Home and Away in the Six String Nation

A Return to Live (School Edition)

jowi@sixstringnation.com (Jowi Taylor) — Fri, 29 Apr 2022 20:18:35 GMT

Turns out there were epiphanies to be had at Epiphany

It was a tough week behind with the passing of Bill Bourne and Shane Yellowbird - two artists who brought Voyageur brilliantly to life – but my visit to Epiphany of our Lord Catholic Academy in Scarborough was an important reminder of the promise of the road ahead.

My last school engagement was to have been a return to Prince Edward County at the end of March 2020 and then.... well, you know what happened all over the world. And while I did do a couple of virtual school and student conference events over the past year, it's not the same as being in the room with those kids and seeing them connect to the project each in their own way. And to hear a student play and to be bombarded with questions as they file past at the end of the presentation taking their turn to touch the guitar they've just seen on the screen for an hour. There is such value and such energy and such sustenance in those encounters.

As I mentioned in my last blog, the presentation has been modified to address the effects the last two years have had on all of us. And it was no different for this small group of students from the ages of about 10-15. They've felt it particularly acutely – especially at that age – adjusting to virtual learning and having this critical time in their development so rudely and thoroughly interrupted. And with the deaths of Bourne and Yellowbird on my mind, I felt a kind of heaviness going into my first live school visit in over two years . But it felt great to be back seeing students and teachers responding to the project in person and in real time and to watch the characters among the students emerging and curiosity blossoming.

Sam (left) acted as emcee in full Radio Promo mode and that was certainly one major flash of character and resilience. B ut when the time came to hear Voyageur played, it was 11-year-old Kevork Manouchian who did the honours. He did two classical pieces and one he wrote himself that was a kind of hybrid of classical finger work and "House of the Rising Sun". I'll say that again: wrote himself! 11! And that was the reminder I needed of the way music carries us through the ups and the downs.

So thanks to Sam and Kevork. Thanks also to principal (and longtime friend) Dave McMullan and the rest of the staff and students at Epiphany of Our Lord Catholic Academy!

A Return to Live at the Fergus Grand

jowi@sixstringnation.com (Jowi Taylor) — Tue, 05 Apr 2022 21:31:54 GMT

...just 722 days later than expected!

It's a strange experience, going back and looking at the calendar from two years ago.

We'd had a wonderful time at the IceBox Festival in Prince Edward County at the beginning of February. I had a corporate keynote in Ottawa in the middle of the month and lots of meetings planning for upcoming events : for DoorsOpen at City Hall in Toronto in May, a return to PEC for a school visit at the end of March , a golf tournament planned for summer and our event at the Fergus Grand coming up fast . And then, all of a sudden, it's just Zoom calls. Endless Zoo m calls.

Like everything at the time, it was all touch and go. We were all feeling our way in the dark, our eyes gradually adjusting to what life in a global pandemic was going to look like. So the show at the Fergus Grand stayed on the calendar in case it was just going to be two weeks of lockdown, then "back to normal". Seems quaint to think of it now. To their great credit, Eric Goudie and the township administration in Centre Wellington never actually cancelled the show. We just kept rescheduling a few months out, hoping we'd be able to make it happen. We eventually rescheduled for Ma rch 20th, 2022 – just 722 days after our original date and the day before the mask mandate was lifted in the province of Ontario.

Although we all (half) joke about the elastic nature of COVID-time, the repetitive nature of pandemic existence and the frustration of not being able to do what we want to do, an awful lot happened in those 722 days. And I do mean awful : the multiple discoveries of unmarked graves on residential school sites in various parts of Canada, the murder of George Floyd, the wildfires in BC and Alberta that obliterated the town of Lytton , the flooding of the Cocahalla, the ongoing shitshow of the Trump /FoxNews presidency and the horror of the January 6th insurrection, the never-ending revelations about people like Harvey Weinstein, the surging of racism and nationalist movements worldwide, the childish trucker's convoy in Canada and the invasion of Ukraine by Russia , to name just the most obvious. Exhausting. Terrifying.

