The Paul Wells Show - The symphonic Joni Mitchell with Sarah Slean

Episode Date: October 5, 2022

Singer-songwriter Sarah Slean talks about Joni Mitchell’s enduring influence on music and women in the arts. Slean also talks about the challenges of pursuing a music career in the digital age, and what's coming next for her.Slean will be performing orchestral versions of Mitchell’s songs with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra at the end of October. You can find more details here: https://www.vancouversymphony.ca/event/sarah-slean-a-joni-mitchell-tribute/ Audio sources: Glenn Gould, Joni Mitchell, Sarah Slean

It's a big world out there and sometimes it seems like it's breaking. Some people try to help fix it by singing. This week singer Sarah Sleen on the symphonic Joni Mitchell. So many of her albums escaped me in my 20s because I was like, what? Like, huh? And then you listen in your 40s and you're like, oh. I'm Paul Wells. Welcome to The Paul Wells Show. Okay. As of this week, I've been doing this show for a month. We've tackled some big topics, Canada-US relations, the war in Ukraine, and the future of the conservative movement with Jason Kenney. We've got shows coming up on the opioid crisis, the energy transition, and more.

But sometimes there's just somebody I want to talk to. Often that person is an artist. And because I really believe art is as important as all of that other stuff, sometimes we're going to bring those conversations to you too. I'm a big classical music fan. I mean, really big. Every year when the big orchestras announce their concerts for the coming season, I take a look at their schedules to see whether I can plan some travel around a concert somewhere. And I've been kind of blue lately because I can't be in Vancouver at the end of the month to hear Sarah Sleen, the great singer songwriter, playing a concert of Joni

Mitchell songs with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. The thing is, I'm also a late-blooming Joni Mitchell fan. This is only something that's been happening in the last 10 years or so. Sometimes I'm slow to catch up. But I know a little bit about the music that Sarah Sleen is going to be singing in Vancouver. It's drawn from two of Joni Mitchell's last albums. In 2000 and 2002, Joni was in her 50s, slowing down a bit, and she recorded two albums with a string orchestra, Both Sides Now and Travelog. The arrangements were by this guy Vince Mendoza, a leading writer of pop and jazz for orchestras.

That's what Sarah Sleen is going to perform in Vancouver at the end of October. Vince Mendoza's arrangements off Both Sides Now and Travelogue. A few of these songs are Joni Mitchell classics, but a lot of them are deep cuts from her weird 70s and 80s albums. Collaborations with musicians like Jaco Pistorius and Charlie Mingus. Sometimes almost punky albums or new agey albums. You almost have to be Sarah Sleen to tackle this material. She was classically trained. She's written for orchestras, which is not for the faint of heart. She's been nominated for three Juno Awards. Honestly, I'm not sure why she hasn't won one yet.

And she's a lifelong Joni Mitchell fan. I decided if I couldn't go to these remarkable concerts, I could tell you about them and I could talk to Sarah about them. I'm glad I did. I've never met her before, but she understood right away why I wanted to talk about all of this. We're beginning to understand as a society what Joni Mitchell means to us. Sarah Sleen gets how powerful a musical force she's been, what an inspiration and an example for women in the arts. We talked about all of that. And we talked about longevity in the arts. What happens when music goes from being a career to being a life. An artist sees and hears things in the work of another artist

that the rest of us might miss. Talking to Sarah Sleen was a privilege and a tremendous pleasure. And after the break, I hope you'll join us to listen in. Sarah Sleen, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me, Paul. So let me tell you why I called. I'm a big orchestral music geek.

And every season when the various symphony orchestras come out with their seasons, I check out what they're going to do. And sometimes I travel to hear them. And I was so bummed that you're playing Vince Mendoza arrangements of the Joni Mitchell songbook at the other end of the country. I can't make it out, but I thought I could at least ask you about it. This is the second time that you have done this program. You did it in Saskatoon in Joni's hometown in 2018. This is in fact the fourth time I've done this program. So let me tell you how this started. In Saskatoon, there is, you know,

orchestras, it's a great big cruise ship that someone amazing needs to steer right there are lots of moving parts there are all kinds of different audiences to appease and appeal to it's a huge undertaking it's kind of like opera in that effect and then it's like it's such an ancient amazing tradition but it's very expensive it's resource rich it's such a draw on staff and like there's so many moving parts so you really need someone dynamic to kind of drive the bus and when institutions like orchestras find that person they really blossom and thrive and that's happening in Saskatoon. There's a guy there by the name of Mark Turner, who has all kinds of great vision for his orchestra. So he got the idea

for Joni Mitchell's anniversary. I believe it was her birthday. It was a 75th birthday or something. It was in 2018. He wanted to do a big celebratory show for her. And he was like, why can't Vince Mendoza conduct it? Let's do that music. Let's get Vince to come and do it. And, you know, most people are like, what? Saskatoon? No way he'd come to Saskatoon.

