Graventown

Whizbangers and swizzle sticks. Season two is really rocketing out of the mental Cape Canaveral of our mindspheres. I'm so thankful to have had some insanely talented guests so far and episode 4 (4 already?! DANG SON!) is NO different. But also different. Because yeah. We don't want to paint people with a broad brush here in Graventown. Broad brushes just leave more cleanup. Boy, I'...

Holy cow, my dudes. I have a real hot pocket of a cheesy saucy episode in store for you today.  Matt Mays is a Canadian indie rock singer-songwriter and was the lead singer of Matt Mays & El Torpedo  (a rock music group based in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, and New York City). Previously, Mays was a member of the Canadian indie band The Guthries and was born in Hamilton, Ontario, but grew up in Nov...

Graventowner Beancounters: get off the abacus and on to the graven bus. Welcome back for another episode of Season Two to warm your intellectual biscuits. If you were anything like me, you spent a lot of the 80's and 90's glued to a screen and enthralled in the vast array of television and cinematic gold that helped us all grow up. The legendary Hollywood actor Keith Coogan played some m...

Graventowners: welcome here - wherever here is. Here we freaking are. Season two. I even have a new theme song, for gosh sakes. So kick back, grab a muffin or a meringue and let me put your thought train back on the rusty rails. I have a sizzler of a second season in store for you and I'm so happy to kick things off with a serious kazam whizbang from the heavens of hilarious hounds with Janel...

Folks - have I got a big bang of a beautiful Graventown season-one-ender for you. Originally from Marin County, California, Seth Morris is a comedic wizard who steals every scene that you’ve seen him in. Morris started a career in comedy after moving to New York City, performing at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre (UCB) as an improviser and sketch comedian, and became the first staff writer fo...

It's been one hot RHCP minute, my pals. This summer has been redonkulously busy for shows and I've finally had a few minutes to reflect on some/all of it. I hope you're thriving wherever you are. Special thanks to the incredibly talented and legendary Chris Walken who popped by to say a few words on the G-Town pod. JULY 16 - Graven In Graventown Nepean, ON (Email gravencanada@gmail...

Friends - it's been a red hot chili pepper minute since I've been on here. I sort of wanted to talk openly and freely, with little context or subtext, about some heaviness that's been on my mind lately. The recording and undertaking of Simple Complex (my newest album) took up a lot of psychological weight and I'm just sort of realizing that now. I wanted to unpack how I've...

Holy crow: was it ever lovely to converse and catch up with my old touring pal and JUNO nominated mega-talent Saskatchewanian music magician Megan Nash. Throughout their self-produced upcoming album Soft Focus Futures, Megan Nash mines the death of her marriage for clues that could decode its demise and set her on a path toward some sort of stability in self. In the process, they achieve a distill...

Today in Graventown, I had the chance to chat with a fellow CBC alumni and someone I would run into frequently in my journalism days. Waubgeshig Rice is an Anishinaabe writer and journalist from the Wasauksing First Nation near Parry Sound , Ontario , in Canada and released his amazingly successful post-apocalyptic novel “Moon of the Crusted Snow” in 2018. Rice has been recognized for his work thr...

In the Graventown studio today, I had the chance to talk with a high energy pal and hip-hop performer and actor who I met in the middle of a prairie field in Manitoba in 2016; Bubba B the MC. We will definitely need a part 2 because we could have talked for hours. Bubba wears many hats and performs musically under the name Bubba B the MC and always offers a positive rhyme-based message and has per...

Welcome back to the Graventown tree, acorns! Today on the show I was lucky and grateful to speak with Caroline Marie Brooks. Caroline Marie Brooks is a musical  storyteller, and her new record "Everything at the Same Time" (produced by Jim Bryson) is the first solo outing from ⅓ of the Canadian harmony trio Good Lovelies. Brooks walks the listener through a wall of stories, taking moment...

Welcome back pals. Today on the G-town pod, it was lovely to chat with someone who comes from a long line of lovely Canadian musical lineage: Devin Cuddy. Devin has been noted as a versatile music maker who does a lively interpretation of New Orleans ragtime and blues but in his very own way, and who also loves to get rockin' and ramblin' with some Country-Crunchy highway songs. His late...

Graventowners: It's been a minute since I've been in it. How are you? I have recovered from a sickness and I have a new album out in the ether called "Simple Complex" and I hope you go give it a listen. It's making some nice small waves! This was a just a re-entry podcast for me to warm up the pipes and fire up the mics and get out some words that have felt pent up for a w...

