I’m out on the road again in Europe for the third time. Last year (Nov 2017), I was in Europe for the first time in my life and now I feel like an expert (!)… well…. maybe not an expert, exactly, but at least I feel much more Euro savvy. Shows this time are in The Netherlands, Germany and one…   …read more.

After my last blog, I received so many messages and emails (yes, some still use that format!) and I’m sorry that I just couldn’t get back to anyone in a timely manner. I’m a single mom! Life gets hectic. The most commonly asked questions were these: So when (or) are you moving back to Canada? What happened with your in-laws?…   …read more.

We are sitting in a small office in a nondescript socialist-style office building on the 10th floor. It’s the same office building in which we got our marriage license exactly 9.5 years ago. (That’s as long as I was with my ex-girlfriend, by the way, but that’s another story.) The leather couch, shiny red-wood coffee table and beige filing cabinets…   …read more.

The gorgeous high-ceilinged café at the Groningen train station has me gaping. Our train leaves in thirty minutes and I am admiring the woodwork, half-moon windows, detailed stained glass and gilded ceilings of this century-plus building. I’m thinking that, finally, despite this being a Starbucks, even with the global saturation of its corporate image, even this mega-brand cannot homogenize the…   …read more.

I am sitting in a back garden in Eindhoven, Holland beside a small pool filled with koi fish doing lazy circles, the trickling water from its fountain spout creating a layer of sonic presence under the sound of a little guitarlele being played in the living room by Gab, my touring companion. The flowers in the garden seem to be…   …read more.

I have hesitated to write this final tour blog. I’ve been home for one week, officially, and with my life in its former rhythm, my time in Europe seems like a dream. I remember when my “normal life” was the road blur: town after town, new group of people after new group of people, consistency found only in the van’s…   …read more.

My longest journey during this tour started at 5:30pm on a Sunday evening and ended at 11:45am on a Monday morning. I went from Northern Holland (Steendam) by car to Leer, Germany (thanks Peter), then by train to Münster, Basel, Zurich, and finally, Lucerne. With that many stops that included hauling my guitar, pedal board, knapsack and large suitcase through…   …read more.

The Netherlands. There is a reason blue and white is so popular in classic Holland imagery. At least, I have a theory as to why. It’s the sky. The clouds, but coupled with their particular hue of blue, and (as I mentioned in my last post)… the clarity. My last blog was written in Nijmegen where I was booked to…   …read more.

“Five days in Paris.” Even the sentence sounds romantic. Say it in French and my knees get weak. I have passed through the cloud of romantic illusion and I am typing this from the (ironically misty, but) comparatively clear and clean-cut realm of the Netherlands. Right now I am sitting in a poche library in the small town of Nijmegen,…   …read more.

Well, they say things happen in threes. The day of my show in London (October 30th), I started by heading downtown from the borough I was staying in (Lewisham) to a street called Denmark Street just off of New Oxford Street. It was my first experience of downtown London coupled with the subway and the “overground” trains. Honestly, the one…   …read more.