September 2nd, 2010 / 0 Comments
On today’s flight from Calgary to Glasgow, I found myself sat next to Sarah (from Australia) on my left and Alistair (from Dundee) on my right, all three of us proud gingers. We named our row Team Ginger and spoke for most of the flight about food, politics, and chasing love around the world. Shortly before breakfast, I fell asleep for an hour or so and had a repeat of a dream from childhood, the one where I’m flying through the air over glowing cityscapes at night (which reminded me of this little demo that came out on a children’s compilation last year that I lost track of somewhere along the line). Getting off the plane in Scotland felt like coming to a home I’ve been away from for far too long.
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More: Dispatches, Friends, New Music, Places
August 9th, 2010 / 0 Comments
Catriona Sturton has been a swell friend for the past year, and has appeared on this website more than once (singing along to a couple of Magnetic Fields’ covers here and here). She’s also part of Plumtree, a Canadian indie mainstay whose fortunes have just taken the bizarre turn of one of their songs forming the basis for one of the summer’s most hyped films, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. In celebration, Gooseberry Records has put together We’ve Liked You For a Thousand Years: A Tribute to Plumtree, coming out next week via our friends at Zunior. Until then, here’s a glimpse at the Woodpigeon rendition of ‘I Love U When You’re Walkin’ Away’ from Plumtree’s Predicts the Future album. Go Plumtree!
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More: Friends, New Music
August 7th, 2010 / 0 Comments
In studio, watching FOONYAP record the base tracks for her gorgeous ‘The Blue Lagoon’, waiting for the other string players to arrive. My wisdom teeth sores are killing me, so it’s nice to just watch someone else at work. Later on tonight, hot springs and maybe even a gondola ride up a mountain. We’re spoiled by where we live – we’re spoiled by one another. I can’t wait for the world to hear what Foon’s up to.
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August 2nd, 2010 / 0 Comments
On our recent Canadian tour, our “skins master” Chris “THE GLIMMER” Dadge filled the gaps between songs with a series of his own compositions. Gathered here at last – due to popular demand (ours, mostly) – we give you, dearest internet friend and follower, The Glimmer Interludes. All your favourites are here! ‘Yesterday’s News’! ‘My Grandma’s Eyes’! ‘Furniture From The Patio’! Without doubt the finest live album at less than 3 minutes in length ever compiled. (AND BONUS! The studio version of ‘Furniture From The Patio’, AKA The Summer Jam 2010).
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More: Friends, New Music, Tour
May 16th, 2010 / 0 Comments
The festival is over, and last night’s party lasted until some point this morning. While everyone slept, I took a bicycle along the coast, riding through small Swedish villages along the seaside. Swans the size of my bike swam in the water and the air cleared my lungs. I bought a sunflower and some baking. Back at the house in the early afternoon, everyone was waking slowly, and it was time to pack up bags and make the boat. Now there are very few of us left — tomorrow, we’ll all have returned to mainland Sweden, to Stockholm and Göteborg. Adieu, Visby.
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More: Dispatches, Friends, New Music, Places, Tour
May 14th, 2010 / 0 Comments
The annual Ljudvågor festival in Visby premieres new classical works by the students of the Tonsättar Skolan on the harbour. Not only is the city filled with the sound of music (Notes? Who needs them! Tuned instruments? Over-rated!), but each flat seems stuffed with musical instruments on every surface. It matters not if you can really play them, and each room of the house (we’re staying in one built in the 1300s, previously a monastery — when renovated, they discovered children’s corpses underneath) is typically bursting with different songs simultaneously. Here then, a sample listen to the sounds of Hampus Norén’s place.
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More: Dispatches, Festivals, Friends, New Music, Places, Tour
May 13th, 2010 / 0 Comments
When you tell a Swedish person you’re going to Gotland for a week, their eyes widen and they speak of the island that awaits you in hushed tones. A security guard at the train station even put me first in the queue when I told him where I was going — he was born here, and was adamant that it was still the “most beautiful part of Sweden”. I’m here in Gotland (in the capital of Visby) for a new music festival, in which my friend Hampus Norén is premiering new works. Last night we heard his beautiful first composition in a grand old church. This morning we walked along the town’s medieval walls, came back, and played the piano (this piece performed by the amazing Christine Everö). If the best way to start a tour is in an Icelandic hot spring, surely the most perfect way to end it is with escape to Gotland.
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More: Dispatches, Friends, New Music, Places, Tour
March 30th, 2010 / 2 Comments
It’s one of those years. Nearing the end of March, and already we’ve had to say goodbye to Kate McGarrigle, Mark Linkous, Vic Chesnutt, and now Alex Chilton (and don’t get me started on the Oscars forgetting to mention Bea Arthur). But I’m not here to eulogize – there are far better folks at that than me (Paul Westerberg, for one). Instead, I’d rather celebrate a song that’s meant a great deal to me for a long while, and one of the first things I ever learned how to play on the guitar. (A love song so perfect that it even made its way on WP’s …A Given EP, recorded for the wedding of our dear friends Kevin and Gordon – and that’s just the way I’d like to remember a great songwriter now passed).
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More: New Music
March 11th, 2010 / 2 Comments
So for nearly the past two years, we’ve tried getting a batch of songs together with Brooklyn folk singer Ryan Doyle, but you know how these things go — you get busy and distracted, and sometimes things take longer than you originally planned. 26 February 2010, however, we finally managed to pull it together in the lovely Buddy Project studio in Astoria, Queens, and did some joint recording that we’re both particularly proud of. We recorded one of the first ever WP songs, titled ‘By Lamplight’, which has come in and out of WP set-lists since the start. And let it be said now, Ryan Doyle’s ‘Homeless Summer 1996’ is the summer jam of 2010. (Or, considering how long it took to actually get into the same studio, maybe we should play it safe and say summer 2011). Anyway, considering how good it went this time out, you can be sure to expect more in the way of WP / RD in the future. Until then, here’s the original 2005 demo of ‘By Lamplight’. So young, so full of promise.
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More: Friends, New Music
January 25th, 2010 / 0 Comments
One of my fondest memories of growing up in Canada involves John Weldon’s 1979 short film The Log Driver’s Waltz (viewable at the National Film Board of Canada’s incredible website (here). The song (originally written by Wade Hemsworth), was performed for the film by sisters Kate and Anna McGarrigle and became such a quintessential Canadian cultural artifact that I can’t think of a time when this tune hasn’t been a part of my understanding of Canada itself. For a time, we performed ‘If Only I Were a Painter, I’d Paint for You the Moon’ from Songbook as a two-part medley with ‘The Log Driver’s Waltz’, and at our 2008 Sled Island show at Central United Church in Calgary, our friend Kris Ellestad asked us to back him up on a full run-through. We post it here in memory of Kate McGarrigle, who died last week.
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