Episode 121: Summertime Climb

Hey pals. Just a little internal dip into the mind lake of Graventown these days. The water is a bit frothy. I hope you enjoy and I hope you're all alright. Keep enjoying your summer. Get outside. Watch out for flooding storms. 

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

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Well, hello friends. We're back at it again in Graventown. There's a medium one for you. A medium one. And we're here in this summertime climb. And I know that Ollie May, shout out to Ollie May from Peterborough, will appreciate that being the huge flashing lights fan that she is. Um, yeah, man, it's been a while since I've sat down here in the studio to just fire one off to the universe, rip one out to the ether. And I appreciate you being here. Thank you so much for listening to me rant and rave and uh get on my righteous stoop about different topics, and just just your kindness and thoughtfulness and notes and different things that you send. And when people say, Oh, that I listened to this episode 56 or whatever, and it really connected. I mean, that's beautiful. This is something that I just kind of set out to do. The whole Grave Town podcast, the whole Graventown thing really was just something to put everything under. It was like an umbrella that I thought, well, this would work for like a name, for a tag, for a community. But you all have made it what it is, and it's a pretty beautiful place. It shines through storms, seems to have a fairly sweet connective thread of great people that never seems to unravel and just gets tighter with time. And I appreciate you if you're someone who listens to my music. By the way, my new album, Geographics, is soaring through the charts. Not really, but in my mind it is. I mean, it's been on some charts, it's it's been on some charts and some radio stations that my music has never been on. So that's pretty beautiful. And I'm very, very, very thankful for that. And so thank you for listening. Thanks for sharing. I'm really, really proud of this record. And um, yeah, let's get into it. And you know, uh, if you're not in Graventown specifically, if you're not connected, like I am connected with a tight core of people, you can do that by going to kofi.com slash graven canada, and that's spelt ko dash f as in frank i.com slash graven canada. And that's where you'll see there's a little eight dollar per month payment system that you can be a part of, and that basically puts you into the fold of people who uh connect with me, support me just by giving that much, and that's the only tier that I have. I won't take any more monthly money uh from people other than that. So my goal is to just, you know, one day have 10,000 followers in there. Wouldn't that be incredible? Um, but but yeah, you know, you got to start somewhere, and uh I think there's around 30 folks that are in there. I don't know why I always quantify the number, but it doesn't matter. I'm just thankful that people are there, people are listening, they get something from it. It's a beautiful thing, and I'm really, really thankful for all of you who are here and who uh suffer through the existential detritus with me. Um yeah, and I have been just living and learning lately. That was a triple L sentence, but you know, what can you do? Alliteration is lovely. I've been living and learning, you know. I've been um first and foremost, just entering summer mode. I think when all of us enter summer mode, there's a bit of a tendency to slow down. When you're younger, you think, oh, I want to do this and this and this and this and this. I'm almost 50 now, and I really feel the urge on days where I don't have my daughter, on days where I don't have gigs planned, on days where I don't have a million and one things I have to do. I'm really like, oh, I'm gonna kick back. Yeah, I'm gonna watch a movie. Maybe I'll go for a walk, maybe I'll drink a beer, I don't know. And I just sort of leave it open because you need your rest, friends. We live in a society right now that tells us all to hustle 24 fucking seven. And you know what the problem with that is? If you hustle 24 fucking seven, you will fucking die. Your your body can't recoup. You need rest. You need days where you don't have to do a whole lot. I I put out a podcast a while ago, an episode a while back, called Give Yourself the Gift of a Basic Day. And I think there are too many people who just aren't doing that for whatever reason. So please do that. Please, please allow yourself the space and the time and the latitude to look back, you know, think about wow, what's gone on since 2022, since 2018, you know, what what's happened in my life? Have I grown? Am I stalled? Am I in a stall pattern? Just gives you all the time and sense and and ability and space. You know, that's really what you need is space to do that. Um, and hey, I appreciate you, appreciate you being here. I also have been kind of hustling a little bit. June was busy with a bunch of shows where I had to get out. I think I talked about that in the last episode, and I I went to a bunch of different towns in a few days, and I'm not driving right now. Um, and so I had to get rides, and I have to I've had to rely on other people. And uh it's been really eye-opening, really beautiful. I've got some more of that coming up. I've got a festival coming up out of town. I had a festival between this episode and the last one called Line Spike. I'm gonna talk about that before I do that. Here's your ASMR sip of