Hurray For The Riff Raff’s album, The Navigator, was one my favourites in 2017

I generally don’t like ranked lists, so here, simply, is my favourite music of 2017. Read on, or scroll down for the link to the Spotify playlist.

Whether consciously or not, many of these songs seem to touch upon themes of struggle, hope, reconciliation and/or finding joy within all that. There are questions asked, bridges built, high roads taken, forgiveness offered and fucks given.

Some of these songs speak for themselves, but allow me to say a few words about some of the others.

Hurray for the Riff Raff makes two appearances because “Living in the City” is such a great, catchy song with some grit under its nails (something Lou Reed would have been proud to put on his New York album), and “Pa’lante” (which means, essentially, “forward”) is such a powerful expression of resistance, memory and perseverance. It seems to hit the zeitgeist-y sweet spot for what was 2017, especially considering the state of Puerto Rico.

Some of these songs ask timeless questions (“Do We Chose Who We Love”) or very contemporary questions (“Do We Chose Who We Love”). And what’s more contemporary than Benjamin Booker‘s plea, “I just want to believe in something; I don’t care if it’s right or wrong.” The warm, old-school soulfulness of the song makes you want to help him find an answer.

“Thinking of a Place” by The War on Drugs takes you on a meditative drift down a lazy river, carried by the whims of the current, punctuated by meandering Neil Young/Lanois-esque guitar solos, as the scenery changes subtly. Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream.

The band Tinariwen, from Mali, was new to me this year, but their “desert blues” sound really caught my ear. I love great electric guitar sounds, and they have it in abundance (I think there are 6-7 guitarists in the band?). The pulse of the music is so captivating.

Mavis Staples is a treasure, never failing to satisfy. She teamed once again with Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy for another great album, If All I Was Was Black. It was hard to pick one song, but “Build a Bridge” is the one that speaks to the times we live in, offering hope and a positive vision of how to proceed.

If 2017 gave us a more wistfully beautiful song than Ron Sexsmith‘s “Shoreline,” I’d like to hear it; I need to use up this metric tonne of kleenex I got on sale at Costco.

What could wrap everything up after the powerful statement of “Pa’lante”? The quiet and humble lesser-known George Harrison composition “That is All” as sung by former Torontonian Kate Fenner, an artist I had lost track of until a very recent rediscovery of her 2017 release, Middle Voice.

Here’s hoping that 2018 finds you on the high road to a more hopeful future. Sing, dance, love, believe, forgive, build bridges, move forward and give as many fucks as you can.

Hear the playlist on Spotify.

The Songs

Waiting on a Song – Dan Auerbach
Living in the City – Hurray for the Riff Raff
Do We Chose Who We Love – The Waterboys
Believe – Benjamin Booker
Thinking of a Place – The War on Drugs
Hope the High Road – Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit
Tiwayyen – Tinariwen
Build a Bridge – Mavis Staples
Shoreline – Ron Sexsmith
Things are Changing ‘Round Here – Jerry Leger
Have to Forgive – The Building
Pa’lante – Hurray for the Riff Raff
That is All – Kate Fenner

Here’s a new blog post I wrote for Aeroplan.

Top 3 Things to Do in Paris.

Allons-y!

July 21, 2016

Doesn’t matter how old you are.

Doesn’t matter how many of life’s lessons the years of lived experience inscribe on your soul.

Doesn’t matter the hard-earned wisdom you’ve accrued like precious scars.

August will always sneak up on you like a goddamn super-Ninja!

EVERY FREAKING TIME!

Coming out of the Pizzaiolo down the street, where I’d stopped to get a slice, suddenly this dog shot past me on the sidewalk, like a rocket. I knew it was an escapee.

It was a small-to-medium sized, golden-brown Samoyed type deal. I watched it shoot across the side-street and make a bee line for a man standing by the clothing drop-off bin on the corner of the gas station parking lot. He was a man obviously highly fearful of dogs. Great choice.

The dog accosted the poor guy, jumping up on him excitedly. The man was flinching and retracting his arms from the canine onslaught of unwanted affection. He looked like he was trying to climb up his own skeleton to get away from the manic mutt.

