Bottles in Rythm

Spend a late night at the pit on friday and had the pleasure of the seeing some fine fiddling again from Willie Gordon. We also spent part of the night talking with an old trapper who spun us tales of trapping around Inuvik in the 70's and spending time with his family... he said it was the most amazing experience to be in a traditional Inuit family where everybody played an instrument straight out of the old-time celtic tradition - accordions, violon, piano, drums... I hope they were also dancing as enthusiastically as we were... though it's a little tough to shake your booty in these snow boots...






By the end of the evening there was a distinct Canadian glass percussion instrument joining the ensemble...




The song for the day will be Love me or Leave Me... I'll put that up on myspace later today... it's an odd one: I found an old piano roll of Fats Waller playing the tune and threw that in the back of the track... t'was a pleasure to think I was singing with Fats... www.myspace.com/bremnerduthie

Secret Fests

Well, it's Thaw di Gras Weekend! (Mardi Gras Dawson Style) I wonder how I'm going to explain the Frozen Chicken Bowling and the Toilet Seat Toss to my friends in Paris.... probably better if I don't try. We'll definately try to catch those two events, along with the Pancake Breakfast, the Chili Cookoff, the Egg Toss, the Nail Driving Contest and the famous Lip Sync contest tonight at Diamond Tooth Gerties Casino (apparently the high point of the social calender here..) We watched the 'launch' of the Percy de Wolfe dog sled race downtown yesterday. From blocks away there was a great yowl of enthusiastic dogs desperate to take off running. They have ATV's that hook on the back of the sleds just to hold them back and they spring forward the moment they let go. One of the organizers told us they used to try to make do with with four guys holding the sled but they'd regularly get dragged off their feet by the enthusiasm of the dogs.






It's a sunny mild day (-23) so I'm off in the afternoon to walk down the river to one of the beached old sternwheelers. The whole song a day project is making my head hurt as I have to throw stuff on the page so quickly but today my Song for the Day will be 'Secret Heart' by another Canadian - Ron Sexsmith. I'll put it up this evening at www.myspace.com/bremnerduthie ...

A Song a Day

While staring out at the cold northern landscapes and watching the icicles get longer on the eaves and cheering on the Dog Mushers I've been working on a whole set of standards that I'll be rehearsing in April and performing in May and recording in June in Paris.

The quartet that I've been working with should be the same, (though the amazing bassist Tomasso Montagnagni might be continuing his studies in Brazil in June, so his sounds might sadly be missing from the concerts that month). And in preparation for that I've set myself the challenge of a new arrangement everyday for the next few weeks... so I'll be arranging the track, recording the vocals and mixing them down by the end of each day. I'll be posting them daily at myspace.com/bremnerduthie The first one is up now- a little number called Some of These Days (written by a Canadian- Shelton Brooks)

They'll all be pretty rough and ready but it's a way of trying out some new ideas and new vocals. If you have any comments don't hesitate to drop me a message here or at myspace or at bremner@bremnerduthie.com

cheers...

Synchronicity

So our arrival back in Paris is looming ever closer, and I’m trying not to think about how the culture shock between Dawson and Montmartre is going to make my head hurt, so I google 'Dawson Paris', to find some links between the two cities (since Dawson was called the Paris of the North in its heyday) and I find, put there, it seems, purely in order to make my head spin even more, a link to a company called Dawson, which is holding an event called Dawson Days, at the Café Carmen in Paris (apparently the ex-home of George Bizet) and this company, which is even weirder, considering Lisa is up here on a writing scholarship, is holding an event that is considering ‘Total Book Management’ where guests at the event could witness “Pat Eades and Ms Kristina Bone, looking regal in front of the magnificent 2005 portrait of Queen Elizabeth II in the Court Dining Room demonstrating the techniques used by the Dawson team” and they claim to be all about “producing a first class shelf-ready book the Dawson way”… which is more or less what Lisa’s time up here has been devoted to…

Google is just too odd sometimes…

Thighbones and Graveyards

Had an amazing walk up the ridge of the hill behind our house. Had a momentary scare when our dog tried to plunge over the edge of the hill into a bit of trampled bush. We couldn't see the attraction until Lisa spotted a massive thigh bone sticking out of the snow. A caribou or deer must have been hit and then died down there. It was picked pretty clean (the Ravens were still circling overhead) but seemed to hold a lot (that is to say: a lot!!!) of fascination for the dog....


We made it up to an amazing view of the river and to Hillside cemetery, which has been in use since Dawson was a gold rush town. The graves go back to the end of the 1800's and there are a whole selection of lives and religions in little separated neighbourhoods: the Catholic cemetery, the Jewish (with five graves in it...the most notable being Solomon Packer - great name- who owned a hardware store during the gold rush), the Masonic cemetery, the Fraternal Order of Eagles, the Yukon Order of Pioneers, the Protestant cemetery, and the Arctic Brotherhood (who were restricted to men who had come over the Chilkoot Pass and who had the motto 'No Borders Here'...can't go wrong with a motto like that).