a decaf coffee. Here we go. Oh yeah. Did you hear a bit of the foam, the crema on top getting slurped before I got into the actual liquid coffee? Ooh, that's good. Something about a decaf at 4 58 p.m. that just hits different. But yeah, so played at Line Spike. That was on June. Let me see, what date was that? Like the end of June, June 26th, the 28th, I think. And I was in the middle on the 27th, and it was literally get in, get out show. I I had to get a ride with my drummer Ray, who was coming from Montreal. He picked me up. When I say about 9 a.m. We had a nice drive down through Lanark County, where Ray and I both grew up, he just for a couple summers, me for many summers at this camp in that region uh near Westport, Ontario. And I worked there for a long time, but Ray, I think, worked there for two summers, maybe, and I I really loved Ray. We we were people who just got along uh right away. We connected, we vibed. Um, he was an incredible drummer from the get-go, from a young age. He just had the skills, the ability, the talent, and he just had a real flow to his his talent. It wasn't like a hardcore clinical technical ability, though he does have all those things. He's just liquid on the drums, which I I love. And we have really great laughs, we've been friends for 30 years. That was really nice. It gave us some time to chill out and just hang together and to connect. And I I enjoyed that rip through the county, through the Ottawa Valley, and down. Kind of we drove right through Westport and had to stop at the grocery store there. Cadrinkos, shout out to Kadrinkos. Um, at any rate, immediately saw a few folks from the camp in the region in the store. Dave Biosma, shout out. It's great to see that six foot nine giant dude always, and we had a couple chats. I felt like I was like on a day off running into Westport. That's where we used to go into the town from the camp. We would descend a bunch of scrubby staff kids just heading into a town for ice cream, for laundry, for whatever basic, normal city-town things we could do whilst not being out in the deep wilderness where oftentimes, you know, there's only a couple laundry machines there. A lot of times they were just busy, busy jacked with, you know, kitchen uh aprons and you know, linens, whatever, and just lots of people wanting to use them. So, yeah, things like laundry, ice cream, movies, those would be big, big ticket items on our days off. So, Ray and I were just kind of rehashing all that. We we had a great chat and a great hang as we drove through there. And when we got to the festival, I gotta tell you, this festival run by Jeremy and his crew, Line Spike was really tickety-boo. Like they they had everything set up, they had everything taken care of. They were just kind of, you know, like they're finding their footing, it's only their second year doing this. And one thing I'll say, people, is buy tickets for Line Spike for next year. Fuck, like it's a great vibe, it's a great festival, all in this beautiful um bowl, just right near Harro Smith, Ontario. So if you know that region, then you know, kind of close to Kingston. But it was a great time. And everyone there, and I saw Devin Cuddy, you know, Jim Cuddy's son, great, great singer-songwriter. Saw him. He was playing, I think, after me, and so we had a chance to chat and catch up for a couple minutes. Always a great friendly dude. And yeah, there were just people coming and going that we saw. We saw Tick from CKCU shout out. Tick has a long, long running show on CKCU, and he also runs his own festival called Barnstorm in Finch, Ontario. And I think he's doing it again next year. I'm not sure, but it was great to see him. I hadn't seen him for years and years and years. So it was nice. Um, got some of the band some barbecue after the set that was enjoyable. Or I think some people had barbecue, some people had hot dogs, and great food, great vibes. Yeah, the only thing is that I think you know, for an independent festival, friends, you got to get out there and support these things. You gotta go, hmm, do I need to spend $300 to see, you know, Deathcab for Cutie or Radiohead or whoever? Again, and by the way, I'm going to see Death Cab this summer. I'm psyched about that. But, you know, these are questions you have to ask. It's like, A, have you seen that band before? And, you know, everyone has their own reasons for doing it, but I'm just saying there needs to be an ethos, a bit of a push out there in the world to go and support independent music festivals that aren't just corporate shit, where you walk in and you're like pizza pizza, Coca-Cola, Budweiser, you know, and the huge lineups, it's impossible to get anywhere. The ground's already all muddy because people have been traversing it for weeks, getting it all set up, and it's like, you know, environmentally destroyed. Like Line Spike was just pristine in this great natural bowl right off the highway. It's beautiful, it's a huge space. And I just want to say to Jeremy and his whole crew great work putting that together, great work organizing it all. You're lovely people. Um, Emma was another person running the artist side of things, kind of like a liaison. And she was great to deal with, just to the point, here you go, this is what you need. You need that? Okay, let me get that for you. Um, they had this huge refrigeration truck, and that was kind of fun because it was such a hot day, as it has been lately, just insanely deep summer heat. So I got to go and open the refrigeration truck with