Like many other people, local musician (and City Council member) James Gordon has been trying to figure out to keep his business going during this plague time. Unable to actually do any touring, he's written a book/album about the decline of the bar band circuit. In the process, he's attempted to come up with something of a prescription for a new world.
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The book starts out by introducing a folkie band by the name of "Miles Gerber and the Shit Disturbers". This group consists of the main singer/song writer/guitarist Miles Gerber, bass and fiddle player Dougie, the Drummer, the van they travel in (Nelly-Belle), and, a young woman they literally picked-up off the side of the road who goes by the letters "MG". The plot progresses by illustrating how much the bar circuit has declined since the "good old days".
Haunting this depressing state of affairs is Mile's decline---both professionally and personally---after the other half of his original, semi-successful band "Miles and Myles", left him under mysterious circumstance. His wife and the band's lead singer, Maddie Myles, unexpectedly left him one day never to be seen again. He never got over the loss, and it left him in a tailspin.
Once MG arrives, however, things take a bit of an upswing. First off, MG announces that her initials stand for "Merchandise Girl" and shows how the Shit Disturbers can augment their meager income by selling t-shirts and downloading songs off the Web. Eventually, she takes over the role of agent---which she proves very good at, even to the point of organizing a show at a major bar in downtown Toronto---which is live-streamed.
The artistic basis of this mini-renaissance is Miles' connection to a member of his audience who shares with him the story of the decline and fall of his family's sheep ranch. This leads him to write a song about this personal tragedy, which he promises to sing at the next venue. When the band gets there to set up, they find that the ex-rancher is in the audience and pleased as punch that he has been heard.
This leads to other stories from audience members, which leads to other songs, which eventually results in a caravan of folks following the Shit Disturbers across the Prairies and eventually to Manitoulin Island where an impromptu "Woodstock" coalesces into the "Ark of the Oven Mitt", which you'll have to read the book to understand. ;-)
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The book has it's moments, but the real appeal is the music. When you open it you are confronted with a QR code which you can scan with your phone or tablet. It takes you to a BandCamp page that allows you to stream or download the songs.
James Gordon has a real knack for writing songs that encapsulate someone else's emotional point of view. Consider, if you will, the following example. Here're the lyrics from one of them.
James Gordon, looking mysterious .
Angus Maclean
On that awful day, they took my license away
Might as well have taken me out back and shot me
Bit by bit they steal, everything that makes me feel
Like a man, time has tracked me down and caught me.
Well the auctioneer, he's on his way here
To take everything except my pain
What am I bid, how much to get rid
Of one old man named Angus Maclean
Their gonna take me away, to that old folk's place
Put me in a hog pen to die in
And when they try to say, Angus it'll be OK
I still got enough upstairs to know they're lying
Well the auctioneer, he's on his way here
To take everything except my pain
What am I bid, how much to get rid
Of one old man named Angus Maclean
You can't separate the land, from an old farmin' man
We're made of the same damn dirt
Might as well auction me, then maybe we'd
Know what an antique like me was worth
One more trip into town, on this old David Brown,
Don't need no license for that
Then we'll sit in the barn, till they auction off this farm
And we're sold off together for scrap
And here's the performed song as a YouTube clip.
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The way to understand this book is to recognize that James Gordon is an old-fashioned balladeer. By this I mean that he writes small, emotional songs that explain a specific human situation.
This is an old tradition that goes back long ago. In the British tradition, balladeers were people who wrote songs and travelled from town to town sharing them with people who were gathered in pubs or markets. When cheap printing and increased literacy came along, songs were often printed on "chap books" so they could be shared more widely than a individual balladeer could travel.
In a world without newspapers---or any other formal source of information---the ballads a person would hear in a tavern would often be their only source of information about significant or just plain interesting news from the wider world outside the village.
For example, here's a ballad from 1759 about the death of General Wolfe during The Battle of the Plains of Abraham.
First the lyrics:
Bold General Wolfe
On Monday evening as we set sail
The wind did blow a most pleasant gale
For to fight the French it was our intent
Through smoke and fire, Through smoke and fire
And it was a dark and a gloomy nightNow the French was landed on the mountains high
And we poor hearts in the valley lie
Never mind my lads, General Wolfe did say
Brave lads of honour, brave lads of honour
Old England shall win the day
The very first broadside we gave to them
We killed seven hundred and fifty men
Well done my lads, General Wolfe did say
Brave lads of honour, brave lads of honour
Old England shall win the day
The very first broadside they gave to us
They wounded our general in his right breast
Then out of his breast living blood did flow
Like any fountain, like any fountain
Till all us men were filled with woeHere's a hundred guineas all in bright gold
Take it and part it, for my blood runs cold
And use your soldiers as you did before
Your soldiers own, your soldiers own
And they will fight for evermoreAnd when to England you do return
Tell my friends that I am dead and gone
Pray tell my tender old mother dear
That I am dead O, that I am dead O
And I shall never see her no more
And now the performance:
Gordon's ballad Angus Maclean is much the same thing, only it isn't about the conquest of French Quebec by the British Army, but rather the decline of the family farm. That's what The Ark of the Oven Mitt is about, the personal impact that our changing world is having on individual people. If Gordon lived at the time of the enclosures, he'd be singing about people being kicked off their village lands. At the time of the potato famine, he'd have been singing about starving while shiploads of Irish wheat were being shipped to England. And if he currently lived in Ukraine, he'd be singing about training as a guerrilla to defend his home while Russian troops concentrate at the boarder.
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As a matter of fact, James has written another ballad recently which has become something of a hit (ie: downloads alas, not sold recordings). Ironically, it's about a different sort of convoy than the one described in The Oven Mitt. It's not composed of people who lost their livelihoods because of the new economy, but rather fools who threw away their employment because they were gulled into thinking that a life-saving vaccine is a plot by reptiles from outer space/Bill Gates/blood-drinking American politicians/whatever.
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Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!
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