Episode 119: June Two Just For You

Hello my G-town pals. I truly haven't felt like myself lately so I hope you can excuse the absence. Lots going on - and not in the positive sense. Mourning. Upheaval. Life Gut punches (and those gut punches when you're most relaxed and un-ready for the pain). But hey - I'm surviving. Are you? I hope you tune in and get some nuggets from this mining session. I love you.

My new album "Geographics" is out now on all platforms. You can preorder the digital, cd and vinyl versions of the album on my bandcamp page, (which helps me greatly) but I understand that cash is tight all over the map, so you can also order a five dollar Geographics sticker. 5 beans! This album is really special to me (as my friends Melissa Payne and Charles Austin played all over it) and I hope you'll come along for the supersonic ride. Follow me @gravencanada on all the socials, and check my website to see when I'm playing live in a town near you. Join Graventown today to support yours truly for only 8 clams a month. 

Transcript

0:22

Well, hello friends, we're back at it again in Graventown. Short one today. Appreciate you. Appreciate you being here. What's up? What's cooking, as the kids say? Are you cooking or are you just sous-chefing? Um, I am alright. I'm surviving. It's been a while since I've popped one of these into the ether sphere, but I appreciate y'all. I appreciate your love and support even through storms that I'm weathering. I've come up against a bunch of obstacles recently, all at once. So I'm navigating those, I'm circumnavigating those, to quote the great John K. Sampson in a song I like to cover. Yeah, it's a lot. It's been a lot of extra energy on top of just being human and just existing, which is a lot too. It's like the universe is going, okay, deal. Now deal with this. Now deal, deal, deal, deal, deal with that, deal with this. This thing happened. Now you got to deal again. And uh just lots of those sorts of things. But what can you do when you live in a shoe? I'd like to encourage you to uh be a part of Graventown. If you haven't already, maybe you are, maybe you aren't. But it's only eight bucks a month. That is the only amount of money I will accept from people on a monthly basis. That's it. I don't think you can get anything for eight bucks a month these days. See, that's not even an add-on on Prime. Like, you can't even get a full streaming service for eight dollars a month. It's insane, man. Everything's expensive. So I like to keep the things that I do pretty cheap, relatively inexpensive, and uh, and that way I'll just stay poor forever, you know? And and and you know what, whatever. I'll just keep creating, do what I can do, make money where I can. But yeah, you know, it's it's all relative, man. As you can tell, some of my woes lately have been uh financial. But speaking of that, to support me, to be a part of Graventown, it's only eight bucks a month. You go to ko-fi.com slash graven canada. That's K-O-F-I, as in Frank, dot com slash graven canada. And then you'll be a part of the Ko-Fi crew. And it's just this little connected, interconnected group of weary travelers, minstrels, fun artists, people who support me and who have open hearts and are all about kindness. And I try and send updates from the road. I haven't been too much lately because I've been swamped with all this other extracurricular shit. But um, yeah, if you want to support me, that would be great. I would just love you for that. But let me get into what's going on with me lately. Before I do that, uh, just want to tell you I do have a couple upcoming shows. I will be on Wolf Island on June 10th. That's a Wednesday, with Stephen Stanley, my good friend, and a couple of other great musicians. Jason Mercer, Chrissy Jackson, a bunch of other great folks playing with Steven. And I'll be playing with them on the 10th on Wolf Island at Spicer's Dockside Grill. And then I head out with Steven. We're gonna hit the road together, and we are playing um both, I believe on September 12th, uh September, June 12th at Springtide Festival in Uxbridge, Ontario. And in Uxbridge, it is a great little town. It's got a really cool art scene. I've made some really cool friends up there, man. I'm really lucky to um know these people and to to just be, you know, connected to some to some great crew. When I heard about Chris's passing, I was actually at my friend Sajan and Shelly's place. My friend Chris, by the way, is the one who uh Chris Olson is the one who had cancer and survived by his lovely wife, Rebecca, and his four kids. And the funeral was just this past weekend. So it's been very heavy. Um, that was a very intense moment in time, but but getting off the Uxbridge train for a second, I'll be up there with Steven and uh playing on the 12th. I think Dan Mangan is also playing at that festival, a lot of other great