LUKE DOUCET ON MYSPACE

JOURNAL[Pages :7 6 5 4 3 2 1]

2009 tour review:

Sitting at my cousin Sam’s place in Halifax NS; the city of my birth. Recovering (finally) from my third bout of laryngitis in the past 12 months, which forced me to cancel a show in Halifax & one in Wolfville NS (sorry all). I guess I’m getting old. My back hurts from carrying the Falcon around airports, my feet hurt (again… blasted Falcon), my right elbow is sore (ditto) and it seems that every time I get a minute cold I lose the ability to use my voice. I cannot convey the frustration. But it is passing…

I guess this week marks the end of the last of tours for Blood’s Too Rich. I am tired but I feel like it has been a pretty great year. The high lights are many; too many to recall. Criss--crossing the continent & the Atlantic incessantly for the last 14 months (18 years… let’s be honest) has made it so most places blend together and really just feel like one big hometown, with the best bits from all cities becoming one big town where I know people, places, smells and sounds.

Imagine these places jammed into one and you’ve got my city:

Toronto’s Queen west. Capsule Music is headquarters for me. I find many excuses to wander in from the cold to chat with the all-knowing sages guarding not only the plethora of vintage guitars but also the small talk He-said, She-said whispers betraying the private lives of our compatriots on the Toronto scene; always juicy.

Chloe & I were sitting across the street last summer, eating ice cream when I pointed to a man quietly shuffling his way across the grass, “look Chloe, it’s Ron Sexsmith”. She was star struck which impressed me. More people should be star-struck by Ron.

It’s also the best place in Canada to watch fashionably dressed girls ride their bikes with their skirts & their scarves fluttering in the afternoon breeze. This is either pretentious and annoying or charmingly sophisticated, depending on your mood.

Hamilton Ontario is all about our new house & the surrounding downtown/west side neighborhood. We live close to my uncle Jim. We live close to Tom Wilson. We live close to Colin Cripps & Kathleen Edwards. We live close to Gallagers pub where Lindy plays every Monday night. Our house, which is now free of bats AND squirrels, sits on a quiet, well hidden street on a hill in the center of Hamilton, which if you could see it from anywhere but the freeway, is probably the most beautiful city in Canada, at least from an architectural perspective. And you can afford to live there. I always said that if Winnipeg were 45 minutes from Toronto that I’d move back. I guess in some ways, by moving to Hamilton we’ve done just that. 

Montreal’s plateau. Between gigs at the Cabaret du Musee Juste Pour Rire, the bar-flies at the Miami, and getting down with one’s French half on St Dennis, I rarely find myself venturing off the beaten path of the plateau (save for the odd foray north to Mile End, which may technically be on the plateau—my Montreal geography is spotty).

Winnipeg’s Wolsely are: Ok, not as trendy & happening as some of the others but this hood is home. I lived here for 12 years (the longest I’ve lived anywhere) and it’s where it all went down. stolen bikes, sneaking girls out of my bedroom at 3 am, stealing my moms car to deliver the demo tape to the Blue note café etc. I played music in front of people for the first time at my friend Rob Abubo’s house when I was 14. He lived on the next street over in a house his mom bought and then immediately moved out of to go live with her new doctor boyfriend, leaving him there alone, to rent out rooms to his friends from the Royal Winnipeg Ballet school. If you think rock stars party hard, crash a bun-head party; Out of control— especially if you are one of 2 straight boys in the whole school, as Robbie was. He always maintained that he wanted to dance ballet because it was the closest he could get to being Batman. Think about it, sashaying about in a cape & tights… that shit was masculine to him.

Saskatoon’s Broadway: essentially your basic prairie hip strip—Calories restaurant is where we go for dinner if we have a day off in Saskatoon. Amigo’s Cantina is the first bar I ever toured to outside of Manitoba, back in the days (91) when you’d actually stay in one venue for a week. Turns out this is where I met Sarah Mclachlan too.

Edmonton’s Whyte ave I’ve told this story before but it’s a good one. One day, a couple years back, I was in Edmonton on a show day & I stopped by Café Mozaic for a bite to eat. This place is a very small vegetarian restaurant (I eat veggie as often as I can on the road—just to balance out the other shit I put into my body) run by some great gals who have been friends for ever… so I eat and they won’t let me pay. Very sweet gesture. Then I head over to Avenue Guitars with a busted distortion pedal knowing that it’s a busy Friday afternoon and the chances of them fixing my gear on the spot would be very slim. Not  only do they fix it immediately, but again, they won’t let me pay for the service. You can see where this is going. I cross the street to the Black Dog pub and order myself a congratulatory pint of Big Rock Pale Ale to celebrate my continued good fortune—and again—they don’t let me pay. Now, while it’s true that I may fancy myself a low rent celebrity, I am not exactly Ferris Beuller. Yet somehow the city of Edmonton always rolls out the red carpet. There’s a reason that Nik 7 (Shout out out out out  singer & former Veal bassist) has 780 tattooed to his right bicep. City of champions indeed.

