Stephen Fearing Q&A

Multiple Juno Award-winning musician Stephen Fearing (Blackie & the Rodeo Kings and Fearing & White) has been taking photos for years, but this past October was the first time he collected and showed them publicly. On January 20th, starting at 7pm, Stephen brings that show to the eBar, where he'll discuss his work and perform a short solo set. Here's a primer:

The Bookshelf You attribute a wealth of down-time to your interest in photography, and suggest that, initially, taking the photo might’ve been more important than doing anything with it afterward. Could you maybe fill us in on that shift from doing something for the sake of doing it and beginning to explore the life of these things after that moment had passed?

Stephen Fearing It really has a great deal to do with the leap in digital technology and what is possible now because of that. Like most artists these days I spend a lot of time on my computer (both the act of creating and disseminating whatever it is I have created—working on my website and all the other social media channels.) As photography software develops, my ability to take a picture and use it in so many different ways increases dramatically and I am no longer an amateur photographer with a fridge full of undeveloped film, but an artist who uses photography to grace his album covers, web page etc. etc. etc. 

  

BS Can you conceive of a relationship between your eye for what makes an interesting photo and your ear for what makes an interesting song? And does photography make possible different explorations for you than songwriting has in the past?

SF Yes for sure. Songwriting and photography are both different ways of telling a story, but in many ways, photography is simpler, less analytical, less cerebral… I see it and if I am lucky, I capture it. Trying to capture images with words is harder.

BS What does it mean for you to use a photo of yours for an album cover? What do you hope for an image to say about or add to a collection of your songs?

SF Choosing an album cover “image” is like choosing the album title… one or two words that sums up the vibe of the record (not always an easy task). In the case of my last album, Between Hurricanes, the title came about through a series of chance circumstances (an e-mail to a friend complaining about getting my work completed during hurricane season in Nova Scotia). I was going to call the album 50, as in the age. Once I had the new title, the image leaped right out of my collection as being perfect for the cover. For the new Blackie and The Rodeo Kings release, SOUTH, we had all agreed, well in advance, that we would go with one of my photographs for the cover (my bandmates are all very supportive). I sent out a number of options that worked with the word SOUTH and we settled on the image of the dome car gliding through the boreal forest of Saskatchewan. There is a common theme to this new B&RK record of migration and travel, so that image captured the spirit of the songs, plus we recorded the songs very acoustically and the simple B&W image clicked.

You can find out more about the event here: "Between The Rumble Strips" at the eBar

Be sure to check out Stephen's photos ahead of time:  http://stephenfearing.photodeck.com/

February's Non-Fiction Book Club

Lawrence "Larry" Hill's Massey Lecture, Blood: The Stuff of Life, is our next Non-Fiction Book Club pick!

For a sense of what Blood is all about, here is a great quote:

“The problem with equating authenticity to race is that it attempts to quantify a concept that is inherently absurd. To focus on the authenticity of the blood in our veins is to repudiate deeper realities: we construct and negotiate our identities … Blood, I hope, will eventually unite us. Blood fills our imagination just as fully as it fills our veins.”
 
Each sentence in this paragraph deserves a couple hours of discussion. The book was well reviewed by the big three Canadian newspapers. Here are a few takes on it:

Globe and Mail: http://bit.ly/1cW2Pcz
Toronto Star: http://bit.ly/1aE95RO
National Post: http://bit.ly/1dNKWg1

So far, the club has discussed a wide range of issues and has always been tactful, respectful, and fun. We'll chat about Blood: The Stuff of Life on Thursday, February 20th at 7:00 pm in The Bookshelf Greenroom. 

We hope to see you there!

The Bookshelf Book Club Crew

Report from the Interior

If you are interested in the psyche, child rearing, creativity, parenting, pondering the whole tangled ball of existence, don’t go to our self-help shelves. Go around the bend to the biography section and check out Paul Auster’s Report from the Interior, the fourth of his ruminations about memory, relationship, authenticity, and meaning.

I began my sojourn with Auster in the 80’s when I read The Invention of Solitude, which he wrote after his father died. This was the most honest evocation of a deeply fraught relation that I had ever read and it surely was a game changer for disclosure in familial drama. Since then I have followed him closely. Perhaps it is because we were born in the same era. It also could be that his hunger for meaning through ideas, literature, film, sport, and, most importantly, love, is accompanied by an immense talent for constructing a compelling narrative.

This volume is like a blueprint for his formative years. But it is a blueprint with a door that opens down into many levels. Perhaps Freud might call it Id Land, which is why Auster writes his whole story line detached from his own struggles and miseries. Throughout the book he refers to himself as you, as if talking to the memory of his own young self.

His understanding of narrative arc is most astounding when he recounts two movies which changed his whole gestalt when he was not yet a teenager. I doubt that the actual movie The Incredible Shrinking Man would grab me the way his recounting of it did. I raced through it and still do not understand how he captured the adrenaline of it all. He did the same for I Was a Fugitive of a Chain Gang. In essence his exposition is one of the best condensations of capitalism and all of its evils that you will read.

