1. The First Song I Wrote:
It was about stealing a duck from the Public Gardens in Halifax for Christmas dinner. I can still play it but wouldn’t. Yodelady, the first cut on my latest record Domestic Eccentric, is one of my oldest songs and the first songwriting eureka moment. I stayed home sick from work to write it in Dawson City, Yukon. I wrote it about the yodel that escaped from my sexual chakra when I fell in love in the same town a few years before.
2. The Last Song I Wrote:
It’s called The Early Days, from the same record. I recorded it at home in a cabin in the woods behind my house that I built by hand. It’s about how fast the insane time when you have babies goes. It’s funny and sad. We had identical twin girls and a year and a half later another girl so the last five years are a blur.
3. Favourite Song I’ve Written:
My favourite song has almost the least lyrics. Wait a While from Domestic Eccentric is not my biggest hit. I don’t have those particularly, but it does tap into the river of the music I love in a new way. I play it on a fretless gourd banjo and I loved the live recording of it with swampy African sounding guitar and west African percussion when we made it in the snowy woods in Nova Scotia.
4. The Record That Changed My Life:
Closing Time by Leonard Cohen has been a good friend for a long time. Since I was in high school. Great lyrics and melody. It is the kind of song that values intelligence but it also has dumb jokes in it.
