"My tunes are my way of processing," says Kev Corbett. "I write audio songs. I work out the world by talking in my head. Music is my first language."
As a natural storyteller, Corbett brings listeners on quite the journey with his narrative-driven songs. Despite having a soft release at the Lunenburg Folk Festival, he's releasing Son of a Rudderless Boat at The Company House on January 16.
"A song is not finished until it is heard," says Corbett, with his hand wrapped around a mug of tea at Just Us!. "I write about the things people don't talk about but feel deeply---the sweet stuff of human experience. I don't write break-up songs, I don't write piss-up songs. There has to be some sort of silver lining.
"Proverbially I like to get to the nub of things. I write about some of the stereotypes of being Canadian."
Whether he's accompanying a band, in the role of leading man or hosting Sing For Your Supper, a songwriter's circle Saturday afternoons at The Carleton, Corbett lives and breathes music. The odd time he's not beneath the glow of the stage lights, he's somewhere nearby listening keenly with his signature Cheshire cat grin and pint glass in hand.
"It's almost mathematically impossible to be a songwriter now," he says. "No one needs to buy a CD if they don't want to. My job is to show up every day and not obstruct my own progress."
With splashes of blues, folk, reggae, bluegrass and jazz, Son of a Rudderless Boat runs the musical gamut. The toe-tapping opening track "That's All Gone" features Old Man Luedecke on banjo and highlights life's more sugary moments. "Cheese and Whiskey" might be an unlikely pairing, but it's a true ode to love and comfort food. "The Driving Song" sorts through life on the road and the long stretches between home and away, while Christina Martin lends her vocals across the telephone wire. Meaghan Smith joins Corbett with her buttery voice on "Flowers In My Sidewalk," a hopeful song despite life's finite endings.
Many others lend their handclaps, musicianship and vocals, including Erin Costelo, Norma MacDonald, Jason Mingo, Thom Swift, Don Brownrigg, Fleur Mainville, Heather Cameron, Mike Aube and Steve Bowers
Love can be an act of devotion whether it’s reciprocal or not. Often when it’s unrequited obsession surfaces as the pursuit of longing overwhelms. Tegan and Sara examine delusion, virtue and benevolence in their latest release, Sainthood.
“Thematically it’s where we were both at in our emotional states,” says Tegan Quin, calling mid-afternoon from Los Angeles. She’s spending her last few days of freedom with her photographer girlfriend going to the movies and catching a Death Cab For Cutie show. But pre-tour duties still require a series of phone calls, Tegan’s on Canadian press while Sara’s allotted all American interviews –their North American division of labour.
“We wrote 50 songs alone for this album,” she says. “A lot of those songs were about different subjects but the thing we are best at and most passionate about have to do with relationships, the pursuit of them and the failure of them. I don’t think it’s just Sara and I, between the producers and our mom the songs we are most passionate about are based on this theme.”
With sass and on-stage banter like no other, the ex-pat Calgarians usually write their material separately (Tegan splits her time between Vancouver and Los Angeles while Sara bunks in Montreal). But for this record the siblings decided to change it up and spent a week together in New Orleans writing.
“Sarah wrote a song called Sainthood; while she was working on the structure of the song I was dying of boredom and feeling antsy,” says Quin. “We were stuck in a room for eight hours together. She wanted to get the melody down and started singing these beautiful lyrics inspired by a Leonard Cohen song, ‘Came So Far From Beauty.’ I was flabbergasted.”
The pursuit of love and the lengths one goes are thematic elements of Tegan and Sara's repertoire—1999's Under Feet Like Ours, 2000's This Business Of Art, 2002's If It Was You, 2004's So Jealous and 2007’s The Con, but it’s this sixth album Sainthood that explores the quest for such purity and secularity.
The Cohen lyrics: “I practiced on my sainthood, I gave to one and all, but the rumours of my virtue they moved her not at all,” relays themes of desperation and strife found throughout Tegan and Sara’s Sainthood. Unfortunately due to copyright complications the actual song “Sainthood,” never made the album’s final cut.
“It was a romantic term not necessarily a religious one. It’s this idea of practicing being perfect and devoted. It comes from a series of very intense unrequited relationships,” says Quin. “Over the years I’ve gone through different phases and I felt compelled to write different things but it always comes back to relationships.”