Reading Report from the Interior, I saw how hands-off parenting—even downright bad parenting— allows kids to wallow in their own boredom and, if they’re lucky, find their true delights in life. Ironically, this was reinforced by none other than Bobby Orr. I had just finished the book and turned on the TV to see Orr being interviewed by Peter Mansbridge. And there was the hockey icon making fun of the super organized professionalism of kids and sports. He thinks it’s crazy. He became who he was on outdoor rinks playing shinny. Auster was a baseball fanatic and spent as many hours as he could finding his bliss with neighbourhood kids on the diamond. It’s lovely that two such different people can experience similar bliss, and it speaks volumes of Auster’s reach that I could see the relevance of his story in something that just happened to be on TV.

- Barb

Barns and Coach Houses of Guelph

Barns and Coach Houses of Guelph
By Evelyn I. Bird

Every couple of years, The Bookshelf and the Guelph community are treated to a work of local history that brings to life a person, place, or thing in or of this city. This year, Evelyn I. Bird makes a wonderful contribution of to that story, immortalizing the barns and coach houses of Guelph. In her book, Evelyn offers a fantastic way to look at our city's past. She spent years walking the beautiful streets of Guelph in search of barns. They are all over the place, but how often are we aware they're there, and how often do we consider the story of our past that they tell?

If you have been enjoying some of the local history pages that have popped up on social media sites, you will love this book. Did you know, for instance, that the beautiful stone building on Douglas Street (now up for lease) used to be the place where people would stable their horses while they were at work in the downtown? Or, on Albert Street, you can find a barn that was built in 1836.

It's interesting how things have changed in the past century. Evelyn grew up on the west coast of Canada where the cities she lived in were built more recently, i.e. at a time of the car's early dominance, and therefore did not have many barns. Her book has cataloged over 100 barns in Guelph. She believes that the book will give younger generations "an appreciation of what was necessary for our ancestors to be able to travel around." 

If you have any local history buffs on your Christmas list, this is the perfect gift!

There will be a signing in the bookstore this Friday December 13th at 6:00 pm. Please join us while a portal is temporarily opened into 1800's, 1900's in Guelph.

--Ben

Simultaneous Reads

As a bookseller, the worst thing I encounter is having someone apologize for a book they're buying. "I know I should be reading something more serious, but..." I don't think The Bookshelf gives off any kind of haughty vibe; I'd like to think that any feeling of shame is the result of a creeping miasmic rumour that you're less of a person if you're not familiar with Finnegan's Wake. But the thing is, we're not an academic journal; we sell books. And selling books means that we support and encourage titles of all kinds of heaviness and lightness. And if you're ever feeling sensitive about a book, don't sweat it: we love that you're here, and we want to hear about the books you love, why you love them, and how they fit into your life. Life is full of cracks of all depth and width and the great thing about there being so many damn books is chances are there's one that's a perfect fit for all those weird spaces in your life.

The fact is, most people are omnivorous readers: sometimes we like to fathom the depths of our own inky condition and sometimes we like to go for gentle paddles. And sometimes we like to do both simultaneously.

This year's Journey Prize winner, Naben Ruthnum was just featured on Hazlitt's great Shelf Esteem feature. "If there’s something I’m smug about, reading-wise," Ruthnum says, "it’s the diversity of my taste. I read so much stuff that might be considered trash, but it’s not trash. Most of it is really good." The variety of his reading habits lead Ruthnum to start this Tumblr, Simultaneous Reads. The stacks featured on the site will probably look familiar to you. You have these in your house--by your bedside, on your toilet tank, beside the TV--or you've seen them at friends houses. These simultaneous reads stacks bring to mind inuksuks, both in appearance and meaning--"something which acts for or performs the function of a person."

So, if you can put down your book for a second, have a look at the stacks on Naden's Tumblr, and imagine how the books that make them up describe the person that left it. And if you have an extra moment, send us a picture of your own simultaneous reads stack, or if you spot one while you're out and about, snap it and send it along.

Q & A with Stephanie Domet

From the back of the book: “Lansing Meadows has one last shot to get it right. With the clock ticking, he sets out on the road one last time, to sing his songs to anyone who’ll listen, and to try to right his wrongs, before it’s too late. Fallsy Downsies is a novel about aging, art, celebrity, and modern Canadian culture, told through the lens of Lansing Meadows, the godfather of Canadian folk music; Evan Cornfield, the up and comer who idolizes him; and Dacey Brown, a young photographer who finds herself along for the ride.”

The publication of Stephanie’s new novel was preceded by the fancy (and sometimes limited) fifth anniversary of her first, Homing, which was the first to be published by increasingly formidable saints/weirdos at Invisible Publishing and won the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award. If you turn your dial far enough East, you can hear Stephanie hosting CBC Nova Scotia’s Mainstreet and Atlantic Airwaves.

The Bookshelf is pleased as spiked punch to be hosting Stephanie in the bookstore on December 3rd at 7:30pm. A reading and conversation will be bookended by a tribute to Stephanie’s creation, Lansing Meadows. Imagining the hits of Lansing Meadows will be Jessy Bell Smith, Alanna Gurr, Gordon Auld, and Greg Denton.

