SOUNDTRACK: THE WOODEN SKY-Live at Massey Hall (June 23, 2017).
I don’t know this band at all. I’m fascinated that he lead singer Gavin Gardiner and the keyboardist Simon Walker have the same haircut and glasses but are not related. The band has a kind of folk-rock vibe. Nothing really stands out about them to me, but I did enjoy the songs while they were playing them.
For The Wooden Sky, getting to Massey Hall always seemed unreachable. But they say that getting here you can feel the history and see that the place opened in 1894. Its pretty surreal. Just looking out on stage you can feel–holy shit, this is cool.
“Life is Pain, Pain is Beauty” is a six-minute song that opens with a nifty guitar riff. The keys and violins act as a kind of drone underneath. The middle has a cool rollicking section with big drums and groovy keyboard solo. There’s a nice jam element to the song, too with Jason Haberman on bass.
Gardiner has a kind of drawl or something. His delivery is unique without being especially noteworthy. On some of the later songs he puts on a strange vibrato that I find a bit unsettling.
“Our Hearts Were Young” has a cool violin part that runs through the song. The backing vocals during the chorus are amazingly catchy.
It’s weird that they interrupt this song to talk about them making their record. They miss a verse and a solo of the song to talk about them recording in their own studio.
He introduces “Deadhorse Creek” by saying that his parents are celebrating their 40th anniversary in a couple of days so this if or them. It’s about living and growing up in Manitoba.
This song is also interrupted so they can talk more about working in the studio, how they recorded this song three different times.
There a wild harmonica solo from Gardiner mid song.
He invites his best friend Andrew Wyatt to the stage to play banjo–you know the passion he brings to the stage. HE is listed as a member of the band, so this is a weird moment with him on stage. They play “The Wooden Sky,” a mellows darker song where Gardiner introduces that vibrato singing. There’s a more mellow harmonica solo.
“Swimming in Strange Waters” is the most fun song. It rocks with some wild singing by the end.
“Angelina” ends the show quietly with Gardiner singing solo with acoustic guitar. He says it is dedicated to his friend Aaron who passed away in 2010. The rest of the band gathers around behind him as he plays. Midway through the song Edwin Huzinga introduces a fiddle melody and Andrew Kekewich plays a kick drum as the song builds. They all gather round to sing backing vocals.
[READ: January 24, 2018] “Question 62”
This short story has two plots running parallel. It involves two sisters and wild cats.
How’s this for an opening line:
She was out in the flower bed, crushing snails–and more on them later–when she happened to glance up into the burning eyes of an optical illusion.
Until recently Mae had lived with her sister Anita in Waunakee, Wisconsin. She now lived in Southern California where it never rained, except that it had been raining all week. The snails loved this rain and were destroying her garden. Which is why she was destroying them–despite being a vegetarian and wishing no harm to come to animals, really. She and Anita made a vow to become vegetarian in junior high school.
But it was while she was crushing snails that she looked up and saw…could it be? A tiger? She was startled, obviously. She quietly cried for her husband (he was asleep inside). The tiger didn’t seem aggressive, it just seemed inquisitive at the sound of her voice.
The parallel story is Anita’s She works the late shift at the Page Center for Elder Care. She lives the inverse life of everyone else–drinking at first light while eating a Lean Cuisine. She was just going into her trailer when she heard a sound. Like her sister, she saw a feral car. Unlike her sister, she was familiar with this one She called him One Eye for obvious reasons. It wasn’t her cat but she did put out kibble for it once in a while because it also killed the mice that lived under her trailer.
As she was about to go in, a stranger called to her He was very tall and she was sure he was a salesmen, or maybe a Jesus freak But no, he wanted to ask her about Question 62.
Question 62 is a proposal to save songs birds. The man says that feral cats kill millions of birds a year. He studied her, clearly having seen the cat that ran under her trailer. Question 62 proposed that anyone could kill any cat found roaming without a collar–like gophers, like rats.
The plots bounce back and forth with Mae staying still watching this tiger watch her and with Anita watching this man.
Anita was taken back. The only thing she could think to say was she didn’t like guns–her husband had been killed by one. He resisted this line of thought and after a few drinks of wine, they were in bed together (it had been a really long time for Anita).
Mae found that as long as she muttered to the tiger, it seemed relaxed. When she tried to move–she was in one position for a long time–it seemed to get agitated. But after a while, it fell asleep. She imagined getting meat–from where?, but her husband was also a vegetarian.
The spell is broken for Mae when a neighbor opens the back door and lets her barking dogs out–the tiger flees instantly. The spell is broken for Anita the next morning when she and Todd go out for breakfast. He tells her she can order steak and eggs. When she tells him she is a vegetarian it angers him–you’re one of those save the animals people–you hate hunting and hunters… he stormed out on breakfast.
Mae’s husband didn’t believe her about the tiger until he saw a news story about it.
The story ends a week later with a conclusion to the Mae story and a follow-up on Anita–they have a phone call that is cut off by bad weather. But the premise of Question 62 leads her to wonder what previous Questions were. Like what was Question 1?
Leave a Reply