I Love My Job
Or, how a career in music is a front for my true passion: connecting with people.
It’s hard to describe the feeling of stepping out on stage last week during the Halifax Jazz Festival and being greeted by an audience full of (mostly) strangers, welcoming me as if I have returned home, as if we are family.
I lived for 6 years in Halifax in my twenties, it’s where I came of age as a professional musician, along with contemporaries Jenn Grant, Rose Cousins, David Myles, Old Man Luedecke, and Wintersleep, and it’s a place that I have often referred to as my musical “home."
This trip was especially meaningful for me, as I brought along my 8-year-old daughter Grace as a tour buddy so that she could spend time with some of my dearest friends, in a city very near to my heart but sadly far from our family home in Vancouver.
We swam in the lake with my sweet friends Jenn Grant and Daniel Ledwell and their two young boys, ate pancakes with Rose Cousins, enjoyed a sidewalk chat with my favourite podcaster and Substack writer Lindsay Cameron Wilson, and dined with my old Queens University roommate Liz, who was in town attending a conference about criminal law.
But of course the primary reason for being in Halifax was to play the Jazz Festival.
After all these years, there is something that I find very comforting in moving through the choreography of putting on a show. From the moment I roll into a venue, I soak up the feel of the space, meet the crew, hug the band as they arrive, and we all set about our respective tasks to collectively get ourselves to showtime, a kind of ritual.
The crew this evening was on point, the band was on fire, and the audience was a delight. Sometimes I look out at all the faces and just wonder about them, and how they came to be there. Maybe I fall a little bit in love with them, some more than others. I always love the people sitting in the front row the best, but then I pick and choose other individuals to beam extra love out to. The ones that look kind of sad, or old, or especially delighted or moved. Couples holding hands, the woman in a wheelchair, the two twenty-something young guys who somehow ended up there, the man who reminds me of my Dad, the woman with the frizzy hair, the ones who speak to me or yell to me, the ones who clap or beam when I play the first few notes of a song they recognize (or love)… I beam love and gratitude back to them for being there. I try really hard for them. I also try hard not to try too hard, to just be, to be in communion with these people. To just sing, to just feel, to just be in a room together for a spell, under a spell, to trust in the magical alchemy of the band playing together, the crew standing by on lights, sound, the ancient ritual of performance, the temporal nature of it. The knowledge that the show will be a memory by the time we all go to bed.
The next night I had the chance to see Emmylou Harris play the Main Stage at the Festival, and delighted being in the audience myself, a member of a spontaneous community pulled together by our love and connection to this legendary artist. I observed moments of tenderness between friends, laughter and cheers in the bar lineup, strangers simply sharing space. Although it wasn’t held in a church, the concert had a feeling of communion, and Red Dirt Girl was our hymn. Emmylou shared a song that she wrote for for her friend, the late Kate McGarrigle with whom she came up in the music business. It really moved me, and the next morning I texted my friends Rose and Jenn and thanked them again for this incredible bond that we share as musicians and friends moving through the stages of our careers together.
When the time comes, THIS is the song I want played at my funeral.
Yesterday, a professional working musician that I follow posted to social media an earnest call out to her musician friends: Are any of you actually happy? I was intrigued by the responses. Many of them were disgruntled, a few remained hopeful. I didn’t chime in. Believe me, I can and DO commiserate often with my close musical friends, but at the end of the day I am a pretty happy musician. I make a living, but more importantly I’ve also made a life. I get to have these connections with people, some that last the length of a song and others that last a lifetime. I am grateful.
A few things I’m also loving lately:
ps. A few more upcoming summer dates in Desolation Sound, The Kaslo Jazz Fest Etc. on the August long weekend, an appearance at the Sunshine Coast Writer’s Fest August 18th, Aug 24th in Gravenhurst, ON and a show with my brother Matthew Barber in Prince Edward County August 30th!
That Miranda July book is ASTONISHING
I was listening to All Fours, the audio version, as I walked to your show. What a wild rich night it was! 🤭🤩😍 loved our sidewalk chat, next time we’ll debrief the book.