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Could you fill us in on your models for Lansing? In the book you've put him in the context of real life folk heavies, but also set him slightly apart from them.

It was important to me that Lansing stand on his own, as himself. Which is why I peppered the narrative with real life folk heavies, as you say, so that the temptation to think he was based on any one of them would be somewhat alleviated. I was definitely inspired by Lightfoot, McLauchlan, Hynes and Connors, but also by Britney Spears and Justin Bieber and Avril Lavigne, if you can believe it. I wanted to think about fame and how it affects those who are saddled with it, and those who are in awe of the famous. And so in that way, Lansing was broadly modeled on a whole bunch of people, and also on no one person.

What was the first appearance Lansing Meadows made in your life? Were you carrying him around for a while?

Lansing first revealed himself to me I would say about six years ago. He came aboard as a crusty, cranky old git, but the more time we spent together the less like a caricature he became and the more I could hear his heart beating. He surprised me at every turn. I was equally shocked by the unfiltered way in which he speaks, but also by his tenderness. 

How complete is the discography of Meadows in your own head? In Fallsy Downsies we get a sense of his hits and his impact, but did you go further in preparation for the book?

I did not map out his discography, but I definitely thought about the length and heft of his career. I allude, in the book, to the album in which he went country. And I think he had a lot of those phases—I was thinking a lot about the career of a Bob Dylan or a Neil Young. You know, every couple of albums from one of those guys is pretty terrible, but they put it out anyhow, either as a testament of where they're at, artistically, or to keep everyone guessing, or just out of sheer cussedness. And I thought of Lansing as having the same approach to his music. He would be a true artist and some of his albums would be turkeys, but he'd release them anyhow because that was how you grew. You tried things and if they failed, well, you learned something from that. So though I don't have his complete back catalogue mapped out, I felt that I had a sense of what kind of artist he'd been. I can say that I can clearly picture all the album covers, however.

Do any of Lansing's touring stories come from your own experiences touring a book?

I wish! Touring a book is fun, but in a CanLit way, not a rock and roll—or even folk and roll—way. But my husband is a musician and I've been on tour with him. And I've seen some things! Even in the way that people will take your photo without asking, put their hands on you—the exchange with the super-fan in Thunder Bay, the one with the bags full of records, I just wanted to push fandom to its most inevitable conclusion. There's a delicate relationship, I think, between artist and fan—because neither of them is allowed to be genuine, in many ways. And as an artist, if someone doesn't like what you've done, and says so, there's not much you can say in response. Sorry, I guess? Thanks for telling me?

The book is very much about mentorship, though about both sides: being guided towards the type of person you'd like to be, but also being warned away from the type of person you'd like not to be. Care to talk about the mentor you've had in your own career, either positive or negative? (You don't need to name names!)

I have an amazing mentor, and that's Sue Goyette. She's a poet and she teaches, and she's wise and funny and real. And by and large, I have seen incredible acts of generosity among the writers I've met—people like Miriam Toews and Lawrence Hill and Lisa Moore—they've all been encouraging and curious and democratic, and I love that spirit of we're all in this together. Sure, I've seen lots of examples of the kind of writer and person I do not want to be, but I would say more often I'm shown examples to strive for. Sorry, that's probably not as juicy an answer as you were hoping for!

Q & A with Lyle Estill

From the back of the book: "Unflinchingly honest and compulsively readable, Small Stories, Big Changes provides an intimate look at the personal experience of being a pioneer in the sustainability movement, laying bare the emotional, spiritual and financial impact of a life lived in the service of change."

Lyle Estill is the president and co-founer of Piedmont Biofuels and the author of Industrial Evolution, Small is Possible, and Biodiesel Power. He has won numerous awards for his commitment to sustainability, outreach, community development, and leadership. We're thrilled to be hosting Mr. Estill in the eBar this Friday, November 8th at 7:00pm. Ben Minett fired off a few questions in advance of the reading.

Your book gathers together the stories of individuals you have been influenced by during your life championing environmental sustainability. What role has collaboration played in your success?

At Piedmont Biofuels we are in the energy business. As such we collaborate across a wide spectrum: policy makers, bureaucrats, oil companies, fleet managers, and individual coop members. I would say we collaborate or die.

What were Piedmont Biofuels' biggest obstacles to the public's perception of biofuel as an attractive alternative to petroleum?

The status quo can be hard to budge. Mechanics and engine manufacturers have been the most intractable for us, but we have managed to open the door just enough for our locally made, artisanal biodiesel to slip through into public acceptance.

You have been ahead of the curve in terms environmental sustainability. In fact, you have taken it into your own hands and made a life out of research, development, and implementation. Where was this passion nurtured? Where did you develop the skills to implement your various projects?

Our skills came from the school of hard knocks. We started in the backyard, and just figured stuff out. Passion is harder to identify. When something just makes sense, it is hard to abandon. And sometimes being told it will never work is a great motivator.