Canadia Beats

Life, eh? You’d have a assume I’ve been busy with all kinds of things that aren’t your typical Canadia like making movies, looking at comic books and drinking. And this is all true. But despite the fact that I always seem to answer “what have you been up to lately?” with “um, working and… not working,” I have in fact been making an EP.

If you follow my Twitter at all you’ll see I’ve been mumbling about recording for the last month, but then I’m always mumbling about recording. But it goes like this: by the end of June I will have tracked the follow up to One Dog Clapping. There will be a new Canadia EP.

Wait, hold on, it’s July already. So make that some time in July. The plan I wrote on my wall says June, but I used pen and can’t rub it out.

The EP has no name yet, is mostly acoustic in nature, and will have six tracks. There are three brand new songs, and three that have been kicking around in the live set for a while. Although I changed them, so let’s act like they’re new and not get all “I liked your old stuff.” If you liked my old stuff I would have more wine. That is science.

Progress so far: two songs completely tracked, one song almost completely tracked, and three songs totally started. I’m joined on the recordings by new white MacBook Maggie Williams, who is the most helpful member of Canadia since Eunice Brance Branca. She’s basically doing all the work.

My children need wine.

On Friday, just as I was about to watch the intro to The Littlest Hobo my laptop seized up. No worries, I figured, my trusty iBook G4 had been through a few turns before, nothing it couldn’t survive. So I put it in my bag and figured I’d deal with it when I got home.

But it turned out I was too late.

As if by heart attack, or attack by germs and other microbes, my Pants had been taken away from me. Serious hardware malfunction. No backs.

Which kind of left me in an awkward position, what with Pants being the only other member of Canadia, and us going on tour in a week and a half. He was in charge of the bulk of the music, and he was dead.

I swear to you within twelve hours everything was okay, in the form of one Ed Musik. This handsome devil just happened to be in Auckland, which is not normal. He also just happened to have an iBook G4 with him, same model as Pants. He also offered to lend it to me for the duration of the tour.

What a champion. Am I wrong?

So before anyone even knew a thing Ed Musik had saved my soy rashers. Someone buy that guy a beer, and I’ll see you on the road.