It’s one of those years. Nearing the end of March, and already we’ve had to say goodbye to Kate McGarrigle, Mark Linkous, Vic Chesnutt, and now Alex Chilton (and don’t get me started on the Oscars forgetting to mention Bea Arthur). But I’m not here to eulogize – there are far better folks at that than me (Paul Westerberg, for one). Instead, I’d rather celebrate a song that’s meant a great deal to me for a long while, and one of the first things I ever learned how to play on the guitar. (A love song so perfect that it even made its way on WP’s …A Given EP, recorded for the wedding of our dear friends Kevin and Gordon – and that’s just the way I’d like to remember a great songwriter now passed).

• Thirteen [Big Star]

So for nearly the past two years, we’ve tried getting a batch of songs together with Brooklyn folk singer Ryan Doyle, but you know how these things go — you get busy and distracted, and sometimes things take longer than you originally planned. 26 February 2010, however, we finally managed to pull it together in the lovely Buddy Project studio in Astoria, Queens, and did some joint recording that we’re both particularly proud of. We recorded one of the first ever WP songs, titled ‘By Lamplight’, which has come in and out of WP set-lists since the start. And let it be said now, Ryan Doyle’s ‘Homeless Summer 1996’ is the summer jam of 2010. (Or, considering how long it took to actually get into the same studio, maybe we should play it safe and say summer 2011). Anyway, … Continue reading

One of my fondest memories of growing up in Canada involves John Weldon’s 1979 short film The Log Driver’s Waltz (viewable at the National Film Board of Canada’s incredible website (here). The song (originally written by Wade Hemsworth), was performed for the film by sisters Kate and Anna McGarrigle and became such a quintessential Canadian cultural artifact that I can’t think of a time when this tune hasn’t been a part of my understanding of Canada itself. For a time, we performed ‘If Only I Were a Painter, I’d Paint for You the Moon’ from Songbook as a two-part medley with ‘The Log Driver’s Waltz’, and at our 2008 Sled Island show at Central United Church in Calgary, our friend Kris Ellestad asked us to back him up on a full run-through. We post it here in memory … Continue reading

Like it or not, Calgary is the city in which we live, and it’s the city that brought us all together. Sure, considering what’s going on up North to Alberta’s tar sands and the knowledge that by living here one is – in at least some way – attached to the disastrous oil machine, it’s sometimes hard to feel all that proud about it. But, it’s still important to look back at the good things that have come out of Calgary from time to time, right? Good things like Jann Arden, which leads to even better things like our new side project MANN HARDEN. And so, we give to you, our non-Calgary friends who doubtlessly missed our one and only show, MANN HARDEN (all songs by Jann Arden). (Foon on mandobird, Annalea on drums, Peter on guitar, Kenna on guitar, … Continue reading