Wrapping it up

It rained in Edinburgh. A lot. In fact, this was the rainiest year in over 100 years. And since Scotland is renowned for its normally soggy climate, you can imagine just how wet it was. It rained on the castle, it rained on the cobblestone streets and it rained on the umbrellas of folk waiting in line to buy tickets for my show Whiskey Bars.

But the record rainfall didn’t stop another record being set – and that's on the number of tickets sold on the opening weekend of this gargantuan Edinburgh theatre festival. Over 2000 different theatre shows were performing in town, 19 000 (that's right - nineteen thousand!) performers were wandering the streets trying to get audiences to come to their shows, and over the course of the three week festival around 1.7 million tickets were sold.

And now I'm watching the rain fall on the afternoon after the last night of a glorious run over here. On the last week we sold-out several nights – and since the average size for an audience in Edinburgh is 8 people, a full house was a dream come true.

We arrived here on August 1st as an unknown Canadian one-man show. When we walked into our tiny venue we didn't expect much – it's seedy, to put it mildly. I was performing at the end of a dank alleyway across from a gloomy ancient cemetery; the theatre space is tucked into the 500-year-old vaulted church basement. The address is 11 Merchant Street; number 9 is one of Edinburgh's least glamorous massage parlours, and number 10 is where the armoured cars bring in criminals for their day in court. Reviewers have said complimentary things like "the seedy, dank atmosphere of the Vault creeps into every sinew of this performance".

I can't argue...but the locale was perfect for a one-man exploration of the music of Kurt Weill--composer of Mack the Knife. Weill basically invented a whole new style of music theatre in the 1920's, working with Bertold Brecht. I've been obsessed with Weill's music for years - I first heard his songs in a cabaret in East Berlin in the 1980's while I was living in a squat in West Berlin. We squeaked through Checkpoint Charlie and sat in a dank bar watching a cabaret show and drinking harsh Eastern Bloc vodka. Maybe I had heard his music before, but this was the first time I said to myself that this was music that I wanted to sing.

Fifty years after his death, Weill's music is constantly performed. Shortly after he died Louis Armstrong and Bobby Darin set "Mack the Knife" as a jazz standard; The Doors, Judy Collins, Lou Reed, John Zorn, Dagmar Krause, PJ Harvey, Teresa Stratas, Ute Lemper, Anne Sofie von Otter, the Dresden Dolls, The Young Gods and Marianne Faithfull have all recorded his music.

We had already toured the show across Canada and the US, from Hamilton to Vancouver to Florida at different Fringes. We spent months on the road, reworking the show between festivals--tweaking the script, changing the songs, playing with lights and staging. It paid off: we sold out houses in Winnipeg and other festivals in Canada. But in Edinburgh - no one cared! For the first week we played to audiences of three and four enthusiastic friends. We begged the folk who work in the theatres to come and check out the show, hoping to start some buzz. And amazingly, it worked. Britain's prestigious theatre mag, The Stage, dropped by & gave us a double thumbs-up: "Like Hedwig with far better melodies" they said. And, luckily we also fell in with a great scottish theatre tech who ran our show flawlessly and maintained our sense of humour when the audiences were sparse at the beginning of the run.

And in that first week, we got Five Stars from The Edinburgh Fringe Review, and Five Stars from Edinburgh's Broadway Baby Review, and then later had great write ups in the Scotsman, Three Weeks Magazine, MTM – the music theatre organization, and a great nod from a writer from the Sunday Times. The reviews are a real help to lure audience – it's tough trying to get the word out about a one-man show when we're competing for publicity with gangs of cheerful samurai, tap-dancing girls in top hats, sexy stilt walkers in low cut corsets and the whole cast of a broadway musical dressed entirely in tight bright green jump suits and platform heels.

And, we avoided the terrible fallout from the biggest scandal of the festival season. The whole Fringe ticketing system collapsed the week before the festival started. A badly planned IT contract was awarded late, creating web chaos at the central office, and meaning that those 1.7 million tickets were being processed by hand. There is a lot of name calling going on in the Edinburgh Fringe community right now! But if anything it helped our show, since the frustration of trying to get into some of the more well-publicized events has led some ticket buyers to search for smaller shows.

