Late on the latest

Character Witness, summer shows and a bootleg in the footnotes

Hi Folks,

I’ve been much, much slower than I should be on the Window Inn newsletter front. The fall tour was great fun but after all that singing and rattling on I was pretty tired of my own voice and I admit to feeling a bit of writers block the last while. I started several newsletter posts over the last couple months and, for one reason or another, abandoned them all. Case in point, this one here has been a draft for a week undergoing several versions only to land where I’m landing now.

With all this tardiness in mind, I just discovered I can pause the subscription charges for paid subscribers in Substack. So I’ve done this for the next couple months as I ponder how I’d like to move forward. Your support is very much appreciated but I want to make sure I can hold up my end of the bargain. I’ll let you know you know if and when subscription charges begin again.

There’s another feeling that’s kept me from writing recently - the sense that the value of the written word is being obscured by the sheer amount of it everywhere. It’s not unlike the flood of music on streaming services. The sheer volume of everything on tap is giving me pause for thought as to how much I want to contribute as I don’t want to feel like I’m “delivering content”. I also have this unsettling feeling that AI is starting to pad out some of the long form writing I’m encountering online on Substack and elsewhere.

I suspect most of you are subscribing here for my music rather than this ramblin’ prose writing and perhaps its very apparent Chat GPT or an equivalent isn’t involved. No doubt some AI could hammer this newsletter into some proper efficient form - but could any large language model adequately convey how the recent facemeltingly rockin’ documentary, Becoming Led Zeppelin, made me feel 13 again?

My son took this photo a while back. A product of AI or human beings with a subtle sense of humour who save their best work for their clients?

In February I started to get back in a musical groove - wrapping the “One Real Reveal on Wheels” tour with a couple gigs in Ontario and a showcase at the Folk Alliance conference in Montreal.

I also got to work on a 22 minute video piece called Character Witness. It features music from One Real Reveal, interview footage we filmed in the studio as well as some live performance filmed on the tour. Mike Hall put the finishing touches on it this past week and it will be out on CBC Gem on April 2nd. Here’s the “cover” shot for the video taken during the shoot by Eric Stephen Martin. We took some hot and cool lighting inspiration from the documentary “This Is Marshall McLuhan - The Medium is the Massage”from 1967. I’ll be curious to hear what folks make of it once it’s released.

Some solo and band dates are starting to roll out for June through August. Solo in Guelph on June 16/17 (with Peter Elkas opening) and Penticton July 26th and then with The Emergency in Miramichi (with July Talk) on July 4th and Windsor, Nova Scotia on August 2nd. You can keep an eye for more to follow here. Looking forward to them all.

World’s a wild, weird place right now. Perhaps it’s always been but I’ve been thinking a lot about the role of technology in our perceptions as it seems the smartphones and the algorithms are well upstream from much of the conversations as we swim in opinion and information overload. The medium is a mess these days. I’ve been attending

Andrew McLuhan

’s weekly online reading class on part two of his grandfather, Marshall McLuhan’s, crystal ball of a book, Understanding Media. With the chest beating politics of the world ramping up daily and the tides of emotion pushing up and over the sandbags and borders, I’ve found it helpful to remind myself of McLuhan’s salient observation that “the ‘content’ of a medium is like the juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind.” Information is addictive. Along with McLuhan’s writing I’ve been enjoying other writers also looking these challenges-

L. M. Sacasas

,

Nicholas Carr

and

Rina Atienza

are a few who come to mind.

At the end of the day, I still find much solace in music where the moving truths can reveal themselves implicitly and I can find some room for my own thoughts. Peace Piece by Bill Evans is my go to calm down tune and, more recently, The Day the Mississippi Died by Gillian Welch and David Rawlings lands some great lyrics for the times we are living in and a glorious falsetto yodel in the chorus that lifts the spirits along with it.

Lastly, the stage is where I live less in my head and more in my heart, hands and feet. Below is a raucous and roomy live bootleg recording of the Emergency (myself, Dave Marsh and Chris Pennell) performing at the Danforth Music Hall, December 21, 2018. I haven't listened to it all, as I’m not one listen back much but I recall it being a pretty epic night pushing two hours. On quick perusal, it seems I was counting tunes in pretty quickly which is a good sign adrenaline was high and we were having a blast. Erin Costelo (who opened the show) joined us as the night went on along with Clive MacNutt on guitar and Leith Fleming Smith on keys. The crowd singing along at the top of their lungs hits most of the notes I don’t. Were any of you there? The set list can be seen here.

Big thanks to Adam Rodeniser who brought it to me this fall on a memory card (along with a number of other JP, JPE and Thrush Hermit shows he’s bootlegged over the years). Here’s the “cover” he made for it as well as a photo someone sent me from the back of the room that night. Fond memories.

Til next time,

Joel