I crossed over to their corner, and looked back to see a worried-looking woman coming up the sidewalk. I signalled to her as if to say, “This is your dog, right, should I grab him?” although I’m not sure if I got the precise hand gestures right for that message. But I was pretty sure I had sussed the situation correctly.

By now the poor, harried dog-o-phobe had made his escape, so I called the dog to me, and it gladly came. I reached in under the thick fur at its neck and found that it was wearing a collar, luckily, so I held onto it until its human reached us, and gratefully reclaimed the furry fugitive.

Happy that I could help snag a lassie on the lam.

My first blog post for Sonicbids is now up. Check it out here:

How to Craft a Killer Guitar Solo

My latest article for SOCAN’s Words and Music is now up, a feature on Chin Injeti, Vancouver-based producer/songwriter/artist and founding member of ’90s Toronto R&B trio Bass Is Base.

He’s worked with a ton of big names on the hip-hop/R&B and pop scene, including Drake, Dr. Dre, 50 Cent, Eminem, P!nk and Bruno Mars, picking up three Grammy Awards and a couple of JUNO Awards along the way.

He’s also lent his talents to lots of homegrown Canadian projects, and continues to do so.

Photo by Tom Spray

Check out my latest cover story for SOCAN. I talked to Vancouver-born singer-songwriter Tobias Jesso Jr. about the success of his debut album, Goon, and his recent songwriting collaborations with pop music heavy-hitters Adele and Sia.

When I’m writing the songs, when I hit a chorus that I really think is cutting me, like ‘Without You,’ I’m really, really thinking ‘Man, this chorus really moves me.’ It’s something I felt. So when you give that into your writing, it’s almost like putting love into cooking or something; people can feel it when they eat it, or feel it when they hear it.

It’s Back to the Future Day!

And why is that? It’s because the time-travelling characters in the classic 1985 movie chose as their future destination date… today! October 21, 2015.

Lots of media outlets are looking back at the movie to see how many of its depictions of the future world of 2015 ring true. You can check out some of them here and here and here.

This all reminded me that in the very recent past, I used a “Back to the Future” reference in a speech I was hired to write.

Back in July, I wrote a speech for the president of a company that’s celebrating its 30th year in business this year. That’s quite a milestone. Many businesses don’t make it past the first year.

I had a lot of fun writing the speech, and in drafting the intro I decided to take the “looking back” approach. I did a little research to see what the world looked like 30 years ago, in 1985, and what other notable events had happened that summer.

In 1985, Brian Mulroney was Prime Minister. Ronald Reagan was in the White House. That summer, the world came together at a concert called Live Aid. It raised millions of dollars for famine relief in Africa. “We Are The World” … remember that?

What else was happening 30 years ago?

In 1985, Microsoft released Windows Version 1.0 – the very first version of Windows.

In 1985, the compact disc was introduced to America. The CD. It held music. Some of you young people are saying, “the compact what?” “You mean you didn’t listen to music on your phone?”

In 1985, the movie “Back to the Future” was a big hit in theatres everywhere.

And right here, in 1985, the ribbon was cut, and ground was broken for a brand new business…

I also referenced “Back to the Future” again near the end of the speech to set up the closing remarks.

And even though we may not get our hoverboards for a few years yet, right now you can hover your cursor over this link and click to read the speech in its entirety. (PDF)

I’m looking forward to a future where I get to write more speeches that were as enjoyable to write as this one!

The first contains advice on how to present your music for review – maybe leading to that first big break. These are tips I gleaned from writing the “Showcase” page in Canadian Musician magazine for three years.

The second article offers tips for running a proper band rehearsal – things I learned the hard way.

Click on the images below to read the articles.

And look for the free magazine in a Long & McQuade Musical Instruments store near you.

Let’s face it: No matter how much you love to write, sometimes the process can be a pain. But luckily there’s a variety of writing productivity apps designed to make our jobs easier.

I decided to test-drive two writing productivity apps that I had never used before – oTranscribe and Scrivener – when I started work on my latest cover story for SOCAN Words and Music. It was an interview with legendary musician/songwriter Randy Bachman, founding member of The Guess Who and Bachman-Turner Overdrive.

So, let’s see if these apps made my job easier as I was… Taking Care of Business.