“I dated a Leonard Cohen fanatic. I own all of his books; growing up in Canada of course we were influenced. I never went through a Leonard Cohen phase. Sara is a bigger fan, but we both think he’s an incredible artist and presence.”
Music is a vehicle of expression first and a business second. Part of Tegan and Sara’s success is they’ve never adopted a persona. Unlike many bands they fought against the grain and have remained true to themselves, both as musicians and people.
As twins (Tegan is minutes older) journalists often fixate on the obvious, especially since both identify as lesbians.
“It is part of who we are but doesn’t really have anything to do with our music,” she says. “It’s not like we make gay music. We write pop songs. But being gay and in the spotlight we’re sort of being cornered off from other artists. Instead of being a musician, I am a gay musician. I think it’s effected who I am as a person. I am writing about a person, a relationship.
“I think artist is subject and art is not gay. I think whether you are writing pop music or making bracelets at home, you are making art. If you sat down a couple of people both straight and gay and play music I don’t think anyone would say this is gay music. They would just hear music. I think they would just connect to it.”
Author Augusten Burroughs tapped into Tegan’s forthright and confessional approach to songwriting. He asked her to pen a song for the soundtrack to his second memoir-style novel A Wolf At the Table. “His Love,” is an acoustic narrative navigating through the depths of one’s childhood experience, however painful, and the catharsis it can inspire. She asks, “Augusten are you just like me? Does your hurt fade as your write out your history?”
“As an artist it’s something that I strive for; being a good writer. When people come up and quote lyrics there is something very intense about it when someone is specifically moved by how I feel. If they struck a chord with me with words I feel really attached. I probably put that same thing onto people if it’s the lyrics that grab me.”
Produced by Chris Walla (of Death Cab For Cutie) and Howard Redekopp, Sainthood is a testament to unabashed honesty. Whether it’s a asking a lover to go steady “On Directing,” becoming almost fictional in your infatuation “Paperback Head,” feeling like a slave to romance “Sentimental Tune,” being addicted to one’s own misery in “Northshore,” or a bleak, an industrial break-up song “Night Watch,” the album doesn’t sugar coat anything.
“In indie rock we’re constantly apologize for love. We’re embarrassed,” she says. “There is something very self-deprecating. It makes our community very jagged. It brings the emo back to indie-rock, though we’re more pop than anything.
“Our influences are from a wide spectrum of music. We’re trying to bring back that torch song, that incredibly honest sentiment. When you just want someone to come back to you, a song like “Alligator,” it’s a very simple. It’s straight up. We’re trying not to be apologetic.”
**Catch this month's issue of Penguin Eggs magazine to read this article in its glossy glory.
Writer: It’s funny how life is made up of a series of moments. Some feel monumental while others are simple, more subtle experiences.
Artist: And it’s funny sometimes how it is those subtle experiences and moments that are either what are or what seem to be monumental.
Writer: I’ve always liked quiet exchanges – those sounds that blend into the background when our minds are paying attention to the larger surrounding narratives. For example, the sound of the clock ticking, laundry tumbling in the dryer and the sound of pen upon paper.
Artist: I remember the first time disrobing for a class of drawers. I remember the sound of pencils and charcoal sticks on newsprint. I remember that perhaps more than being nude.
Writer: Being nude comes in various sways. There is the nakedness of being with a lover, the nakedness of the soul when being fully present in the moment and the nakedness of one’s own self. Sometimes I want to peel back the layers of flesh and bones to see what lies beneath the surface. I want to understand true nakedness. Do you think nudity has anything to do vulnerability?
Artist: To be naked and to be nude. These are two different things. An example given to me was that to be naked would be for example taking off your robe and walking across the room and engaging while to be nude would be sitting, or posing. Perhaps more as a subject unclothed. I think both can leave you in a vulnerable place. It is our awareness that protects us. Perhaps.
Writer: Awareness at times can be a degree of self-consciousness – the being in the nakedness. To be in the nude seems almost like a lack of conciousness. I suppose it all returns to balance, choice and security. Eye contact can be a form of nudity, or maybe nakedness.
Artist: The naked eye! We are a subject nude. Naked is vulnerable because naked is raw, naked is rest. Nude is regarded, protected in some way, cherished by some and some don’t have the knowledge to understand. Some will just laugh immaturely and call it naked.