Mark made it happen. And he was trying to make it happen for many years. And it finally ended up coming together. And Vince insisted that Pete Erskine join him, the incredible drummer. Ed Livingston on bass, another incredible American musician. And Mark called me and said, would you like to sing this program? And I fell off my chair. And when I recovered, I got to work learning all of the music again. But I know

this music so well, because like you, I absolutely adore these albums. And I just think the music is so special. It's very unusual. It's a really fitting mix of Joni's influences because Vince is such a respected figure in jazz it's the perfect marriage of of two geniuses really and a perfect way to to honor the breadth of her career it's so beautiful to me too that the voice she has singing these tunes is like a woman who has has lived a remarkable story and has lived a lot of life and the sort of shadow it casts or the perspective it gives to the earlier versions of those songs and some of them iconic treasured songs that she wrote when she was in her 20s like it's just really really unusual and original in in the sort of musical landscape so yeah that was the first time that was Saskatoon in 2018 and then recently Regina, Calgary and Niagara.

My motivation is revealed I'm hoping that we can drum up enough publicity so that some orchestra will bring you over the lakehead to do it in Toronto or Montreal or Ottawa so I can actually go and check it out. I would love that. I've got a long history with the National Arts Centre Orchestra so hopefully that will happen but Toronto I haven't played with Toronto in oh probably 15, 18 years, 19 years. So word to the wise and if anyone's listening. It's an unusual thing for us. Well, it's not an automatic thing for a singer-songwriter who's made so many albums from a fiercely individualistic perspective to essentially lend your voice to someone else's music and someone else's context.

Does that feel like you're stepping down from a pinnacle or you're simply operating in another environment? No, I'm paying tribute to the absolute guru of an individualist musical career. I mean, that is Joni in a nutshell. She is the quintessential iconoclast. She is to me that she is the poster child for that mentality of life. Especially being a woman in the crazy time of the music industry that she lived.

I mean, she was in the ring with all of these male bands, all of these male songwriters, male legendary jazz musicians, making an album with Mingus. Like in the time that she did these things, they were unheard of. And people were, you know, there are a lot of raised eyebrows, like who does she think she is? Or how dare she? Or, you know, like everyone who wanted her to stay the long haired, like angelic folky that she started out as. And she simply adamantly refused. Her only allegiance was to her own inner artistic compass. And I just think that takes a really huge helping of audacity and courage and strength to do that in that particular era and being a woman. I really, I just, I admire it so much.

It surely helped her back in the day when she was hanging out with Crosby, Stills and Nash and Dylan and Leonard Cohen, that she brought just astonishing musical chops to the table. She went through that scene because she was so pretty, because she loved men, and because she was better than any of them. She went through that scene like they didn't know how to deal with it. They didn't. They didn't. And you know what?

When you say that, it's so true. Had she looked slightly different, would we be talking about the the icon that she became like it's just so it it's so unfortunate that that even played a role you know she is a genius she's not a quote-unquote female genius she is a straight up genius every aspect of her art to me is leagues beyond all of her contemporaries male or female in songwriting in in making albums and production and singing and playing in every aspect and i think it's just like it's an absolute crime that dylan and neil young and leonard cohen are all

talked about so naturally as you know know, of course they're giants. When not the same was true over the decades when people were talking about Joni critically. It's only now where people are like, whoa, she's a stone cold genius. And she's like in that league. Of course she's in that league. In fact, she had to be like better than all of them to be in that league. See, I have a feeling that those guys know, even if they might have been slowing down at the moment. But they know now and they have never quite recovered.

That's 100% true. And, you know, the thing I love about Joni, too, is like she's unapologetic about that. She's like, I knew what I was doing. And she'll go on Instagram and say things like, well, I'm so delighted to see that people are really enjoying the album blue. You know, 50 years later, you finally get it. She'll just, she'll say things like that. And we don't want, we don't want women to behave that way. We don't want women to be self-assured of their own talent. We don't want them thinking they're really good. We don't like that. We don't accept it in this culture. And Joni doesn't care. And she's album after album.