Part I of this two-part series dealt with oTranscribe. Today, we’ll look at Scrivener, a full-featured app that many writers are using for a wide variety of writing projects.

Scrivener

Scrivener is a very powerful writing app that’s completely new to me. It’s chock-full of features that I didn’t even touch in writing the Bachman article, so please don’t take this as anything close to a full review of this app.

I decided to try Scrivener after seeing a great overview of Scrivener’s best features in an online webinar presented by “Scrivener Coach” Joseph Michael and TheWriteLife.com. So if you’re looking to find out more about this app, you can perhaps start there.

Or take advantage of Scrivener’s free 30-day trial period and mosey through the app’s interactive tutorial, which gives you a pretty complete overview of all the features and functionality.

Right out of the box, I found a few features that were a big help as I wrote the Bachman piece.

A Tool With a View

The one feature that stood out for me right away is the so-called corkboard view. This allows you to look at a project’s sections (as defined by you) in a grid-like array, like recipe cards arranged on a coffee table. Or, y’know, a corkboard. I had a feeling this would help me organize my article better.

Click to enlarge.

I was right. I’ve written lots of magazine/web articles that are from 1,500 words up to 3,000 words, and I often get to a point where I need to pull my nose away from the computer screen and step back to get a big-picture look at how it’s shaping up. I need to see how the various sections are coming together to tell the story.

I found the corkboard view very valuable for doing that. You can drag the sections around to rearrange their order, and split the text at a chosen point in one section to be tacked on to another section. There’s lots of flexibility.

You can see how this would be helpful for someone writing a novel or a large report – moving chapters around, changing the order of sections. And even though my article wasn’t as large as a novel, Scrivener helped me get a better sense of the flow, and whether I was giving some topics too much or too little ink.

I ended up moving sections around several times until I had the flow that I wanted.

Click to enlarge.

Belly Up to the Sidebar

The sidebar on the left of the Scrivener page is called the Binder. This includes the Draft folder, which holds the sections/chapters you’re writing, and the Research folder.

The Research folder is a terrific feature. It lets you keep lots of different kinds of support documents and reference materials in the sidebar area – so you can access them right in Scrivener.

You won’t need to go switching between several open applications or searching through your computer for documents. It can even hold media files – images, PDF files, video files, etc.

For the Bachman article, I used the Research area to keep a few different kinds of documents and resources at the ready: The transcribed interview in full; the writing agreement from my editor in case I needed to refer to any of the parameters for the article or materials he had referenced; Bachman’s website (yes, you can import web pages into the Research area); his full bio that his press people had sent to me, so I could quickly check facts and spellings, etc.; and a video from an EPK (electronic press kit) of the making of Bachman’s new album that I could refer to.

It seems there is no end to the variety of documents and resources you can keep at hand in the Research folder. Very handy.

Spit it Out!

When you’ve finished writing your Scrivener project, hit the ‘Compile’ command and all your sections/chapters in the Draft folder are combined in the order you’ve set and can be outputted in a variety of formats.

Formats vary depending on what mode or template you’re using in Scrivener – screenplay, novel, manuscript, e-book, report, etc. – but it supports most text document formats: MS Word, rich text, plain text and html, among others.

The Price is Write

Unlike oTranscribe, Scrivener is not free. It’s $45 USD (I took advantage of a 50%-off special, which made the decision easy). But, if it’s an app you’ll end up using for your writing projects, that’s not a bad price.

And as I mentioned above, there is a free 30-day trial period that will allow you to test-drive it and see if it’s (ahem) write for you.

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So there you have it. Two writing apps that made my job easier when it came to writing my Randy Bachman article. In fact, thanks partly to these apps, I was able to submit this article on deadline despite a very tight turn-around time, prompting my editor to triumphantly proclaim, “We the turn-around kings!” (Pro Tip: It’s always good when your editor triumphantly proclaims things like that.)

Try these apps for yourself. I’m sure there’s more about these apps to discover, especially with Scrivener. So, just maybe… You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet?

Perhaps you’ll find other great features with these writing productivity tools – or other problems and gripes. Either way, please share your thoughts here. I’d love to hear about your take on these apps, or if you found this write-up useful.

What about you? What tools do you use to maximize your writing productivity or make your job easier?