Ain't I handsome

New Headshots from the fab photographer Chris Frampton .

Under advice from my agent I went for a series of character shots. Her remark was something like 'Casting agents aren't the most imaginative people in the world' (OK, actually her words were a little stronger than that, but I don't think she'd appreciate the quote) So we went for a series of looks and a series of shots... I'm not sure which I like best - I'll have to live with them a little...

Demon Drink

Well, sad but true - I've been wondering for the last few months, or maybe even been a year now, why I've had a weird ongoing cold - sinuses are all screwed up and I've lost my sense of smell and taste... sort of like having the aftermath of a bad cold, only all the time. And I've finally put two and two together, and it seems the culprit is booze, with Red wine being the meanest. Some kind of allergy to alcohol...Ack!. I had a couple of glasses of red wine last night, and was up half the night with the feeling I'd been practicing that trick where people drive nails up their nose - excruciating pain! Perhaps this is payback for all the amazing wines I overconsumed in France for several years.

So I guess this means that I'll be the designated driver from now on! If its permanent then it'll be hard to give up, but as a singer its pretty freaky to constantly be stuffed up, and I'd like to have my sense of smell back please. Especially in Fall.. its such a great, smelly season..

out there

Back to work in Toronto... found a great quote by David Byrne that cheers me up when I'm bummed over the current state of the music industry...

"In the past, music was something you heard and experienced — it was as much a social event as a purely musical one. Before recording technology existed, you could not separate music from its social context. Epic songs and ballads, troubadours, courtly entertainments, church music, shamanic chants, pub sing-alongs, ceremonial music, military music, dance music — it was pretty much all tied to specific social functions. It was communal and often utilitarian.

We'll always want to use music as part of our social fabric: to congregate at concerts and in bars, even if the sound sucks; to pass music from hand to hand (or via the Internet) as a form of social currency; to build temples where only "our kind of people" can hear music (opera houses and symphony halls); to want to know more about our favorite bards — their love lives, their clothes, their political beliefs. This betrays an eternal urge to have a larger context beyond a piece of plastic." - David Byrne