We left Anchorage early this morning on two buses, the Alaska adventure has begun. Many of our patrons/guests/fellow adventures also took part in the Over The Rhine trip so it was a quiet three hour drive to Talkeetna. I've been looking forward to this day of the trip for many weeks. It's the one day on the itinerary, where I have a few free hours and where we are within easy striking distance of some renown fishing spots. I figured I'd make the best use of my time and hire some local knowledge to put me on top of some rainbow trout. Skip Merkley was my man and he came through in spades, providing me with fishing gear and outfitting me head to foot in rain gear to keep me warm and dry. I was hoping to get to on one of the rivers that flow through the area, but there has been so much rain that all the rivers are blown out. Skip put Plan B in to action and pulled up at the hotel with canoe in tow and we headed off to a local lake. It was a slow day on the water but completely enjoyable. I had a half-dozen half-hearted strikes throughout the afternoon and finally, when we were heading in so that I could get back for soundcheck, I landed a rainbow…not big by Alaska standards but it made my day.
This is a very cool little town out in the middle of nowhere. Populated with those looking for a different way of life or simply a new beginning. I can see how it could get under one's skin. Come for a visit and stay for a lifetime. All those quirky personalities and personal histories have pulled together to form a true community. It's a rarity in these times to find a town which has been so fully formed by the attitudes and perspectives of the people who inhabit it. I talked to more people today that lived off-the-grid than on it. They wear their badge of non-conformity on their sleeves here and the result is a unique and vibrant little town.
True to form, the venue tonight was as funky as the town: located in an old aircraft hangar (rechristened an Arts Center) at the edge of the still active air-strip that runs right through the center of town. We had an amazing show. Inspired by the beauty of the surroundings, the friendliness of our hosts and the enthusiasm of the audience: it was loose and free-flowing, just like the town.
Tomorrow we head out on a mammoth travel day into the heart of Denali Park. We pray for this weather to break so that we can enjoy the spectacular views that everyone has been promising us since we got here.
It's the rainy season here in Alaska…who knew? It came down pretty much all day so I spent most of it in my room. I was in no mood to browse through the dozens of souvenir shops that line the main street, any object that you can imagine branded with “Alaska”. Around dinner time the skies cleared and a spectacular light flooded the city and the Chugach mountain range revealed itself. The souvenir shops disappeared and the magnificence of the setting exerted itself.
The gig tonight was at a nice sized theater on the University of Alaska campus. It was a co-bill with Over the Rhine and it was great to hear Karin and Lindford again. Unfortunately we didn't get a chance to hang with them very much. They were at the end of their Alaskan Adventure, were exhausted and had a 3am lobby call ahead of them. They did warn us to “stay off the sea”…..I don't need to be told twice, large bodies of water are not friendly places for me.
Our show was pretty good considering that we hadn't played since May. It was a little tentative, everyone waiting for the other to lead the way, no one feeling confident enough to do so. Pretty standard for a first gig after a long lay-off. But we had fun and its always good to be playing again. Tomorrow we edge further North.
Alaska is far, eh? I walked out our front door at 4:30am, Pete and I went to our studio, loaded our equipment, hooked up with brother John, drove to the airport, paid Air Canada $700 for our excess baggage, flew the five hours to Vancouver, ate a really average fish taco in the airport, flew another three hours to Anchorage and stumbled in to the hotel….a nifty little fourteen hour travel day. We were last in Alaska about seven years ago and as we wandered the streets of Anchorage, looking for food, memories of the city began to gurgle up. It's much like most cities in the far north, functional. But the one thing about Anchorage that puts it a cut above most northern cities is the abundance of brew pubs. I had a great IPA cask ale at dinner….all is good in the world once again. This short, week long tour is one of those welcome oddities on our tour schedule. We look upon this sort of thing more as an adventure than a tour. This particular one has been put together by our friends at Roots On The Rails, who also promoted the cross-Canada train trip that we did a few years ago. The way this one works is that about forty guests pay a lot of their hard earned dollars for an Alaska adventure and we and our music are a part of that adventure. It all starts in Anchorage tomorrow night with a show at the Wendy Williamson Auditorium (it's a shared bill with our friends Over The Rhine, who are at the end of their own Alaska adventure). On Saturday we all climb aboard a bus and drive 3 hours to Talkeetna which sits just South of Denali Park. During the day I will search for rainbow trout and at night we will do another show at a local venue. Then on Sunday the adventure really begins with a long journey in to Denali Park and a two night stay at a remote lodge in the middle of the park and an acoustic Junkies performance. We then catch a train back to Anchorage and start the long journey home. So stay tuned….hopefully I'll be posting lots of pics with me holding up big fish, Margo being chased by a bear, Pete riding a moose, Al sleeping among the Musk Ox and Jeff examining wolf poop. It should be fun.
As I mentioned in the blog below, our latest project is a collaborative one called The Kennedy Suite. We will be performing the Suite in its entirety on Nov 22 at The Winter Garden Theater in Toronto. This will be a two set night with a debut performance of The Kennedy Suite in the first set. The second set will be all Cowboy Junkies with, we hope, a few special guests joining us on a few songs.
Helping us with The Kennedy Suite performance will be a long list of friends that also perform on the album: Sarah Harmer, Jason Collett, Skydiggers, Lee Harvey Osmond, Harlan Pepper, Jessy Bell Smith, Reid Jameison, The Good Family (Bruce and Margaret Good), The Screwed, The Potion Kings and Ivy Mairi.
This will be a very special and unique night of music. Tickets go on sale today so now is your chance to get snag the best seats in the house. Click here for ticket info: http://roythomson.com/eventdetail/cowboyjunkies
We will be posting a lot more info about the Kennedy Suite album in the coming weeks. Stay Tuned. We are looking forward to seeing some of you in November.