And we hung in for the whole run. Many shows drop in for a week or two, but staying for that extra week meant that for the last week almost every night we had a different producer or promoter come by who’d heard about the show. We had interest from theatres across Britain, questions about translating the show into German and Portuguese, and one booker, who runs a show slew of shows at this festival, hang around after to tell me show she wanted to book the show into an international tour.

So, amazingly, for a little show that wandered into town on a wing and a prayer, our whole gamble has paid off... Now of course, our only question has to be – can we handle any more British weather?

and for the record...here's what they said...

FIVE STARS
"This really is Fringe theatre at its very best. Duthie’s classical training and background as a many-year veteran in musicals and jazz bands is evident from the outset. By the time we arrived at the chillingly Speak Low - calm on the surface, yet bubbling with undercurrents of febrile yearning - we were left with no doubt whatsoever that we were in the presence of a true master of his craft.
This show is, like the best of Weill's own works for the stage, a seamless blend of gripping entertainment and genuinely moving art."
The Edinburgh Fringe Review

FOUR STARS
"This one-man show was dark, glitzy, dingy and sparkled with the life of a performer down on his luck. Written and performed by Bremner Duthie, it betrays the author's passion for Kurt Weill, whose music inspired the piece and permeates the show's central character. Innocent and at the same time far too world-weary, Bremner's voice was strong and beautiful. Darlings, life is a cabaret."
Three Weeks Magazine

"brave and inventive...a compelling and boldly-delivered one man show full of energy and impassioned acting."
Music Theatre Matters

"Kurt Weill grew up," states actor Bremner Duthie's character impassionedly near the end of this show, "between a synagogue and a music hall theatre." Thus, Duthie asserts, the composer's life and music reached a perfect balance between the sacred and the profane early on, and there's a real sense of both in his show. The music is sung with all the passion the character brings to bear when introducing it. Duthie's voice and performance give songs like I'm a Stranger Here Myself the perfect level of sexuality and tenderness, while his version of Je ne t'aime pas demonstrates what he means when he says "Weill can break your heart in any language"."
-The Scotsman

FIVE STARS
"Bremner Duthie, brings his one man “Kabarett” to Edinburgh, featuring the music of Kurt Weill - and it wonderfully showcases his multitude of talents as a writer and performer.
The character pays homage to the life of Kurt Weill, punctuating the interview with captivating performances of his songs. These are beautifully delivered with power and emotion, set to a hauntingly sparse piano accompaniment."
Edinburgh Broadway Baby Review

A Good Time of Year

Its our anniversary today, and we celebrated with a long walk up Arthur's Seat to the Sheep's Head pub - the oldest pub in Scotland...where we ate a great dinner of Haggis and Turnips and locally brewed beer... A gorgeous day - for Scotland that is... intermittent rain, clouds and sun. On the way home we discussed what time of year we would guess it to be if plopped down here unaware of the season - Lisa settled for early May, I settled for early October. Neither of us would have guessed August! Still, its pretty spectacular, even in the drizzle - we walked back past a 14th century Kirk and then down into Edinburgh past Holyrood Park (the royal park of Mary Queen of Scots)

Since this is my evening off we went to see a show and picked Camille at the Queen's Hall. She's an Irish Cabaret singer and the show was fascinating - I'm looking for a new direction for these songs that isn't so structured around the theatrical devices of Whiskey Bars, and it gave me a lot to think about...

