April 18, 2012

This is a HUGE weekend for me. In the midst of running around making last minute preparations, I’m overwhelmed thinking about the fact that my BOSTON FAMILY will MEET my HALIFAX FAMILY. Oh, and it’s also my BIRTHDAY.  I can’t imagine a better place or way to spend it than surrounded by love and music. Pretty sure my head is going to explode.

I am so incredibly lucky to make music for a living and so lucky to have found homes in more than one place. My friends in Boston helped me make WE HAVE MADE A SPARK. My friends in Halifax give me the roots enough to spread my wings. To have everyone in the same place will be EPIC. I can’t wait to show my US pals just how amazing it is here. We live in a truly incredible community.

As an “opening act” in Halifax I’m going to show the film we made IF I SHOULD FALL BEHIND which completes the exchange in making a small window into the community in Boston.

Here’s who is coming from Boston:

ZACHARIAH HICKMAN – producer, bassist, chef, snappy dresser and member of Josh Ritter’s Royal City Band

AUSTIN NEVINS – guitarist, photographer, juggler, lover of desserts and member of Josh Ritter’s Royal City band

(Here’s a video of Austin and Zack on Jools Holland with Josh Ritter)

LAURA CORTESE - fiddler, singer, motivator, vintage fashionista, most positive person I know – a video of her song Perfect Tuesdays

DINTY CHILD - multi-instrumentalist, singer, instigator, builder, driver and member of Session Americana

BILLY BEARD - Drummer, trouble maker, magic maker, charmer and member of Session Americana – here’s a video of Session in ACTION with Peter Wolf at Lizard Lounge our haunt in Cambridge!

From Halifax the cast of characters is large and close to my heart and will include: DON BROWNRIGG, TANYA DAVIS, JENN GRANT, DAN LEDWELL, STEWART LEGERE, RIA MAE, MIKE O’NEILL, ZAC CROUSE, STEVE GATES,  HEATHER GREEN, KEV CORBETT, CARMEN TOWNSEND, CYNDI CAIN, MARGOT DURLING +…….I mean, AMAZING!!!

If you’re in Halifax please come to this show – it will be my best yet.

If you’re in LUNENBURG April 20th, WOLFVILLE April 21st, CHARLOTTETOWN April 25th, MONCTON April 26, SAINT JOHN April 27th or FREDERICTON April 28th – please check the shows page and come to my show there. Boston peeps will be there along with local celebs in each spot!

I can’t wait to play for you. Seriously.

xo

r

Rose & Royal Wood sing at the piano!

This was shot by The Neighbours Dog in November of 2009. WOO!
THanks to John Mills for posting it!

I’m sitting in a Chicago backyard where my friends are planting their garden in above-ground boxes. It is cool and about to rain. The US Midwest is currently plagued by tornadoes, the warnings flying across Oprah during her epic goodbye.

I remember planting the garden with my mother. I suppose it would be right around now or probably even June since it takes a while to warm up in PEI. She’d dig, hoe and rake, building perfect rows. Each seed type needed correct spacing. I remember the carrots didn’t matter as much and the corn was quite particular. The corn kernels were pink-purple, an odd colour going into the ground. Carefully she’d cover the seeds behind me and gently tap the top with the hoe. I loved this. How did she know how to make a garden? How could things so dry and small be brought back to life. Both she and the yield amazed me.

Beside the garden were bushes and bushes of raspberries. My Gramma would pick for hours. With those my mother made the best raspberry pie on earth. I treasure the times when the berries were fresh going into the pie. The glory of it, the preciousness of being present in the short season. The jam we’d eat in winter reminded us it would come again. My part time job planting at a local U-pick farm in the fall felt like a contribution to assuring its return.

Carrots, beans, peas were best, sweeter early and pulled right from the ground and stalk. Corn came later. Beets and turnips we’d take into the fall with onions, zucchini, pumpkins, squash. Pickles were made.

Gardens we plant are temporary and brand new over and over again. With the right conditions they do nothing but give but they give at their best regardless. Tornadoes, fires & bugs detroy. But each year the garden can be planted again, we rebuild. I want to build a garden. Something to be said for how many times we get to start over.