Emma because she was getting a few beers for my myself and my band. And uh, oh, feeling the air come out of that the reefer truck. Ooh, that was nice. It was like heavenly. Speaking of which, too, which I'll I'll get to, I there was a crazy storm here the other day, and I had to walk up to the metro in my neighborhood. Um, you couldn't even get in a vehicle up to that area because the whole this whole creek just up the road for me flooded onto the road, was taking out like a probably about a hundred to two hundred meter radius. It was a big, big ass area, and it was running into people's backyards on the other side of the street, like it was horrible. Anyway, I walked up to Metro. I'll get into more storm details, but I walked up to Metro and it was the only place in a whole mini mall that was open, and it was like a plus 34 degree day with sun beaming, and I was like, got inside. The AC felt like God's breathing on you. It was just incredible. I just got like a cold drink out of their deli section, popped it, and walked around the store for like 15 minutes, just taking in the coolness. I was like, oh god, this is great. So, anyway, the festival was great. Um, Scotty was on bass, he's played bass with the band a bunch of times before in the full band. Tom was there and Ray, so it was the four-piece. We rocked it. We had a great set. For whatever reason, we just found this groove. We all stuck in our sonic spaces. Scotty and Ray, Gell, the best that I've ever seen those guys, Gel. Like, like this sound guy who's seen me multiple times. Jake, by the way, shout out to Jake from Wolf Island, incredible sound tech, incredible human, just a lovely, lovely dude. I love Jake. He was doing sound, helping with sound at the fest, and he was like, you know, I've seen you and your band and just you solo and duo many times, but he goes, I have to say, I think that was my favorite version of Craven stuff, whatever you're doing. So to hear that kind of feedback from someone who's seen you many times always feels great. I don't know. I don't know what was in the air. We just really got into it on stage. We had a fun set. I don't think we were pushing too hard. We just kind of stayed in this nice groove and it was so fun. Anyway, line spike, continuance of living and learning. That was a part of it. And had a nice drive home with Ray. All enjoyable. Another coffee sub. Then I'm gonna say, oh yeah, just a couple days later, Canada Day. Oof. I don't know what part of the world y'all are listening to this from. Probably just different parts of Canada, different parts of Ontario, um, some in the States for sure. I know there's some overseas as well. That's cool. But Ottawa, Canada, specifically Napian, had a localized storm on Canada Day. It started kind of like, you know, this crazy downpour. And it was like, oh, this is supposed to stop in 45 minutes. Oh, it's gonna stop actually more like an hour and a bit, and then it just kept dragging. Like the weather predictions were going, it's gonna be more. It's gonna be more and it's gonna get worse. And I'm telling you, I've never seen steady, steady downpour rain for four hours like that ever in my life, let alone here in you know, the Ottawa, the Greater Nations Cap region. It was intense, man. The backyard here at my folks' place was a swamp. It was scary. Like we were looking at the lower, there's sort of this low like smaller hill, this man-made hill in our backyard. It's it's not very big, you know, it's probably a foot or two feet, maybe, and then it goes down to this lower part of the yard. The whole lower part of the yard, just off the deck, was swamped, and it was like there's a storm drain back there, but obviously wasn't draining. And everyone was like, What the fuck are we gonna do? You know, if this stays and keeps accumulating like this, it's gonna come against the house. We're gonna get flooding, it's gonna be bad. So our neighbor across the street, Bob, who is a beautiful human being, always looking out for other people, brought a sump pump over. We had that rock, and our neighbor next door, Brent, was helping us kind of channel the water and get things going, get things flowing in the right direction. Luckily, it was all kind of flowing out of the yard, down the side yard and onto the driveway, and our driveway sloped. So it was um, yeah, it was nice that way that it that the mother nature seemed to take the water to the right direction, onto the street to those sewers that were draining. But it was scary. There was, there were, you know, there was an hour or two where it was like, oh fuck. And I was down in the basement lifting stuff up, getting stuff on couches. Then that's the thing, it triggered this traumatic response for me because I've lived through a hellish flood before. 