Most Fridays in August and September, 1-2pm: I’ll be playing music for the lunch hour crowd at the Depanneur Café, 206 rue Bernard Ouest, Montreal. Free.
September 5, 1-5pm. NDG Cat Shelter benefit: front lawn of 4901 Beaconsfield, Montreal. I’ll be part of a lineup of musicians, playing two or three tunes for this event. I’ll definitely play this! Donations welcome to support a local cat shelter whose resources have been stretched to the limit during this pandemic.
Saturday, September 11 (12-5pm); rain date Sunday Sept.12. Hudson Porchfest. I’ll be playing a full set on one of the porches in this annual festival in Hudson, Quebec. Details to come. Free.
Ongoing: co-hosted the Lawn Chair Soirée, a Montreal literary reading series.
August 5, Argo Zoom Reading Series. I read “The Arrow”, a poem in Shimmer Report, and played a song derived from it at this Montreal literary event.
June 30-July 5: Galerie Espace, Montreal: My photographs were displayed along with paintings by Chard Chenier. Here’s a video tour of the show.
June 16: CKUT (90.3FM, Montreal) Interview and airing of selections of On This Shore on Wednesday Morning After (7-9am) hosted by Sheila Ferraro. It’s available in the CKUT archives, but I also made a photo montage Youtube video out of it! It’s also posted on the Video page.
May 17: La Palabrava. Featured as both reader and musician at this Montreal multilingual reading series. Zoom; Facebook.
Apr. 27: Club Passim virtual open mic, Cambridge, Mass. Facebook Live, Youtube.
Feb. 17, March 17: Private Event: Vie Autonome/Independent Living, Montreal. Zoom.
Feb. 4: Argo Books reading series. Featured performer. Zoom.
Jan. 27: Private Event: Vie Autonome/Independent Living, Montreal. Zoom.
Jan. 22: Living Room Session, an hour-long solo set at Mariposa Café, Montreal. Facebook Live.
Jan 12: Club Passim virtual open mic, Cambridge, Mass. Facebook Live, Youtube.
Jan. 1: Zoom launch of Jocelyne Dubois’ Memorial Suite, presented by Lawn chair soirée. Videos played of A Quiet Place, Wild and Free.
2020
Ongoing: co-hosted the Lawn Chair Soirée, a Montreal literary reading series.
Nov. 5: Argo Zoom Reading Series. Performed music and poetry at this literary event.
Sept. 29 and Nov. 17: Club Passim virtual open mic. Cambridge, Mass. Facebook Live, Youtube.
May, June: Tuesday evenings: 45-min. shows of music and poetry, Facebook Live
April 5: Virtual launch of “On This Shore”. Facebook Live.
Feb. 8: Rumi Ways of Love – Meditation and Song Circle. Four Rumi poems set to music, performed with Joseph Emet. Yoga d’Eveil, Montreal.
February 5: Warm Winter Wednesdays Solo Live Performance, Mariposa Cafe, Montreal
2019
Ongoing: Depanneur Cafe, played once a week for the lunch hour crowd, Jan to June; Sept to Dec.
Ongoing: co-hosted the Lawn Chair Soirée, a Montreal literary reading series.
Dec. 19 Argo Reading Series. Played two poems put to music, and read poetry as well.
Dec. 7: Launch of Ethel Meilleur’s “Funny Girl”, published by my chapbook imprint, Sky of Ink Press. Ethel read from her new book; I performed songs at this well attended event. YWCA, Montreal.
Nov. 19: The lawn chair soirée, a monthly reading series I co-organize and co-host. This month, performed music. Italian United Church, Montreal.
Sat. Sept. 14. Hudson Porchfest. Featured as a singer/songwriter in this music festival. Hudson, Quebec.
Aug. 17: Rumi’s Ways of Love, Meditation and Musical Circle. Performed poems of Rumi and Hafiz put to music. Montreal, Quebec.
Aug. 11 Lawn chair soirée/Poetry in the Park. Performed music at this event.
August 8: Argo Reading Series. Played music at this literary event.
June 21: Montreal Serai Writers’ and Artists’ Gala. Performed music at this event commemorating 32nd anniversary of the online review, Montreal Serai, Espace Knox, Montreal.
June 5: 3 Lands, 4 Voices, One Planet: played music and read poetry; featured with writers Veena Gokhale, Rae Marie Taylor, Laure Morali and Rita Mestokosho, Librarie Bertrand, Montreal
May 20: NDG Porchfest. Featured performer; one hour set at Mariposa Café terrace. Montreal
Mar. 8: Side Door Coffee House: Featured performance with Phil Peters, bass. Pierrefonds, Quebec.
March 2: Brian Campbell w/Phil Peters on bass, with JB Demouy @ Mariposa Café, Montreal.
Martin Bennett, sound engineer/producer/arranger at Studio Loco here in Montreal’s Mile End, and I have been doing great work together recording & arranging my songs over the past couple of months. So far, eight have been recorded; five will be released as an EP called “On This Shore”, some time early next year. It seemed time to commemorate all this with a selfie!
Some pics from my show with Ronney Abramson at Mariposa Cafe last Saturday night. It was an honour to share the stage with Ronney — and her set was immensely enjoyable. It was also lovely to be accompanied by Phil Peters’ fine bass playing and Cathy Watt’s excellent vocal harmonies. It was a comfortably full house — about 30-odd in attendance, and I think the pictures convey that a good time was had by all. Photos: Jacques Bernier.
I’ll be alternating sets with Ronney Abramson at this lovely, bohemian music café Saturday night at 7. Accompanying me will be Cathy Watt, vocals and Phil Peters, bass. Details in the sidebar to the right.
Most Mondays these days I play music at the Depanneur Cafe, which happens to be close to where I live in Montreal’s Mile End. It’s a homey place with a couple of decent mikes and sound system, and musicians play there throughout the day. Most of the patrons are laptop nomads or there to meet friends, write, doodle, read books — so it’s like public practice, as it were. But more often than not I earn attentive listeners, and often sell CD’s or interest them in an upcoming event. The other week a photo enthusiast named Thomas Colin took pictures with his fine Sony camera; the following week, an artist named Sophie Jama did some watercolours in her sketch pad. I gave them free CD’s. If you want to drop in and see me play, I’m there Mondays between noon and 1pm.
The other artistic spinoff from the anthology “Refugium”, my poem “Slick” was among those incorporated into “Weather Watching”, an exhibit of sculptural coracles by artist Erika Grimm that hung from the rafters of the White Rock Museum and Archives in White Rock, BC. in February and March of 2018.
One artistic spinoff of Refugium was an exhibit of twenty-two works of art responding to specific poems in the anthology, which was held in Maritime Museum of British Columbia (Victoria, BC) late last year. I’m honoured that “Slick” was one of those chosen, and that it inspired a most haunting sculptural work by Karina Kalvaitis. From the exhibit program:
In 2017, my poem “Slick” was published in Refugium, Poems for the Pacific, an anthology edited by Yvonne Blomer and published by Caitlin Press. Originally published as a short prose poem in my collection Passenger Flight, it was recast here as short poem. The poem was inspired by memories of the Valdez oil spill, although of course it could reference the travesties wreaked on animal life by any oil spill. It’s an excellent anthology, by the way, featuring fine poems by the likes of Rachel Rose, Jan Zwicky, Patrick Lane, Maleea Acker, Barbara Pelman, Steven Heighton, Lorna Crozier, Fiona Tinwei Lam, and others. For the anthology — and for this poem in particular — there were a couple of surprising artistic spinoffs which I’ll describe in other posts. Below, a handwritten version of the poem.