In my player: Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues, Freelance Whales – Weathervanes, Hey Rosetta – Seeds

Read and reading: Lures – Sue Goyette, Outskirts – Sue Goyette, Rolling Stone Mag

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ROSE WINS at the East Coast Music Awards

Female Solo Recording of the Year + SOCAN Songwriter of the Year

1:49am in Rathfriland, Northern Ireland

Some music before I attempt to sleep in this little cottage in the village of Hilltown, Northern Ireland. I searched ‘February’ in my iTunes and am listening down the list of songs with this month in their title.

February regularly proves itself a challenging month. It’s the mid winter. The weather. The waiting.

Ireland isn’t under snow. Neither was Tennesee. Half my February has been warmer than usual which has taken the weather challenge away. My other February ghosts are quiet, dare I say gone. I don’t question.

Every year end I beg for the next one to be new, not by number but by everything else. I think I’m at the helm of this one and am learning to find the wind. I ask for help. Less shame, less fear, more desire.

I love the porridge in Ireland. Just something about it. And I love that there is no shortage of tea or kindness. I think I’d like to live here for a time, learn the accent and buzz around the tiny maze roads, sleep among the sheep. Something about this place makes me want to lean in.

In my player: Jenn Grant – Honeymoon Punch, Lori McKenna-Lorraine, Carmen Townsend – Waitin & Seein, Olympic Symphonium – The City Won’t Have Time to Fight, FRED

Read and reading: True Names of Birds – Sue Goyette, Tinkers – Paul Harding

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Dungeon, Bonavista, Newfoundland, Canada. I sit with Amelia Curran staring out over the heartachingly rugged, serene scape. Gulls perched on jagged cliffs, foreground and background, whales spouting in distant pods. Free roaming sheep and horses, ocean til forever. Nothing to say. No dumbing this down. We are reminded why we spend our lives feeling and feeling thankful for that, though it’s often misunderstood.

To be stirred in this way relieves me for a moment of my grueling inner grind, heavy heart and struggle to please the details. It inspires and shelters and saves and pleases and saddens and wells desires and wonders why anything and begs what matters. I’m rawly alive and completely alone. Small and insignificant, spilling over gratitude, almost like I wasn’t supposed to witness this, a treasure never to be found; what happens regardless of anyone. There’s no way to properly re-enact this.

I could be crazy, but by the vastness of this ocean I feel sheltered. No way to be reached though the most exposed I could ever be. One foot daring the edge, I feel safe, like everything I’m surrounded by understands my plight.

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(ps. to DL and JG: i love you. you have conquered a thousand oceans. congratulations.)

Being at home makes me appreciate the road. Likewise the road to home. This is the longest I’ve been home in 4 years.

I’ve bought groceries and cooked food. I’ve read books. I’ve played my piano and guitar for pleasure every day. I’ve slept in or gotten up early. I’ve seen the same people sometimes several days in a row. I even, for the first time, planted a small flower box on my back step. I’m savouring, trying not to waste time, but also, to waste a little time.

I long to be stirred. I crave being still. Somewhere between east and west, fleeting moments of balance occur. Permanently temporary.

I have come to understand there is no greener grass. We have to take care of our own. If we don’t know how to grow grass we need to read about it (google it?). If it doesn’t grow, we may need to dig up and start over, adjust our nurturing. Maybe we lend a hand to a struggling neighbour, but in the end, we can only be responsible for our own patch. It’s challenging to see how green it is. Weeds are natural. If we’re lucky, maybe we get to have a cottage patch someday.

Obviously, I’ve had some thinking time, but it’s been a gift to be local for the summer. Enjoy yours, read something, eat ice cream, wear sunscreen, watch sunsets, make out with someone? Go see music.

Read and reading: Life of Pi – Yan Martel, Girls Like Us (story of Joni, Carly and Carole)- Sheila Weller, Total Money Makeover – Dave Ramsay

In my player: Frazey Ford – Obadiah, Amy Correia - You go your way, Sarah Harmer – Oh Little Fire (yay she’s back)

Dearest Spring,

Oh how you relieve me. Though the winter deceived me, making it hard to believe you’d ever come, you return. I embrace your early warmth. It pulls us off couches, spins us around the Commons and welcomes back the smiles that have no explanation but for you and your reassurance of summer. You gather groups in the park and lift the heavy weather conversations up and out as we over turn snow-soaked earth, if we’re lucky enough to have our own patch to grow something in.