1st Edinburgh Fringe Week in the bag

and so we're dark on monday - and the first week at the Ed Fringe is over and it was indeed a tumultuous thrill fest rollercoaster adventure ride .... two five star reviews, a recommendation in Britain's 'The Stage', great and enthusiastic houses, a lovely and amazing place to stay in the historic West End of the city (right beside the New Town - New, that is, since it was built in 1760 after the 'Old Town'......) And now its a day off - a day to get away completely from this madness and see a bit of the city...and a day (if the insane rains hold off) to tromp up Arthur's Seat (the little mountain that overshadows Hollyrood Palace) and down to have dinner at the Sheep's Head inn - a little pub dating from 1500 that apparently serves a mean Haggis and Neaps....

and here's what they said...

http://www.broadwaybaby.com/fringe/reviews/whiskeybars


http://www.fringereview.co.uk/fringeReview.php?showName=Whiskey%20Bars

Kurt Weill and Whiskey Bars on the Fringe, Edinburgh pitches in..

The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagony by Kurt Weill is opening the Edinburgh Festival and I’m thrilled and daunted to be doing a Cabaret of Weill’s material at the same time (literally the same time, so sadly I can’t even go to the show) Our resources are vastly different – they have the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, and are in the Festival Hall, and I’m by myself down at the end of Merchant St, (just across the road from the ‘No 9.- Massage, Sauna and Escort Agency’). But I like to think that maybe I’m a little closer to the spirit of Kurt Weill and his music.

Kurt Weill was born in Dessau, Germany in 1900, the son of a synagogue cantor. and studied composition with Humperdink and Busoni, and by 22, the Berlin Philharmonic had premiered two of his compositions. He came of age at the end of World War I, in a Europe spiritually exhausted, ghastly, frightening, desperate -- and remarkably creative. Weill's musical legacy is enormous, and all of it broke new musical and theatrical ground. His most famous and enduring works were his Berlin cabaret and theater collaborations with the poet Bertolt Brecht, "The Threepenny Opera" and "The Rise and Fall of the City Mahagonny."

I first heard Weill’s music in a cabaret in East Berlin in the early 80’s when I was living in a squat in West Berlin. We squeaked through Checkpoint Charlie and sat in a dank bar watching a cabaret show and drinking harsh Eastern Bloc vodka from bottles that arrived at the table with tinfoil peel-back bottle tops (once open it was assumed you wouldn’t be resealing them…). I’m sure I had heard his music before, but this was the first time I said to myself that this was music that I wanted to sing.

Perhaps if I’d known what kind of footprints I’d be walking in I would have been too daunted to begin – since fifty years after his death, Weill's music is constantly performed in pop and classical worlds. Shortly after he died Louis Armstrong and Bobby Darin set "Mack the Knife" as a jazz standard, and since then performers as diverse as The Doors, Judy Collins, Lou Reed, Todd Rundgren, John Zorn, Dagmar Krause, PJ Harvey, Teresa Stratas, Ute Lemper, Anne Sofie von Otter, the Dresden Dolls, The Young Gods and Marianne Faithfull have recorded entire albums of his music.

Weill helped create a new kind of musical theatre in the bleak and gritty settings of his first music theatre works. London in Three Penny Opera is populated with Robber Kings and brutal women, and the imaginary American frontier city of Mahagony symbolized the ultimate city of Capitalism; Weill and Brecht decided that gangsters, gold-diggers, hurricanes, the FBI and lumberjacks might all meet up the fleshpots of this mythical Western city. And when Weill fled the Nazi’s in the 30’s he sought projects with serious political and human themes and linked up with the brightest and most politically engaged of Broadway’s lyricists – Maxwell Anderson, Langston Hughes, Ogden Nash, Elmer Rice as well as Ira Gershwin and Oscar Hammerstein. Weill also adapted "Lost in the Stars" from the tragic novel of South African racial oppression, "Cry, the Beloved Country" by Alan Patton. Though Weill was in the avant-garde of 20th-century European composition, none of his music is detached, technical and cold; all of it is infused with constant, tumultuous, immediate passion. Every note of Weill's music expresses love and hope as much as it expresses rage and despair.

