Book Recs, Dawson City, Regina monologues
A gem find, a classic, a gold rush town and the city that rhymes with fun
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Hello love,
The announcements keep coming - Regina is now on sale. I’ll be playing at Darke Hall on Oct 4th. Stay tuned next bit as there are still more shows to be announced and several fantastic support acts coming aboard this fall run.
AND
Returning to Dawson City Music Festival with the full band. This is way up north in the Yukon. One of the most special festivals you’ll find. Last time I was there in 2010, I bro’d down hard with Fred Penner, discovered Tune-Yards (wow), and giggled at flowers beneath the midnight sun at 2am.
BOOK RECS:
Get It While You Can by Nick Jaina
“Dear __________,
Do you know about quantum entanglement? It’s when two particles interact in such a special way that even if you separate them, their movements will continue to affect one another. You could be in Los Angeles with one of these particles and I could be in New York, and if your particle spins a certain way, my particle will spin that way, too. This connection happens instantaneously, which is to say that it’s faster than the speed of light.
This is such a remarkable scientific fact that I can’t understand why everyone isn’t talking about it every day. This is more important than health care or algebra or the housing market. You could say that our desire to bridge distance is what is killing us. More and more, we want to get to places faster and we are burning ourselves up to make that happen. It doesn’t make any sense. If we are already connected to everything, we can stay right where we are.”
During our recent tour down the west coast of the US, Israel Nebeker and I stopped in Ashland, OR to have lunch with his old (and my new) pal, Melody. Her partner Nick couldn’t come, but had sent along a book. Even his inscription is poetry.
I’d known the name Nick Jaina, as he once lived in Portland and is a longtime peer to many of my own musical friends from the PNW.
I tore through this book over several recent travel days. It’s a memoir, sort of. I love that it breaks rules and doesn’t fit neatly into a genre. I love that it is both prose and poetry. I love that it approaches the writing of a book like the writing of a song. That the thesis is both obvious and obscure. That the story is secondary to the fact that you understand his essence. His personhood.
Many times, I’d look away after a particularly wonderful passage and sigh with delight.
No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
“You might think you could run away and change your name and I dont know what all. Start over. And then one mornin you wake up and look at the ceilin and guess who’s layin there?”
This is a very famous book which begot a very famous (and strikingly bad ass) film by the Cohn brothers. It’s the first Cormac McCarthy novel I’ve read.
I am jealous of those who can read in a moving vehicle without feeling emergent barf in all of four minutes. Years ago, when Gord Grdina was in my band, he read McCarthy’s The Road in the back of the van over the course of a European tour. Every now and then, he’d pause, and look up, and just say, “……….fuck.”
Gord’s daily book reports on The Road made me intrigued about McCarthy, but they also made me hesitant to dig in. There is a lot of darkness in the world, and we must be efficient with the additional darkness for which we opt.
Anyhow, this book is macabre in delicious ways. It is very male. In my mind’s eye, I had a hard time not resorting to Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin and Javier Bardem, the leading actors in the adapted film. This is natural, I suppose.
On the surface, it’s about Texas and drugs and guns and people who value money to psychotic extents. But the subtext of this book is exhaustion. How it is so very exhausting to watch your society slip into madness. Into selfishness. To watch others do the worst possible things and say to yourself, “what the fuck do I do with that?”
All my love. Thank you for your eyes and your ears,
x
Dan
UPCOMING SHOWS
Jun 11. Uxbridge, ON - Springtide Music Festival ! SOLD OUT
Jul 2. Burlington, ON - Royal Botanical Gardens # $ ADDED
Jul 3-5. Orillia, ON - Mariposa Folk Festival & ADDED
Jul 10-12. Sudbury, ON - Northern Lights Festival Boréal * ADDED
Jul 17-19. Dawson City, YK - Dawson City Music Festival # % ADDED
Aug 21-23. Owen Sound, ON - Summerfolk # @ ADDED
Sep 5. Pender Island, BC - Pender Island Community Hall SOLD OUT
Sep 12. Prince George, BC - Knox Performance Centre LOW
Sep 17. Courtenay, BC - Native Sons Hall LOW
Sep 18. Nanaimo, BC - The Port Theatre
Sep 19. Tofino, BC - Tofino Legion
Sep 25. Bowen Island, BC - Bowen Theatre SOLD OUT
Oct 2. Saskatoon, SK - Broadway Theatre
Oct 4. Regina, SK - Darke Hall ADDED
Nov 13. Montreal, QC - Church of the Gesu
Nov 14. Quebec City, QC - L’Anti Bar & Spectacles
Nov 16. Kingston, ON - The Spire
Nov 17. London, ON - Aeolian Hall SOLD OUT
# full band show
! with Young Novelists, Hollowsage & The Three Mile Islanders
$ with Joel Plaskett
& with Steve Earle, Father John Misty, The Barr Brothers, Foxwarren & more
* with Sarah Harmer, Begonia, Foxwarren, Terra Lightfoot, Charlotte Cornfield & more
% with Georgia Harmer, Field Guide, Communism, Daniel Romano, Ellorie McKnight, Steven Lambke, The Fretless & more
@ with Jane Siberry & more