In the meantime there is still time to do a little bit more fishing:
Tickets for the show on November 22 at the Winter Garden Theater in Toronto will go on sale at 10am on Monday August 19th. We will post the link here on the 19th. In the meantime…go fishing.
It's been a strange summer up her in the Great White North: cool temperatures and more rain than anyone can remember. But I haven't minded so much. Excellent sleeping weather and when it's not raining the air has been clean and the temperature has been perfect for biking around and enjoying our most amazing city. This is truly a great place to live (especially in the Summer). We have been off the road since May and it has given me a chance to to do a bit of fishing (no luck yet with the browns but the largemouth have been very game) and an opportunity to watch my team: the aggravatingly-horrible, ball-kicking-gong-show that is the Toronto Blue Jays. But mostly, we have been in our new studio (The Hangar) finishing off our next project, The Kennedy Suite.
The Kennedy Suite is one of those albums that is extremely difficult to describe. It's a rock opera, a musical, a song cycle, a melodic psychological exploration of the people, characters and events surrounding the assassination of John Kennedy. We didn't write it and we don't even perform all of the music on the album, but we are proudly putting our name to it and “presenting” it on our Latent Recordings label. It is one of the most intelligent, creative and moving piece of writing that I have come across in decades (ever since Jesus Christ Superstar entered my life at the impressionable age of eleven) and it is one of the most exciting and unique projects that we have been involved with in a long time. The narrative of the song cycle takes place over the course of the weekend of November 22 – 24, 1963. Starting with the Kennedys' arrival at Love Field in Dallas and ending with the President's funeral in Washington DC. Each song is written and sung from the perspective of someone, real or imagined, that had a connection to the assassination. JFK, Jackie, Ruby, RFK and Oswald are all represented as are: three sisters giddy with anticipation for Kennedy's arrival at Love Field; a motorcycle cop riding in the motorcade determined to protect the Presidential couple to make up for his own failure to save his own family; a police detective assigned to escort the suspect Oswald but caught up in a delusional reverie about his high school senior prom, and many other assorted characters. The Junkies (myself, Alan and Pete) along with our good friends Andy Maize and Josh Finlayson (The Skydiggers) perform as the band for most of the songs. Margo does a turn as Jackie Kennedy and delivers one of the most compelling and heartbreaking performances on the album (would you expect anything less?). Each song has a different vocalist and working with all of this talent has been the one aspect of this project that has been the most exciting and satisfying. Joining us are: Sarah Harmer, Jason Collett, Hawksley Workman, Doug Paisley, Martin Tielli, The Good Family, Jessy Bell Smith, The Screwed, Harlan Pepper, Lee Harvey Osmond, The Potion Kings and Ivy Mairi, as well as a large and varied assortment of musicians. As I said, it's a difficult project to describe. We have chosen to record and release an album that requires repeated listenings, a record that needs to be sat with and mulled over and that even needs liner notes to be fully appreciated. This is not a blueprint for success these days. But we have you and we know that there are enough of you out there that still want your music to challenge and inspire you.
We don't have a set date for the release just yet, but we are aiming for the end of October. We do have a very special concert planned for November 22 at the Winter Garden Theater in Toronto. It will involve most of the performers on the album. Tickets for that show will go on sale next week (I'll post more info about the show as soon as we have ticket info). We will be blogging a lot about the making of this album over the next couple of months and we will be creating a seperate website for it….so stay tuned. In the meantime here is the lyric for the song (Disintegrating) that Margo sings on the album. This is Jackie Kennedy (as imagined by the writer) sitting on Air Force One, heading back to Washington with the body of her husband, still wearing her blood-splattered clothes so that the world could see what had been done to her husband, wracked with survivors guilt and suddenly struck by the horrible realisation that maybe the bullet wasn't meant for him, but for her. As I said, it's an amazing piece of writing, crossing effortlessly between the literal, the historical and the figurative, ultimately inspiring, but not afraid to creep into those dark under-explored recesses of our thoughts and actions and to shine a little light on the complexities that make humans, human.
Disintegrating
In glazed eyes and red stains
I’m thinking this has to be
The biggest case of “I told you so”
I know I’m being petty
But when Nellie turned and said,
“Can’t say Dallas doesn’t love you…”
I almost laughed before you put your hand on my knee
To stop me,
Please stop me
Like I couldn’t stop you
From disintegrating
The young woman you waved to
For that moment I hated you
I imagined you dead and that I was finally free
And that’s when it happened
‘Did I will it to happen?’
Was all I was thinking as I
Held your head in my hands
This is a tight sleeve,
The fucking engines of this plane are shrill
My lips are bloodless
Please, stop me
Please, stop me
Like I couldn’t stop you
From disintegrating
The face of that young aid
Glancing back over LBJ’s shoulder
Did I overhear him say, “Hey, I’ve got a sure-fire way to win a second term
We are proud to be featured by Philadelphia's WHYY On Canvas show. They came out to our Sellersville, PA show this past spring, filmed a pre-show interview and recorded the show. Looks and sounds pretty darn good….check it out:
We are excited to announce that Lee Harvey Osmond's "The Folk Sinner" has made the long list for this years Polaris Prize. For those of you who don't live in Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver, the Polaris Prize is awarded annually in Canada to the artist with coolest facial hair, or the most tatoos….or maybe its for the best album voted on by those with the most facial hair and coolest tatoos. In any case, the winner gets a nice chunk of change and its always good to be recognized for a job well done…it's also a great album. If you haven't had a listen, please do so by going to the Lee Harvey Osmond website where you can listen for free.
