I guess I’ve neglected my blog for a little while… but I have a really good excuse - I’ve been busy!

Seriously, lots of stuff has happened since my last post.  Yesterday, CBC Radio 1 played my song “Shame on Me” (I had no idea they were going to do that.  My friend just called me up and said that he heard my song on the radio.  I was pretty excited, to say the least.), I played a show at the Railway Club (great turn out and great bands to open for: Fuzzcat and Missing Starla), and I auditioned for the Olympics.

…did he just say the Olympics?

Yes I did.

I will be an Olympian, skin-tight body suits and all, and I’m going for the gold!

Not really.  But I did apply to play music at the Olympics.  The weird thing was that my audition wasn’t for music.  It was for “movement”.  They figured that musicians have rhythm, so they must be able to dance and move.  Little do they know…

I’m not one for dancing, but I surprisingly had a lot of fun.  We did some line dancing and other movement exercises.  I think they were mostly looking for a few things: (1) good coordination,  (2) good at following instructions, (3) good attitude.  They would then train the people that they choose.  Apparently they are auditioning 3,500 people, so it’s a long and complicated process.  My audition was three hours long, but the time flew by.  I really enjoyed the experience and I hope to be chosen to “move” during the Opening or Closing Ceremonies.

At the end of the audition, they announced that three people will be asked to  stick around for a special audition.  They called out the numbers and I was one of them!  I was almost scared.  I thought I might have done something wrong.  But no.  This was awesome.  They wanted to audition us for carrying the Canadian flag as the Olympians come in behind us at the Ceremonies.  Could you imagine that?  If I get picked for this, basically the whole world could be looking at me on television for a short period of time.  That’s intimidating.  But it would be such an honor.

This will be my only post about Olympics stuff though because everyone who is involved in the Ceremonies is sworn to secrecy.  They want the performances to be a surprise.  They even specifically said that we cannot blog about it (I hope I won’t get in trouble for this post).  I won’t even find out if I’m chosen until September anyway, so you’ll probably forget all about it by then.

If there’s any lesson I learned from this experience it was that life is more exciting when I’m open to trying new things.  Even though my expectations didn’t line up with reality (I thought I would be auditioning for music, not movement), I experienced something new and fun.  Take this concept and apply it to your life.  Go be adventurous!

“Shame on Me” seems to be my most popular song, which makes sense because it’s up-beat and catchy. The lyrics are a bit cheeky and the song has a good rhythm to it. In fact, my mom said she played the song for her preschool class and the kids all started dancing. If a song makes kids dance, it’s got to be good, right? (Oh no - please tell me I’m not going to be the next Sharon, Lois and Bram!)  Well… I’ve also seen some adults dance to it, so that’s a good sign.

I wrote the song for my Dark Before Dawn album when I realized that my slow-to-fast-song ratio was out of whack.  So on a rainy mid-week afternoon, wearing nothing but boxers and a house-coat like any good hermit, bum, or artist, I picked up my guitar and just started playing.  The first thing that came out was the guitar part for the verses - that simple “G” to “Gsus9″ for all you guitar players out there.  I really liked it, but it almost sounded familiar.  I later found out that Ryan Adam’s song “English Girls Approximately” uses the same chords, but it’s quite a bit slower and has a different groove to it.

The original melody of “Shame on Me” was a bit fancier than it is today, but when it came time to record, I wasn’t a good enough singer to pull it off, so I simplified it.  I’ve realized recently that I should continue to try to push my skills to new levels when I practice, but when it comes time to perform, I should pull back a bit and make sure I stay within my skill level.  A simple melody sung well sounds much better than a fancy melody sung poorly.

Lyrically, “Shame on Me” is a story about a guy who is in love with a complicated girl.  She’s hard to read, she’s closed off, she’s wild, she’s dramatic, she’s demanding, and she takes control, but she’s beautiful, breathtaking, and mysteriously lovable.  I’ll leave it up to your imagination on how much this girl is based on a real person.

I got a call from Adam late one night,

“Jeff, me and Tony are coming over tomorrow morning at 9:30. Don’t shower or eat breakfast. We’re going to make a stop-motion music video for ‘Shame on Me’. It will be a day in the life of Fawker [his “clever” nickname for me… I don’t really mind it]. We’ve worked out the storyboard and everything.”

“Well… okay,” I said, knowing that I didn’t really have a say in the matter. I was actually pretty excited even though I had no idea what the plan was.

Adam and Tony came barreling in a half hour late and likely running on pure caffeine. My roommate and his fiancé sacrificed their quiet Saturday morning for our crazy antics (I guess I probably still owe them for that). We started shooting right away. Adam told me to climb into bed and slowly reach for the alarm clock. He shot at rapid-fire speed to get the stop-motion effect. We proceeded to shoot scenes all day. Most of the music video actually involved what I needed to do that day: eat breakfast, brush my teeth, practice music, etc.

There was one scene that is allusive and artsy where I am just standing completely still at the bus stop. We actually completely lucked out with this beam of light shining where I was standing. If we shot that even half an hour later, that light would have been gone.

The annoying part of making the music video was the editing process. For the longest time we struggled with the math of how long each of the 669 pictures should last for the 3 minute song. Then once we figured out the equation, the computer program wouldn’t work properly. So we gave up for the night and just poured drinks and shared stories.

A few days later we tried editing on a different computer with different software but the computer kept crashing. So we tried a third computer with yet another program. It ended up being Windows Movie Maker (a bottom of the barrel, free program) that worked in the end. It took three different computers and three different programs to get this short video to work. Editing engineers in the film industry have my sympathy.

Check out the video here or on my Media page.