Music
From Ghost Of A Dancer (Blue Land 0061, 2008)
Original cover art created by Martin Springett
Left-click on the title to play, right-click to download each track. The respective links are followed by the liner notes in the CD booklet.
Spanish River (7:28) Despite the happily accepted misdirection of the title, Spanish River actually runs through parts of Northern Ontario and Quebec. It was one of the travel routes for the voyageurs, people of the paddle, woodsmen and traders enduring terrible hardships traveling hundreds of kilometers through unforgiving wilderness, year by year. This tune follows part of that journey, along a few bends and rapids. – “River, sublime in your arrogance, strong with the might of the Wilderness, even yet must you be haunted by wraiths that bend and sway to the rhythm of the paddles, and strain under phantom loads, who still thread their soundless ways through the shadowy naves of the pine forests, and in swift ghost-canoes sweep down the swirling white water in a mad chasse galerie with whoops and yells that are heard by no human ear. Almost I can glimpse these flitting shades, and on the portages can almost hear, faintly, the lisping rustle of forgotten footsteps, coming back to me like whispers from a dream that is no longer remembered, but cannot die.” (Grey Owl, Tales of an Empty Cabin, Toronto: Stoddart 1992, p 166)
Northern Comfort (3:35) Northern Ontario, Canada. A decent campfire, good company, steak and spuds, and some honeyed liquor are your good buddies when it gets cold out there; and, boy, it does. The Keewatin, the Great Wind from Northwest, can tear your heart out, leaving you hopelessly lost in love with the North. – This is for my friend, Canadian landscape painter Andrew Hamilton. We’ve logged a few travels together. – Taking the canoe out one night on a lake I got lost in the stars, falling head first into the sky. Somehow I found my way back, through story, through song, and by the light of the campfire. I was greeted by my friend, calling me such an idiot for not taking a flashlight along, and remarking the steak would be past its prime by now, but at least he’d been trying to take care of the liquor before it got bad. – I wrote this tune backwards, starting with my guitar’s idea of the sound of the ice breaking on a lake come spring.
Ghost Of A Dancer. Some tunes take their own sweet time. One summer evening in Toronto, back in 1995, I was sitting in the garden of painter Diann Haist and the late songwriter Glenn Maguire, with a guitar, and some last-minute music to write for my debut album. This theme came flowing by on a breeze across Lake Ontario, and the Beaches. For a few years to come, every now and then its melody lingered in the air like the faintest trace of a perfume long gone – a whiff of bergamot and orange, honey and salt. Eventually I followed my nose.
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From Music From The Sacred Grounds (Northern Breeze NB 0011, 1997)
Cover art: 'The Wind Cries Mary' by Diann Haist.
Ear Of The Beholder - featuring Dee Potter (drums), and Paul Therrien (percussion.