Even the stuff in the 80s where I was like, huh, what is going on here? I don't even understand this. She just was constantly pushing her own envelope pushing her own limits expanding constantly and I mean like I don't even think Dylan did that after a while how did she find her way into your ears and into your life uh was it since time immemorial or was there a moment when you started to check Joni Mitchell out? My teens. So I was classically trained, and I was really, you know, deeply in love with classical music until the flowering of adolescence when suddenly you have huge emotions and songwriters start to speak to those huge emotions.

And Joni Mitchell's Blue was my gateway drug into her universe. I think that's true for a lot of people. And I just remember thinking, first of all, how aesthetically beautiful it was, how on every level, how catchy, but also how profound, but also how memorable and how at times unexpected chord shadings and like just loving the album, playing it over and over again, letting it sort of sink into me. It was so palatable at first, right? Like it's so easy to listen to. It's so enjoyable, but then it really lands in your soul, I find. So then I explored the rest of her catalog and so many of her albums escaped me in my 20s

because I was like, what? Like, huh? And then you listen in your 40s and you're like, oh. You know, because you have to have gone through some things in life or matured or, you know, just had some experiences to really understand her perspective then. I think that's also part of her genius. Were there specific elements of some of her songs that you tried to

incorporate into your own work? her songs that you tried to incorporate into your own work? You know, I think when you're young and you first start writing songs, you are so unabashedly imitating your heroes. Like you can't help yourself, right? Because you're so unformed. You're still, you're still such a seedling. You know, there's so much Tori Amos all over my earlier recordings. And there's so much Sarah McLachlan and the folkier side of Joni. But I was never a guitar player. So I never really hooked into the immediacy of her lyrics and the imagery and the real skill with words that she possesses, the real creative, beautiful way she has with words. So I've always admired that and always wanted to be that.

So I could say that would be the extent of her influence. I was never really directly imitating her because I don't think it's possible with someone like Joni, you know? Almost any way you get into her music, almost any angle you approach it from, she's got such a large concept. She crams a hell of a lot of words into a lyric. She's got rich harmonies that you don't normally hear in folk music or pop music. Yep. She puts a lot on the table.

She does. She's so clearly a painter to me. That's another thing about her that I just, I think is so unique and really truly informs her process and why it's so special and so like unusual and interesting and and grabs us is because she's a painter she's not a trained musician she absorbed all this stuff in her early folk days and she absorbed jazz she just absorbed it so instinctually it was really her ear and what her ear wanted to hear was responding to the different tunings and things like that because she was literally painting. She was painting with sounds, with chord extensions, with her lyrics. The whole thing was so very visual.

That's why you get all these like unexpected turns of harmony and the shading of it. It's so, it's almost like Debussy to me. When I rehearse these pieces, I play them and I look at the scores and half the time when I play them, I'm like, I didn't realize she did that. Like, whoa, like I would never do that. As a person who like started day one in Western harmony, learning that system and that system embedding itself into my ears, she's got all this stuff that moves around. So many pastels and so many, you know, Revellian kind of effects that are so artistic, so coloristic.

And it's not like she's deliberately doing it. This is just the way her mind and her creativity and her ears are. We'll come back to my conversation with Sarah Sleen in a minute. I want to take a moment to thank all of our partners, the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, the National Arts Centre, our founding sponsor, TELUS, and our title sponsor, Compass Rose.

Our publishing partners are the Toronto Star and iPolitics. We couldn't bring this show to you without them. Star and iPolitics. We couldn't bring this show to you without them. These two albums that are the basis for these concerts, Both Sides Now, Travelog, based on arrangements by this Vince Mendoza, who's a prominent sort of jazz-influenced orchestrator, prominent sort of jazz-influenced orchestrator. They come at a really significant moment in her career, which is when she's trying to get a record contract off of her table. So she, you know, we'll do these two albums.