Writer: I feel both naked and nude with you. In moments I am stripped of the layers and walls I once built to protect myself, while in other moments I feel nude –cherished, protected, admired, secure. It is quite interesting to me the various shades of undress that we are exploring somewhat together, somewhat a part. Madness, longing, loss, being in limbo, winter, heartbreak. I appreciate both the naked and the nude within you.
Artist: Your naked, your nude, yours are both beautiful an honour. Now what is normal?
Writer: I think as an artists and writers we aren’t concerned with the normal, yet as human beings on a basic level we require a sense of place, home and understanding. Perhaps even that isn’t merely the norm but what we all long for.
It was as if angels were interrupting my dreams, their voices like mermaids gurgling from the depths of the sea into my ears.
I must have been sleeping for several minutes, for when I woke the sky had darkened and evening mass streamed in through the windows.
The hymns sung in Maltese sounded like out of season carols. I convinced my mind to stay alert, get up from bed and head down stairs.
I poured a glass of wine and wandered to the garden.
With a goblet in hand I stood in the watch tower, encased by the ear, eye and sacrificial Pelican mother, watching the pink sky fade over Valetta. The harbour lights danced on the water, almost taunting demons in contrast to the heavenly echoes of the choir surrounding.
I fingered my house keys unknowingly, disturbing the postcard moment. A few men had their lines out in the water still hoping for a catch. Women walked arm-in-arm into the night.
Everyone had their purpose, except me.
My mind veered into memory, recalling the poetics of desire. I thought of undressing you slowly, artfully, kissing you, soft lips.
I remembered the quest for truth, love and home.
Distance looms, a never-ending fog between my heart and head. I know one of my greatest lessons is patience; time is something I’ve always wanted to rush, usher in the season and turn the calendar page mid-month.
To say these moments aren’t trying would be a lie. But I take solace in the simple things, cooking, cleaning, sleeping. I know there is still magic to uncover and mystery to conquer.
I’ve been digging deep, getting dirty and chipping at my soul. The questions flicker like flames of a candle. It doesn’t take much to put them out.
I raised a toast to the moon despite its lack of appearance, it’s late or I’m early. I can’t tell. Pride put me here, but courage keeps me moving forward. I’ll drink to that.
When we’re not recalling them, I wonder where memories reside. If our bones never decompose, where do our memories go?
I look at the pictures, the refined moment captured, forever preserved. Never fading, always still. Songs convey meaning without long-winded explanations; it is tone, lyric and melody.
If only I could write music, or play it. Like unrequited love, I gave up on it too early. I stick to observation, understanding the relations and curses of humanity.
Decisions take decisiveness, a sense of the concrete despite the lack of anything being tangible. We are all grey matter, dust and flesh. Imagine that.
Salvation is a myth we sell ourselves, but it serves a purpose. Memory, now that’s something that could make us a fortune if anyone was willing to recall it, reclaim it or give it up.
I remember their voices, the sound of their intention upon the paths of others. I think of the haunted and the hunted. I am not a sad soul; though know better to get caught up in the possibilities of others.
Blue, I remember you. I know your hue, stride and colour. Please don’t let me down this time.
A memoir of Burl Ives and a Newfoundland Christmas in Ontario.
As a little girl, I was convinced my Nan should marry Burl Ives. Never mind her on-again, off-again relationship with Poppy (if you ask her, they are divorced; if you ask him, they're still married): I believed Burl was the man for her.
Every Christmas Eve growing up we'd all pile into the car and head over to Nan's house in Ajax. The moms (her three daughters: Diane, Wendy and Veralynn) gathered in the kitchen with mountains of scissors, tape and cannelloni rolls of green and red paper to wrap gifts, until all hours of the night. Us kids hibernated in the living room, crafting, telling stories and listening to records among the glow of the Christmas tree in all of its mismatched glory.
I loved my grandmother's Christmas tree. Its plastic balls, tinsel and homemade ornaments were fantastic artifacts of days gone by. At home in Oshawa, our tree was picture-perfect, adorned in matching ribbon and bows---dusty pink and gold---just like the decorating scheme in the living room. Nanny's tree featured handfuls of jellybean-coloured lights, yarn ornaments and a sense of Charlie Brown authenticity. But what I remember most about Christmas is the soundtrack: Burl Ives' Have a Holly Jolly Christmas.
