This Friday I’ll be releasing ‘Pickles Galore’, the first single from my album ‘Rose Ravine’.
I have been holding these songs a little too close to my chest for a little too long. The last year has taught me that the people who need to hear this music aren’t out there somewhere in a hypothetical space, they’re all known to me personally somehow, and it is time they had an easy way to listen to my little musings.
The first scene in Ernest Buckler’s The Mountain and the Valley was a particular source of inspiration for ‘Pickles Galore’. The verses run like a slideshow of jumbled memories: a photograph of my mother in the garden; the cover of John Baldry’s ‘It Ain’t Easy’; the class picture from 1995.
I lived in Six Mile Brook, Nova Scotia for the first fifteen years of my life, and in my mind forever. I see the tree line just as it always was. I could still see Rover the dog where he used to lay years after he died. In elementary school it was the same tight-knit class day in, day out. We lost one to cancer in grade four, another in an accident in grade nine. Time has left scars on the landscape, the people, on memory itself: “Some have gone home; some are still far away.” Often it seems to me that those who have died aren’t nearly as far away as those of us that are left: a cloud of witnesses that have marked my life forever, and whose examples give me hope and fortitude for a radically unrecognizable future.
Thanks to everyone who has borne me up over the years, all the great players that made these sessions happen: Galen Pelley, Devon Henderson, Bruce Mackinnon, Michael Eckert, and especially Aaron Comeau. Thanks to the Toronto Arts Council!
The final product will feature some spectacular art by Tash Harris. For now, I’ll be putting a few images of Six Mile Brook out there to get everyone in the mood. Veronica and I took these pictures while we were there through the pandemic, and these are some of my favourite views in the world.
Thomas McCallum 