My abiding passion is
A few years ago I went to my high school reunion. I wasn’t feeling a lot of terror about it. I am a successful musician. I have Juno awards and nominations, I felt, as an alumnus, I had done my alma mater proud.
I bumped into someone I hadn’t seen since graduation. I knew that she was respected in her field, well travelled, and successful. I asked what she had been doing since high school, and she ran down the list of degrees and foreign postings and the like. She asked what I had been up to. I gave the condensed version. I was a writer and performer, I sang, and played guitar.
She nodded slowly up and down… “So, you are still doing what you were doing, when you were a teenager then?”
Well, I guess, ya…sorta. I’m not playing as many stairwells now as I did back then, but it’s still pretty fun.
She made it sound like I was in a rut.
So just in case, you think that all I do is play and sing…
Since 2011, I’ve been the Artistic Director of the Summerfolk Music and Crafts Festival in Owen Sound, Ontario. and since 2018 I’ve been the AD at the Stewart Park Festival in Perth. The job has given me a new passion for programming. I have to book the artists and program 6 daytime and two nighttime stages. The walls of my office end up looking like this:
I was born in Calgary but have lived in Toronto, Winnipeg and now, a charming little town called Perth in Eastern Ontario. I’m trying to say at home more these days, as I have a couple of boys at home, aged 16 and 12. I want to spend as much time with them before they fly the coop.
If you know my music, you know that I love history. I studied at the University of Calgary, though I never actually completed my degree. I concentrated on the history of science, under the tutelage of the dear, departed Dr. Margaret Osler and was influenced and inspired by Dr. Shel Silverman – one of the great storytellers of our time.
While I read a lot of history on many different topics, my areas of specialty remain science and World War One, especially the Battle of the Frontiers, 1st Marne and Verdun.
I prefer Irish to Scotch but never developed the drinking gene, so I am good for about 1 shot if I ever have the urge.
I am omnivorous. My favourite meal is breakfast. Followed by lunch and then dinner.
I’m more comfortable on the plains than in the mountains.
I once met Harry Belafonte in an elevator in Saskatoon.
I am a fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographic Society. I was added to the college in the same year as Margaret Atwood and had the pleasure of singing her a song on her birthday at the annual Fellows dinner.
I’ll add more factoids as time passes, or feel free to lob a question my way.