So even if I don’t have the resources of the Festival Hall behind me, I think Edinburgh is providing me with some even better assistance. Since, every night, just before my show, I leave the cheerful crowds in the Grassmarket, trot down a gloomy cobblestone dead end and walk under a dank and odorous tunnel below George IV Bridge, where I wait on the curbstone of the No. 9 Sauna at the end of Merchant St. And I stay there contemplating the walls around me while the show before mine finishes performing in the converted cellar that is the Vault venue. And though once they finish I only have 15 minutes to get ready to do the show, by that time I’ve had the best psychological preparation that you could want for singing Kurt Weill’s music and talking about his life. I can’t think of a corner of Edinburgh that could better serve as a set for his works. Perhaps next time the Festival does a Weill show they should look around their own atmosphere filled city and take advantage of the history and and resources. I know that I’m delighted to be getting that chance.

Whiskey Bars by Bremner Duthie...suspicious behaviours

As the US border guard held the suspicious device he’d found in my car, I wondered why I had been pulled over. And why I was being treated like a terrorist. When I crossed the border from Canada to perform at the Minneapolis Fringe Festival I didn’t think I fit the usual profiling – I wasn’t trying to be anonymous – after all, I was driving my vintage cherry-red 1964 Buick Skylark. I’m part of that large, bland demographic – white, anglo-saxon, male, and I’m not even a suspicious foreigner – I was born in New York City and proudly carry a well traveled American passport. Perhaps I fell into some random selection process, or perhaps the guard had indigestion. Suffice to say I found myself in a small office while the red faced guard in mirrored sunglasses popped back and forth to show me items he’d pulled from the car. He seemed to be waiting for me to fall to my knees and admit that this flimsy ‘performing in musical theatre’ story was actually a front for the international white slave trade (well… OK, sometimes, at the going rates of pay in theatre, I think I might agree with him…). At one point he wandered in with my top hat from the show. ‘And just where will you be wearing this?’ I drew his attention to the flyer for the show that I’d already given him – ‘On stage, like in the picture’. He left unimpressed.

Finally, he came back in with a triumphant, grim smile. He was brandishing a piece of wood with a hole bored through the middle, and now behind him stood another border guard with his hand hovering close to his gun. ‘I found this in your trunk, what is the purpose of this device’. I paused. He was waving a section of a portable coat rack I’d borrowed from my Mom to use in the show. I had a vision of myself driving to Washington DC in my Skylark to thwack George W. Bush with the piece of wood. It was a very unlikely vision, but hey, I guess you can’t be too careful in the war against terror. He flourished my Mom’s old coat rack in the air, staring at me like I was his prize for the day. My Dad’s words came back to me – ‘never, ever, ever joke with a customs guards, they are not hired for their senses of humour’.

I explained the purpose of the ‘device’. There was a long pause. His armed friend coughed discreetly and drifted tactfully away. ‘Would you like me to show you how it works?’ I asked innocently. He glared. ‘No, I think I’ve seen enough! Please move your car.’ And I drove off thinking I’m glad my government is protecting me from all those coat rack wielding music theatre performers who might be trying to sneak into the US in a 40 year old classic car, yes, indeedy… it makes me feel so, so much safer….

The Whiskey Wars of Whiskey Bars ( a kabarett by Bremner Duthie with the songs of Kurt Weill)

Ouch…when I decided to take Whiskey Bars, a Kabarett by Bremner Duthie with songs by Kurt Weill, to the Edinburgh Fringe, I stumbled into this without any idea of how extremely tender Scottish feelings are on the subject of Whiskey... or is it Whisky. Please calm down, oh annoyed Scottish friends!

I'm bringing my show from Canada to Edinburgh and it's called 'Whiskey Bars'. Yes, with an "e" in the whisky.

The show's based around the songs of Kurt Weill—the guy who wrote Mack the Knife, among other songs. And before the Fringe has even started, I've had too many emails reminding me curtly that the correct spelling of Whiskey is Whisky, and that the Irish stole the word and added an 'E' to indicate their inferior product, and that the ignorant Americans began using the Irish spelling, (probably because there were way more Irish than Scots arriving State-side) and that adding an 'e' to the word is like adding Coca Cola to a single malt, (all right, all right, I've seen folks do that in the States and I agree it's disgusting) and that if I'm going to do a show in Scotland I should be aware of the correct spelling.

