The Thaw Before The Spring

Summerspeed: July 31, 2017

Narcissism will be the end of Donald Trump.

posted by Matt McKechnie @ 8:26 PM Comments: 1

Summerspeed: July 30, 2017

Baseball is summer. It will always be.

posted by Matt McKechnie @ 8:25 PM Comments: 0

Summerspeed: July 29, 2017

Friends arrived. Montrealians. Kids. 7 and 6. Boy and girl. Best friend and his wife. Been having an amazing time.

Best weather weekend of the summer.

Went to wading pool in my neighbourhood drinking a blueberry beer.

Trippin' the life fantastico.

Captain Hill.

posted by Matt McKechnie @ 12:13 PM Comments: 0

Summerspeed: July 28, 2017

Long work day, and bad news from a potential employer seasoned with a semi-bright dusting of sweet joy through a newspaper interview about my music.

Moving my laptop around at 1390. Common occurrence. Best weather of the summer is yet to come. August looks crazy on paper and will be in reality.

Yipes.

posted by Matt McKechnie @ 12:16 PM Comments: 0

Summerspeed: July 27, 2017

Calibrese.

That is all.

posted by Matt McKechnie @ 12:18 PM Comments: 0

Summerspeed: July 26, 2017

Whatever happened to Rick Moranis?

posted by Matt McKechnie @ 12:19 PM Comments: 0

Summerspeed: July 25, 2017

My brother is a lot like Will Hunting.

posted by Matt McKechnie @ 8:25 PM Comments: 0

Summerspeed: July 24, 2017

Klingon Kingdom.

posted by Matt McKechnie @ 12:22 PM Comments: 0

Summerspeed: July 23, 2017

Leaving the lake is always hard. My baby and wife keep changing - my baby moreso than my wife.

But the reunion is always sweet.

posted by Matt McKechnie @ 12:21 PM Comments: 0

Summerspeed: July 22, 2017

Summer speeds past. Gas gets passed through the airwaves of yesteryear.

My head peels layers on sunburnt skin into my receding hair.

Nobody wants to pet the bear.

posted by Matt McKechnie @ 12:23 PM Comments: 0

Summerspeed: July 21, 2017

One time, I went to something called a cell group at Allison Mahoney's house. It was early in the morning and outdoors. People drank coffee in metal mugs.

People cried when they prayed.

I think that's where I first came up with the idea for the song called End Of The Day.

posted by Matt McKechnie @ 8:24 PM Comments: 0

Summerspeed: July 20, 2017

This song reeks of old summers, dandelion fluff, crusted yellow grass and street stink.

The memories rattle by like empty tin cans in the alleys of your past.

Urchins of song - methuselahs of the moment.

I've been spinning it to infinity.

posted by Matt McKechnie @ 6:12 PM Comments: 0

Summerspeed: July 19, 2017

Change the locks, change your socks.
Don't be a friend to the man sellin' hamhocks.
Repeal to the wonder in your lungs.
Repeat every beautiful song that you've sung.
Give it a taste and let it wash your face
and stop runnin' and just walk in the human race.

posted by Matt McKechnie @ 6:06 PM Comments: 0

Summerspeed: July 18, 2017

The days speed by too fast.
Mirrors in a splintered memory glass.
Highways break into hounddogs callin'
from longings gone and blacktop ballin'
make it last - do what you can to be better.
wear it out like the old threads of the sweater.

get comfortable in your shoes.
feel the dirty streetwater flow and ooze.

posted by Matt McKechnie @ 6:01 PM Comments: 0

Summerspeed: July 17, 2017

Another summer day - into the fray.
Lecture life.
Listener love.
Make it all slow down.

posted by Matt McKechnie @ 5:51 PM Comments: 0

Summerspeed: July 16, 2017 (Tom Petty)

Some nights, you get the table scraps.

Other nights, you get to sit at the foot of the masters and soak in inspiring rays of light. My friend Matty Foreman won tickets from his local watering hole to see Tom Petty at our local, massive scale festival, and immediately, he thought of me as a co-rider on the journey.

