Strange Things Done in the Midnight Sun

Tall Tales from Uninhabitable Canada

I’m from Saskatchewan, Canada. I have—and always have had—a complicated relationship with my home, and this is the subject of an upcoming album and book I am working on. I never intend to denigrate this lovely little place stashed away on the Canadian prairie; I am haunted by it, and I wish everyone I knew could have a piece of being raised there. It’s special—maybe like every home is, but I don’t think that’s only it. And thus it finds its way relentlessly and belligerently into my work.

As I said on Instagram a long while back, referring both to my wandering and fundamental, unchanging orientation to home:

Austrian streets can’t pack their ancient cobblestone over the gravel roads. California heat can’t burn out the inner winter. The lights of London and Paris have not managed to eclipse this gentle memory of sundown over the quietly barren fields.

But with all that said, when I was last home in the thick of a brutal January, waiting for the heat to kick in as I drove on ice-covered roads, I muttered to myself, “This place is uninhabitable.”

We had hit - 4o that morning.

I want a re-do of this for better audio, but at this point, the rate of projects and creative ideas that stack up compared to my ability to do them varies by an order of magnitude. So here is “The Cremation of Sam McGee” by Robert W. Service—one of the greatest of tall tales, which marvellously captures the dark humour and feel of my cutting, cold North.