After a little hiatus from the Wild West of the internet, I’m venturing back out with news of an upcoming project. Though still in its preliminary stages, this new anthology, tentatively titled Hagiographies and Hit Pieces, will be a concept album that explores a series of strange characters placed in stranger situations.

I crossed the North Dakota / Manitoba border ten days ago and soon pulled into Winnipeg, immediately heading to local cafe/bookstore Sam's Place for the first of three shows in the area.

So far, my Canadian tour, though brief, has been filled with a few interesting moments. Here are some snapshots:

Today, I'm heading west to do a little one-month Canadian loop from Montreal to Calgary and back. It's exciting to get back on the road and play some of the songs from That Cold Year to some new audiences.

I've always had a thing for places that are a bit rough around the edges. Bangkok is one that springs to mind; New Orleans is another. It might be that, having grown up in the gentle and nurturing clutch of a polite scene like Montreal, my heart sometimes aches for the places that are altogether too humid and boisterous and prone to fits of seedy bacchanalia.

The Land of Nod was born out of a very simple concept: retell the parable of Cain and Abel from the point of view of Cain, and with the artistic license to completely macerate the finer details of the story.

The Orpheum is one of those songs that gradually became one of the unwilling heroes of That Cold Year as the production took place. I finished writing it at the tail end of the songwriting cycle, just weeks before the band and I were set to start recording.