Off the Road

with Car Wheels still spinning...

This Window Inn missive took the gravel road while I was rolling the highways, skyways & tape machines the last couple months. As Jonathan Richman said, four songs into his set in 1972, “It seems to be the mood to return to slowness now.” I’m happy to be home with the family - collecting my thoughts, doing my laundry and downloading scans of my developed photographs, courtesy of Friend of a Friend Film lab.

There is plenty to catch you up on eventually but today I wanted to share some memories from The Kay Meek Theatre shows in Vancouver on October 17th & 18th. It was a tribute night and a celebration of Lucinda Williams and her impeccable album, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, a record I’ve loved since it was released in 1998.

Below are a handful of film photographs I took that night as well as a few side stage videos of my performances captured on an iPhone by Theresa, Lindi and Geronimo.

The show was organized by Fiona Black (the artistic director for the Vancouver Folk Festival) and bandleader/singer/songwriter/guitar slinger & slide man extraordinaire, Steve Dawson.

The rockin’ big band Steve put together consisted of Geoff Hicks, Darryl Havers, Liam MacDonald, Jeremy Holmes, Jerry Cook, Malcolm Aiken, Dominic Conway, Tristen Paxton, Chris Gestrin and Eliot Banner. Fingers crossed I’ve covered everyone here - as you can see, the stage was full.

The special guests (other than yours truly) were:

Pony Gold (aka Theresa Bromley), Chuck Prophet & Mercy Walker

Shawn Verreault (shown here with Matt from Pony Gold)

The Eisenhauers (Sheree and Jeremy)

Dawn Pemberton

Lindi Ortega and Regina McCrary

and Regina’s tambourine!

By the end of the second night, had three tour buses pulled up outside the venue, we all could have happily taken this show on the road.

Here I am singing I Lost It.

I rarely sing covers but this song has been close to my heart since it came out in the late 90s. I recorded a fuzz-pedaled live version of it in 2019 for 44, sang it with the acoustic for this session for the National Post back in 2015 and first tried my hand at it back on December 5th, 1998 at The Marquee with the early Emergency Band (Dave Marsh, Tracy Stevens, Andrew Glencross & Charles Austin). Here’s a recording of it from that show. It’s just of the second half of the tune as we were recording on a four track cassette machine and most likely the tape ran out at the end of the previous song. I’m a pretty shaky on those top notes but we’re going for it!

At the tribute we also played some other great Lucinda tunes. Here I am singing a version of her classic, Passionate Kisses…

… and I took a verse of the last song of the night with everyone, I Just Wanted To see You So Bad.

Thanks to Steve and Fiona for the invitation to play a part in these fun shows and to Lucinda Williams for making a timeless record stacked with such memorable and evocative songs.

- Joel