But also she's not sure that she's going to be performing again. These are very kind of autumnal recordings. How do you think that influenced the process of making them? And how does that influence the way that you hear them? I think that the collaborators she chooses, she's very deliberate about that. I mean, you can't work with Herbie Hancock and people like that and, you know, just go like, I'll just crank out an orchestral record and then we'll call it a day. She is always interested in making something exquisite and up to her standard. And I think Vince is that choice. Like he did a beautiful job with this stuff. And Travelogue, like that's a double record. There's so much material on that. And I think he really I mean not only her not only the new

treatment with the full orchestra and that's these jazz influenced stylings but also where she is in life and where her voice now sits like we're talking 2000 and 2002 I think those two pieces really make these records interesting to me. Specifically, the comparison I always call to mind is the Goldberg Variations with Glenn Gould. And when, you know, he made that, the first recording he made when he was, you know, I think 20 or 20 something, it was like the 52 recording or 51. And it's dazzling, it's sparkling. And it's all of the like, the energy and effortlessness of youth, and his genius, you know, leaping out into the world stage. And Joni, of course, made that record too, you know, like whether you it's Lady of the Canyon or Clouds or Blue or whatever you want to call it. But like, she had the same

thing where like, everyone was suddenly like, wow, who's that? And then you have the same piece, in Joni's case, it's specifically the song Both Sides Now. That's the comparison I think maps so beautifully to Gould, is his 1982 version of Goldberg Variations was slow. was slow. It was almost a parody, right? It was like so slow, so bittersweet, so poignant,

so full of the decades he'd lived before. Like it was a man, like you say, autumnal, like later in life, reflecting. And all of that is in his playing. And we have this, these perfect comparisons, you know, a one-to-one comparison. And we have the same with Joni. And I feel the same feels when I listen to that later version of like, isn't this just life? You know, you have some triumphs and you have some disappointments and you have all the beauty and heartache of living is there in that later one. And that's why I think they're, you know, so it's so special to have that

almost as a time capsule, you know? It's funny because she writes both sides now. That's the whole point of the song, right? Is that you see things differently from the other side. And she can't have known when she wrote it how true she would be able to make it later. That's a hell of a trick. Isn't that incredible?

It's very moving, actually. Especially the content. Like you say, the lyrics in that song oh like the later version just makes me fall to pieces especially with Mendoza's orchestration which is so it hovers very nebulously in the beginning the violas are just doing this sort of and Joni's low, low voice emerges from that fog. Rose and flowers of angel hair. And it's just, yeah, the layers of meaning are really, really poignant and felt. See, I asked you what your path to Joni Mitchell was.

That was mine, that actual later recording, because I spent more than 30, 40 years wasting my life listening like I was a real jazz head. And then in 2010, at the opening ceremonies of the Vancouver Olympics, I'm sitting there in BC Place, and this recording of someone singing Both Sides Now comes out. And I wasn't even sure who it was. I was like, well, is that Shirley Horn? Is it Diana Krall?

And then Wayne Shorter, the wonderful saxophonist who played with her for 20 years and is still close friends of hers. I heard him and I thought, oh, it's Joni Mitchell. And the funny thing doing my research this week is that those albums and especially the Travelogue album, which is more of her original material, mostly got lousy reviews at the time. And it was mostly because of that voice. And it was mostly because of that voice. The people who'd grown up with young Joni were not that interested in hearing her with a coarser voice in a lower register. And I find that astonishing because that's the Joni Mitchell that I fell in love with.

I mean, I don't want to sound like a broken record, but it's like, I know there's a theme of people like falling in love with an artist at a certain point and not wanting them to evolve. I understand that happens, but I find, especially with female artists who are, who are super gifted, like Joni Mitchell, like it is so clear, right? People do not want them to change. How dare they? How dare they explore artistically? Be what you are. Be grateful. And it's like men are allowed to evolve. Men are allowed to take risks and to explore. I mean, Leonard Cohen was never a singer, ever, ever.

It's not even part of his gig. Nobody cared that he couldn't sing. It's not even part of his gig, right? Like, nobody cared that he couldn't sing. But, you know, I think Joni's low voice delivers the truth of those lyrics even more powerfully. You know, like, when you're singing about both sides now and the content of that lyric, it's almost more convincing from an older person. It's less convincing from a 20-something. more convincing from an older person.