people, and then I will be and on the 13th, headed to Peterborough to play a show with Granya and the Knight Riders at the Pig's ear. That will be fun, and then on the 14th, I'll cap it all off with a uh open mic that I'm helping host in Almont as I head back to my neck of the woods. Um, yeah, so there's all that happening in the next week. Also, before that, this coming Saturday, Ron Hawkins is playing in my backyard. That show's almost sold out. So if you are thinking about getting tickets, go do it, man. Don't wait around. Okay? Don't be the lazy Susan that shows up to the party with a wet dress. I don't even know what that means. I was trying to take that metaphor somewhere and it just did not work. But, you know, just plan. Get your tickets, get them now. I know there are people who are like, we're just we're coming. And I'm like, well, I hope there's space for you because my yard is not huge. But um, you know, what can you do? You can't force people to buy advanced tickets, it's just the kind of way she goes these days. And uh Ron Ron Hawkins is a real gem of the Canadian music world, and he's done so much, released so much stuff, whether with Lois of the Low or Ron Hawkins in the do good assassins. Um, he took me to Buffalo for my first time, and I opened for him about two years ago. And that was a great experience, man. I will never forget that. I was a real mountaintopper um playing to those people, and I'm still connected to some great Buffalo people from that show who want me to come back. So I would love to. I just can't bring myself to get into the States right now. But so that's kind of what's going on with me. You can check out what's happening with me. I'll be updating my website, graven.ca, see where I'm playing, see what I'm doing. Let's get into it. Number one, the funeral. It was heavy. It was a very kind of unexpectedly heavy time with the week that I'd had leading up to it, which I'll get into later. And and the morning that I kind of had on my own, you know, with at my friend Sajan and Shelly's place, I talked to some great friends that night. Um, when I found out it was funny, you know, I knew Chris was getting along in the uh closer and closer to passing. And I'd seen him once in the winter with my brother and and my daughter. We went over and and just had a real fun hang with him and his family, and Rebecca made this awesome shepherd's pie. It was a real great time, like just to connect. I'm really thankful we had that. And he, I think, you know, he'd sensed that he needed to meet up with people who it meant a lot to him. And um, so we did that. I think it was sort of heavy for Sloane because she she, you know, being around someone who's sick like that, um, with cancer at nine, it's a lot, it's a lot to wrestle with, it's a lot to think about. And uh she didn't end up coming to the funeral, it's just it was a lot too, and she wasn't, you know, extensively close with um their family. Just knew them a bit. But I'm thankful we had that time. And then I knew that so that was probably January or February, and skip ahead to May. Um, I think it was about the 17th. I was up in Uxbridge playing at this farmer's market, and I knew I I'd sensed my my brother had said, and Chris and my brother uh Adam grew up together, they're the same age, and they were friends from a young age, and I became uh friends with Chris through my brother, and and um knew the end was coming, and I've been talking with Adam, my brother, about Chris, and just like we knew that this was an event that was gonna take place relatively soon, not exactly sure of the timing. And I just reached out to Rebecca while I was hanging with my friends Sajan and Shelly in Oxbridge and thought, yeah, I'm just gonna send her a note and say hi and see what's going on with Chris. And it was legit, like she was with Chris basically at death's door at that point. Uh, and uh, just so heavy. Like I had messaged her, I think, in the afternoon around 3 p.m. And she was like, he's not gonna last much longer, it's gonna happen soon. And he passed that night at like 8 p.m. something like that. And I think, you know, maybe I was just randomly the universe or our our souls maybe were connecting and and just needed to meet. And I I said some things to Rebecca just to pass on to Chris, which I won't share. And I and she said she would and she was thankful that I said them. And um yeah, I talked to some really good friends that night while I was with Sajan and Shelly. Really hit me hard. I just was talking to Sloane's mom, and I just started blubbering. I couldn't hold it in. And then um my old friend Trish from Capus Casing, Ontario, who I wrote the song Teenage Memory Machine about. If you're a fan of Geographics, my new record. Um, thank you for that, by the way, for all your support and love with that. It's getting me through this this time. Um yeah. So I kind