Spring, you send me walking in sneakers, jacket at home. I take my 3-hole punch and stapler and make sense of the piles of paper that have accumulated since the New Year. I sweep, vacuum, de-clutter. Were I a season, I’d probably be you. Though, I’d long to be more a beautiful autumn. The spring of expectation vs the fall savour.

A vase of Easter tulips on my counter, I dream of June lilacs and the light lingering in the air as long as possibly can and of that light coming into my home and making everything just a little easier.

I’d like to be that light for you.

rose

Recently read and reading: A Wild Sheep Chase – Haruki Murakami, The Kruetzer Sonata – Tolstoy,
A New Earth – Eckhart Tolle

In my player: Dance Movie – It’s in the And, Joanna Newsom – Have One on Me, Laura Veirs – July Flame

It’s early morning in Manchester and the earliest I’ve been up in a long while. It’s nice to see the sunshine after being in Ireland and the UK for 10 days and not seeing much. I’m listening to Patty Griffin’s Downtown Church. The dampness here creeps in under all layers. One would think I’d be used to it coming from a coastal town. This morning’s sun, Patty’s voice and a sleeping bag are providing me a cocoon right now.

I flew overnight to Belfast, landing with crossed eyes on Feb1st and slept the entire day. On the 2nd I met up with Maeve O’Boyle to start our little 6 date tour. After the first show in Belfast I was scooped up by Jenn Kimball staying in Culdaff, Donegal, a part of Ireland more north than Northern Ireland but considered the south because of the borders that exist. I saw the coast looking out into the Irish Sea, sheep, Malin Head, 2 rainbows, and the quaint town of Carndonagh. In the evening we went to a session at a small local pub The Persian, where the Henry Girls lead the way with fiddle, tin whistle, accordion and harp. I sat in, sang along and had a sip of Guinness.

The next morning Ry took me across the Greencastle Ferry to the Giant’s Causeway before catching a bus back to Belfast where I again met up with Maeve and we drove to our show in Slane, IE. Royal Wood HAPPENED to be in town, having just played the same venue, so I roped him into singing!

Then it was off to Scotland via ferry and a lovely drive to Edinburgh. We played a venue called The Caves and it was literally just that, apparently a part of a buried underground network of spaces. That night I stayed outside Edinburgh with the talented Karine Polwart & family whom I’d met at Celtic Colours in 2008! The next day I met up with two more Canadians I went to university with and didn’t know were there til they showed up at the show. After a quick walk up to the castle and along the Royal Mile I hopped a train to Glasgow to meet Maeve in at Oran Mor. I had fish and chips and “mushy peas“.

Next morning was breakfast with another amazing Scottish artist Lori Watson whom I met at Celtic Colours as well and she got me onto my next train to York, England where I spent the night and next day. Tiny streets, short doors and windows along “the Shambles” made me think the people in the 1600′s were extremely small. It’s a wonder why they’d need such a huge Cathedral. I walked up the 275 narrow steps of the Minster to see York from above. I hopped another train to Manchester.

Gabriel Minnikin was waiting for me there and got me to my gig at the Blue Cat. This brings the story to yesterday when Gabe and I went to the studio and recorded some vocals on his new recording. Last night his roommate cooked English dinner of chicken, “veg” and two kinds of potatoes. Then tea and “biscuits”. Then rummy – and I won!

I have one more stop on the trip and that’s London where I’ll get to by train today. Totally going to email the Queen and see if she’s up for tea and scones in the next couple days. She doesn’t seem to be answering my txts.

In my player: In my player: Paper Beat Scissors, Patty Griffin’s Downtown Church, The Swell Season’s Strict Joy

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Lastnight, Luke and I and David Travers-Smith spent the whole night in David’s hamster-sized mixing studio on the west side of Toronto. At 8am luke and I parted, found 3 hours of sleep and met up again at the mastering suite on the east where we’ve been all day. Now as the final tiny adjustments are being made I’m realizing that we’ve done it and today is the day we set to have the record done and mastered and it is so. Crazy.

It’s been an unbelievable ride. I arrived in Toronto exactly one month ago. We finished at 2am on the 24th of Sept. I took a fast trip home to NS to play the Deep Roots Festival in Wolfville. I played a rock and also an acoustic set with Joel P and the gang and a set of my own. Also took the seasonal opportunity to buy a fresh back of valley macintosh apples and stand in a field of pumpkins with my good friend Erin!

