Random Facts
I’ve been getting all these requests for random facts about myself on facebook. Why am I acquiescing and doing your bidding? Cause I’m jet lagged and don’t yet have the brain capacity to do some real work. I could barely spell acquiescing. Hell, I could barely spell barely.

1. When I was a child my mother bought me two ducks as a present. They followed me all around the farm and they….loved me, I believe. After school one day, I came home and they were no longer in the yard….but in the freezer.
2. Once when I was a child I found a key with deer imprinted on it in the woods. I wore it on a chain around my neck and was convinced that I would make me run and jump like a deer. That key was the source of many contusions.
3. I used to bury my jewellery in a field near my house thinking that would make it more valuable. Problem was…I never remembered where I buried it. I miss the Avon snowflake necklace the most.
4. Certain colours of blue remind me of the sky.
5. I think George Clooney is creepy.
6. I’m 4 books behind on my new years resolution to read a book a week for a year.
7. I’ve watched several America’s Next Top Model marathons….and enjoyed them.
8. I once wrote a song called “Set Him On Fire and Watch Him Burn”….a love song.
9. I once wrote a song called “Last Conceited Mother Fucker”….a love song.
10. Since the wheat allergy, I sometimes dream about rolling around on a bed made of croissants.
11. I worked in catering after high school and had to wear a white uniform. I used to wear a black bra and panties to work just to piss off my boss.
12. I love socks.
13. I think most sweet foods are overrated.
14. I’ve been a vegetarian for years, but when I did eat meat it was mostly hot dogs and bologna.  Or the slurry of parts, as I liked to call them.
15. My favourite font is not comic sans.
16. I was arrested once and have always secretly wished that I had the mug shot to display. I think I’d want to put it as the centerpiece in one of those multiple picture display mattings.
17. I can be fooled most of the time.
18. I cannot function if underwhelmed or overwhelmed.
19. I’m content for the first time in my life.
20. My contentedness has nothing to do with what I do or don’t own, and everything to do with pizza.  I mean, friends.

image by skyseeker and licensed under creative commons.

So having a tour that was almost exclusively house concerts this year was a blast.  There’s nothing like getting to play to groups of under 40 each night, the connection you can achieve with your audience is astounding.  There’s a real conversational banter that opens up between you and your audience and it makes me realise how much I always hated playing club dates…and why I was always happier playing places like the Yellow Door and Ginglik.  Aside from that, getting to stay somewhere cool each night, rather than some overpriced rat trap with someone else’s hair on the sheets was amazing.  Aside from that, people letting me use their kitchens….personal tours of new cities….and just an all round feeling of welcoming into new/old groups of friends was stunning.  
Thanks to everyone! Here’s some great pics from the shows!

There are way more photos to post and lots more here if you’re interested.

USB Sticks

Fecking Airlines

Continuing Saga of Sonicbids

So enjoy the videos and as always, speaking for frogs and rutabagas everywhere, I’m Lobelia.  Good day.

This is a new song called The Sound of a Breaking Heart.  I started the looping out on mute….which is a dangerous thing..cause not only you can’t hear what it’s going to sound like…I can’t either!!!  Also, a nice example of what happens when you get an extra beat in the loop live.  You just go with it and point upwards.

This is a song called In, which I wrote for bass and voice when I was 19.  I’d never done it live as it needed to have tonnes of harmonies and what not to work on stage.  And only a short 249 years later Voila!  Modern technology!  

At the end of the show, it seems that both producers really liked the music, but one in particular didn’t like my stage presence at all. The self-deprecation was annoying to him and he felt that it just wasn’t what he needed for the show. (this is what I gathered after chatting with the other producer/filmmaker that stayed) To be fair, there is a difference in how I perform to a room full of mates (which this show certainly was, and how I perform on a large stage to hundreds (or thousands) of people whom I don’t know.

There’s certainly a lesson to be learned here. Music is the one thing in my life that I am confident about. So why do I feel the need to apologise for myself on stage if I make a mistake? Am I spending precious time internally focused when I should be spending time connecting with my audience? I do know one thing for sure; when I open up and talk about myself and explain what my songs mean to me, I sell a lot more CDs and people stay to chat after the show. If I can’t show the audience that I believe that I’m worth the six squids they just spent to see me, or the time they took to travel to the venue…do you think they’re going to think I am worth it?

The audience has no idea how long I’ve been writing songs, or busting my ass to make a living in this business and probably most of them don’t really care. They came out to be entertained…to a PERFORMANCE, and me being apologetic about dropping a D chord on the 2nd verse of Morgantown and Montreal isn’t nearly as interesting to them as me telling the story of what the song is about. About the last night I spent with my friend before he was in a horrible car accident, and the guilt associated with moving on with your life and having to leave people you love behind. How life moves on after you do and people who were once your whole world get hurt….people are born, people die, and you can’t stop any of it. A lot more interesting eh?

The truth is, I’m always going to be a little awkward on stage; I’m awkward in person. I’ve spent enough time in my life trying to force myself into roles that don’t fit…trying to be things I’m not. I’m not going to change everything I do based on the opinion of someone I don’t know who has seen me perform one time. But I can learn from the experience and keep in it mind in the future. The whole reason I perform is to share little snippets of my life. I’ve created little snow globes out of experiences and I shake ‘em all up once in a while for you to see. The next time I do this, I’ll try and tell you more stories about the snow, I promise.