Categories
News Podcast

Ep. #161: Siskiyou

Siskiyou is the musical moniker of Colin Huebert, a gifted and evocative songwriter who lives in British Columbia. With his previous two albums, Huebert emerged as a strikingly emotive voice in subversive folk music, unafraid to house pretty melodies and hopeful lyrical notions in somewhat surreal and unusual musical packages. The new Siskiyou album is somehow more forceful than any before it; it was borne of physical pain and mental anguish and that shapes one of the most haunting and riveting albums of the year. Siskiyou’s latest record is called Nervous, it’s out now via Constellation Records, and here Colin and I discuss east Vancouver, Nardwuar the Human Serviette and the Tomahawk Restaurant, Colin’s terrible ordeal with a rare hearing and ear disorder, Ten Year Drought and Great Lake Swimmers and Ed Video, leaving Toronto and Great Lake Swimmers, Sandro Perri, mandarin oranges, tension and playing live, playing the drums, hi-fi production, feeling haunted, feeling fear, blaming yourself, funny lyrics and song titles, doubt and intention, explosions and the funniest moment on Nervous, scoring The Happy Film by Stefan Sagmeister, moving back to Ontario, the song “Wasted Genius,” the Smiths, We all used to listen to the Flaming Lips, and that was it.

Related links: siskiyouband.com cstrecords.com vishkhanna.com

Siskiyou2014_AWaber-KKeir_595x400

Listen, subscribe, rate/review on iTunes.

Categories
News Podcast

Ep. #130: Elisabeth de Mariaffi

Elisabeth de Mariaffi is a gifted writer and poet who lives in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Her 2012 short story collection How to Get Along with Women is extraordinarily moving, emotionally jarring, texturally precise, and it was longlisted for the 2013 Giller Prize with good reason. Of her work, author Michael Winter once astutely said, “She’s alive to what disturbs, and she’s dead to cliche.” Elisabeth’s work has been featured in prominent periodicals and her story “Kiss Me Like I’m The Last Man On Earth” was nominated for a 2013 National Magazine Award. She is also one of the founders of Toronto Poetry Vendors, a small press that sells single poems by established Canadian poets through toonie vending machines. De Mariaffi has a new novel coming out this January via HarperCollins Canada called The Devil You Know and she’s appearing at the Eden Mills Writers’ Festival on Sunday Sept. 14. Here, she and I talk about the weather in St. John’s, living between Toronto and Guelph and Newfoundland, meeting St. John’s current poet laureate George Murray, Book Ninja, working for an airline during a long distance relationship, just married, working at Ed Video Media Arts Centre and learning about video editing, writing poetry under the tutelage of Dionne Brand and short stories with Michael Winter, flying together, finding the time and resources to write the stories in How To Get Along With Women, short stories versus long stories, travelling to Hungary a lot as a kid, learning several languages, politics and perception and the tangible impact of the Cold War, how I thought How To Get Along With Women would be funny but it was actually very heavy, the politics of our day-to-day existence, relationships and power dynamics, fear, the whole literary prize nomination deal, writing a novel while the iron was hot, Invisible Publishing, working at Breakwater Books, having four kids and jobs as writers, NO, her new novel The Devil You Know and its relation to fear, February 1993 in the weeks that Paul Bernardo was being pursued by police, darkness, writing more short stories or another novel, sending wedding thank yous, the future, and then the end.

Related links: invisiblepublishing.com twitter.com/ElisabethdeM edenmillswritersfestival.ca

mariaffi2

Listen, subscribe, rate/review on iTunes.