of was reaching out to some people. I talked to my really, really good friend, one of my best friends, Paul, who also knew Trish. We we worked at camp at the same time. Paul lives in Montreal, and we had a really good chat about Chris, and I was emotional a bit with him too, and just so sad. You know, Chris was one of those guys who was just pure light, man. Happiness, joy. He loved to laugh, he loved to get others laughing. He he was sporty, he was musical, he was like all things. Like he he was artistic, uh, he enjoyed, you know, cinema. And um yeah, he just was so great. Great dad, lifelong teacher, left behind this legacy of kindness, was at I think his his school in Ottawa Hillcrest since 1999. And you know, when you're out of school that long and you're a good, great, awesome teacher, which you know, they can be hard to come by. Um that's a beautiful thing. And really at the funeral there were students, man. You could see there were just like these groups of students, like maybe past now who might be in university or college or doing other things beyond uh secondary, and they were there crushed, you know, one of their heroes gone. And I was sitting beside some old friends from camp, Allison and Caroline, who it was great to see. I hadn't seen either of them in in uh fuck well over probably two decades or more. And just chatting with them, and uh it was funny. There was this video that they played at the funeral. This was really strange, and I hadn't watched it. I know they put it up on the funeral page, but I didn't watch the videos of Chris. Chris was playing a John Prime song for um November. He was really connected with Movember and he always wanted to raise money. Ironic, right? That the guy every year, every fucking year, raising money for no November gets knocked out by cancer. How fucking insane is that? But anyway, what can you do? Um Chris led with kindness, you know, all the time. And he he hugely supported me. Anyways, this this video came up of him playing John Prime, just I think in a room in his house, and he made this little video and he said, This is my November music challenge, and I pass it off to he said someone's name and another person's name, and then he said and Matt McCackney. And just hearing him say my name on the screen at the funeral was like that hit me too. Um, I was a little bit in my head because I had to perform, so I was feeling it and feeling the emotion, but it's weird to to hear someone who has passed in a video before they passed mention your name. It's a very um strange thing. And um yeah, oh, it's just a lot, it was a lot to deal with. Um and then on top of that, it's like you know, when things come in life and you you're just being dragged, like you're you're kind of winded, you're gassed. It's like this other fucking tester jumps out of the bushes and God punches you while you're already gassed. And that's number two. That's the thing that I'm I'm gonna talk about in sort of light terms because I don't want to really mention the whole thing. But um SMR, ASMR just gonna take a sip of this coffee. Hmm. I bet you could hear even some of the foam on top of that straight up. Not even sure what that is, not a cappuccino, but it's just a nice coffee made with an espresso machine with some nice crema and I'm enjoying it. Um yeah, number two is a I'll just say a legal situation that I'm now facing and undertaking and paying money to fight. So there's that. That happened a week after Chris had passed. Um the situation, you know, I'm not gonna get into it. But it's brutal. It's a brutal situation. I think it it's uh it has to do with police. I believe it to be an abuse of power, and um I'm doing what I can to fight it, and I will will leave it there. But uh the timing of that is crazy, you know. Um you're just not ready and and I mean you're never ready in life. These things just come at you in rapid succession when you're like in relaxation mode. It's like imagine someone flexing and preparing for something, okay, like a huge bodybuilder builder type guy, and there's like a um kind of a rapid-fire machine that can shoot softballs in a row, like real hardcore, you know, grapefruit size softballs that you would see in a ballpark. People cranking dingers. Dingers, gonna make sure I pronounce that correctly. Um yeah. People getting bass hits, shagginflies with those grapefruit-size softballs. And there's a machine about let's say 50 meters away from this pretty muscle-bound man, and he's just flexing out in the sun, and his abs are just like super tight, and he's getting red because the the blood is rushing through his veins, and he's just tightening and tightening because he knows this machine is gonna hit him, and then he's like, Okay, I guess it's not gonna happen. Fully relaxes, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go. As in a relaxed state, imagine these softballs