Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Hawksley Workman: Toronto Mike'd #667

Episode Date: June 15, 2020

Mike chats with Hawksley Workman about so many interesting things, including Hawksley Night in Canada, his new music with Sarah Slean and how he was inspired by Toronto Mike'd.

Welcome to episode 667 of Toronto Mic'd, a weekly podcast about anything and everything. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, a fiercely independent craft brewery who believes in supporting communities, good times and brewing amazing beer. Palma Pasta, enjoy the taste of fresh homemade Italian pasta and entrees from Palma Pasta in Mississauga and Oakville. Garbage Day. Weekly reminders for garbage, recycling, and yard waste pickup. Visit garbageday.com slash Toronto Mike to sign up now. StickerU.com. Create custom stickers, labels, tattoos, and decals for your home and your business The Keitner Group They love helping buyers find

their dream home Text TORONTOMIKE to 59559 And our newest sponsor CDN Technologies Your IT and cyber security experts I'm Mike from TORONTOomike.com and joining me this

week it's the triumphant return of hoxley workman welcome back hoxley mike thanks for having me back are you kidding me i'd have you on every day if you were up to it. Are you up to it? I'm up for it. I think of you a lot. Do you? You're a guy who's doing his own thing. And I guess I've been thinking about your wrist or your arm as well.

Your cast is off. Yeah, I had it on for six weeks. And now it seems like an eternity ago because it's been off for a bit now. But for a good month. But yeah, thank you. Were you going to ask me how it's feeling? Because then I can thank you. How's it feeling?

Not bad. I use it a lot. I use it a lot. I do use it a lot. And it's sort of like perpetually swollen and it hurts a little when I use it. But I can use it it so I don't complain I mean I think about you because I like what you've done what you've created um and then I like that you're a passionate cyclist who like has a cool uh slick looking like city cruise like

city hybrid type bike and I just I imagine your fun life and i just like i this is where it's a handmade world all of a sudden if you were afraid of the internet like i was and how it's going to affect you know the worlds of media and the music business and and you know i think it's easy to say that it's affected most of those things in a negative capacity but but what it's done for people to be able to kind of generate to have to rethink how they're going to enter into the world and be sort of innovative and do handmade things for the world the internet has been interesting you know lately for me have you been doing a lot of zooms like we're currently

connecting via zoom if you had like a a run of zooms i've been doing like zoom interviews but we've been doing my live stream television show called hoxley night in canada we use vimeo because it's a better sound quality um and it's a better video quality and jennifer who you were just on with who's my wife and who manages me um she she researched you know these platforms exhaustively and it was it came out that Vimeo Vimeo one it's the one yeah so we're pleased with that okay so right off the top tell us a little more about uh Huxley Night in uh Canada is this where you play ball hockey and we watch? Like what is Hawksley Night in Canada?

Hawksley Night in Canada is on live this Thursday as well at 8 o'clock and you can get tickets on my website. And so what it is, is years ago when I was in high school, I had a public access television show in Huntsville, Ontario on the McLean Hunter Channel.

And I was walking home from high school. I'd wanted a show. And so I just, I was walking home from high school and the station was en route to my house. And so I just popped in. I said, I'd like to have a show. And they said, well, you just need to fill this thing out and the main guy will take a look at it. And if he thinks that you're worthy of a show, we'll give you a show. And I was like, well, this is great. So I went home, I filled out the thing, and then I had a show within a week, and it was a live talk show. And I'm a bit competitive, Mike. Yeah.

