Tour.

TOUR.

Well, the tour is over. I played my Weather Station songs, played banjo in Entire Cities, and also hollered with Bruce Peninsula all the way out to the Atlantic Ocean and back again.

As always, touring reminds me of what I already know. That Canada is a beautiful place, full of people that are deeply kind, very talented, and worth knowing.

Halifax Pop Explosion is the nicest festival EVER. I just want to point that out. So nice. And so many lovely/crazy things happened. Like a completely unexpected house show in Saint John that got broken up by the cops in the nicest way possible, but we still sang Crabapples while dancing wildly around a shag carpeted living room with babies, youths, and older folks shreiking 'OH HELL NO!' while the cop smiled, and took Leon's drum sticks. And then there was playing a coffee shop in the Ottawa Valley to the most lovely crowd ever, in the middle of nowhere. And also leaping exhaustedly around the Gus's Pub stage with Entire Cities, waving streamers in the air, channeling my 7 year old ribbon dancing self while screaming 'fucked up' into the microphone. And the myriad pleasures and pains of driving a few thousand kilometers, sardined into a station wagon, with our gear and possessions piled to the roof.

We got a couple reviews for our Halifax Pop showcase. Gosh, they are nice.

SoundProof Magazine:
"So nice to see new venues on Gottigen Street," my cab driver remarked as we pulled up to The Company House. The venue, barely a year old, has added a welcome vibrancy and nighttime bustle to one of Halifax's most maligned and overlooked north-end neighbourhoods. Inside, the red walls, cozy lighting and friendly faces added to the warm atmosphere. Toronto songwriter Tamara Lindeman, who plays under the moniker The Weather Station, looked a little flummoxed by the bright lights and noisy crowd—"All I can see are sparkles of light. It's quite surreal," she said at one point—but quickly became comfortable. Lucky for us, too, because her show is spellbinding.

It's easy to see how Lindeman has dazzled so many other writers and showgoers. When you try to describe this woman and the music she makes, words fail. It is difficult to describe something that sounds so familiar but also feels so otherworldly. Lindeman's voice rings delicate but deep, and her fingers move on instruments—banjo strings, guitar frets, and a bow—with strength and sureness beyond her years. A lot of female songwriters are compared to Joni Mitchell, but Lindeman is the first musician I've ever seen who actually captures her vocal and lyrical prowess. The music is also delightfully ambient—sometimes Lindeman would loop her voice into a three part harmony, and ended one song with a gentle whistle that sounded like the call of a loon. For her last two songs, she was joined by bandmates from her equally good ensemble, Entire Cities. They launched quickly into a banjo-fuelled, propulsive rager, with some members seated offstage and standing on the floor. Somehow, all of the song's intricate parts floated and eventually met, fitting together just as it seemed on the verge of collapse. The show was entirely too short, and my only complaint is reserved for the people clustered at the back, talking loudly throughout the set. But Lindeman seemed unfazed, totally locked in this unearthly, beautiful musical landscape she'd created—and so were we.
By Alison Lang

The Coast - Scene and Heard
Later on I went to the Company House for The Weather Station, the solo-ish project of Tamara Lindeman, who plays banjo with Entire Cities (Gus', 12am tonight). I had a love affair with banjos in the spring and summer of last year, ending with a week at a friend's in Winnipeg where I'd sit in a chair with his cat and listen to him practice every night. Then those banjo times disappeared and life went on, but The Weather Station puts me right back there. Understated and elegiac, this is kind of what I imagine it was like watching Joni Mitchell play an empty club in Toronto in 1965. The contributions from her Entire Cities bandmates on some songs are lovely, but the stripped-down aesthetic is completely fulfilling on its own.
By Laura Kenins

Where I must live, obviously.

http://tinyhouseblog.com/tiny-house-concept/the-weatherstation/

Video

I got to make a video last week with Lenny Epstein, one of Kingston's finest videographers.
I should have made something really high concept and cool that would be eye poppingly unique and grasp the attention of the internet with an iron fist.
But instead, I decided to make something that I would like, that I pictured when I heard the song.
The song is 'Can't Know' (track 11 on the line) and it is all set on a river. Said river goes from the lake near North Bay that my family has been cottaging on since the fifties to a string of other lakes that are all on untouched crown land. I soloed up the river in a canoe, with Lenny and the camera in another canoe. Cameras in canoes is a terrifying prospect but we managed to get everything we needed without serious incident. There are many slightly wobbly, gliding shots.

It has been ten thousand years since I've updated this neglected corner of the internet. In the intervening years many things have happened. The album came out and it was shockingly well received. Thanks world. I got to go on tour with one of my personal musical heroes - Timber Timbre. That was wonderful. We had a big CD release in Toronto. I went home to my parents place and we cut up deadfall to make about 20 life size trees, which we then scattered around the Tranzac. We found a homemade bird and suspended it above the stage. I recorded crickets, coyotes, birds, and wind, and played the sounds on mp3 players I hid around the room. We got two stages going. On one, Lisa Bozikovic and Snowblink did their gorgeous thing, and on the main stage we had Weird Weather and Muskox featuring Isla Craig.
What else has happened? We got to play Apple Crisp in Kingston, and it somehow managed to be one of my favourite shows ever. We played the fantastic Gordon Best Theatre in Peterborough. We played a horrible show in Ottawa. Alone, and fighting a bad cold, I travelled east with Timber Timbre, playing Sherbrooke to a shockingly fantastic crowd, Sackville, lovely as always, Halifax twice, and PEI twice.
I couldn't have imagined a better spring.

DAW

A fellow named Jordan asked what my recording setup was.
Jordan, this is for you.

