While I was riding up Brock Avenue on my way to the Tranzac open stage, a young couple passed me very quickly. Women don’t pass me very often but when they are riding with fast boyfriends they seem to develop cycling super powers out of their compulsion to do things to help maintain the relationship. The couple were quite a bit ahead of me but I picked up my pace and passed them while they were climbing the hill to Dundas. I pushed myself to stay ahead of them until College but it turned out that they weren’t even behind me by that point. I was very out of breath though and relieved to be able to slow down.
Maybe I’m getting too old for this kind of competition. The quick breathing seemed to agitate my throat and caused me to cough every minute or so all the rest of the way to the Tranzac. Even once I was there I felt the need to cough. A glass of water though helped me wash the phlegm out of my throat.
In the Southern Cross bar, a jazz concert had just finished featuring a band made up of ex-Humber College students. There was not a big crowd in the room, but there was at least one set of proud parents in attendance, who were talking with amusement about some of the Humber College property, such as the music stands, that have Humber College stencilled on them, and even a phone number to call if you’d like to report that you’ve found them.
Erik Sedore arrived with a Tupperware container full of butter tarts that he’d made. I took one, but didn’t eat it right away because I didn’t want to clog up my throat before singing. I told him that I only have a few more Monday nights to come to the Tranzac before I will be occupied with my studies. He was surprised that I have difficulty with French as a second language, even though I do translations of French songs. I explained that I still have to look words and phrases up in order to interpret a song, but I argued that someone with sub conversational French skills but with an understanding of poetics could do a better translation of a song or poem than someone who is proficient in French.
I reminded Erik of the song about the death of the dinosaurs that he sang last week. I’ve told him in the past that his songs would work very well as the soundtrack and story for animated short films, but the dinosaur song would be more conducive to that medium than any of his other compositions. The part where the one dinosaur decides to practice his pose so that he will look cool when they dig up his bones is inspired!
The host for the night was Abigail Lapell, who looked very tired when Sarah Greene introduced her to me. She apparently is one of the rotating Tranzac hosts on months that have five Mondays. In the Tranzac’s complicated system, in a month with five Mondays, Yawd Silvester gets the fifth Monday, and passes his usual fourth Monday to Abigail. Her next Monday of hosting will take place on November 23rd.
Abigail told us that she has just returned from a canoe trip on the Grand River whereby her and a group of other musicians paddled from town to town and from gig to gig. Upon looking this up later, I see that this is an annual event called the “Fish Quill Canoe Tour”. Each year a group of contemporary Canadian musicians and poets canoes from town to town giving readings in cafés, arts centres, and at historic landmarks along the Grand River. She said that she lost all of her social skills on the trip.
Abigail started us off with “O Marie” by Daniel Lanois – “ … On travail aujourd'hui, on travail sous la pluie, on travaille au tabac, hostie! Mes mains sont noires a cochon … Oui ma blonde elle attend apres mois, Je vais retourner avec beaucoup d'argent … O Marie, j'ai mal a la tete …” These parts would translate as – “We are working today, we are labouring out in the rain, we’re picking tobacco, by god! My hands are black as a pig … Yes my girl has been waiting for months, but when I return I’ll have lots of money … O Marie, I have a headache …” He has a headache because he went out drinking after work the night before.
Abigail picked the song well. She then went to the piano and told us that she was going to do a song by her “good friend”, Bruce Springsteen. She sang “Hungry Heart” – “Got a wife and kids in Baltimore, Jack, I went out for a ride and I never went back, like a river that don't know where it's flowing, I took a wrong turn and I just kept going …” So many performers, when they cover songs, boringly do it pretty much exactly like the original. Abigail’s version was quite different.
The first open mic performer was Avesta, who said that he had a video on his laptop that he wanted to play while he improvised on the piano. He said that the video was an hour long, but he’d just show five minutes of it. He told us that it includes photos of the Don Valley Viaduct and the universe. The file was taking a long time though to load on his computer. Abigail and Sarah were planning on having dinner delivered from a sushi place. Abigail had the menu and she was planning on reading it in the style of a slam poet to fill in the waiting time but then Avesta was ready. Only some of the video came on while he played. He started improvising with very fast playing but then settled into a more conventional melody. I don’t really see why he thought that the video would serve as an enhancement to his playing.
I think that No MSG forgot to sign his name on the list, but Erik Sedore once again generously gave him the number two spot in exchange for number eleven.
Abigail, still perusing the menu, told us that there was no sushi during her canoe trip, just peanut butter, cheese strings and apples. She was not used to No MSG’s quirky demand that the lights be turned off. She argued that it might be a fire hazard. There were already lit candles in glass on the tables so it wasn’t nearly as dark as it sometimes in when he plays.
No MSG made a delicate start. It was the soundtrack for an empty street at night; of sad perseverance, though he said it was a train. When he stopped playing, Abigail walked to the microphone, not realizing that he’d only finished his first piece. His second improvisation was similar in mood and speed to the first but became more cinematic until he said, “It’s the train again. It’s goin the other way this time. It’s gone away.”
Next up was Eric Sorenson, who started with an Evan Dando and Jon Brion song called, “It Looks Like You” – “I cant for the life of me tell you what all this is really about, so I’m leaving you with a burden of proof and a strong case of reasonable doubt …” Eric’s second selection was an original with the name, “Your Grey Skies”, but as he began singing it a very loud and drunk middle-aged woman in white came into the bar with another man. Once she’d gotten a drink in her hand she began dancing and shouting at Eric, “I love you baby!” as she raised her drink to him in a toast. Then she called out, “Alanis Morissette! I love her!” Eric continued to play and when he got to the instrumental part, he said, “This part calls for harmonica!” Abigail just happened to have one and began to play. Eric sang, “Your grey skies are gonna cheer me up this time …” as the woman made her way to the performance area, began to dance provocatively, pulling up her dress, then going down into a squat. She went back to the bar before Eric was finished.