I like the story of the American Joe Vogler who led a movement called free Alaska that wanted to join Alaska up with the Yukon and part of BC and separate to be its own country: he swore that he wouldn't be buried in Alaska until it was 'free', so he's buried up here until that time comes. There are quite a selection of Americans that ended up here: there's even one Civil War veteran...




The RCMP/NWMP plot was striking with dates of 1899 and older on the headstones... the RCNWMP kept things in order during the gold rush and endured the most incredible hardships for a pretty modest police paycheque .. it must have been tough when the gold was flowing all around them..

On the way down the hill Barclay decided to cheer our rather somber moods by finding a huge drift of snow and plunging in like it was some kind of swimming pool. At one point she disappeared completely.

Its too damned hot

Warming trend up here in the North: -20 these days...which is a great relief from the -53 that it hit about ten days ago. They had to cancel one of the dog treks that were going on because their kerosene began to freeze so they couldn't cook. It feels positively balmy... I was wandering around with my jacket open and Lisa was complaining about how hot she was in her winter coat. I did a free show of my Kurt Weill revue - Whiskey Bars - at the local arts centre so I'm glad it was warm enough to let the audience make it out of their houses. The show went over wonderfully.... great response from the audience.

I have to admit that when it hit the deep minus temperatures I didn't go out to much, but the cabin fever let me get lots of work done - I recorded and mixed a new version of the absolutely beautiful song Whisper Not and got that up on my space ( myspace.com/bremnerduthie ) and continued work on the theatre piece that I've been puzzling over for about a year now.

Now that it's 'warm' this weekend we're going to head off down the frozen river and visit the ruins of a paddle steamer that lie a mile or so past the town, and next weekend my old friend drives up from Whitehorse and we might take the chance to drive up the Dempster Highway towards the Arctic Circle...

Ice Fog

Ice Fog has hit the whole town as the temperatures have dropped and seem to be hovering around the -40 t0 -50 degree mark. Last night when I walked the dog I looked back along the street and in the light of the streetlights I could see a series of small clouds retracing my route. There was no wind so as I walked the condensation from my breath was freezing immediately. They stayed for a few moments then a breath of wind blew them away. Today the fog stayed on the river and never quite lifted from the town. At the grocery store someone said 'Glad that the Cold has broken a bit! It's finally over -40' and a friend from Whitehorse called to gloat that it was only -27 where he was.... I guess everything is relative...





Even Barclay is finally feeling the effects. It hasn't seemed to deter her joy about leaping into snowbanks, but today when she came back from her walk her whole face was frosted with the cold...

Brrrrrrr

- 40 Celcius before windchill. Ice Fog this morning covering the town. Lisa and I walked down by the river and watched the sunrise before the cold forced us home. The dog went mad with joy over the cold and plunged deep into snow banks and tossed tiny blocks of ice around the path leaping around like a lamb in springtime. On our arrival home we were so amazingly cold...I think the picture says it all...

Cold Perspectives

Have been stuck in the house fighting with midi recording programs so I thought I'd just throw up some random images from last couple of days that I liked.... You have to use your imagination for this one... it's a 'panoramic' shot (without a panoramic camera) from the mountain across from Dawson... And Lisa...

he drove in, he drove out

So we headed across the ice bridge to the local campground that's been taken over by the Yukon Quest to see the departure of Lance Mackie. They have to wait 36 hours in Dawson City while they rest and the dogs rest and any repairs are done to their sled. All the media were there (I bet they're not there for the mushers who leave at 4 am) and it was quite a sight to see the whole team head off down the river. They follow the routes of the old dog teams that carried the mail around the north for years and years, so it was it also cool from a strictly historical point of view. I imagine by now he's in the middle of nowhere camped out with his dogs. It must be a strange sport to be so isolated for so long on the trail....





The other mushers are still camped out waiting for their time to arrive. They rest their dogs in straw under these tarps. Apparently letting them stay acclimatized to the cold is better for them then putting them into warm kennels... they look pretty cosy.

Stayed up till almost midnight to watch the arrival of Lance Mackie, current leader of the Yukon quest.. an amazing sight... We saw the light from his headlamp way down the river, all the media people poured out of the visitors centre checkpoint and then he pulled in to the crossing point on Front St.

The most amazing thing was that after doing 500 miles of the 1000 mile race in just over four days and in the last 24 hours crossing 100 miles of deep snow and climbing and crossing the 4000 foot King Solomon Dome he looked great, and his dogs were desperate to keep on going!!...