I have a fairly exhausted, slightly senile Toshiba laptop. I have a 2 channel beginner M-Audio box. I must upgrade it. My DAW is Sonar Producer 4. This is a PC only program that doesn't get alot of attention, but I like it an awful lot. Very good reverb and EQ plug-ins built in. My secret weapon is my AKG C3000B that I bought used from the fellows at Long and McQuade. Thanks fellows. The entire record was recorded with its warm loveliness, except for the moment when I broke out the Shure SM78 to record Dwight's drums. I own a cheap pair of AKG headphones, and broken computer speakers that will soon be replaced. When I mix, I rent expensive beasts from Long and McQuade. For information, I turn to the internet. I ask lots of stupid questions on message boards.

I have never used MIDI.

I have one stand and one cable. I have an old piano my parent's got from the Shelburne Junior School before they closed it down back in the 70's. I have three banjos - my beginner Goodtime, a heavy, frighteningly shiny Sierra, and a fretless, nylon stringed fellow from, well, sometime before 1900. I have my grandfather's centenarian classical guitar, a big steel string I can't play, a broken 12 string, a broken lap steel with some out of control wolf tones, and a 60's Harmony Mars electric guitar with a bowed neck. Actually, I now have two Harmony Mars's, but I will likely sell one. Or start a band where everybody plays matching guitars. I have a wheezy 25 dollar button box accordion, an out of tune court organ and a Hohner Melodica my friend Dave gave me. This is on top of my childhood collection of plastic castanets, steel drums, and one mallet glocs.

I own a fabulous collection of steel bowls and some great mason jars. I own a snippy pair of scissors, and a two violin bows. I have pots, and also pans, and crinkly wrapping paper. I will generally have wine and beer bottles around, and someday will make a beer bottle pan flute. I have wooden blocks, sticks, pens, pencils, and good boots for stomping.

My recording setup is placed gingerly on a desk, generally festooned with bills, envelopes, and loose change. It faces a small window in an entirely red room that is not soundproofed. At all. I hang colourful quilts for sound treatment and hope for the best.

April 28th is the date.
We will be releasing our first full length, The Line, into the world with the help of Fontana North.

The Line is 12 tracks long. Four of those tracks were seen in some form on 'East'.

The Line is the culmination of four years of slow and patient work, teaching myself to record and write music in order to say something specific about loss. I'm not sure if I said it, but I think I said something.

Our official CD release will be April 30th, in the Tranzac's Main Hall. Muskox & Isla Craig will play, Snowblink too, and Weird Weather of Peterborough, who are also releasing a disc. A secret team of people will be transforming the Tranzac into a forest like space. More on that later.

Death Valley

I have meteorological dreams.
Last night I dreamed about Death Valley, one of the most visceral places I've been. To stand at the bottom of Death Valley is to stand on the surface of the moon. You can see for miles. It is bigger and stranger and darker than you can understand.
One of the first things that struck me about Death Valley was the sound. If you sit in the middle of the desert, in silence, your head feels stuffed with cotton wool. The silence doesn't sound like silence. Sound travels strangely and deceivingly - a voice on your left sounds like its coming from your right. The ground sounds hollow when struck. The only thing I can attribute it to is that Death Valley is one of the hottest, driest places on Earth. Perhaps the lack of moisture in the air means that the sound is hampered or modified in its travels.
Which is why I was surprised by my dream last night.
I dreamed about Death Valley in terms of moisture, dampness. The salt flats were flooded and the mountains were hemmed in with oppressive cloud. Everything was drenched in slow, heavy rain. I was sweating.
It is raining in Death Valley right now. This doesn't happen very often.

Also, there's this:
http://www.anomalies-unlimited.com/OddPics/Playa.html

Also, there's this.

Photographs.
Taken by Meredith Cheesbrough at The Tranzac.

Remember the Mountain Bed, by Woody Guthrie.
In other words, pretty much everything anyone could hope to say in a song.

Do you still sing of the mountain bed we made of limbs and leaves?
Do you still sigh there near the sky where the holly berry bleeds?
You laughed as I covered you over with leaves
Face, breast, hips, and thighs
You smiled when I said the leaves were just the color of your eyes

Rosin smells and turpentine smells from eucalyptus and pine
Bitter tastes of twigs we chewed where tangled wood vines twine
Trees held us in on all four sides so thick we could not see
I could not see any wrong in you, and you saw none in me

Your arm was brown against the ground, your cheeks part of the sky
Your fingers played with grassy moss, as limber you did lie
Your stomach moved beneath your shirt and your knees were in the air
Your feet played games with mountain roots as you lay thinking there

Below us the trees grew clumps of trees, raised families of trees, and they
As proud as we tossed their heads in the wind and flung good seeds away
The sun was hot and the sun was bright down in the valley below
Where people starved and hungry for life so empty come and go

There in the shade and hid from the sun we freed our minds and learned
Our greatest reason for being here, our bodies moved and burned
There on our mountain bed of leaves we learned life's reason why
The people laugh and love and dream, they fight, they hate to die

The smell of your hair I know is still there, if most of our leaves are blown
Our words still ring in the brush and the trees where singing seeds are sown
Your shape and form is dim but plain, there on our mountain bed
I see my life was brightest where you laughed and laid your head...

I learned the reason why man must work and how to dream big dreams
To conquer time and space and fight the rivers and the seas
I stand here filled with my emptiness now and look at city and land
And I know why farms and cities are built by hot, warm, nervous hands

I crossed many states just to stand here now, my face all hot with tears
I crossed city, and valley, desert, and stream, to bring my body here
My history and future blaze bright in me and all my joy and pain
Go through my head on our mountain bed where I smell your hair again.

All this day long I linger here and on in through the night
My greeds, desires, my cravings, hopes, my dreams inside me fight:
My loneliness healed, my emptiness filled, I walk above all pain
Back to the breast of my woman and child to scatter my seeds again