Luke, the amazing Luke. I can’t tell you all what an incredible experience it has been to work with Luke Doucet. Building this project has been intense and gratifying and I can’t imagine having created it with anyone else. I have so much respect for his positivity and kindness as a human and now good friend and a deep admiration for his endless talent. A consummate professional and a goof after my own heart – forever thank you Luke.

A million thanks go also to Daniel Ledwell who once again created a masterpiece for the cover of my album & to Margot Durling of fogo creative for taking Dan’s painting and making the most beautifully themed cd artwork ever. Can’t wait for you all to see it!

NOW WHAT? Well we check out the shows section cause I’m about to burn a hole through Canada (and a few spots in the US) with this new record!! Check it OUT. For those of you who pre-ordered the record…WE DID IT. Thank you so much for making it happen and watch your mail for your discs!

Now, I’m going to sleep for 988543985473 hours. Can’t wait to see you all when I’m out on the road.

Currently reading: Cat’s Eye – Margaret Atwood

In my player: my own friggen record….The Wooden Sky, Acres and Acres – All Nations , Amy Millan – Masters of the Burial, Grass Market – Port City

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So tonight Sir Paul MacCartney played on the Halifax Common. The day was brilliant with sun and the sky completely clear so that when the sun finally went down you could see stars above the stage and Paul even pointed out the amazing moon..maybe 2/3 with a blurred right edge…amazing and low in the sky. I started the evening by joining Joel Plaskett on stage for an opening set right before Paul played…not without some panic as the generator supplying power to the entire operation went down right before we were supposed to sound check. Within 5 mins of our start time, the new generator kicked in and we were cooking. Joel really nailed it and all reports say that his set was killer. Definitely the biggest crowd I’ve ever played to and amazing to do so in my current hometown and with someone I’m such a huge fan of.

Before that and earlier in the day I took Rose Polenzani, Anne Heaton, Laura Cortese, Nicole and Ellen to Peggy’s Cove. They are here FINALLY visiting me from Boston. We got sun trapped in our skin.

Before that, last night Rose, Anne, Laura and I played at the Company House to an amazing crowd. You’ve heard me rave about these women before but I was SO PROUD to show them off to my Halifax friends and fans and it was a show to be remembered. We even did a cover of “Say Say Say” for the living and the dead.

Before that I spent 3 days with the incredible Luke Doucet in Hamilton, ON. I couldn’t be happier that he and I will be embarking on my new project in September. I am a huge fan of Luke and am honoured he has agreed to produce my new record. I feel like only goodness can come from this.

Before that I played in St John’s Newfoundland for the first time. Joel took his show to there to complete his national tour, which of course, was before that for the entire month of May and a few other dates in June. We played Canada Day celebrations in NB and at Alderney Landing in Dartmouth. I finally got the best view for the fireworks and was super pumped to play for the home crowd. At that point we were still only talking about opening for Paul.

Before all that back in April I played a couple great shows with Catherine MacLellan in Windsor, NS and in Moncton, NB and they were great too. Nick Cobham and Kyle Cunjak and Kinley Dowling joined us…another sweet collaboration.

Before that I did my best to move slowly for a while and it went kinda of ok. I have realized that being on the road and taking care of business (and working overtime) has over the last couple of years changed my time allotted for writing but I’m getting it back now and am excited to share some new stuff with you.

Tonight though…I finally got to see a Beatle and a brilliant master of hooks and riffs. His band was amazing and at one point huge flames shot out of the front of the stage and fire works went off behind. He played any classic you could think of and he looks so fit and healthy and he played and played and I never saw him take a sip of water. I’m completely inspired and open mouthed. I’m humbled and I’m in awe. I want to bottle this night.

From here on in I’ll be writing and tweaking and demo-ing and visiting people who are getting married and then going to their weddings, hopefully with new wedding songs to play and I’ll going to go to PEI and swim and hang with my niece at the beach and eat shellfish and stare at the ocean and savour my slow time cause this fall will be a crazy new adventure with a brand new record and many shows to play.

Books I’ve just read: One More Day – Mitch Albom & Into Thin Air – Jon Krakauer

In my player: Ane Brun, Changing of Seasons, Sarah Siskind – Say it Louder, Matt Epp -Safe or Free, Alexi Murdoch – Time Without Consequences

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