just pelting this guy in the abdomen over and over again when he's not ready for it. That's sort of um in a pictographical type way, um, what's going on with me right now. I really wasn't ready. And you never are when things like this happen. And uh it's this legal thing, I'll say, has affected also my agency, my ability to move around and do things. I'm, you know, physically okay. I'm fine. Uh, there's definitely some residual stress and anxiety that's hanging around because of it. But I do feel, you know, I feel alright. I I feel like, you know, I can still see the light uh at the other end. I'm not in a place of darkness, I'm not in a place of self-harm. I love my kid. I'm I'm lucky to have, you know, a healthy family who has been very supportive through this process. I really have to give it up to all of them. My brother, my mom, and my dad, uh, who I live with, they have been five stars in terms of just like, what do you need? How can we help? And it's just without question, you know, and you never know how things will go down when you experience something like this. But I'm incredibly lucky to have that base. And there's some other friends too have really stepped up, and the response has mostly been, how can we help? And it means everything, you know, that helps you to get through to see light when you're just out to sea on the darkest of dark nights. I don't know why I said that dark with such an east coast um tint, but I did. I've got an east coaster hiding in me somewhere, I'm sure of it. I've spent so much time over the years in Halifax, and I I I love it out there. I love PEI too. I I love Eastern Canada. My a few times that I've spent in New Brunswick also deeply enjoy that province. It's all it's all gravy on the East Coast, it really is. There we go. I had to take another sip and clear my throat off mic for your sake. So, hey, we're at about the 20-minute mark. That gives you an idea of what I've been up to, why I haven't been podcasting, why I haven't been doing a lot of things. I haven't been posting online, I really haven't been on top of you know promoting shows. Um, I'll get back to it. Uh, but this, you know, this situation that I'm facing in the in the legal sense has really sapped not just mental energy, financial energy too. And it sucks, man. It really fucking sucks. It's it's a horror show to go through something like this. It's like embarrassing to talk about with people. Um, for the most part, everyone has been super supportive and understanding and the the strange set of factors surrounding it, which I'm not going to get into. Um it uh I'm just thankful that I'm okay. Um, my family and my friends are okay. It was just an incident that involved me, nobody else, and um some police officers who I felt were overstepping, and I had to stand up for what I believed to be right in the moment. And I did, and I'm paying the price for it in more ways than one. Fuck. But uh, you know, what can you do in life? These things are gonna come. Sometimes the rapid fire softball machine sitting out there in center field, and you're on the pitcher's mound, just bracing, bracing, flexing, getting ready for impact, and then you're like, okay, I guess it's not gonna fire today. Goosh. And that's when you get hit multiple times in the groin. Uh, that's what it's felt like, friends. It's been been pretty heavy, but um. I've got some things. I'm I'm gonna be playing some shows. I am gonna be at um a couple festivals coming up. As I said, springtide is very soon. That's June 12th. So strap in for that. I think I'm doing um um a workshop that afternoon, the 13th, sorry, the afternoon of the 13th with Steven Stanley as part of the festival, so that should be great. And then I am going to be um headed to Peterborough after that to play the the pig's ear, the open mic the next day. But then I'm also playing at um another festival called Line Spike, and that one is just outside of Kingston in a little town called Harrow Smith. And uh lots of great people playing on that um festival, Bill. Emily Steele and the deal, who I love, such a great band. We're we're buddies. Um always people I talk to online. I've seen them play years ago in Ottawa, so I'm sure they've just continued to progress and get better. Just lovely people, insanely talented musicians. They should have a great set. A bunch of other musicians are playing who I can't think of all their names right now, but it was just announced too that Rain Maida from Our Lady Peace and Chantel Kreviazic, Krevachuk, Kreviazik, I never know how to pronounce her name, are playing together as a kind of a husband and wife 90s power duo. So that should be fun, and I'm sure people are gonna come out to see them. So come to Mind Spike, that's on June 26th to the 28th. So that should be great. And then on July 11th, I'm playing at Four Winds Festival, and that's up in