I love telling the story of the Six String Nation project. It comes naturally to me. I have "performed" it hundreds of times but it never feels like a performance. I get to feel the power of the story reflected back at me by audiences young and old, large and small, every time I tell it and it feels like brand new. But although I'd done a few virtual sessions over the course of the pandemic, I was nervous about coming back to the stage to do it live. For one thing, I'd had to rejig the presentation for virtual audiences and virtual formats with hard-endings so I'd come to rely on a script to help me tell the story in a different way for exactly 45 minutes instead of the natural cadence of live shows; for another I'd really forgotten my own rhythm after two years out of practice. But, perhaps more importantly, how do you stand up in a roomful of people and tell this story again as if all of that stuff that I mentioned above hadn't happened... or that we hadn't all just come through a global pandemic that isn't over and that may have caused real hardship and loss among people in that room? I would have to find a way to acknowledge all that wreckage around us as I made my way back to the heart of the project.

And what you find at the heart of the project is empathy. That's fundamentally what it's about: coming to a richer understanding of ourselves collectively by understanding the stories of all of those individuals and communities contributing to this ongoing project of making Canada, each in their own way, with their own tools, their own perspectives, their own backstory. It only works by acknowledging triumph and tragedy, beauty and ugliness in equal measure – by accepting the fact that we have to be better if we want to think of ourselves as so. Acknowledgment, atonement, reconciliation, ref lec tion, re para tion – all of those must come before (and somehow be rolled into) celebration. And for that journey you need empathy.

Fortunately, Voyageur is an empathy machine. And those who seek out its story – by read ing the book or going to the website or coming to a show – tend to lean in with empathy. It's a wonderful match and I am so happy to say that I felt that all day at the Fergus Grand: from the audience during the show (who were as out of practice being an audience as I was being a storyteller – but we all found our way pretty quickly!) to the photo sessions in the lobby to the performances that brought Voyageur to life.

The musical performances were arranged by guitar master and local music teacher Adrian Jones , who first met Voyageur back in 2007 at the OCFF Conference (though we didn't get his official portrait that time!). The fact that he is a great teacher came through loud and clear – in the soundchecks and backstage run-throughs and, of course, in the performances try his students. Isaac Stacey kicked off the performance pocket with a rendition of Tragically Hip 's "Bobcaygeon" . It's always great to hear that song but I have to say that especially since we've yet to venture back to Queen St. West, the line "That night in Toronto... With its checkerboard floors..." hit home pretty hard, thinking about how great it will be to walk again through the doors of the Horseshoe Tavern. Amanda Braam is clearly an up and coming talent. She performed an original song that had both strength and delicacy and I'm sure we're going to hear a lot more from her in the future. Lucas Doyle was the third act. Lucas moved to Fergus from the U.S. with his parents not too long ago. He let us know in advance that he was intrigued by the piece of Wayne Gretzky's stick that's part of Voyageur. I find that a lot of Americans who meet Voyageur appreciate it with a unique intensity and perspective. After all, Americans are typically better at telling their own story about themselves than Canadians, even if it's not always accurate or the whole story. But it means they recognize something in this guitar about its value as a storytelling device. My hope is that by the end of the day, he and his family found more ways to hold onto an idea of Canada than just the top of the Great One's stick. He and Adrian collaborated on a rendition of Dire Straits ' "Sultans of Swing", including a virtual ly seamless guitar-swap part way through. Great job everyone!

Thanks again to Eric Goudie for being inspired to share the Six String Nation experience with the folks of Fergus and Centre Wellington and for always being optimistic that the show would, indeed, go on .

Thanks to our portrait station volunteers Terri Arora, Barb McAlpine and Angela Berriman and to Rob Klein for sound, lighting, projection, etc. And thanks again to everyone for coming to the show, masks on that one last time. Here's to meeting again with naked faces one day!

More Common Ground

Thu, 13 Feb 2020 14:37:42 GMT

And in more ways than one

I wrote about these folks back in October following my presentation to the Canadian Common Ground Alliance Damage Prevention Symposium in Niagara Falls. Apparently, some of the folks who saw my presentation there thought it would be a good idea to have me present to the Ontario Regional symposium in Ottawa this week. And so here I am, typing this blog in room 619, just down the hall from rooms 656 and 658, once the studios of the great Armenian-Canadian portrait photographer Yousuf Karsh.

And that's just one more example of the various kinds of common ground I've found with this group. As I said at the event back in October and again yesterday, the people in that room - they're the non-profit alliance of people in the world of underground infrastructure in Canada, the ones who run the "Call Before You Dig/Click Before You Dig" campaigns - that while they concern themselves with the piping and wiring and cables and conduits and all the other stuff that most of us never think about that actually keeps us all connected, Six String Nation is very much about our cultural infrastructure as a diverse country and set of nations within nations.