As a family of displaced Newfoundlanders, the suburbs of southern Ontario never quite measured up to the shape of life on Bell Island. Despite being dirt poor with a dozen or so siblings, there was always enough for a feed of turkey, salt beef, cabbage, turnip, gravy, dressing and potatoes---jig's dinner, a traditional Newfoundland scoff.
When she spoke of Newfoundland it seemed almost mythical, imaginary even. Back in suburbia we'd try and recreate these holiday memories with special items purchased specifically at The Newfoundland Store. The notion of having to go to a store based on a province while living in another seemed a bit strange to me. I wondered if there were other stores like the Newfie store in Oshawa. Did Saskatchewan, Manitoba or Alberta have similar shops? Where did displaced folks from the prairies dwelling in the GTA shop? Surely British Columbians ate salt cod tongues, didn't they?
It wasn't until I was a teenager, on my first trip to Newfoundland since I was a baby, that I realized how truly unique the island is. A specialty store isn't just a resource; it's a community for displaced Newfoundlanders. What my grandmother was longing for all those years was a sense of belonging, home. It merely started with the savoury.
Before she moved back to Newfoundland, Nan talked about the island with a distant look in her eyes, as if the province was somewhere off in the background far beyond my face. As a family we gave it our all to make Ontario as much like Newfoundland as we could. One year my cousin Angie and I even tried to go mummering but the neighbours thought us odd---it was Christmas, not Halloween.
Nearly every Christmas Nanny sang along to Burl Ives with her hand stuffed into the back end of a turkey. To this day, when I hear "Christmas Can't Be Far Away," my heart swells. I still wonder: did Mom ever get that do-dad she was craving? And Dad, did he ever get his usual Christmas tie? I've never seen either my father or stepfather in a tie, but I buy into Ives' nostalgia hook, line and sinker. His voice is like a bottle of Purity syrup: sticky, yummy and sweet.
Truthfully I just couldn't get enough of Burl Ives, and neither could Angie. We'd put the record on every time we went over to visit. Burl Ives played in the background to our giggles on numerous slumber parties. We listened to him after we stole a cigarette from Nan's pack and smoked it by the tennis courts. I put the album on to console Angie after she got her mouth washed out with a bar of soap for cursing. It would be weeks after Easter and the two of us would still be singing out-of-season Christmas carols. Nan never once told us to turn it off; she'd hum along whatever the season or reason.
To me Burl Ives sounded like history, a history I had yet to truly know but felt deep within my bones. His thick, velvety voice paired perfectly with my grandmother's tales of Newfoundland. He seemed to call forth all of the longing within my grandmother's heart that eventually led her, and in some way all of us, home.
Nan moved back to Newfoundland nearly a decade ago. These days Nanny still shacks up with Poppy---they live outside of St. John's in the Goulds (pronounced da Gouls). They lost the record player in the split, when Nanny moved back to Newfoundland and Poppy made his way to Quebec. She doesn't sing as much as she used to, but sometimes I'll catch her humming an old song as she peels potatoes.
Life, circumstances and history brought my grandparents back together in the past few years, not necessarily romantically per se, but they care about one another and tolerate each other's idiosyncrasies best they can.
I try and make it back to Newfoundland every other Christmas. Even during the years I don't make it home, I'll still throw on a few Burl Ives songs, whatever the season. This is the first time I won't be heading to Ontario or Newfoundland for the holidays---this year, I'm staying in Halifax. As much as I welcome a new gamut of Nova Scotian traditions there are a few things I can't go without. Yesterday I bought Burl Ives' Have a Holly Jolly Christmas for $6.99 on iTunes and I'll be making a visit to the Newfoundland Grocery Store on Willow Street before the 24th.
"With my songs I want to create a strong voice for women; to yell back instead of being silent, to create a dialogue with power systems around us that suppress us from being ourselves," says Jen Clarke. "With my songs I want to encourage a sense of community between women and to support and encourage each other to achieve their goals, and make their own choices."
Clarke is Halifax-based electro-songstress Jenocide. She tackles feminism, femininity and fashion on her latest release Machines That Make Us Wet.
"I always wanted to have a solo project," says Clarke, who honed her musical chops in such acts as Murder Sounds, Hotshotrobot and Windom Earle.
"I would write all of these songs that seemed more radical or female in my journal but never found an outlet to play them. I wanted to interact with the audience; I didn't want to be stuck behind the keyboard."