Well, normally on matters of cultural heritage I bow down and back off to the aggrieved cultures involved, but for once, I have history on my side. Because Kurt Weill wrote music theatre pieces with the brilliant Bertolt Brecht in the 1920's in Germany, and the 'Alabama Song' was one of his hits, and the title of my show comes from one of the lyrics.

You know the song—it was a huge hit for The Doors and David Bowie ("Oh, show me the way to the next Whiskey Bar…").

So this song comes from a show called the 'Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny'. It's a satire; Mahagonny symbolized the ultimate city of Capitalism, so Weill and Brecht imagined a city on the American frontier—although at that point they'd never been to America (and though the show was really a satire on 1920's Weimar Berlin).

Weill and Brecht decided that gangsters, gold-diggers, hurricanes, the FBI and lumberjacks might all meet up in this mythical Western city. And while the show is in German,Alabama Song is in English, and Weill and Brecht chosen American spelling simply because the song is set in the Wild (Weimar-tinted) West.

So…I know that Scottish Whisky is the best (though a fine single cask Kentucky Bourbon can go down pretty well), but for this one situation, my spelling of Whiskey is right.

To redeem myself, I promise to consume all the Whisky that I can once I get to Edinburgh…

Quick Quiz - Bremner Duthie's Whiskey Bars with songs by Kurt Weill at the Edinburgh Fringe at 'The Vault'

Three Weeks Magazine in Britain asked me to fill out a quick quiz about my show Whiskey Bars, with the songs of Kurt Weill that will be going up at the Edinburgh Fringe at The Vault venue. I think this about sums it up...

1. What is your 2008 show all about?

"Whiskey Bars" is a tell-all, behind the scenes, no holds barred, backstage peek at the torrid and neurotic life of a fading cabaret singer teetering between a stunning future and a plunge into obscurity. It takes place as he prepares himself with innumerable shots of cheap vodka in the dressing room before a 'comeback' performance. Casting the audience as his critic, he lies, seduces, threatens, cajoles and bargains to secure a good review for the show he's about to do...all while performing a reverse striptease. He starts in a towel and ends in full tuxedo and whiteface. And best of all - he illustrates his story with the dark and daring songs of Kurt Weill.

2. Why should we come and see it?

Because folks say 'Wow' after hearing Weill's songs in this context--songs like Mack the Knife, September Song and soooooo many others, with lyrics by writers from Bertolt Brecht to Ira Gershwin. Because how often to you get to spend an evening with someone who believes they were captured by aliens? And because everyone can relate to the story of trying to get up and do what most scares them.

3. If your show was an olympic sport, what would it be and why?

Gossima. Whiff-Whaff. Flim-Flam. Ping-Pong – that's right – Table Tennis!!

Why? Because it's a breathless, nonstop, frighteningly precise yet totally nerdy battle of wits and speed where every move counts. Because you need to keep your eyes glued to the show for every tense, thrilling and yet somehow hilarious moment. Because Ping Pong was invented in 1890 in England using cigar box lids for rackets and a carved champagne cork for a ball, and we feel any game that has its roots in nicotine and alcohol has a lot in common with our show.

4. What are you most looking forward to about this year's Festival?

We're looking forward to sharing our own art and work and struggles equally amidst a collective community of the best of international theatre dedicated to artistic excellence...no, wait...that's the first line from the grant proposal…damn! …OK…we're looking forward to single malts, the fringe club, late night music jams, a distant shot at fame & glory, and a brief sleazy fling with some hot dancer with an amazing physique (we can dream, right?)

5. What are you least looking forward to about this year's Festival?

Now look - before heading for Canada I spent my youth in Fraserburgh in Aberdeenshire...not that far from Edinburgh...so I know...I know ALL ABOUT the friggin' awful weather. None of those carefully selected edfringe.com photos where happy performers busk in warm sunlight fool me. In Canada, August means a chance to soak up some sun, but in the capital city of Scotland I remember those North Sea squalls sweeping through at any time of year! Normally I do the busking in white face, so hopefully drizzled, dripping and streaked makeup will give me that lovely dramatic touch...

