My Music at Work

I am not musical. I can’t play an instrument. I tried to play the flute in grade 7 and could never get a sound out of it. My music teacher was very kind and kept insisting I must have a “bad” flute, and urging me to sign out another. I knew it wasn’t the flute(s) and, eventually, I wished he would just admit it as well.

As for my singing, well, let’s just say it’s great when I’m the only one listening. A (very long-ago) boyfriend once told me he knew he was starting to like me because he didn’t even mind when I sang along to the radio in the car.

So, musical – no. Influenced by music – absolutely. Immensely. Music can make or break my day and the right music definitely makes me want to write.

I can’t listen to music while I write. I really prefer not to have any other noise around me when I write. But it does help if I get a chance to listen to music I love at regular intervals.

So, what’s on my writing playlist? To keep this post to a reasonable length, I’m going to focus fully and completely (get it?) on bands / singers I love 100 per cent – can listen to any of their songs at any time, and they will always inspire me. There are many, many, many individual songs by countless different singers I also adore, but, you know, I don’t have all day to write this post.

Here’s my list:

No surprise – anyone who’s read this blog for any length of time will know I adore, worship, bow down to The Hip. Everything about The Tragically Hip makes me happy. The lyrics (even when I don’t completely understand them), the music underlying them, and Gord Downie’s voice. Aaah … Gord Downie’s voice. Their latest album – Now For Plan A – was released the same week I got my first round of edits back on Objects in Mirror and that CD became the soundtrack to my revisions. Particularly “We Want to Be It”. I played that track over and over, and it reminded me not to be half-assed about my edits. To jump in, not hold anything back, throw out whatever needed to be thrown out and re-write. The ferocity of Gord Downie’s “Drip, drip, drip” fired me up over and over again.

Sarah Harmer. There’s definitely a Kingston theme here. I love Sarah Harmer. I love Sarah Harmer singing with The Hip on “Now For Plan A”. I love Sarah Harmer’s smart, strong lyrics and I love her haunting voice.

Catherine McLellan and, here, particularly I’m going to reference Church Bell Blues. Every single song on this album wraps me up, carries me away and makes me want to write, write, write.

There are more. There are so many more but I’m going to end, for today, with Jimmy George. Jimmy George was not just a band – it was a time and a place in my life. Jimmy George was being able to go down to the Duke of Somerset, pretty much any night and know at least half the people there. Jimmy George was having the time of my life (or one of them) and not even knowing it until it was all over. I remember dancing on the street, under the stars, outside the Duke on a warm summer night – I don’t even know if it was a Jimmy George night, but the memory of their music is all wrapped up in my memory of that evening. I remember seeing Jimmy George play in Deep River. I have no idea how seriously the guys in the band took their music. They mostly seemed to be having fun with it – and their fans – but they wrote some killer lyrics. Every single time a Jimmy George song comes up on my iPod, there’s at least one line that makes me shake my head with the cleverness of it. To pick just one track, “My Final Days With You“, always brings a smile to my face. I mean, who doesn’t want to hear someone say they hope they spend their final days with you?

So, two questions for you this week:

1) Does anyone else out there have any Jimmy George memories to share?

2) What’s on your writing playlist?