Durham, Ontario, which is actually not near Oshawa or anything like that, or Whitby. That's sort of, I think, Durham County. Durham, Ontario, to be more confusing, is like way, it's north of Collingwood. It's up kind of close to Tobermory, where there's that great beach and that point in Ontario. Beautiful, beautiful area and country up there. And I've played it four wins. I played it the first one, I think it was 2022. Yeah, I'm gonna say that. And playing this year uh with my buddy Tom in a duo form, that's gonna be great. Tom will be on the pedal steel and guitar, and um Blackie and the Rodeo Kings are playing. Um Tim Baker from Hey Rosetta. Uh, one of the Tweety, I think it's Sammy Tweety, so one of the sons of Wilco will be there. It should be a lot of fun. And special shout out to my great and talented friend Krista Curry, who is gonna be in the I think she's one of the um Forwins open mic people that they're doing a showcase this year of of new talent, and Krista will be one of the people, and she has such great songs, and Krista is such a great friend. Um, so stoked for her and her musical journey. So I will be there cheering on Krista when she plays, and then there's also going to be um, I believe my friends Caro are also playing from Huntsville. Um, just all four winds always brings out the best people. It's like really good-hearted, open-minded, music-loving people who are just there for the music. They don't want the overhyped corporate vibe of so many festivals in our current day and age. They want the grassroots feel, and that's what four winds really has. So I'm really excited to get back to that. Um, I may be showing up at Blue Skies sometime this summer. Stay tuned for that news as that uh keeps plodding along. My friend Ali McCormick and I have been discussing some things. So stay tuned. There's always stuff coming up. Um I'm still here. I may end up doing a GoFundMe for the um legal situation that I'm in, which has just drained me in more ways than one. Um, so I'm I'm not sure uh about that yet. I'm not sure if the ramifications of that, if that's a smart idea or a no-go, you know, whatever it is, it will work out. Just um yeah, if you're someone with Boku Bucks, send some good vibes my way. Uh there's a bandcamp Friday coming up in August, so you can buy stuff and support me that way too. But really, you know, some of your kind words about geographics in this time have have really helped me. Um stay on course, you know, help have helped me stay sane. They've helped me just realize that I did make this thing back in October and put it out that the start of this year in March. And it's really connecting, and people are really loving the record and the the work that Melissa did with me. Melissa Payne, shout out, love her so much. Um, Charles, I love him so much, and Charles was was a huge part of the sonic process of the album. And you know, we spent a few days together, just the two me and Charles after Melissa left, just getting everything right, working things out, and it was so fun. It was really fun thinking back to that album and putting it all together as a real warm space to go to in my memory, and I I'm thankful that I got to do that. So thanks for your kind words about that record. Keep telling other people about it. Um, yeah, stay tuned. I'll be back. I'm just uh I'm in a state right now. What can I say, man? It's uh uh it's a lot, but I'm here, I'm alive, I'm kicking. I still want to get to the end, whatever that means. Um yeah, keep me in your thoughts, send good vibes, but overall, I am okay, I'm safe. Um I'm not dead. I'm uh I'm doing okay. And I I love you all so much for listening to this. You know, whoever you are, wherever you are, thank you so much for for lending your ears and your time to me in this little Graventown pod that I do. And it's it's really I I feel better already after these 28 minutes have gone by just talking about what has gone on. And I think that's the hardest thing sometimes is when you when someone you know is going through a hard time, often the first thing, and I think it maybe it's a genetic man thing, I don't know. It just might also be a human being pride thing, no matter what gender you are, that you're like, oh, I don't want to weigh people down, I don't want to share this thing. But once you do, you really start getting surprised by people and you really start seeing that, you know, like Mr. Rogers' mom told him in that documentary, Won't You Be My Neighbor, look for the helpers. And the helpers present themselves, man. They really do. And they're they're out there and they're real, and I I feel help and I feel support. Um, yeah. So I love you. Thanks for being in Graventown. I'm alive, I'm existing. That's my baseline. And uh sending you all big hugs, and I'm I'm receiving all of yours back to me. We'll talk real soon. Bye for now. It's good even getting away.