Then it was my turn. When I started doing “The Cha Cha of the Wolf”, the woman wanted to know where the other guy, who’d been playing before, was. I guess she didn’t like me – “Well girls your age, they’re afraid of guys like me, you’re much too sage to come and sit upon my knee, but I love you dear, so do not fear, come up to my side, I promise you that I will not bite …” My second piece was my own, “Recurring Vision of a Myopic Third Eye” – “Intravenous, McDonalds, the restaurant of the future, and the fastest food of all, into the blender go the roaches and rats and the world is now a very clean ball …” I screwed my playing up quite a bit and I think I forced my voice into a shout at first compete with the drunk woman’s shouting, but the songs went over okay anyway. I didn’t hear her during my second song, or in fact see her afterwards, so I didn’t know if she’d been tossed out or not.
I was followed by Sonja Seiler, who played the piano and sang her song, “The Wreckage” while Abigail and Sarah ate their sushi – “ … broken part of me that only love can heal …” Sonja didn’t remember the name of her second song – “ … I know that there is a mile between the words you speak and what they mean … my roots don’t grow that deep … I know that there’s a place inside where no one left and no one lied … our arms around the things we cannot hold …”
After Sonja was Bryan, but she remained on stage to provide backup vocals for his song.
At this point Avesta told Abigail that there is too much treble coming through the speakers. I asked him if there was too much treble when I sang. He laughed and answered, “No treble at all!”
Bryan’s second song was in the style of New Country, as was his first. He told us that he also wrote it in collaboration with his cousin, but had never played it live until then. He warned us “We’ll be rusty!” using the royal “we”. He had the lyrics on a stand in front of him – “ … The mistakes we made, made me the man my wife knows …”
Of the open stage, Abigail declared that it just keeps getting better and better. I said that means that if anyone wanted to be considered the best they should have signed up last.
Seeing that the next performer, Mr Allison, had a banjo, Abigail asked us if anyone knows how long it takes to tune a banjo. The joke answer is that nobody knows because no one has ever successfully accomplished the task.
Mr Allison was accompanied by a drummer whose name he said was Octave Chanute. He said that when they are together they are known as “The Morality Players”. His first song was entitled “No Dice”, and both his voice and his music had a Tom Waits feel to it – Pickin a Band-Aid, I’m a captain of industry …” The rhythm that the drummer was laying down sounded deliberately off beat. He told us, “As you can tell from my physique, I am predominantly inspired by the act of dancing. The foxtrot, the protein shake, the reach around. My target demographics have already left. I will be dancing internally after a word from my sponsor!” and then he took a drink from his beer bottle.
During his second song he played blues banjo and the drummer played a simpler rhythm – “ … Cleopatra’s a Gibson Girl …”
After Mr Allison was Brian, who had put his name on the list as “Tin Whistles”. He played “The Boys of Blue Hill”, one of the reels he’d learned on his recent trip to Ireland. His second piece was called “I Saw Ireland In His Eyes”. He said he met a Canadian military officer who has invented his own Irish language. Abigail asked Brian to introduce the next person on the list in Irish. I wouldn’t know how to spell what he said, but he introduced No MSG, which of course was really Erik Sedore.
Erik did his song “Python” – “ … I wanna open up my jaws and swallow myself whole …” He felt it was appropriate for his second song to do a super quiet bedtime song, so he sang a cover of John Darnielle’s “Get Lonely” as played by his favourite band, The Mountain Goats – “ … I will get lonely and gasp for air and look up at the high windows and see your face up there.”
Following Erik was Vinnie, who borrowed Abigail’s guitar to play and sing some original Blues songs with a Country voice. He’s a very good singer but he doesn’t enunciate very clearly and so it was very difficult to understand his lyrics. He said that his second song was about busking but he didn’t know the title, even though he wrote it.
Then came Zoe Henderson, who played two of her own songs on the piano. The first was called “The Last Train Home” and it was similar in theme to some gospel songs like “Train to Glory”. Her second song had the line, “Love is a Sunday thing.”
After Zoe was Jim Amar, who did what is sort of his signature song, “All Hands on Deck”. The lyrics don’t seem to have been written with any kind of conscious meaning – “The folks don’t find it terribly amusing but the mayor finds it horribly confusing …” It’s a well-written song though that could easily become a hit with the right promotion. His second song, “Down In the Valley” is also lyrically ambiguous – “ … Down into the cauldron, 10,000 strong … if the deal don’t hold the valley’s gonna blow …” The picking on this song was pretty hot.
I’ve noticed that over the last few weeks, Zoe Henderson and Jim Amar have been arriving, sitting and leaving together. I wonder if it’s a coincidence that the last time they came to the Tranzac, they both performed two cover songs each and this time they both did all originals. If it’s not it’s adorable.
Abigail closed out the night with a sweet singalong of “You Are My Sunshine”, and pretty much everyone besides me joined in – “ … if you leave me to love another, you'll regret it all one day …”
I asked Erik if the drunk woman had been kicked out. He said that it was politely suggested that she leave. It seems to have happened during my set. I hope it wasn’t because I was performing without a microphone and people felt a certain need to protect me. I found her kind of charming despite and perhaps a little because of her obnoxiousness.
No comments:
Post a Comment