It's less convincing from a 20-something. I've looked at clouds from both sides now From up and down and still somehow How do you know you're only 25 or whatever? And you have not experienced an arc yet. You may have little narratives going on, but you don't have a grand arc yet you don't have the perspective and i yeah i just really i think it's like it's a shame that we we don't let artists evolve and change because some people who have little eruptions of

of success in the beginning if they keep trying to chase that earlier success they you know maybe they will never replicate it again and they they've lost the chance to expand and grow whereas you know like who knows what's waiting around the corner if they follow their muse and expand and evolve as all artists must you know? Are these things you've struggled with yourself as your career turns into a life? Beautifully put, Paul. Damn. I liked that. I liked that so much. Yes. Yes. And this is part of the reason I'm so, I feel such a connection to Joni Mitchell. That's not vanity by any stretch of the imagination. It's more, I look to her as a guiding light. It's very hard in a culture such as ours that, you know, has pretty clear and shallow motivations on the surface. It's very hard to continue to follow your artistic

light, to follow your own creativity and to trust it and to not doubt it and to not just fall back on what has worked before. But everything is in constant motion. The times are always changing. If I was to try and make a copy of my most best-selling record to date, which did not sell tons and tons of like Arkell's level records, if I was to try and copy that, it would be a dismal failure because the times have moved on even more so from then, right? So it's just, I think as artists, we just have to do that. Like I would bust tables before I would make music that I didn't believe in.

And I've always been that way, which is, you know, why I look at someone like Joni and be like, wow, this rare unicorn could do it and actually have a massive career. Amazing, you know, but it's difficult for all the reasons I've mentioned. Hey, what was your best-selling album? Day One. I've been going back and listening to your discography this week. And, I mean, Day One was, in a lot of ways, a much more assured kind of production than what had come before. But I'll tell you, my favorite album that I listened to this week

is Metaphysics, your most recent one from 2017. Oh, bless you for saying so. Did it sell? Does anything sell anymore or does it just stream? Well, this is the thing. Like, I do some mentoring here and there because I get lots of people, you know, young people, how do I break into the music industry? At which point, like, I just kind of go like, I don't know, because you're asking me how

to break into today's music industry. And I'm as foreign to that as you are. You know, like like I come from a completely radically different time. All I can do is I tell people like it's the whoosh, it's the sparkles, like whatever, whatever name you need to put to it. What is grabbing your interest? What is pulling all of the threads of your consciousness into a straight line? And we all have something like that that will kind of capture our attention, pull at our souls and engage us.

Maybe it's books. Maybe it's certain television shows. Whatever it is. For me, it's like when I start creating something musically and it grabs me, that's the most exciting, most fun, wonderful time out of the whole breadth of musical experiences I have had. Performing is a close, close second. I mean, performing can be, you know, elation. But the rush, the sparkles you get when something creatively has come to you and is starting to roll out, I try to focus on how pure that is, how right it is, and how I know that it's what I'm supposed to be following. Whether someone will buy it or not is not my concern. I noticed that you and I are the only people I know who both follow a singer named Jenny Burkle.

She's a poet before she's a singer. She's got this album out called These Are the Sounds Left From Leaving. I think it's the best album of the year. And I can't, like, I don't know what to do except talk about it on a podcast. Because she's not on much music, but because nobody is. No. And you don't see her making reels on Instagram, right? And we have this weird, we conflate these days, like, visibility with competence and artistic merit. Like, those two things, there's no, you cannot draw a straight line between those two things. Like just if someone is like extremely visible does not mean they're good. It just

doesn't. And I don't know how you would be a poet and devote 50% of your life to thrusting your face into the public's eyes. Like I, it's not possible. The only reason we have Leonard Cohen's and Joni Mitchell's at all, and, you know, Lorca's and Rumi's and all of these, you know, great minds who write words that, you know, will last over the centuries is because they had all of this white space in their lives. Em, emptiness with which to let the mind drift, to let the mind think, to absorb the zeitgeist, to be in the world. It's almost like we've been invaded and we have to defend that white space. And I think Jenny does that actually well. Like, I don't know how you could write like she does without it.

I want to ask about working with string ensembles and eventually with orchestras. I mean, you grew up with that sound in your head, but was it a challenge to bring it into your music? It can be tricky, amplified music and orchestras. Well, this is the beauty of youth. You don't consider these things. You know, like when I was in my 20s, I was like, I don't write music. I know how to read music and I want these people to play with me. So I just write the notes on the page and then they play them.