Calgary… 17th ave is the spot for most of what I seek out in Calgary but it wasn’t till I discovered this little vegetarian Vietnamese joint in China town that I felt I was let in on a secret. I think Melissa & I spent about 8 bucks between us and we stuffed ourselves, all the while carrying on a conversation with the owners—an aging Vietnamese couple. The place is the size of your bedroom. I wish I could remember the name but it’s right downtown, just around the corner from the Delta Hotel.

Ottawa: The Manx is a pub on Elgin street that that lures us in after most gigs in Ottawa. The food is great as far as pub fare goes (hummus, quesadillas, fancy pants soup) and they have a good selection of micro brew beers. This is the kind of pub I seek out in every town. No TV screens. No classic rock blaring out of the stereo. Just a quiet pub to have a pint & a bite. Ok, this is perilously close to sounding like a restaurant guide but it needs to be pointed out. And in keeping with the theme of finding healthy food on the road, the Green Door on Main street is a fantastic pay-by-the-pound vegetarian buffet style restaurant. This place cures any hangover. Fresh raspberry pies with whipped cream…

Vancouver’s west 4th ave/kits beach. Well, this is probably the most Lululemon/Starbucks drenched yuppie neighborhood in all of Canada but for a variety of reasons I still love it. Firstly, it is where I lived with my daughter for 9 years and no amount of proletariat cynicism can tarnish that. Also, despite its champagne socialist pretenses, it has some cool spots. Zulu Records is the best record store in Western Canada. Snotty as hell (like, truly head up its own ass) but great selection of below the radar stuff if you can stomach the attitude of these wanna-bes. In fact, I should take this opportunity “hey guys, I know you hate my band because I don’t have an ironic moustache, a scarf, or a positive review from “I’m a snob.com” but I make a living playing music and you work in a record store” just saying. Also, the best Sally Anne is always in the rich part of town, so the one at 4th & Cypress is awesome. Also the Naam restaurant: a vegetarian restaurant open 24 hours. Weird and super west coast hippie but cool…

Park Slope Brooklyn: the new Manhattan, or a t least the new Lower East Side (restaurants, bars, vintage clothing stores, artists, gays etc. all the good stuff).

Kilburn, London UK: Ok, check this out. I was walking along Kilburn high road with Melissa & a couple of good friends, Jamie & Meredith. We were heading out for a pint before going to see Tom Russell play when this guy comes over to me & whispers “fancy a pint, mate?”… I’m thinking he has balls to hit on me in front of my wife but I’m so shocked that I ask him to clarify. “fancy a pint across the road in the pub? Mick Jones is playin’. You know, Mick Jones from the Clash. Right there. Two quid”.

And it was true, there he was playing his guitar in this indie-rock meets hip hop band. And there were only 15 people in the room. For 2 pounds.

Hillsborough village/ 5 points, Nashville TN: Although it’s nestled into the urban fabric of Vanderbilt University and is therefore a bit “ponytails and joggers” (see west 4th in Vancouver), it is where Melissa & I lived for 6 months and is also walking distance to Grimey’s record shop & our favorite venue (the Basement) below it. Five Points is in East “Oh no, don’t go there it’s rough (ie; there’s black people there)” Nashville and has the best Tex Mex I’ve had. There’s a little venue deeper into the hood called the Family Wash that I love--Great Shepherds Pie. And yes, finally, some black people. Shit, the city that calls itself “Music City USA” has virtually no black musicians in the local community. What’s up with that? Last time I checked, they are a musical bunch. I guess you have to go to Memphis to hear them play.

But tonight we are in Halifax, on the eve of our last tour date, in the city where I was born. I used to miss the school bus & have to walk the 3 miles across Halifax (yeah, yeah, yeah… up hill both ways), from the north end to the south end the only French emersion school. Yes, I have told that story many times but it bears repeating. I saw more of that city before I was 8 than many locals ever will. I think those wandering mornings were what would eventually manifest themselves into my insatiable wanderlust. Afterall, if a 6 year old can walk 3 miles alone, then there’s no limit to where a 7 year old could go.

