overdosing on the christmas cheer - from the land of oz

it is 3:01am on christmas morning and i cannot sleep, just cannot sleep!

i think we are having pancakes for breakfast and i took a little peek under the tree. just a little one. i am very lucky, for later today i will be part of not 1, not 2 but 3 christmas meals all in the span of 24 hours. how does she do it you might ask? well for one, i am hoping that santa will be kind this year and gift me 'the button' pant and skirt extender to make the day run as smoothly as possible:

"The Button" Pant and Skirt Extender.
Don't suffer! Add an inch to your waistband! Adds comfort to any button waist jeans or slacks. Excellent for tight jeans, pants, dockers, and skirts.Why BUY NEW CLOTHESto accommodate a few days per month?!!! Transfers easily from one pair of jeans to the next with NO SEWING!!!

f**k me. who thinks of this shit?

we had a garage sale last week, to get rid mostly of my shit. and there was a lot of it.

i put out a vase, the ugliest fu**er you have ever seen. it was kind of pink. dead person pink with a bit of post mortem grey, and weird paper mache stuck to it. oh and shells! i put a sticker on it 'the worlds ugliest vase - 50c' and i was so pleased someone bought it within 9 min of opening our front gate to the maniacs who had been waiting there for an hour, i kind of blurted out my joy a bit too loudly 'hey you bought the worlds ugliest vase, that's priceless'. the guy was not happy with me. man people really do buy shit and it was my shit which is even worse. i guess i don't have a high opinion of my own belongings.

speaking of filling your house with more crap that you don't need. why not try something a little different this year? pics up top as I can't figure out how to get them down here.

Fundies (The Underwear Built For Two) - Some couples share everything. For the people who won't accept that there is such a thing as too much intimacy, there is Fundies.

WTF? Is that even hygienic?

The P Mate: Jesus I have been trying to convince everyone that this thing does exist. We were presented with a pack of these in Summer 2007 at a festival in SK and I talked about it on stage and everyone thought I was nuts and making it up. But here is the proof! Oh and just for the record, it works...

Freud would be proud. Now women can pee like men. That's right, women everywhere can experience the joy that is standing up while going #1. What woman wouldn't love the experience that comes from the P Mate?

I feel especially disturbed by this one:

Perfect Naked Body Double Duvet Cover - Look good naked under the sheets!

Slip under the sheets and as if by magic see your body undergo a radical transformation, no costly surgery or arduous hours in the gym required!

Merry Christmas to you and yours, and remember: the world is a very sick place.

x

em

Roots

Today is the hottest day we have had since I have been back in Australia. Shirt sticking to my skin, the hot wind blowing my hair in my face, the red is fading to *almost* blonde.
This place I have come home to feels almost alien to me. Changes and accents overwhelm me. I feel lost in a sea of Aussie-Americanisms. I left the Northern Hemisphere, or did I?

The yuppie yobbo hairstyles remind me of 80's Japanese Pop replicated badly. Young people don't seem to smile as much anymore and 'Oh My God, Totally'! sounds extraordinarily strange in Melbourne twang. What happened since I left? Granted this country has been run by a government who sat by and did nothing for so long, but we have a new government now, surely that should stir up a good old fashioned Aussie debate. But I do wonder if many people care about the direction of this country, as much as they care about Australian Idol, The Melbourne Cup and keeping up with our American cousins. It makes me sad and I do feel lost. The telly is full of Australian cop shows copying their US counterparts, and painfully at that. Where is our original spirit and what is going on in the music industry? I just can't bare to listen. Australian films? Forget it, Aussies have to go overseas to make a real go of it these days. What a shame.
Will it get better? I don't know...I hope so but as a people I wonder if we no longer have the confidence and self worth to stand up and be original. I bloody hope I am wrong...

Glad to be in Deutschland

Glad to be in Germany after some seriously long drives, stuff ups with the car we leased in France and a performance in a disco in a small town in Italy. Even though there were a couple of less than perfect days, the first show in Rome went smashingly and so far the shows in Switzerland/Germany have been wonderful.

Recap:

Tuesday 1st April: Hilzingen Germany, performance in the local church to an attentive and smiley audience with a delicious meal cooked by Priest Mathius before the show.

Wednesday 2nd April: Lohn Switzerland, just over the border, performance in church organised by Priest Hans, who passed on my details to Mathius. Lovely big audience, and yes we even played Spank Me Man at both shows and they enjoyed it! It was especially lovely to see some familiar faces and friends and share cake and wine after the show with them at Han's house.
Thanks for all of the chocolate and CD's Hans!