6. What advice would you have for someone trying to navigate the Fringe?

Trust your instincts and pick the shows that really appeal to you on some dark and daring level…better to see an exciting flop then a dull success! Don't follow the reviews – ask the person waiting in line in front of you, or eavesdrop on the conversation going on behind you – they'll give you much more exciting advice. Performers LOVE audiences who've been drinking – so don't forget to take advantage of all the great pubs and fine drinking establishments!

7. What advice would you have for someone trying to survive the Fringe?

Just three words – Alcohol, Caffeine, Baked Tatties


8. Describe your show in three words

Terrifyingly pleasurable schmaltz



WHISKEY BARS

by Bremner Duthie

at The Vault, 11 Merchant Street

preview Aug 3, 9pm (1hr) £3.00

Aug 4-10, 12-17, 19-25, 8:40pm (1hr) £6.00(£5.00)

WHISKEY BARS - AT THE ED FRINGE THIS SUMMER

http://pagesperso-orange.fr/whiskey.bars/whiskey.html

Lisa Pasold reading from her book Weave

Lisa Pasold reading from Weave in a June reading at the Art Bar reading series in Toronto at Clinton's on Bloor St.




Lisa did a great reading

Geist Magazine said

"Weave reads as a memoir of the twentieth century in a world bounded by Prague and Peru and the Russian Front and the shores of Lake Ontario. The narrator is a traveler and an exile, and she seems to be perpetually in transit. Her brother Wilhelm serves as mythical interlocutor, and we are led by their sibling love into and out of the darkness of Europe. Weave is quite simply a masterpiece: there is more in these eighty odd pages than in most novels." ~Stephen Osborne, Geist

and you can buy it now, today, immediately at

http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/Weave-Lisa-Pasold/9780973238075-item.html?ref=Search+Books%3a+%2527lisa+pasold%2527

when there's so much going on in the news sometimes the really great stories just get lost - I heard this guy on radio and he said that the only moment that scared him was when he thought that the bear might drown and he was scared for it... not for himself! ... extraordinary...

http://myfwc.com/whatsnew/08/statewide/News_08_X_BearRescue.htm

NXNE Conference Species

I went to the NXNE Music conference last week and observed the different species of music industry people.... yes..different species - highly specialized for specific niches in the environment... I sat in on 4 panel discussions - New Media, Music Festivals, Producers, Promoters - and the panelists were all wildly different from the others, and all so much alike in each group. The New Media/Marketing group were filled with energy and enthusiasm and optimism, the Music Festival directors were so bored to be facing another group of eager young musicians, the Producers were all about the music, and the promoters were sharp eyed capitalists.

The New Media folk were David Usher, a musician who has a very active blog, and Mitch Joel, an online marketer whiz, and Michael McCarty from Emi Music Publishing. They were really great, filled with energy and ideas and incredibly keen on sharing - in fact sharing might have been the key word of the panel - since most of their encouragement was about how to share yourself and your creative process with a fanbase. I'll scrape the info from David Usher who summed up the info on his blog www.cloudid.com. I stumbled out of this panel filled with enthusiasm and excitement about the future of media marketing and connecting with musicians and people who love music - and crashed into the Festival Organizer's Panel, which was a crash course in 'People Who Don't Care and Don't Want to Know Your Name'... but perhaps I'll leave those notes for later... meanwhile this is what David Usher has to say..

At NXNE a lot of musicians were asking the question: What should I do?

Here’s my 20 cents:

1. There are no gatekeepers, don’t wait for that deal. They are few and far between these days. Try and get your music out to as many people as possible. That means building your community on the web. That’s were everyone goes to discover, listen and buy music. So that’s were you need to be.

