Permanent Marker, 1999 We started working on this project in the spring of 1999 and, by this time, Lyndell and I had been working with Cheryl Reid since the fall of 1998. I remember that I was living in a basement apartment in the Toronto neighbourhood called Parkdale. I had moved into it in the fall of 1998 after having…   …read more.

Welcome to the 11-part Blog Series serving as a “literary drumroll” to the official release of 11:11, my newest musical creation. This is day #3 and there are 8 more albums to talk about after this one! Each album embodies a period in my career that has come and gone and includes audio snapshots of what was happening in my life…   …read more.

Welcome to the 11-part Blog Series serving as a “literary drumroll” to the official release of 11:11, my newest musical creation. Each day from Nov 1st-Nov 11th, I will be chronicling the previous albums, the journey of their arrival, and the stories behind the recording experiences and release parties. In most cases, I was also able to reach the original engineers…   …read more.

The last few weeks of my second trip to China included a lot of hanging out Guo Jian. I wasn’t taking it very seriously, though. He represented a sort of sugar-high daydream that China had become for me—liberty, foreign culture, exploration, healing—that I knew logically was soon to be doused with the cold Canadian reality of my established life and…   …read more.

Welcome to the 11-part Blog Series serving as a “literary drumroll” to the official release of 11:11, my newest musical creation. Each day for the next eleven days, I will be chronicling the previous albums, the journey of their arrival, and the stories behind the recording experiences and release parties. In most cases, I was also able to reach the…   …read more.

Newsletter Final Thought: October 2011 As I sit here, snugly in my Beijing apartment, I’m acutely conscious of the fact that I am poised to take at least six months off the stage starting next week. Of course, it’s a necessity with this ever-growing belly and then with the arrival of a new baby, but it spins me out a…   …read more.

So yesterday I went to my first La Leche League meeting here in Beijing. It was just around the corner from my house at a local hospital and so I walked there. The English meeting is held on the last Friday afternoon of every month from 1:30-3:30pm. I went alone. When I arrived, there were only five other women in the…   …read more.

Now, just to catch you all up, I’m going to insert a little additional context to this storytelling. First of all, I’m going backwards in time here. I’m telling the story chronologically. I came to China for the first time in the late spring of 2007 and stayed for 3 months. During that time, I noticed but didn’t get to…   …read more.

I’m back from the tour and sitting in my apartment in Beijing. Now I can say firmly that I’m once again “Preggers In China”! I’m so happy to be home. I can’t express it in words, not fully anyway. I’m really a person who is quite happy in the quiet of home, in my own world, and without a lot…   …read more.

So, some of you might know that I came back from my North American tour to find out the good news that my song has been sitting on the rock charts for a few weeks. These are China-wide Rock Charts and the songs are listener-voted. I was so thrilled to hear this news and even more excited to find out…   …read more.