We were a ways back from the packed stage, in the lofty Coors Light Chill Zone (or whatever the fuck it was called), but it was a beautiful night. I guess when you get really rock and roll famous, you can play hits for an hour and a half, and that's exactly what he and the Heartbreakers did. Walls. Won't Back Down. American Girl. Wildflowers. Free Fallin. Learning to Fly.

All of the fixin's. It was downhome goodness.

We drank it in, walked home and grabbed a nightcap at a packed Pubwells, and parted ways into the half-cloudy, half-starry Cap City night.

posted by Matt McKechnie @ 5:35 PM Comments: 0

Summerspeed: July 15, 2017

Dinner at the folks. Local yokes.
Cloudy gray. Summer stay.

posted by Matt McKechnie @ 5:09 PM Comments: 0

Summerspeed: July 14, 2017 - Weekend Bachelor

I'm out for a stroll, cats.

My lover and loved daughter and dog are not around this weekend, so I shall see what trouble I will get into (for a few nickels). Honestly, I'm looking forward to doing very little. It's funny how age does that to you. In your teens/twenties, you thought 'I can't wait for summer so I can DO EVERYTHING".

Now, a free pocket of time is a chance to clean, do laundry, watch some dumb comedy videos and work on some songwriting.

Hardy har, chaps. I'm a city boy. Let's grab some noodles and broth.

Catch me on the flapjack stack.

Hidy-ho! Friday-go!

posted by Matt McKechnie @ 1:44 PM Comments: 0

Summerspeed: July 13, 2017

posted by Matt McKechnie @ 1:40 PM Comments: 0

Summerspeed: July 12, 2017

I've been thinking about Rickles. It's hard to think of a comparable guy who could make the most composed people absolutely lose their shit with laughter. He deconstructed. He made the serious much less serious.

It makes me think about art. Why is art always so goddamn serious? Does it need to be? Don't we find the greatest moments of enjoyment from his bullshit ball of mud when we lose ourselves in a gut-tightening hot minute of whimsy? I think we do.

There are way too many people with no avenues for their anger. Racism is real. Social disparity is real. Hunger is real. Unemployment is real. Disgusting cowardly acts of murder are real. We all know that.

But why do we always try to fight the serious with more seriousness?

The sky is a thin-veiled grey-white today. I climbed the stairs at work and did push ups. I'm looking forward to a night in with Jillian and Sloan. She's calling.

I like these blog posts. It's a new type of brevity-writing, and it's less flowery for me. But a little more muddy and gutty.

Onward.

posted by Matt McKechnie @ 1:52 PM Comments: 0

Summerspeed: July 11, 2017

Here's Joel playing his first version of an album song. I saw him play this live at the Ale House in Kingston (now defunct) on September 30, 1999. I was there with Brendan Lorimer. Twas great and a truly ear-bleeding evening once the band kicked in.

The haze of strange dark summer clouds still pervade the skies of the Cap City corridor. This is actually yesterday's post that I'm writing today.

I walked to Lone Star for lunch and seriously enjoyed the hell out of a fish taco and some free salsa and chips. God. It tasted like pure heaven. I was ravenous.

After dinner, my old pal Mark Richardson came over and met Jillian and Sloan. That was a real treat. Mark and I were born on the same day in the same hospital. We don't always stay in touch, but when we do connect, we have good in-depth discussions. It's good. I wish him well on his new adventures to Chile with his family of three!! Cameron, Jack and Bea(trice). Wow. I can't imagine having more than one - let alone carting them across the continent! Mark and I almost got hit by a taxi when we walked to his car. Fucking crazy drivers.

It was a hot sleep after a few craft brew. And that was that.

posted by Matt McKechnie @ 1:43 PM Comments: 0

Summerspeed: July 10, 2017

It's a Monday. It's been weirdly dark and cloudy all day with a front hanging over the city. Had a Wild Wing salad with my dad, and pickled willy's. The parking in our hood has been nuts because of Bluesfest. This is a lull time for shows, so I'm hoping a daily entry will slow down the summer.

"I don't want to become everything I despise" - Rivers Cuomo.