2019 in Gatneau, we lived right on the river, myself, Sloan, and her mom at that point, and the river overflowed, and it was like three feet of standing water in the house and all around our region. Um, so it was I don't know how deep it was into all different parts, but it was up three feet in our house. So to walk in there, you had to wear chest waiters, and it stayed that way for like weeks. I think it was two weeks that it stayed that high. Because I had to go soon after it had flooded. And I went with my friend Steve, and we had to take get this a houseboat from basically, you know, a couple streets away from your house onto the yard where we lived. So we have chest waders that are right right up to our, you know, our armpits. Steve's a tall guy, he's taller than me. I'm a tallish guy. We both jump off the boat, boom, the water's immediately up to our abdomen. It's like, what the fuck? So we went in, and anyways, that was a whole horrible situation, a whole other thing that I'm sure I've talked about in the past, but it was intense. So seeing this water sort of rising and swirling and stuff in my parents' backyard where I've never seen anything like this happen. It brought back all those feelings of just like, okay, scramble, scramble, okay. What did I do last time? Okay, get stuff up off the floor onto couches in the basement, things that are expensive, things that can be, you know, um that can be saved. So I did some of that, but luckily it seemed to be okay in the end. Um but you know, that was intense, man. It was an intense moment in time, and um I'm just glad we got through it. However, our neighbor across the street who helped with the sump pump, who always lets Sloane and I come over and swim, who's the nicest guy, looks out for everyone else in the neighborhood. Their house got really wrecked. The basement and their pool, because they have a lower backyard, and they're on the side where the creek flooded and rocked all of those backyards and a lot of basements. They got nailed with sewer water, everything else, and just even today they were they had a crew over there carrying stuff out. I talked to one of the kids, can't even um lift couches out of there because they're so waterlogged and they're toxic, and you don't want to touch that stuff, so you just kind of have to leave it. You're just kind of putting in dehumidifiers, dehumidifiers to get things going. Oh my God, it's a nightmare. It's a fucking nightmare. Any kind of flood in your house, you know, where you're supposed to be safe from the elements. It's just it's so off-putting. Like it just throws you out of your element completely. So that's all I'll say about the flood. It's been crazy here. It's been crazy for a lot of people in Ottawa with that. But you know, what else can we do? We have to keep living, learning, and moving through. And on another note, I um I've actually been doing some grief counseling on my own as something that, you know, I didn't think specifically that I was really in a place where I needed it. But um a friend named Stacy, who by the way, I'll tag her in this episode, reached out and said that she is someone who uh just offers grief counseling to people, and she's a certified grief counselor. She had her own yoga practice for a long time. She's just a very wise, kind individual who is not um prophet over people, she's 100% um people over profit, and I love the way her her mind works and how she thinks about the world. And um she's got an incredible story. I'm gonna have her on the podcast at some point, but that's really been helpful. Um, I've only had two sessions with her uh over the last couple weeks, and I'm gonna do more definitely, but um yeah, it's forced me to kind of dig deep in a time where you don't necessarily want to, because you're dealing with all this other stuff, right? You have when you have a legal thing going on, and again, I'm not gonna get into all the details, it's like you have several pots on the stove, just with that. So you're always like, you know, checking the temperature of this one. What's that? Medium heat. Oh, that one's boiling. Okay, this one I need to take off and simmer. And then for someone to add in, you know, some more ingredients or even another pot, you're like, I'm can't I uh my dance card feels pretty full. And so that's how I felt initially when uh Stacy approached me. I was kind of like, I think I'm good. You know, I do some therapy, I'm all right. But these sessions have been really great in the sense that they're unlocking something. And and full disclosure, like Stacy just approached me and said, you know, I I know it seems like you're going through a difficult time. I don't want you to pay me anything um right now for these sessions that we do. And uh, you know, she's like maybe down the road if we get further into it, but she's like, I'd just like to give you a bunch of sessions for free. And I mean, who does that? It's it's pretty insane. So that's been really great. And um, yeah, Stacy seems like a great human being. She lives in Boston, has a family there, and just a very interconnected person with the earth, with her, her, with her community, um, with healing, you know, with wanting to heal. And I think, you know, I had to look at a few goals that I want to achieve during this time, like while this whole thing is going on, and I can, you know, choose, and it's sort of based on grief, but it's based on also whether I want them to be short-term or long term. Um, because I am in my age as well, just turning 50 in a couple months. I'm entering a phase of rebirth, as everyone who turns 50 does. It's a it's a real emotional and metaphysical time of upheaval. And um, yeah, one important thing that we talked about was um Stacy was telling me a bit about her own journey, which I won't totally share until I interview her on here. But she was talking about identifying your emotions almost as people. So she was talking about at the thing she was going through in her life, and how when Sally would show up in her life, Sally was always sad. So Sally's the name that she gave to the feeling of her sadness. And I just thought that was interesting, you know, that that way you could really, and also almost at times even ask those people to leave, you know, be like, I