is just a horrible way to live. Like that is, it's like a prison. It is exactly like a prison. And she, she ended up dying just because of the isolation. Um, my condolences, yeah. Oh, thank you. But yeah, it's just, you know, that's horrible. So there, we know, we know a lot more about Covid now, but, um, yeah. I hope that we do take better care of our elders, especially in the healthcare system for sure. And it, it can be as simple as improving ventilation. Yes. Yeah. It's like, I mean, it's not like we don't know what to do to, to make our infrastructure safer for everyone. Mm-hmm. Improve ventilation. So airborne particles and moist droplets aren't pr. You know, floating around in the room, getting people, the solutions are, there, is the political will there to implement them. It's, it's gonna be interesting. And you, my condolences about your grandmother, my great aunt passed away from Covid in a nursing home in Kitchener, early in the pandemic. It was so. It was so like brutal, not being able to gather with the family, but having to go to the funeral on the computer. And my aunt in Florida passed away early pandemic and we couldn't go down and gather to celebrate her life. And it was just, so that was one of the deepest impacts I feel on community is how some of our sacred end of life celebrations were so disrupted now, yesterday. I was at the celebration of life for my friend's father Mike it was so powerful. I mean, I just have so many positive memories of my friend Liam's dad, when I'd be over at their hou, him, him and his partner's house, and, and his dad would come over in his and his and his mom. And he was the kind of guy that he was so comfortable with who he was. Everybody else could be comfortable with who they were and didn't have to put up a facade. He was just such an original person and he cared about the greater good and the public good. And at the wake yesterday, the celebration of life, he was a musician and, and people were performing songs. And one of the performers, one, uh, musicians said how, just, how lucky we are here in Southern Ontario that we can. Gather safely and enjoy live music and community. Think about Ukraine, Oran, or these war torn places in the world where p where political strife and greed is preventing people from having these experiences. And Covid gave us a taste of that misery. That is, yeah, that is, that is happening for far too many people around the world. At least now with still all the challenges we can gather to celebrate our loved ones when they pass away, and we can gather together and share our memories. And Kat Van Grove, a guest on a previous show, she said she understands that she's been told that when people get within four feet of each other, our hearts kind of sink and our hearts melt together. It's the feeling I got at the YG concert at the Danforth Music Hall two Saturdays ago. Mm-hmm. It's like I, being in the club with all of those people listening to some really positive music, I just felt like I was connected to the human, that human spirit of when people get together in a positive way in large numbers. Yeah. So yeah. In wow times they are are changing. But thank goodness for the great reopening and wonderful music like baptism one. And all of your great tracks. Now, what do you hope, like, it seems like the pandemic will be here ever more in one way or another, but what do you hope the world is like? If we're ever able to look at Covid 19 in the rear view mirror and we get our ActX straight with ventilation, we get our ActX straights with universal basic income. What do you hope the world is like? Jojo? Universal income, like I think that's gonna make a huge positive difference for sure. I would personally love to see that too. hopefully, I mean, hopefully not as much divide as we have had. no class divides for sure. I hope we can, you know, learn from these mistakes and learn from what. We've experienced, and I hope that future isn't too far off. Mm-hmm. Thank you jojo for joining us here today on the Pan Demi Show, stories of the Pandemic for the People of the Pandemic. No one's alone on the Pan Demi Show. Thank you so much, Dave. It was a pleasure being here and I really got a lot out of your perspective about thinking about the divide and how the last three years, the first three seasons of the pandemic that was kind of building and now it. It does seem like Covid still here. It's a reality, but it's a time for us to be able to unite. And even though we might disagree on one thing, there's still a million other things that unify us and maybe spending more time focusing on the beauty of the natural world and the beauty of our souls and our artistic expression, rather than focusing on, What may or may not have happened or what we could or could have not have done different or whether or not something's real. If we can move past that and we can come together again, we'll be stronger. But there are people that benefit from divide and conquer strategies and putting wedges between people. So thank you so much for your art, because I think it is the art that's going to bring us all back together. Thanks for listening to the pandemic show. We're all in this together, and we're glad you're here together with us physically distance with us@pandemicshow.com. Pandemic show is on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit stories from the pandemic for the people of the pants. Do you have an interesting pandemic story and want to share email us@pandemicshowedatgmail.com. Thanks to all our guests. Thanks to giant value for seeing us in and letting us know everything is going to be all right. No one is alone at the pandemic show.