Mike Sullivan (pictured above) is the President of Alberta One-Call Corporation and Executive Director of the Canadian Common Ground Alliance. He's also an unrepentant bass player! He was slated to play Voyageur at the gathering in Niagara in October but he was days away from becoming a grandfather at that point and decided to stay close to home ( Jason Manning did a great performance of "Lovers In a Dangerous Time" in his stead, you may recall). So now that the twins (that's right, double grandpa) are healthy four-month-olds, Mike jumped at the chance to play Voyageur at this event. Bass player? He's a pretty fine guitar player too - and acquitted himself brilliantly in a rendition of Blue Rodeo 's "Hasn't Hit Me Yet" - including the high vocal parts!

Apart from the presentation and the performance, I had the chance more at this event than the earlier one to chat with many of the attendees - including a terrific sit-down with Brad Gowan , whom you'll hear about later this year. But rather than have a post presentation swarm as is so often the scenario, the arrangement here was for awards and other housekeeping to follow the presentation and then I'd return with the guitar for a reception in the evening. What a great opportunity that was to meet so many of the attendees and hear their stories and take pictures and sign books. I was especially thrilled when John Todorovski told me of his Macedonian heritage and played some Macedonian music on Voyageur . He was not only a great guitar player but told me he also plays the gaida - one of my favourite instruments. Do yourself and look it up - or listen to Valya Balkanska 's track on the "Carl Sagan's Cosmos" soundtrack!

Of course, I mentioned Yousuf Karsh at the top here and that is really the other thrill about presenting at this event at the Chateau. Given that Doug Nicholson 's extraordinary body of portraits are so integral to the way we communicate this project, to be able to show them in a place that is so central to the history of portrait photography in Canada is a real honour. We did have the honour of shooting portraits here for Winterlude back in 2007 as well and the ice sculptures are animating Ottawa's streets as we speak so it's been great to deepen that connection at this event.

Thanks to Mike Sullivan and the rest of the Common Ground executive. Special thanks to Rebecca Leighton and her team for taking such good care of every detail surrounding this trip. Thanks also to Nathan and Lauren for sound and lights and to my team at the National Speakers Bureau. A very special thanks also to Kate McDerby for helping me out at the meet-and-greet reception. I couldn't have done it without you!

A Warm Feeling in the Ice Box

Wed, 05 Feb 2020 22:54:30 GMT

More than just a pause in Picton

I've been to Picton Ontario many times. I suppose I've even been there with Voyageur but it has mostly stayed in the car since we were just passing through. And we love all of Prince Edward County. For several years now we've done mid-winter trips just to tour the restaurants, wineries, distilleries and sugar bushes. And if we're driving from engagements in Ottawa, Montreal or Kingston, the ferry and the county are a far more pleasurable and picturesque route back to Toronto than the 401. So when Krista Dalby - whom we'd met at the SPARC Conference in Cobalt in 2018 - invited us to come and be part of her Ice Box Festival we jumped at the chance.

The venue for the festival is Macaulay Heritage Park, comprising the Manse, the gardens, the former church turned museum and the surrounding conservation area. And the festival is designed to bring people out of their winter doldrums to experience art indoors and out, with installations and animations of all kinds taking place over two weekends in February. Our space was indoors at the former St. Mary Magdalene Church, now the interpretive hub for the park.

We arrived a day early in order to do an interview at County FM 99.3, get our tech, soundcheck and portrait set up done in advance and to make sure we beat any bad weather - Prince Edward County has its own microclimate, which makes it great for wine growing but unpredictable for winter travel - though we needn't have worried: it was mostly very mild with only the lightest dusting of snow.

When Krista booked us for the festival, she let us know that she was also booking long time friend of the project Justin Rutledge , who has been a part-time local in PEC in recent years so we knew the music component of the festival was going to be great. But Justin would be playing a full set on the second day of our stay in the museum so Krista had also booked three local musicians to play Voyageur as part of the "performance pocket" segment of the Saturday presentation: Annelise Noronha, Lisa Bozikovi c and KASHKA . I wasn't familiar with any of them and I feel like an idiot because they are all amazing and the musical touchpoints between these women, myself and the project are deep and varied. We could do a whole show with any one of them and it would be extraordinary. And then, of course, Justin did an amazing set on Sunday - accompanied by the wonderful Burke Carroll on pedal steel guitar - ending with a reprise of his famed "Don't Be So Mean, Jellybean" on Voyageur , which has been so closely associated with Six String Nation since 2006.