Jenocide doesn't just step out, she prances onto the stage. Decked out in heart-shaped sunglasses and glitter bodysuits, Jenocide loves to make a spectacle. She gives nod to riot grrrl with a post-modern take on pop music.
"It's an alter-ego, absolutely. I don't think everyone gets that," she says. "Sleater Kinney and Bikini Kill changed my life. I've been criticized for aestheticizing riot grrrl. I don't think I am that radical. It's not the same time or the same place, though I certainly borrow elements."
If PJ Harvey and Kathleen Hanna had a love child she'd be Jenocide. With thrash-dance tracks like "Slumber Party," and "Off/On" Jenocide is the ultimate girl party.
"It's about being inclusive more-so than a gender kind of thing. It's a positive, inclusive party atmosphere," says Clarke. "It's kind of the antithesis to going to a club to dance and party and trying to act sexy to attract attention. It's about having fun with your friends. Girl parties can be a group of girls hanging out in a kitchen, talking or dancing at a show."
Jenocide is a touch tongue-and-cheek and tough enough to wear her heart-on-her sleeve. Wherever she goes she leaves a trail of glitter and lipstick marks in her wake.
"I can wear whatever I want, do whatever I want. I can wear a sparkly tube top and it doesn't make me a slut," she says. "Jenocide is a character; she's in your face. It's engaging and gets people's attention. What can I say, I like sparkle?"
Jenocide explores themes of empowerment, embodiment and ego. Her agenda isn't explicitly feminist, though her work is inherently so. With lyrics heavily based on relationships, power dynamics, body image and gender, Jenocide's work borders on queercore.
"It's really difficult to talk about ideologies that mean so many different things to different people," she says. "As a woman, feminism reminds me to be critical of the systems around me, to be open to every choice that a woman makes as her own choice, and to support empowerment and challenge the status quo.
"But in my experience I feel that as a woman, I am always pointed in different external directions to find value in myself or my choices with the media etcetera. Feminism reminds me to listen to my inner voice, to be conscious of the reasons I make decisions and ultimately how I choose to live my life."
With a distinctive earth-shattering vocal range (think Sleater Kinney's Corin Tucker meets Karen Dalton), political-minded and queer-centric songs, and a sweet but tough persona, Toronto's Emma McKenna is the ultimate rebel girl.
"I was inspired by the riot girl movement because I wanted to fuse art with feminism," says McKenna. "I thought music could be an effective public medium through which to express myself.
"When I started out playing music I was really angry about things, about being a girl and gay and poor, and starting a girl band and learning to play an instrument and to use my voice were ways of resisting and responding to these conditions."
After shifting gears from performing Galaxy to a solo career, not to mention finishing her degree in women and queer studies, McKenna feels things have changed. She's still pissed off, but her approach is different.
"I think that right now music is my sadness; it's where I can let out my fear and disappointment," she says. "But it's always undercut by the fact that I am out there, performing it as a lesbian. The performance aspect of the music allows me to create distance from as well as gain control over the feelings that I have experienced."
Currently McKenna is in the midst of recording her forthcoming album, The Bad in Me, with Obijou's Heather Kirby. She attributes the album's title, The Bad in Me, as the first song she wrote on her own — post-band break up and the simultaneous end of a long term love affair.
"The song itself is really instrumentally sparse, and vocally marked a big transition in how I had been approaching singing," she says. "It was the first time I began to sing not as an outward projection, like I had in Galaxy, but with more inward focus and sensitivity.
"Thematically, the line in the song goes 'the bad that they see/ is just the bad in me' and it goes on from there to a rising round of 'they won't get to me.' For me, the phrase embodies a struggle within me over dark and light. It's both a challenge and an acceptance, a conflict and a reconciliation."
When everything came crashing around her McKenna rebuilt herself through art. She took a break from Toronto and headed to Halifax last summer, teaming up with like-minded women, queers and artists.
"I feel really fortunate to have some good music/art/performance friends in both indie and queer scenes," she says. "I think my brief move to Halifax last year put me in touch with a bunch of artists — some who have since moved here — which helped to deepen my sense of where my own music is going.
"Toronto can be very alienating and it helps to have friends in multiple networks and different places. Another thing is that the west-end queer community functions as a site of queer art and performances of all genres, and I have found both enduring support and inspiration there."
"My tunes are my way of processing," says Kev Corbett. "I write audio songs. I work out the world by talking in my head. Music is my first language." 
