My guitar playing has been most profoundly influenced by Bruce Cockburn and Leo Kottke. The independent (alternating root / 5) thumb thing I got from Bruce, and much of the (right hand) percussion I got from Leo. Both players are unique with quite different melodic sensibilities, but both have a similar capacity to make the guitar the "whole band" which is why it is sometimes disappointing to see them perform with others - the magic of the "band in a box" is lost.

Drumheller Circle was written after seeing Leo Kottke perform live at the West End Cultural Center in Winnipeg. It’s a small, funky theater which seats perhaps 250 max and hosts the most amazing concerts. I already knew a lot of Leo’s material and was looking forward to discovering what crazy tunings and techniques he used to get his outrageous melodies, chords and unique percussiveness. I was quite surprised to discover that most of his material was written and played in standard or simple alternate tunings (drop D); Theme from "The Rick and Bob Report" (My Father’s Face/ 1989) is a particular example. Leo seems determined to wring every possibility out of these two familiar tunings.

At the time I was experimenting with all sorts of tunings to rescue myself from going to the same old places musically. But I went home that night with a renewed appreciation for the carrying capacity of standard and drop D tunings, determined to wrestle a few more tunes out of them. Drumheller Circle was the result of that determination.

When I first started to play the song publicly I didn’t have a title for it, but found myself telling the story of my early guitar days as a boy in Drumheller Alberta; my father was a prison chaplain at the federal penitentiary in Drumheller and the inmates used to use the chapel Saturday afternoons to have jam sessions. Occasionally I was allowed to go in, sit in the corner and watch the guys play - some were quite exceptional. But I was quite eager to learn to play myself and when the inmates discovered this, they invited me to join the circle.

Not having a guitar of my own, I joined the Jr. Sales Club of Canada and started selling Christmas Cards to get the money to buy a guitar - Dad told me he’d match me dollar for dollar and I had my eye on a Hofner Acoustic ($120 w/hardshell case, strap and pick - ooooo!) After several months I had 60 bucks, Dad matched it and I started showing up every Saturday afternoon to sit in a circle with Canada’s most unwanted men who taught me to play the guitar. I was eight, I was in heaven and to this day adore those men for taking time to teach me.

Anyway, several months after I started performing this song, and telling this story, my manager Dave finally suggested I call it Drumheller Circle and I have ever since.

A few years ago I was invited back to Drumheller prison to perform a concert for the inmates in the same chapel I learned to play in. Obviously, for sentimental reasons, I was eager to go back and play there. It never occurred to me I’d know anyone, or that anyone would remember me after all those years. But I did. It was so very wonderful and so very sad to see old friends after all those years. It was the first time the awful reality of "life sentence" hit me. Is this really the best our imagination is capable of?

 

 Drumheller Circle / Live [2:15m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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I have finally written a new song!

The last song I wrote was Everything’s Lies - almost exactly four years ago after having wasted a night watching late-night TV. After a couple hours of infomercials, sensationalist newscasts (America was marching to Iraq) and Evangelists Gone Wild I lost the ability to distinguish between the different shows and now recall the evening as a haze- drenched, postmodern collage of shameless hucksters just tryin’ to make a dishonest livin’.

So I wrote: Everything’s lies / isn’t it swell / sex in a silver cup / serve it up with the televangel / no worries here/ trust the t.v. / there’s nothing of consequence / with God on a leash.

Shortly after that night I found myself in Palestine/Israel visiting several Palestinian Christian communities and organizations in the West Bank. There I witnessed first hand the malevolent raw power of a military occupation designed to slowly squeeze the life out of an entire people. The trauma of what I witnessed, along with the shame of belonging to a people group who have largely supported this brutality, shut me down. I really haven’t known what to say since. I’ve spent countless hours reading about the Middle-East; politics and history. I’ve read tons on Islam. Specifically I have read many accounts of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and recently took a course on the same topic.

But I can’t fix it. And so one grieves. One grieves one’s own limitations. One grieves the incomprehensability of God. One grieves the particular moms and dads and children in other lands whose lives are ruptured by violence.

Last week I was reading the latest GEEZ magazine. Under the heading, The Luxury of Hope, editor Will Braun asks if our religion and spirituality are deep enough to "contemplate catastrophe." It reminded me of when my daughter was six or seven years old. One night she couldn’t sleep because she was afraid a "bad man" might break in and hurt her. I reassured her that Jesus loved and her wouldn’t let anything bad happen. As she began to dry her tears she looked up at me and asked if, then, Jesus doesn’t love the children who do get hurt.

Shame on me.

Later (in the same, aforementioned GEEZ magazine) in a beautifully written piece called The Washing, Jessie Van Eerden recalls being interrupted while doing laundry, which she eloquently understands as redemptive work. A phone call from her father informs her that her cousin Billy has committed suicide:

It shakes me to the core, Billy’s quiet death.
There is good work to do.
There is good work to do.

Indeed.

In Billy’s Wake lyric by Steve Bell and Jessie Van Eerden

We’re not alone
laundry awash in the mid-morning sun
you can see angels dance as they try blouses on
there is good work to do

We’re not alone
casting long shadows as the day wears on
Billy had troubles, now Billy is gone
there is good work to do

kissing eyelids closed like caskets
breaking bread and filling baskets
pressing dress and swabbing soiled floors

fast remains of feast and fanion
evidence of ghost companions
greeting some and showing some the door

we’re not alone
wordlessly stung by a sliver blue moon
closed casket wake in a cold living room
there is good work to do

 

 In Billy's Wake [2:42m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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