The festival continues this coming weekend and I'll be back in the County for a school presentation in March. And we'd come back to Ice Box any time!

Special thanks to Krista Dalby and her team at the Department of Illumination , Jennifer Lyons at the Macaulay Heritage Museum, technician Emerson Pringle , musicians Annelise Noronha, Lisa Bozikovic, KASHKA and Justin Rutledge , volunteers Jen Bradovca, SaraLou Miller and Trish Van Huesen , Julianne Snepsts and Craig Foster at County FM 99.3, the Picton Harbour Inn, Sarah Gillett, Doug Nicholson, Sarah Keenleyside and baby Jack . And, of course, to everyone who came out to join us for stories, music and portraits at Ice Box 2020!

Re:Unionville

Wed, 05 Feb 2020 14:11:52 GMT

An old friend in a new role and an inspiring conversation with students

Unionville Montessori Elementary Principal Dave Treherne (at right) and I go back more than 30 years and Dave's involvement with Six String Nation goes back to the beginning. Dave is the source of the piece of gold taken from Rocket Richard's 1956 Stanley Cup ring that adorns Voyageur 's 9th fret. Dave also had me in to speak to students in his previous role as a public school teacher. Last year he took on this new job and was keen to get me in front of this very bright group of students.

Unionville Montessori enjoys a terrific facility for these kinds of presentations - with proper staging, lighting and projection systems and raked seating - a far cry from what we managed to scrape together at Dave's last school. And where some schools depend on whoever on staff knows how to plug in a projector or enthusiastic students from the AV Club, UM has Jim Motton , a professional media tech and sound guy who looks after a few neighbouring schools. So I was really going into an ideal situation on that front. But what was really ideal about my day at UM was everything else:

The presentation went really well and the performances were fantastic. For the first song, Mr. Tymstra played Voyageur while Mr. Renglich played piano and lead the Appasionata Singers student choir in a rendition of "From a Distance". For the second song, Dave played Voyageur to accompany student Evelyn Esch singing.... wait for it... "Fish & Bird" by Tom Waits! A clear case of students benefiting from a principal with great musical taste!

Congregational Power

Tue, 11 Jun 2019 01:53:08 GMT

Connected to the Community in West Hill

I first met Ken Bole (the gentleman in the fern shirt on the right) many years ago at the Podcasters Across Borders conference where I was a guest presenter. Ken ended up playing an important role in one element of the project but more on that in a moment. We saw each other a couple of times since then (including for an Izakaya lunch before Izakaya was the ubiquitous thing it is in Toronto these days!) but it had been quite a long absence when he called a few months ago to ask if I would be available to do my presentation for his church. Now, I've done my presentation in quite a few churches over the years and I've always found welcoming and attentive audiences in that environment but I confess I've always felt like a bit of an intruder. I'm an atheist. And while religious and non-religious people of all cultural backgrounds and denominations have humanity as their touchstone, I'm always afraid of offending someone's beliefs if I don't bow my head or clasp my hands or mouth the words or sing the hymns - or, worse yet, if I actually bristle at some article of faith I just can't accept as true.

But Ken's church is West Hill United and its minister is Gretta Vosper , pictured at the left. She made waves a few years ago when - built on years of scholarship and authorship - she declared her atheism AND her intention to continue her ministry at West Hill. Words flew, columns were written, judgements were cast, proceedings were initiated and some of the congregation departed. But she continued her work. After all - even the very religious will talk about the grounding and cohering effects of congregation as much as anything and that was work consistent with her belief and with her context. Eventually the United Church hierarchy dropped its proceedings and the work of her church and community really took off doing all the things you expect a church to provide: there is the sharing of words of wisdom, of perspective, of reflection, of music, of joys and burdens, hopes and actions. In short, it fills the function of most churches in providing a spiritual heart of the community. And I felt honoured to be asked to be part of it.

Kevin Jackson (pictured, second from the right) guided the proceedings for the morning, segueing effortlessly and poetically from church business to introducing my presentation. Perhaps because I felt so at home in that company, my usual waterworks were at an attenuated pitch and I felt the impact of the community that is the Six String Nation as a presence in the room.