Welcome back, Graventowners. I hope you're feeling less burdened as we push on through the Pandy and make our way towards...something? Today on the podcast, I was blessed and thankful to talk with multi-ECMA and Nova Scotia Music Award winner Christina Martin. They say the mark of fine songwriting is when a song feels like an old favourite on the first listen. With once Floridian and Texan tu...

Episode 15! Holy mother of pearl; who'd ever thunk it? Thank you for being a part of this fun, zany, welcoming little vibrant community called Graventown. As a very special guest for this monumental episode, I was very lucky to connect with Danny Michel. The only good thing about not shopping in record stores anymore is you won’t have to figure out what genre to look for Danny under. If that...

In this episode, I had the chance to have a Graventown chat with Liz Pomeroy who is known musically as 0Stella. 0Stella [oh-Stella] is the solo project of Edmonton-based, Irish-Canadian artist Liz Pomeroy. Ruthlessly authentic alt-rock blends with traditional Irish fiddle and bodhrán to create catchy pop melodies with oft-politically charged lyrics drenched in irony and rebelliousness. Whether sin...

Happy mid-January, Graventowners. For some of us, this is the hardest time of year - when the promise of the new year and those magical drunken resolutions we make for ourselves hit the frozen ground of reality. In my life, and through my limited research of growth, the topic of self-love comes up again and again so I wanted to dive into that a bit. There's an even an easter egg cover song at...

Happy January, pals. Onward we roll. I hope you're staying as safe and as warm as you can. On this episode, I was thankful to have some laughs and a lovely conversation with my friend and talented Torontonian singer-songwriter, actor and filmmaker Simeon Ross. Simeon Ross began theatre training at the age of fourteen, attending Winnipeg’s Prairie Theatre Exchange, which lead to various local...

Pals - welcome back to another Graventown gold nugget. Today, I felt very personal, raw and insular and wanted to be open with y'all about a few things bothering me and nagging at the craw of my psyche. I wanted to talk about love and forgiveness. I hope it helps you see out your window a little differently, and get a bit unstuck and maybe even help you feel hopeful for good things to come. C...

On this epic episode number 10 (Woot woot!), I was able to have a very epic guest in the form of Colorado Springs spiritual songmaker and vocal angelic demigod Xanthe Alexis. Whether she’s guiding patients to recovery as a trauma therapist or transporting audiences to transcendence as an acclaimed indie artist, Xanthe Alexis has devoted her life to healing others, and her extraordinary new album,...

In this 9th and mystical episode of the Graventown pod, I had the chance to talk with song-forger and tune-wielder and long-time pal Grant Davidson who is known musically as Slow Leaves. Slow Leaves is Winnipeg songwriter Grant Davidson. His 2020 record, Shelf Life (working title), marks his third studio album under the moniker Slow Leaves. With a laid-back crooner’s lilt and nylon string guitar,...

Fun to be back in the Graventown Podcast command centre - and I was lucky enough to catch up with a singer songwriter who is literally always on the international road; Eamon McGrath. Eamon McGrath is a Canadian musician and writer from Edmonton, Alberta and is currently based in Toronto, Ontario. On his own, his raw live performances are most often folk-oriented, where McGrath plays songs from hi...

Friends - it's been a minute! But I'm back at the podcast helm to enliven your minds with a few red-hot-and-ready musician interviews in the magical hopper, and I can't wait to share them with you. I had the chance to chat with Skye Wallace a few nights after I saw her and her magical band perform a stellar show at the Bronson Centre in Ottawa. Skye Wallace is what happens when a tr...

Graventowners: It's been a minute! I've been busy as a bee since returning back from recording my new album "Simple Complex" in Halifax  with Joel Plaskett and Charles Austin and friends, but I've got a few new episodes in the hopper. This was one that I recorded as my "Journey's End" reflection in the HFX airport. I talked a lot about the essence of making...

In this episode that I uploaded in the Ottawa airport, I had to chance to chat with my pal - Winnipeg producer and musician Rusty Matyas. Rusty Matyas is a producer and multi-instrumentalist based in Winnipeg, Manitoba with over 25 years of experience in the Canadian music scene. He's been a member of numerous successful acts including the Weakerthans, the Waking Eyes, Imaginary Cities, and T...