Turning The Page

This edition of Canadian Musician magazine marks my swan song as a regular writer for them. I've asked my editor to take me off his rolodex. Just too much work (3,000-word articles) for too little pay (10¢ a word). Plus it just felt like it was time. Time to move on and search out other, more lucrative freelance assignments, hopefully expanding into non-music topics, although I'll probably always write about music in some fashion.

But it's been a good four-year run, and writing for them certainly helped me build up a nice portfolio, that eventually helped me to land my current job at Columbia Houseóa stable, 9-5 day-job writing about music is a fairly rare thing, all things considered. And along the way I got to interview and write stories about almost every major band in Canada, from Barenaked Ladies to Nickelback (then just starting to make a buzz) to Alanis Morisette. My last story was on the babelicious Emm Gryner, which was fun to do, not just because she's a real cutie, but because she's an indie artist who runs her own show and is out there going toe-to-toe with the big boys.

It's also the last installment of my Showcase Page. This one puts the period on it after exactly three full years of writing the page. They'll find someone to take it over, no doubt. Probably one of the other regular contributors. It was kind of hard to walk away from it. Sure was nice to have my own page in a nationally distributed magazine, it helped me get a free media pass for the music festivals in town, and it exposed me to some wonderful music that I may have never heard otherwise. (I have plans to put together a compilation discóThe Best Of Showcaseóprobably a three-volume series, one for each year.)

And I'd like to think that it may have helped increase exposure a little bit for a few unknown musicians and bands along the way, or at the very least helped them fatten their press clippings. I know it always made me feel good when someone I interviewed for the page was really grateful and genuinely excited about being in it. Made me feel all warm and fuzzy. And I even made some friends along the way, like the lovely and talented Colleen Power and Linda M.

It was nice to get my homeboy Nathan Wiley in the last installment, before he gets too big. I'm sure he'll be signed by a major sometime in the next year. And, I think I actually outdid myselfóif I do say soówith this sentence about the Local Rabbits, a band whose members live in both Montreal and Toronto:

Though their bi-local existence makes the Rabbits a cottontail of two cities, like their furry namesakes, when it comes to creativity, they've got a jump on all the rest.

Hee hee.

So, so long CM, and so long Showcase. Thanks for the memories.