For the performance segment, Murray Humphrey (pictured, holding Voyageur ) took on the some-would-say-daunting task of playing Gordon Lightfoot 's Canadian Railroad Trilogy and handled it beautifully.

As for the promised story about Ken, it was a perfect occasion to thank him for his help in closing a gap in Voyageur 's story.
I had hoped in the beginning of the project to include something from the Japanese-Canadian community but was unsuccessful in getting any contributions by the time the guitar was ready to be built. But I kept talking about it hoping maybe we'd be able to add something to the case or strap later on. Ken was the one who told me about the Vancouver Asahi - and, as a Japanophile and volunteer with the Japanese-Canadian Cultural Centre , he advocated on my behalf and made all the necessary introductions, eventually leading to me getting a swatch of fabric from an original Asahi jersey held in the collection of the JCCC.

Thanks to everyone in the West Hill United community who welcomed me so warmly, shared their stories and helped with everything from sound to book sales. Special thanks to Gretta Vosper and her husband, music director Scott Kearns , for sharing his story and providing such tasty piano during the service and to wrap up the event.

Boys' Life, Montréal

Wed, 24 Apr 2019 22:09:34 GMT

A Trip to Selwyn House

Quite often I'll have conversations with teachers or principals about areas of focus at the school or among a particular grade in advance of a presentation. Sometimes this is a way of the school finding ways to link the visit to the curriculum or particular moments in the school year.
The conversation I had with the Director of Experiential Education at Selwyn House, Courtney Prieur (pictured, below) was unlike any other.
Selwyn House is a private boys school in Montréal's predominantly anglo Westmount district and many of the boys come from privileged circumstances. So while many of the educational challenges at Selwyn House are just like those of any other school, there's a whole other layer of challenges in piercing that very particular bubble and it prompted me to partly re-imagine the shape of my presentation - an exciting challenge for me!

Space is at a premium on the Selwyn campus so the first presentation - for the more senior boys - took place in Coristine Hall, a well-equipped multipurpose space that became a lunch room that became a rehearsal space (more on that later). Luca Parnas , the boy who had volunteered to play Voyageur in the "performance pocket" part of the presentation, had gone home the day before with a fever so his role was filled by teacher Richard Wills (pictured, below), who performed a rendition of "Stand By Me" with a chorus of help from the students. And I did get a chance to meet Luca's mother, who works at the school, and get a copy of the Six String Nation book signed for Luca so he didn't miss out on the experience entirely.

Presenting the project in Montréal is always very special since some very colourful and defining stories from the city (Rocket Richard, the Montreal Forum, the Fairmount Bagel Bakery) are embedded in Voyageur so it's a bit of a homecoming feeling. But just to make things extra special, after lunch and a Q&A session with a senior ethics class, I had a proper Montréal celebrity encounter.
Maestro Boris Brott (pictured, below) is Founding Music Director and Laureate Conductor of the New West Symphony, California and Principal Guest Conductor of the Teatro Petruzzelli in Bari Italy. But he took over the stage where I'd conducted (get it? conducted?) the morning session in his role as Artistic Director of the McGill Chamber Orchestra and I recognized him the moment he arrived for rehearsal. I made sure to point out that the headstock is a seat from Toronto's Massey Hall, a stage I have no doubt he has trod many times over the years. Perhaps now we'll get an invitation to participate in his annual Brott Music Festival in Hamilton!

Perhaps the sweetest moment of the day, however, came in the afternoon presentation for the grade 5-6 boys in the Rossy Agora space. At that age they don't all look as comfortable or confident in their school ties and blazers as the older boys but what they lack in swagger they make up in charm and enthusiasm. I was introduced to the larger class by a quintet of proper young gentlemen, all of whom shook hands with me firmly and looked me in the eye as they thanked me for coming to their school. From among them, the boy selected to play Voyageur in the "performance pocket" was Maher Chaban (pictured, top), who arrived in Canada a couple of years ago as a refugee from Syria. I was pleased and proud that this young man found part of his story in the guitar - with particular enthusiasm for the story of Chris Hadfield 's connection to the guitar pick he received as a souvenir for his efforts. Richard Wills returned for a reprise of "Stand By Me" with the younger boys and my day at Selwyn House was over.

Thank you to Courtney, Herbie, Rachel, Alex, JP, headmaster Hal Hannaford and all the staff and students at Selwyn House.