get it, Sally. I hear you, and I'm with you. I'm feeling all the things you're feeling, trust me, but uh you you you need to go, okay? And you can come back another day, and there's a beauty to sad Sally, you know, there's a there's a a beauty and a depth to really understanding sadness and and seeing all the different refractory points of the prism with Sally. And uh, I just thought that was really cool. It was really great to think about grief and learning and all of that. Um, yeah, you know, this whole thing, everything that I've gone through in the last while has really been dictated by partially not dictated by, but an event that happened that seemed to be a flashpoint for many other things in my life, probably that I I wasn't dealing with or looking at, was uh the death of Chris, Chris Olson. And um Chris is just an incredible guy, you know. He was a friend of my brother first, but he was never too cool to also be my friend. And and you know, that three-year gap between siblings can be can be tough. Um, but he is someone who is always accepting, always inviting to everyone he met. Real rare breed of being very athletic, like loved, loved, loved playing basketball. He could dunk on regulation. He could um he played volleyball really well, too. He just had this this powerful athletic drive in him and this ability, but also incredibly artistic, just loved dissecting lyrics and poetry and um, you know, all these things. I mean, I was I was definitely more into sports too when I was younger, so I'm I get it. People can be multifaceted. It's just he he sort of carried those things on even later in life. He would take videos of him dunking in his driveway every year to so to show that his sons, it was sort of like his way of being like, gotta show my sons I'm still a man. And uh it's funny, you know, he could do it. Yeah, I think he even did it like a year ago or something. Um pretty incredible, but yeah, he's just a great guy. He loved to laugh. And once if you got him going laughing about something, it was great. You never knew if the train was just gonna go off the tracks with laughter. And uh he loved his wife, Rebecca, loved his family, him and him and Rebecca were high school sweethearts. I was at I was in his wedding party with my brother um back in like '97. And uh yeah, just an incredible guy. And when he started to get sick, it was pretty quick onset, like he had a huge tumor, and and there was a lot of worry. But he did have some remission time, and I think deep down Chris is probably someone pretty deep and existential. I don't want to speak for him, but I imagine in the end he he had made his peace. And I remember talking to his wife on the day he passed because I just thought I hadn't heard, I didn't really know what was going on, and I was like away playing some shows, and um I messaged uh I messaged my brother, was just like, hey, have you heard anything about Chris? And he said, I think it's gonna be really soon. And I was like, Oh, so then I reached out to Rebecca, his wife, Chris's wife, and I said, Hey, how's everything going? We had a little visit back in the winter, and I said that was such a fun visit where we all had shepherd's pie and hung out, and at that point, Chris was pretty sick. Um, but you know, they weren't sure what was gonna happen and um sort of could go either way. That was probably January or February, and yeah, and then so on that day where I reached out to Rebecca, that was the day that he passed. He he she said it's only gonna be, I think, a few more hours. So I asked her to, you know, pass on some things to Chris, and she said she would. And um just incredibly sad, you know, when you're at a funeral and you see his kids who are like probably ages 24 to 13. I don't know if that's totally true. There's four of them. And his two oldest sons got up and spoke. Um, you know, going through life now without a dad is just very insane, very uh difficult to process. Um so I think there was some lingering sadness and things from that that I probably wasn't really addressing. Um and I think it was Chris's death was like a flash point too for my own life, and I think I was carrying around some sadness, carrying around some grief from other things, you know, lost relationships, uh loss of innocence and independence in some ways, you know, uh sharing space with other people all the time, not you know, grieving the fact that I um maybe not am where I am, where I want to be, musically or ambitiously. Um, you know, just some of that, and some of those things that I hadn't put under the microscope. So these sessions with Stacy have been really, really good for that. I'd encourage anyone to do grief counseling. Um, and you might even need it, even if you haven't had any deaths in your family. There's always things that you're grieving, you know. That's the thing. It's uh it's a real thing, and the and it comes in waves. You never really know, but I've really enjoyed the the exploration process, and I think I'm I'm uh getting back to me, if that makes sense. Whoever that is. But I appreciate you being here, man. And uh rambled long enough for today. But I love you, I'm always here for you. Uh please keep listening to Geographics, my new record. It really, really means a lot when I hear people liking it and listening to it. It's uh it means the world, truly. And um, yeah, my door is always open. You can email me at cravencanada at gmail.com. Got some cool guests coming up in the coming weeks. Stay tuned. And we'll talk real soon. Bye for now.