We played at the Company House on Gottingen street last night & outside the venue, one block towards the harbor, is the church that burned in 1978. It is next to the infamous Brunswick Towers, where I lived at the time and my mother woke us up at 2 am to go watch the the steeple engulfed in orange flames. We were poor then and didn’t have money for fun family excursions so when the opportunity presented itself, even in the form of an inferno, we had to be on the ready to take it in. I guess that’s what we did for fun. 

I’m sure Duchy Mason or Matt Minglewood were probably tearing it up at the Misty Moon that very night. Maybe they went home & wrote about it too.

Thanks for the great tour.

December Musings

Coming off the road is like coming off drugs. The familiarity of a clean
hotel room, food provided in dressing rooms, and a clear agenda for the
days’ work; these placate the tedium and sameness of touring the way
dime-bags of weed placate the tedium and sameness of working a crappy manual
labor job 12 hours a day so you can get stoned.

Today is day one of about 45 days in Hamilton—the longest we’ll have spent
in our own beds in over two years. Realistically, there are only about 10
days that we won’t be working. Beyond that we’ll be putting in long days in
the studio to finish a few records.

But back to the re-entry. Waking up in your own bed with no agenda is an
awkward thing. When we tour and have days off, we wake up on days off & go
down to the fitness center at the hotel and work out for a bit (each beer is
about 150 calories. I can burn 450 calories in 45 minutes of running or
elliptical. That puts a good caloric dent in my 3 beer average) then where
we have friends and family to visit, we make plans to do so and that pretty
much covers our down time.

At home, there is no housekeeping staff knocking on our door to clean our
rooms, no lobby call to be punctual for, no sound check to go to, no flight
to catch. Often, at home there is nothing to do but get used to being home.
This morning we slept until almost 1pm, largely thanks to our new curtains,
which mean that for the first time since March, I can sleep without wearing
a mask.

Then we pace around, poking at various scattered projects. I have opened the
cupboards and drawers 8 or 9 times each just to see where things are. Last
night I cleaned out the fridge. I doing so I threw out every perishable
thing in there. Maybe 40 dollars worth of groceries, which is pretty low for
a post-tour purge. I guess the thing to do is give food away before we
leave. But who wants half a cabbage, three radishes and an opened box of soy
milk? It drives me crazy to throw out food. I’m not getting misty eyed over
starving Africans (other times I do) but lamenting our inability to plan our
consumption better so as not to flush money down the drain. I think we throw
out half of what we buy.

An addition to the ritual of the re-entry is pacing around our house in awe
at what we have created. While on tour this fall, we remodeled our kitchen.
We knocked out a wall, built an island, replaced all the cabinetry and
installed a heated tile floor; pretty standard IKEA approved stuff, but the
results are spectacular, particularly when applied to my fairly low design
standards. Melissa & I have found the magic spot where we can stand and get
a good view of the whole first floor. We imagine Chloe (my daughter) &
Deidre (my niece) sitting on bar stools helping cut the peppers while we
make dinner. We picture Rollie (my father) strumming a guitar in the living
room while Twinkle (mom), Ed & Sue (in-laws) inquire as to each others plans
for the new year. Yes, having a new kitchen in a new (old) house does
inspire some pretty glossy Hallmark style fantasies, although we will stop
shy of hanging doilies and getting a poodle.

I had pretty much settled for the possibility that I would live in a series
of one-bedroom apartments for the duration of my life. I even romanticized
it, when the crushing possibility became overwhelming. Ok… I can live in a
tiny space with a couple guitars and some books, maybe a nice chair. Melissa
& I can take turns using the space for music (I’ll go for long walks when
she needs to write & she’ll take a yoga class when I want to practice my
guitar) and we’ll have self-congratulatory conversations about how small our
carbon footprint is to make up from the inevitable fights we have when one
of us endlessly taps their fingers on the kitchen table or eats with their
mouth open.

The house we bought is old. It has cracks in the walls, both interior &
exterior, so the little gusts of wind that we feel from time to time
simulate the ghosts we are simple enough to expect from a house of this
vintage. The floors are all crooked which means that some pieces of
furniture cannot sit in certain spots lest they fall over drunk and the
stairs creak loudly, no matter which ones you skip or how wide your gait is.
The windows rattle and those with a storm pane are dusty on the outside but
are stuck or painted shut so we can’t open them to clean (add that to our
list). The raccoons, squirrels and bats who have all, at some point or other
claimed various quarters of our home as theirs have, for now, accepted that
we are the rightful inhabitants, although the raccoons still scratch at the
office door on the balcony. And I can’t say I blame them. It’s cold outside.

