Bumping Into... is a series of mini-chats with a variety of peeps that you might run into in some of our local music communities. (There's a bit of an intro and my thoughts behind the series here.)
How are you? Where are you?
Doing okay! I'm in the apartment that I share with my partner Stephanie, near Davisville Station in Toronto.
What have you been up to since March or so?
Gosh, it's been such a trip. We've taken the whole lockdown thing very seriously... so it's been a lot of woodshedding at home. I did a series of about 100 daily livestreams, playing solo bluegrass guitar concerts every afternoon. That was kind of terrifying, but very good for me, in the final analysis, and I think that it was a nice way to connect with people in that otherwise very isolated time. I guess that I also released the first official Nashville Minimalism Unit record, "Soldier's Joy," during this period, and collaborated with my friend Kelley Mitchell on her great "Elevator Music" installation at Arrayspace. I also did an interview with my old friend and mentor Martin Arnold, for the new issue of Sound American. I also worked in my day job compiling indexes for great books by Christopher Chitty, Heather Berg, Jeffrey Escoffier, and Gabe Winant.
Have you found any new ways to do old things? How are you feeling about the shifts in how music is being made/shared/listened to?
Yeah, I guess the livestreaming was a way to continue some of the work I had been doing in various iterations at the Tranzac... I have been finding that having all of my gear set up all the time--not packing it up all the time for gigs--has been a spur to maybe being a little more systematic with how I use my various gadgets.
Any works of art that have been a light for you in these times? Anything that's just been a good diversion?
Mira Martin-Grey's Stick Control for the Air Drummer and Martin Arnold's Stain Ballads are both recent releases that blew my mind! I also got my hands on the complete run of The Rockford Files TV series, which I watch obsessively.
How are you feeling about 2021?
Obviously, on the political plane, there is relief about the reset back into ordinary neoliberal misery, from the horrors of the last four years, and so much grief and sadness... and, at the same time, fingers-crossed excitement about the covid-19 era maybe coming to a close. I hope. I am excited to see my friends again. And maybe a bit worried that all of my social reflexes have atrophied. I feel like those of us in the weirder/outside musical worlds really need to have these active processes of seeing one another and listening to each other and chatting at the bar after gigs, and I think it will feel like being reconnected with some phantom limbs, which, on balance, would be a nice thing.
Anything else we'd chat about if we bumped into each other?
Well, given that it would be you and me, we would talk for 85 hours about guitar pedals and related electronic gear. I would probably try to sell you on the virtues of the Chase Bliss blooper pedal, which has really transformed my screwing-around-at-home music-making process.
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