Pretty basic day. Went for a coffee run with my dad and we stuck behind a losery Honda CRV driver who had a bumper sticker that said 'if you're going to ride my ass, at least pull my hair'. I'm blessed to have a workspace with my dad where I can promote and work on different projects. I need to do more social media for my dad, though.

Gonna hit up farm boy and a bra store with J and S tonight. BIG party!

Looking forward to working on some songs later this week. I need to get a pickup put in my Sigma, and to have that classical in my folks basement set up.

Sun might be coming out. Weezer's 'Everything Will Be Alright In The End' is a work of art.

Also - I think I might really like Mac Demarco.

posted by Matt McKechnie @ 1:54 PM Comments: 0

Kenny Rogers Summer-Speed

"We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing."
-Charles Bukowski


I feel a need. The words have to come and the busy outside world needs to hear my inside thoughts. Even if they die on the doorstep of introspection - they will die in the daylight. Too often I see the silence of good and creative friends as their lives dwindle by. They speak of projects that stay in the shed and barely get breathed on. They talk of should haves and would haves, but the worldstorm rumbles and crashes on, and ruthlessly waits for no one. It breaks hearts and necks, simultaneously.

Soon, seasons blend together and patches of years go by and nothing of consequence happens. Another day rockets by and another sleep closes the eyes of our intentions. Morning cracks and we are instantly rushed. We grow older and move into new stratospheres of age groupings. We calculate our chances. Our days. Our hours. Our seconds.

Our potential.

And yet, in the galaxies of our lost friends and broken relationships, people pay these thoughts no mind. They march onward in bare feet towards the dark, silent woods of the end. They make no booms - they sound no barbaric yawps. They live in their suburbs, and they water their lawns of sober saltless dinners.

The summer is speeding by with an epic Fox comet-tail style; it's a trend that is much talked about in the hot street-steam of the moment but will be long since forgotten upon the slow birth of winter.

Much like our lives.

My life and daily outlook has changed drastically in the past year and a half. I wasn't planning to venture down the road of parenthood when it happened. My gorgeous life partner and I weren't in a mode of hatching and planning and bullet-journalling where and when and how we would conceive a child. But it happened. The pregnancy happened. The birth happened. The hard late December and almost all of Janaury in a hospital happened. And now, she is here - with us. It's hard to picture life before this precious seed of a flowery shrub of a human came into the frame.

A few weeks back, I got to go see Kenny Rogers light up the Jazzfest stage with my dad. Kenny Fucking Rogers. The Gambler. It was a frozen moment in time for me, as my 71 year old dad and my 40 year old self stood watching a gold-voiced, cane-walking man whose vinyl releases warmed the floorboards and walls of our house for eons of time. My dad, who sang a lot in church, would sing Kenny's songs while the records played and he had most of the lyrics down to a T. I wasn't expecting to be as affected as I was, but both of us stood in a sunset Confed Hill park in sheer, buttery enjoyment of a man who still took the time to talk to audience members, tell jokes about Mick Jagger being '102 years old' and 'that damned Dolly Parton', and sarcastically push governmental concert goers to get a bit more animated and loose in their singing and involvement. For a 78 year old, Kenny sure had all of the fixins of a true Southern Gentleman who had novels of stories to tell, and buckets of trial-by-fire wisdom to share, and he can still sing decently - and to hear how his dream of music began by being inspired by the legendary Ray Charles.

The whole night was a reminder - a broken stinger in the skin of time. We are all moving on. The ports of past experience float away in our rearview as we ship off to new and foreboding and exciting destinations.

And it left me feeling hopeful - in the sense that we don't need a ton of time to make a mark. Everyone thinks about building a legacy. A gold watch. A degree. An RRSP. A company. An invention. But even in opening the door of a coffee shop for a sullen stranger, couldn't we make enough difference in that moment to make a ripple in the ponds of love and light?

I want to keep building. I want to keep opening doors. I want to help those around me.

I'm here to listen, and gather, and to walk beside you.

posted by Matt McKechnie @ 1:33 PM Comments: 0