---------------------------------------------------

I am sitting on the Go train back to Hamilton with my hangover, eating the
box of cashews I bought at the convenience store when I made the cabbie stop
en route to Neville’s place. The Beauties were sensational. They have a
truly unique sound. The Dakota tavern will leave a legacy of creating for
Toronto what the Times Change, the Bluenote café, and the Bella Vista did
for Winnipeg: built a community of musical artists who were reared on
spontanaeity, musical conversationalism (otherwise known as jamming), a
healthy respect for history (read: roots music) and most impressively,
musicianship. The Canadian music bonanza of the last 5 or 6 years has been
many things. It’s been progressive and often original in it’s quest for
envelopes to push, it’s been communal in establishing the
too-many-people-in-my-band trend that has caught on all over the world, but
what it has only just recently arrived at, for the first time in two
decades, is a respect for musicianship. The scarf-rockers in our midst turn
their noses up at the journeyman approach to learning music. There is a
sense that if one has practiced too much, or if one learns too much from
their siblings’ record collections they can’t possibly have a shred of
originality in their work. This, obviously, is a flimsy argument meant to
distract from the fact that many “musicians” are more interested in their
hair than their instruments. Bob Dylan was a walking encyclopedia of folk
music when he arrived in the east village in the early 60’s, the Beatles had
played Chuck Berry & Little Richard classics 8 hours a day in Hamburg for
months on end before they cut their first singles and for years Jimi Hendrix
played the chittlin circuit with the likes of Wilson Pickett before taking
the London music scene by storm.

History will show that the greatest music has come from people who have
honed their chops in relative obscurity, “paying their dues” as it were, to
borrow a tired cliché still favored by our parents’ generation.

It is true that occasionally some young kid seems to have divine abilities
to skip that phase & just be brilliant from the get go. I’m thinking Connor
Oberst (Bright Eyes) or Hayden, who at very young ages managed to turn the
industry’s ears, resulting in impressive six figure contracts and not
unimpressive subsequent careers, (although I’m guessing the publisher who
wrote Hayden’s legendary advance cheque is still lamenting the day he made
that choice—-the numbers haven’t been as impressive as the artistic output).

But these are the exceptions that prove the rule. Neil Young slogged it out
in Winnipeg with bands like the Squires, playing in community centers and
school gyms, stealing licks from his mentor Randy Bachman before heading to
the Toronto folk scene and ultimately to California to join a band that
wouldn’t even let him sing his own songs because his voice was too frail
sounding… The man worked hard. It goes on and on.

What the Dakota has reinstated in Toronto is a place where “young” bands can
cut their teeth weekly, in front of their friends, locals and musicians who
like the vibe and the beer, and who it appears, have learned to like the
music. It never fails to amaze me to see a hundred hipsters lined up on
Ossington street in December to listen to music inspired by Hank Williams
and Woody Guthrie.

When the industry hawks get wind of a new scene catching on, it is their
duty to be hip to it. The beauty of this new scene is that the bands are not
being discovered so much as they are hitting their stride honestly. They are
maturing. A year ago, the Beauties were a pretty good band. 52
bourbon-soaked Sundays later, they are a great band. As long as the Dakota
can stay true to their initial mantra (and I believe they will), bands like
the Beauties and Flash Lighnin’ will be the first of many such bands and
Toronto can reclaim it’s status as not only a music scene with cool bands
but also a music scene that produces great bands comprised of great
musicians, much like it once did back in the day when the Horseshoe tavern
spawned the legendary Queen street scene. Maybe then it will be able to hold
a candle to my old stomping grounds, although there are folks trading licks
at the Times Change High & Lonesome club on Main street in Winnipeg, who may
have something to say about that.

---------------------------------------------

Dear Santa

I don’t want anything for Christmas, or more specifically: I want nothing.
I’ve been aware of the crass commercialization of the birth of Christ (which
I do not celebrate anyway) for as long as I can remember, yet I have always
participated in it, against my better judgment. I am trying to encourage the
people around me to redirect this energy into other things such as creating
opportunities to share food & experiences, or donating to a favorite charity
(if you MUST spend money at Christmas, spend it on someone who really truly
needs it). While I understand the excitement of gifts for children (mine
included), as an adult I feel like I could do without.

The winter season is a great time to celebrate with family and to reflect on
the year that is ending but I would like to see it happen without the added
baggage (literally) that has engulfed Christmas in the last century. In
this time of economic crisis, the entire world is looking for ways to change
its financial habits & expectations. Surely this is the exact time for those
among us who recognize the gluttony of Christmas to actively pursue that
change in our own homes.

Happy New Year!

Luke

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