Thursday 3rd April: Feinkost Lampe Hannover, really hip underground club, packed and listening attentively, sold out of my home made European EP again, I am making these with stamps and recycled card for each show and can't keep up, it's good of course but I need some sleep lol!

Highlights this week include:

Friendly people dealing with our butchering of German, Swiss German, French & Italian

Ich Tarzan, Du Jane on tv in the hotel room, they actually made the losers sing 'that's what friends are for' at the end and Steph and I couldn't stop watching, like a train wreck...

Being able to find internet and decent food in Germany

The cool playlist by Pally? before our show at Feinkost Lampe, Anna Ternheim and lots of weird Scandinavian shit, I was in heaven....

Having my own room from time to time, no offence girls...

Rome, wow so beautiful but quite overwhelming for a girl who lives on an island with only around 4000 people

Real pizza in Italy

Watching Dr Who in the cool van on the road

People opening their homes and fridges for us

Appreciative audiences and selling out of the EP!

........CJ started a flickr account with photos, so hopefully I will have a link soon!

em

Nous Sommes Croutes Ensemble !

We arrived in Paris airport yesterday morning after over 20 hours travel from Seattle, via Philadelphia airport (4 hours yuk!). Wow, what a crazy big airport, we had to take a train to get to the other side to find Cat and then had to navigate out of the airport and to the outer part of Paris to the B&B where we were staying.

What a relief to arrive at quiet corner of a picturesque village, and to lay down on a real bed and feel the touch of water on ones skin to clean off the traveling grime. Believe me, the smell was pretty special!

My favourite part of the journey includes the 'Daves Buttermilk Bar' that was presented to us as breakfast on US Airways, num num...I especially liked the line printed on the ingredients 'may contain one or more of the following ingredients'..... One woman in front of us wolfed it down like it was the best thing ever. How can people eat this shit? I felt like I needed a detox after all the crappy nutrition void airline food and I even avoided some of the food. My other favourite part was of course the usual search to find vegetarian food in the airport, oily vegetables was the best I could do, it's good to be in France!

Oh and I don't speak French except a few words here and there but managed to have a conversation with a woman walking her dog in the village this morning, that was a thrill.

I don't have much else to say as it's only the first day but it's beautiful here and the people are kind and patient.

Off to Nice!

emaline

the Everyday Ordinary European Tour EP is finished -check it out!

I am REALLY excited about this EP. It’s the first time I have really experimented and am stoked to be on this new musical path.

Apart from the title track which I call 70’s Spoken Word and some piano and flute by Steph, I made all of the music using voices, omnichord and piano partly to push myself and partly because I didn’t have a lot of money to pay people but I surprised myself. And damn, I have a new found respect for singers like Stina Nordenstam and Anja Garbarek who use their voice as an instrument to back themselves up, it’s really tough.

Thanks to CJ for recording the piano and flute and Shael Wrinch for the rest of it, and for pushing me to sing my best so early in the morning and having patience with all of my weird ideas.

I think my favourite track is The Storm, though it may change tomorrow, lol.

Check out 3 tracks at www.myspace.com/emalinedelapaix

I hope you enjoy it....

x

em

ps)the EP will be available at shows in Europe and maybe digitally if I can figure out how to do it. Also check out 1 other track from the EP called Hibernate at http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3Lm15c3BhY2UuY29tL2VtYWxpbmVzZGVtb3M= it’s just me singing all parts.

2007: So many mistakes slung from shoulders

So I will open my first post in over 5 months with a line from one of the first songs I wrote in 2007, oh the irony:

"So many mistakes slung from shoulders"

2007 was a year of growing and making mistakes and cleaning up the mess and then making another mistake and cleaning it up and so forth and so on. Let's get all the things I wasn't so crazy about out of the way first shall we? A purging of sorts!

Least favourite news of 2007: Masters for 5 tracks recorded for album in Australia went missing/were deleted/studio went out of business. Of course, this is my own fault. When I recorded these songs a few years ago I was very naive and didn't know that you should always keep a copy of your masters. Boy was this a hard lesson to learn.

