Your Window - Great Aunt Ida cover - June 25, 2012

So it looks like A Song A Week  might need to be renamed to A Song Whenever I Get To It.  I have my reasons/ excuses....

1. The Company - Kingfisher Painting Services, it's our busiest time of year.  When I started the blog it was our slowest part of the year.

2. The Dog - Dinah, the blue-eyed she-devil.  This dog walking business eats up your free time!

3.  Euro 2012 - a Man must have his footy.

Ida Nilsen was a force on the Vancouver music scene for many years before relocating to Toronto.  One of those musically intelligent multi-instrumentalists who is capable of bringing something unique and critical to every project she gets involved with.  I knew her best through The Sugar Refinery, that magical venue of lore, where one of my fondest memories involved me clumsily  banging out a boozy Blue Christmas on the notoriously out of tune piano, Ida behind me, whisky-soaked clouds emanating from the bell of her drunken trumpet, while a rare heavy and silent snow fell on Vancouver.

Your Window, the opening track from her most recent Great Aunt Ida album Nuclearize Me,  is insanely catchy, infused with an internalized melancholy, and is lyrically clever.  "I see trouble looking through your window" she sings at the end of the first stanza, while the last verse ends with "I think of all the things I saw through your window."  Hmmmmm...what does it all mean?  Send Ida a message and find out. And while you're at it check out the Great Aunt Ida album I originally got obsessed with How They Fly - Great Aunt Ida

Okay, here's my version of the song

Here's a live version of Ida doing it

Your Window by Ida

Find her on Facebook

Your Window - Ida Nilsen

Lover where's your smile

I haven't seen it in a while

what's made you so blue

I see trouble looking through

your window

Lover I'm not scared

I have got myself prepared

I've been watching you so long

I know every break-up song

I am listening

Did you say your heart's gone

do you think that it will come back

I'll take you to the airport

put you on a fast track

Then I'll go walk around

rain is different in this town

falls on faces I won't meet

crossing every major street

I can think of

Did you say your heart's gone

do you think that it might be here

have you looked in all the places

you've been to for the last year

Then I'll go walk around

fill the emptiness with sound

watch the streetlamps turning on

think of all the things I saw 

through your window

The Blog Faltered - To The Ghosts - June 13, 2012

The blog faltered.  I failed to adhere to the construct. There was no song last week.  It was a busy week, but the real problem was my wife was away and all order, routine, and structure crumbled.  Subsisting on all meat pizzas, salt & pepper squid, and salisbury steaks; unclothed, unshaved, guzzling red wine by the box, subscribed to the 24 hour Charlie Sheen channel, marathon phone sex with a Moldavian heiress, filth, squalor, freestyle farting.  I meant to do the blog one night, but instead drank a bottle of wine and played sad songs for 3 hours.  There were two rehearsals during the week for the show we had with Cloudsplitter and  I recorded this song at the end of one of them....I had the potential to do the blog last week but never did!

Our friend Clifford Doerksen died an untimely and tragic death in December 2010 and flying home from the memorial service in February 2011 I composed this song, in its entirety, in my head.  When I got home I typed it up and promptly forgot about it for 6 months, until I stumbled on it again and started working on it.  Realizing the melodies I was coming up with referenced The Carpenters' Top Of The World, I checked out those chord progressions and messed around with them. I believe this is the kind of secret songwriting shit I'm not supposed to reveal.

Amongst many other things, Clifford was a brilliant, hilarious, and ruthless writer and reviewer. Here's an article remembering him that also contains many links to his writing:  

click here: CLIFFORD

And here it is, To The Ghosts, to Clifford....

with Rachelle Reath - violin and backup vox,
Emily Goodenough - viola
Marek Tyler - drums 

To The Ghosts

His heart lay panting on the floor

his mind just walked out the back door

into the winter's night

to fight the good fight

if he could still distinguish wrong from right

Did someone step on a crack and break his back

did someone say give up, turn back

The stolen years

will not be restored by our tears

and our memories will fade from grey to black

Whether we say yay or nay

the night is followed by the day

To the departed and their ghosts

we raise one too many toasts

then stumble numbly on our way