Besides my ranting and raving, things have been quiet on the Tumbleweed front over the past year or so. No new albums to release, no new acts to manage or drive around from city to city, and no free festivals to promote in downtown. Sure, I’ve done a tour or two, but nowhere near as much as I did in the old days. To tell the truth, I was going to quietly let most of it go and just focus on T.O.F.U. the vegan magazine I do.
Luckily, like its namesake, Tumbleweed never really dies.
With that in mind, I proudly offer you the following:
Wed, July.28th, 2010
Brian Borcherdt w/ Matthew Hornell & Rozalind Macphail
I’ve often joked with musicians that their heartache and sadness provide the bandages that heal so many others, and having a good life is sometimes the worst thing for their careers. This is what is running its course through my head after my first listen to Mary Gauthier’sThe Foundling.
Given her catalogue, it should be no surprise that Mary Gauthier has written another amazing album that fits so well with both her ragged, whiskey-soaked voice and a life that could not be told through someone else’s mouth. Coming from the heartache and terminal loneliness of being given up at birth and running away from her adopted home at the age of fifteen, The Foundling itself starts off like an orphan. Cold, scared and alone the first few tracks focus on finding one’s own legs, and knowing that they’ll probably never stop walking away. Sadly, tracks like Sideshow suggest that even now Mary has not found a comfortable place in the world.
Luckily, there seem to be moments that suggest the search for this comfort will continue. Perhaps it’s the restless soul of the lonely and the inability to settle that has left The Foundling with at least a small sense of hope. Despite lacking so many of the key figures in her life from birth, Mary seems to suggest that she still believes in love (The Orphan King), and she will continue to hang on to another day (Another Day Borrowed).
For this, we are lucky. Like so many artists that are willing to pour their lives out through microphones, Mary Gauthier, and the life she led, will forever be available the minute we hit play on such beautifully sad offerings as The Foundling.
Whether or not Mary’s life should have gone another way, and whether or not someone should have intervened is pointless to ask now. However, the question of how to stop the same thing from happening to so many others is one that is sadly just as relevant now as it was when The Foundling was a life instead of an album.
For more information on adoption, and how you can help, check the links on Mary’s website.
So, I’m going to let you all in on a little secret right here and now. Music does not make money.
[pause so you can recover from the shock]
That’s right kids, no matter what Fiddy Cent or Kid Rawk tell you, the life of an artist and most of those involved in this business (for lack of a better word) is one of tap water and cold Kraft Diner. Or, if you’re vegan like me, perhaps ramen noodles or bean burritos. Sure, there are those who have not been in the game long enough who believe that they are the only ones having to milk their last beer ticker for all its worth. However, the ones who have been there through the ebb and flow of any local scene know that whether you’re playing in front of the mic, coiling the cables at 4am and shutting down the PA, collecting the money at the door, keeping the venue calendar full, taking the pictures to make the local rocker look like a god, or writing the review for the local weekly, everyone is going home to their small apartment, dusting off their vinyl and falling asleep with no more than a little bit of lint in their pockets.
“And I’ll ride back and forth, on this two-bit hobby horse, until she splinters and gives way, I’ll till the flowers by her grave, and whisper her name.”
Now, if you have to ask me why people would be so involved in something that doesn’t lead to money, I’m going to tell you to go watch a few more Jay-Z videos and never quit your day job. The answer to that question should be something you live, breath and eat every day. If it’s not, then you’re never going to survive on music alone.
“If anyone out there understands, can I please see a show of hands?”
However, if you know what I’m talking about, and you just happened to come across this while updating your MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and every other bit of presence you can muster online to let people know you’re playing this weekend, then this documentary probably speaks to you. In fact, it probably hits a little too close to home. Sadly, 98% of us have stories of that great venue that closed in the past few years. The place that held the best shows, had the best crowds, and was run by people who cared. Then something happened. One bad show where someone got hurt, a liquor law was broken, a neighbour complained about the noise, a landlord couldn’t swallow the missed rent payments anymore, the city wanted to make way for a condo or a wal-mart, etc…
I’d love to say I have a solution, a call to arms of everyone who knows the answer to why we’re all willing to work those shifts that no one wants to work filling the shelves at the drug store or taking the calls in the cubicle, but I don’t have any better ideas than you. All I know is this: just keep fighting. Don’t put down that guitar, don’t stop looking for another empty building that just might work, don’t stop finding a way to pay for the van, don’t give up on postering even if they keep coming down a day later, don’t stop trying to book your favourite bands, and, most of all, don’t stop loving music. Someone or something outside of your control can take away pretty much everything else, but they can’t take that.
And that’s all we have, but then again, it’s all we’ve ever needed, right?
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