Second least favourite thing of 2007: Recording with a few different studios in Vancouver and finding out that all of them lacked something that is needed for a successful recording including good hearing, patience, manners, confidence and oh a little thing called "knowing how to use your equipment". Do I sound bitter? Perhaps I am, just a little but I said I was purging, and it feels better already! Oh and one last note on this, why can't anyone record my voice to sound the way it sounds? They hear a high voice and automatically pour 80's compression and effects onto it. And these people were recommended. Recommendations schmecommendations...

So where I am I recording now? Well I have found a lovely studio in Vancouver where we have recorded all of the piano tracks but I am searching for an engineer/producer/studio to finish everything hopefully by March in time for the European Tour. Wishful thinking perhaps but there has to be an artistic, clever, patient, down to earth person out there who digs what I do right? I have a lead in Seattle, perhaps a change of scenery will do me good.

Third least favourite thing about 2007: Flaky BC musicians. Arrrgh!!! But it's ok, I imported some lovely Aussies and a Quebecois and one American so it all worked out.

OK enough of the spitting out of bitterness. Thank you for your patience :)

Best things about 2007: I got to play with a dream band this past Summer including Aussie drummer Cat Leahy who I hadn't played with since 2004 so it was soooo wonderful having her around again. K Phanie from Quebec joined me again as well as CJ from Seattle for her first tour. It was amazing how wonderful these three musicians played together even though it was the first time we played together. Emily McMillan an Aussie living in London flew over for the bulk of the shows to help us out yet again as I still hadn't found a regular violinist here. We had a wonderful time playing all through Western Canada from Vancouver through to Winnipeg and have a lot of drunken photos and *gasp* video as proof of the fun. It was the first time in a long time that I had felt that I was playing with people who I really cared about and who cared about me. What is better than that getting to hang out with your friends all Summer and getting paid for it?!? Things went so well, we will be touring Europe in March/April and then doing a bunch of stuff in late Summer/Fall in Canada and the USA including a tour to Alaska in September!!!

I'm so proud of these gals. I hope you can come to a show and meet them. For now you can check out their own pages: www.myspace.com/imkatephanie, www.myspace.com/cameliajademusic, www.myspace.com/catleahy as well as sometime pal and violinist Emily McMillan www.myspace.com/emilymcmillan
For the European tour, we will also be joined by Nice based US celtic harpist Megan Metheney who will be playing melodies as well as some bass lines for us. Check out all of the shows under gigs at my website or myspace, ooh and I have a swanky new design thanks to Ruth!

So I got off track a bit but hey it's been a long time since I have written anything, I guess it was bound to happen but continuing on with the good stuff:

I got an awesome electric piano in 2007 and discovered my inner pianist to my surprise. I have written over 30 songs since I got it and am very excited that at least one tune will be on the new album and I started to play piano at shows so it's a very exciting time for me musically. I have been very inspired by my own pianist K Phanie who has encouraged me (now she can play more flute, glock and sax!) as well as the lovely Amy Seeley from Portland who toured with me a bit back in 2005/2006 and played my tunes for me. She is an amazing pianist and if I can be as half as good as her one day, I will be very pleased.

I got my Canadian perm residence after a year and a half and what did I do the day I got it? We drove over the border to Bellingham and went to Trader Joe's to get some of that nummy oatmilk. I love Canada and all but I just needed to get out because I finally COULD! I am not very good at sitting still in one place for very long so it was very tough not being able to leave the country for so long but now I am allowed to be here forever which is wonderful!

Booking shows for other musicians through Candlestone Music. Wow this has really taken off and I feel honoured to be booking shows for other talented musicians. Check them out at www.myspace.com/candlestonemusic

Discovering Jenny Wilson. Thank you universe, I needed something a little different.
www.myspace.com/loveandyouth

Discovering the omnichord! Thank you Dave for lending me yours, come back from Mexico as I need to borrow it for some recording lol. I guess I better get on ebay and get me one quick!

Seeing Tori live for the first time ever! Thanks Steph and your mum for inviting me. Wow what a piano player.

http://www.freedocumentaries.org/ - The truth is free

Growing older. When I was 21, the thought of getting older horrified me. Now I am grateful for the wisdom that growing older brings and look forward to growing and learning a lot more in 2008.

Becoming a better songwriter and learning to write more about other peoples stories instead of just me me me. I can't wait for you to hear "Everyday Ordinary" a 3 minute saga about some of the people that I have met on the road as well as "Child of War" written about a boy in Iraq and the impact that this war has had on him and many of the other children living through it.

Having a partner who supports me and puts up with me. I know I wouldn't put up with me!

2008 I am so ready for you!

em