Some later teams arrived and their dogs just curled up the moment they arrived at the finish line. There was some gossip later on about what Lance's technique is, since to do that and arrive four hours in the lead is apparently extraordinary (expecially since he just recovered from cancer treatments ) and one of the options discussed was that perhaps he and his dogs were actually aliens... personally from the way he gave off a great energy then and when I saw him later I think it was something to do with simply having an amazing attitude... strange how far that will take you...

Not the toe....NOT THE TOE!!!

Ok. I really don't know what is more disgusting about this photo: the fact that she's holding a human toe or the fact that it's black, or the fact that someone just had this thing in a drink and its now going back to be repacked in ice, or the fact that she has pen scribbles on her hand at the same time. It is just gross. But... we're in the land of the wacky and intense and drinking hard alcohol with human toes in them is simply part of the process. And it wasn't me. I have to admit that I'm just not up to it -- which probably shows some kind of weakness... or some kind of sanity....

The Downtowner Inn has a 20 year tradition of folks daring to swig a beverage (the Sour Toe Cocktail) with a human toe floating in it. And if you drink it and hold the toe in your mouth then you get a certificate. Apparently the first toe is now long gone due to various drunken accidents(!?!), and the next, and the next and now folks around the world, when they lose a toe, mail it off to the Downtowner in the hopes that they can be part of this venerable tradition.

Maybe you just gotta be a lot drunker before even considering this idea... I have trouble even looking at the picture much less seeing it bob around in my glass...

The Dogs are loose

The Quest has started from Whitehorse, and it should arrive in town on Tuesday... I'm reading a history of the race and these people are monsters of survival... One guy doesn't even take a sleeping bag with him: just throws a couple of trees on a fire and beds down in -60C weather on a blanket. Ayiee!!


Stories about building a fire on the river ice but it being so cold that the fire couldn't melt the ice it was built on. And these tough little dogs that pull these sleds a 1000 miles... Ayiee!! They should be pulling into town between tuesday and sunday: apparently the sound the town fire alarm (day or night) when the first one comes in... I'm really looking forward to seeing them

Fighting with the Software

spent the day trying to make my home studio software produce something as an end result that sounded like what I was putting into it. It kept on producing bits and pieces of music that sounded like they were recorded underwater, or in a cathedral with me at one end and the mic at the other and the piano up in the bell tower. Finally got something up that resembles what I recorded... a version of My Funny Valentine. Its up on myspace.com/bremnerduthie . Getting it uploaded through this slow connection was yet another story. I once had a friend who designed large software programs for companies and he said that if he could get the ratio between the amount of work negotiating the program and the amount of productive work done by the user on the program to about 60/40 then he was pretty delighted... After today I know what he meant...

swiss knives and wood glue

Well, the incredible humidity in the north... or should I say the incredible lack of humidity... finally got to my little concertina. The action board, where the keys are sprung and the holes are drilled for the reeds, dryed out and cracked and warped and the poor little thing needed some emergency repairs.... I'd heard the problem developing earlier so I ordered Dave Elliot's repair guide, and happily the tools necessary were all contained within my trusty swiss army knife (Thanks, Peter). So following his advice I got some PVA wood glue and I took the the little thing apart to get to the inner workings...





That's the action board removed and the inside of the bellows and the reed pan... and there are the little white dots between the holes where I patched up the cracks... with the cardboard from one of Barclay's biscuit boxes (thanks, Barclay)...

So the little thing has most of it's tone back. I have to do one more repair on a spring on one of the keys that seems to be stuck. Now it lives in the bathroom with the humidifier on it at all times... it seems happier. It's such an odd little instrument... I'll paste a short history below..

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, a new group of musical instruments arose in Europe, whose origins may be traced to the arrival of examples of the Chinese free-reed mouth organ or sheng in Europe in the late eighteenth century (1). The main varieties of these new instruments were the mouth organ, developed in Germany around 1825; the accordion, patented in Vienna in 1829, and the concertina, invented by Charles Wheatstone around 1829 or 1830, initially as a scientific curiosity, but marketed from 1836 as a serious musical instrument.

The Wheatstone concertina rapidly achieved acclaim as a serious solo and ensemble instrument, not only becoming highly popular amongst musical amateurs, but attracting numerous virtuoso performers and composers.

Lord Balfour (British Prime Minister 1902-5) was in fact an ardent concertina player, and the explorers Shackleton and Livingstone both acquired Wheatstone concertinas (2).

A number of sonatas, concertos and chamber works involving the concertina appeared in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, by composers including Tschaikovsky, Macfarren,Benedict, Percy Grainger, Charles Ives, Molique, Regondi and Silas (3).

By the early years of the twentieth century, the concertina's popularity had broadened, giving rise to the working class concertina bands of England's northern mill towns, and the instrument also found a niche as a populist addition to the instrumentation of the Salvation Army band.