The ignorance is so blissful, right? You don't know like, oh, there are people that do this very, very well. And you have to know such and such. All of that was completely unknown to me. And I just thought, well, I'm just going to do this. And I would find the person at U of T in the courtyard with the appropriate case. And I would ask them if they wanted to plan my indie record, and they would. And I would just, I had like, literally, I would just give them the score that I'd written in pencil on manuscript. And I didn't even have parts this is before like notation software and if I wanted to change

something I would cut out a piece and tape it like seriously scissors and tape and I just was you know simply wanted to hear those sounds on my recordings didn't realize the you know full scope of how well this particular skill could be done. So I started and I listened to those earlier recordings. Now as a fairly competent orchestrator, I'm like, oh, oh God, you're like, shouldn't have done that. Didn't realize I didn't know how to do this. But the audacity of youth was very helpful in that instance. And when I look over the years, you have to sort of keep some of that ignorance and audacity alive because as you continue in music,

you meet more and more talented people. You sort of ascend into circles of more and more skilled professionals. So I would meet people that are really, really good at scoring and then it'd be like oh and I would just pick up things and I would learn little tricks and I would listen to my own earlier iterations and go this needs to do this instead and I would just I was learning simply as I went along but unless I like if I was intimidated by all of these people that I'd met or, you know, becoming aware that a lot of people do this and do it really well, I would have stopped doing it. So I was always 100% focused on on trying to translate what I heard in my mind into the world. That was always my intention.

And I really, you know, didn't ask myself if I was qualified to do so. You know, I actually think that that's kind of the way it should be, you know, for a creative artist, because it's almost like you, the skill gets developed by doing it. It's like when, I think it's Joseph Brodsky, the Russian poet. He was put on trial by the Soviet regime at one point for being unproductive. And in court, one of the prosecution lawyers said, who qualified you to be a poet? And he said, nobody. Who qualified you to be a poet? And he said, nobody. Who qualified you to be a human being?

Bam. That's the attitude. I don't want to put you on the spot. Are you working on an album these days or thinking about an album or thinking about raising a kid? Oh, yeah. Well, this is the thing. Like, I think as I get older, my albums get, you know,

the years sort of stretch in between them. And my last album now was 2017. However, I did release an album with like an EP with Huxley. And then I did a record with Symphony Nova Scotia. So technically, there are some albums out there with me. And I'm more interested in collaboration these days because my criteria for creating a project that is me, has my name on it, has always been like, have I transformed in a way that I feel like I need to tell the world? You know, it's not like, oh, got to make a record. It's been two years.

Let's make a record. Let been two years let's make a record let's find some things to sing songs about like it's that's never been it's not the way the muse speaks to me the muse speaks to me when i uh have marinated i guess long enough on on various things like whether it is the zeitgeist and there's so much to marinate on that right now, or it's interpersonal things, or it's like life changes, like becoming a parent and all these things. Unless I've transformed and felt like I have acquired new truths or new shades of truths, I don't write. And for me, it's been quickening lately. It's been kind of starting to roll lately because I'm convinced it's because I have a child and I have such a radically different take on the

world at large. But also I've been really busy with collaborative projects and with projects like Monty, the musical that I'm writing, which is just a massive undertaking. It's like 30 plus songs. I'm also working on a classical commission for the Iris Trio and I'm also on the SOCAN board and I've also been doing some CBC radio. So I've been extremely busy for the past five years and haven't really had a time to, to sit with those, you know, marinated ideas and wait for them to kind of germinate into something. But I do, I confess, I do feel that happening now.

And I am in the second year of a master's degree in music composition at York. Wow. That I've been doing online, which is a blessing. York. Wow. That I've been doing online, which is a blessing. And I think for that, my end of year research paper and composition that I have to submit, I will be, that will be the seed of my next recording. Hey, Sarah, I'm glad I called. Thanks, Paul. Thanks for listening to me blather on in my COVID infected voice. I mean, I wish we had twice as much time, but maybe we'll just do it again sometime. Thanks for talking to me. I really appreciate it.

Thanks for listening to The Paul Wells Show. The Paul Wells Show is produced by Antica in partnership with the National Arts Centre and the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. It's published by the Toronto Star and iPolitics. Thanks to our founding sponsor, TELUS, and our title sponsor, Compass Rose. Our senior producer is Kevin Sexton. Our associate producer is Hayley Choi. Our executive producers are Lisa Gabriel and Laura Ruggier.

Stuart Cox is the president of Antifa. The music was written and performed by Kevin Bray. Hey, that singer we talked about, Jenny Burkle? Her new EP, The Quiet Between, comes out on Friday. Go to jennyburkle.com, B-E-R-K-E-L, for more. And if you happen to be in Vancouver at the end of the month, Sarah Sleen will be performing the songs of Joni Mitchell with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra at the Orpheum Theatre on October 28th and 29th. There's plenty of good seats there. If you're enjoying this show, spread the word. We'll be back next Wednesday. you