2. Forget the traditional website. Think about the sites you visit everyday. Do any of them have content that’s 6 months old? No, so…

Move to a blog based platform where your blog is front and center. Use blogging and micro blogging (your Status) to keep your page fresh and always updated. No more old news, old photos, old videos, old tour dates. Make it about what your doing today. Open up your creative process to your audience. It’s a bit frightening at first but once you start it can become addictive. Trust me, this can lead you to being even more creative.

Note: you can get a simple blog page at wordpress.com or blogger, there are lots of free alternatives. You can use them with your own URL. Pay a designer by the hour to help customize the look and feel. I shouldn’t cost a fortune. Because blog platforms are built like social networks, they have a simple backend and you can easily do all the updating of your content yourself.

3.Hub out your blog page.
The idea is to blog and micro blog in one place, and then have that information feed to the rest your social networks automatically through RSS (Really Simple Syndication). Your goal is to have a simple system so you can upload once and get your art/process out to as many places as possible on the web.

Note: Start with Flickr, Youtube, Myspace, Facebook, Ilike, LastFM and Twitter.

Remember. Go where the people are.

Weill Inspirations

When I first started working on my CD of the songs of Kurt Weill, I knew I wanted to do the gorgeous Speak Low, but the coaches I saw in New York all advised me to do it as this shlocky uptempo musical theatre thing. And it made me itch - probably because the words are so heartbreaking... I couldn't see myself believing in an interpretation of these words


Speak low when you speak, love
Our summer day withers away too soon, too soon
Speak low when you speak, love
Our moment is swift, like ships adrift,
we're swept apart, too soon

as some bouncy fingersnappin' uptempo thing. So I was delighted to stumble upon a strange recording of the amazing bassist, Charlie Haden, jamming on this song with a recording of Kurt Weill, the man himself, apparently taken from some rehearsal where he was coaching the song. And it's heartbreaking. (ok...the video itself is kind of kitsch...but it was the 80's.... however the song is gorgeous... hell, anything Haden ever did is gorgeous...)




so Stan (my amazing pianist) and I decided to do it as slow as possible and just let all those beautiful words and harmonies just flow out. This is live from the show...





and you can hear the version from the CD here... or here - on Amazon, or itunes..

Edfringe Launches

The Edinburgh Fringe is on-line at last (after a bunch of server problems) with their program for the summer. www.edfringe.com and Whiskey Bars is up and listed in The Vault venue... God! - one little 40 word listing on the web is going to be so much amazing work for the summer. Luckily we now have the amazing and indomitable Irish playwright Maureen Mcmanus on our side - she's an old friend from when I lived in London and will be in Edinburgh for the first week and giving us a hand doing publicity and keeping our spirits up in the competition with the 2000 or so (Ack!) other shows going on at the same time...

"I lock myself inside a pantry of despair....."

Worked for NXNE music fest at the Kathedral venue... taped a few seconds of all the bands on Saturday night, and a few in the upstairs venues... spot the Gold Lame funk band - what were they thinking!





Bands are

From Toronto
Run With Kitten's
Oh No Forest Fires
Infighter
Dance Yourself to Death

then from Madrid - FRIDA

Philadelphia's - Adam and Dave's Bloodline

Spain again with - We are Balboa

from Toronto
The Hip Hop/Djembe group - Grand Analog
The fashion challenged - Foxfire
The trying very hard funk band - God Made me Funky

Winnipeg's - The Sons of York

and finally the fabulous toronto neo-punk band Tin Bangs

Lennie the Magnificent

honestly... he was... just amazing... 73 and brimming with charisma and charm and honesty.. it was a totally brave concert... he could have walked out and coasted on his hits and just walked through the evening, but he made it extraordinary...

OMG!

Why does this kind of freak me out... just checked itunes and amazon.com and the CD is up there as well... available in whole or by single song download... i guess that something about being a part of the apple empire and actually participating in this 'new economy' is very odd... I had enough trouble with the old economy, much less the new one...

anyway... for those who swing that way - its now searchable, viewable, buyable on

Amazon
Rhapsody
Tradebit
Apple iTunes
GreatIndieMusic
PayPlay
Inprodicon (whatever that is...)