And at the time, the biggest thing in show business was Seinfeld. So I was like, well, I definitely want my show to go live and opposite Seinfeld at the same time slot. Wow. Yeah. So I was really, you know, there was a lot of extra. So it was a live talk show so fast forward hoxley night in canada is like peewee's playhouse meets tommy hunter it's me in my father-in-law's basement here which is where we've been stuck for the whole covid thing um because we moved from montreal to peterborough ontario and didn't find a house in time and then covid came and then here

we still are in my father-in-law's house so So we built a little TV studio and we put this Huxley Night in Canada, which is a live show with kooky stuff happening. I think eventually there might be guests as well, but it's effectively a re, it's like a reemergence of my high school community network talk show. Wow. Now that I'm doing it, I'm just like an adult having fun doing the same kind of stuff. I'm thinking of like other talk shows I used to watch on Cable 10 Access. And I remember Tom Green had a successful talk show on Cable 10 out of Ottawa.

And of course, Ed the Sock. Yeah, of course. I'm thinking of all the Cable 10 legends that we have in this country. And you're one of Ottawa. And of course, Ed the Sock. Yeah, of course. I'm thinking of all the Cable 10 legends that we have in this country. And you're one of them. I mean, that's amazing. Well, I was just grateful. You know, I think I look back at that era

and again, it was pre, I think it was pre-gross profit, pre-internet, pre, like it was almost like love and tenderness was still a part of like the business atmosphere and stuff like McLean Hunter could like exist. And like, you know, all the churches had their own shows. I had a friend who had a show called something about a ninja. And all they would do is they would get all of the boxes that the mclean hunter television equipment came in and they'd set all those boxes up and then they would

live stream them kicking the boxes around for a half an hour and so you know to me and now that i'm live in peterborough i get access to checks tv which is the local television and i get to watch the peterborough peets live on checks and. And I'm telling you, local commercials, local content, it's for somebody who's just still looking for something that looks real in the media universe. Yeah. Like local TV is really, really special stuff. I mean, Chex is still there, but Cable 10's gone.

Cable 10 is gone. This is a past tense. It's funny you mentioned Cable 10. So I do every Friday, I do these Pandemic Friday episodes of Toronto Mic'd with Stu Stone and Cam Gordon. They had a show, I think it was sports oriented, but they had a show on Willowdale, Cable 10 or whatever.

Tomorrow, my guests tomorrow on Toronto Mic'd for 668 are Steve Paikin and Michael Landsberg. And the reason I'm pairing them together is because back in the early eighties, they had a show together, together. They, they met at U of T.

They had a C I U C I U T radio show. Then they beat. So before TSN launched, there was Paken and Landsberg on cable 10. And it was a sports-oriented show. I think that one was. I don't know. I got to find out.

The Stu Stone, Cam Gordon was sports-oriented, but I think so. What's it like talking with Steve Paken? I'd be very intimidated, I think. He's listening to you right now because Paken is a super FOTM, which means he listens to every episode. Oh, really?

Say something to Steve, and he'll hear you right now. Well, I've been watching Steve on TVO for years. And obviously, I remember when Steve also used to be the journalist who ran the federal election debates. And he's just an extremely talented and strong presence on TV. I'm just kind of grateful for those characters out there in the Canadian media landscape doing the super good work. Well, he's a great guy.

And he's the kind of guy where if I wanted, like I joked with you off the top, every day I do an episode with you, but I think Pagan would be game to go on Toronto Mic'd every single day. That's cool. Maybe we should, all three of us should start something. Hey, you know what?

This is what's so kind of amazing about the times I think that we're living in, at least what COVID feels like it reset the boundaries of what is kind of possible or what people can expect from each other a little bit. And again, I feel like those who have just a knack for being innovative and a, and a, and a kind of a get up and go attitude, like this was an interesting time to reset your own, I don't know, reset your own thing and, and to, and to rethink how you can enter into a relationship with people via this

weird internet. Like I miss my life pre internet I think that my life pre-internet was probably more interesting I'll bet you my imagination was even that much more uh much more vivid and exciting but in doing Hawksley Nut in Canada watching what you've been doing watching other people who have sort of entered into the landscape and have done this sort of done it without just tipping their toe in, like just sort of taken the leap and built something that, you know, it's a build it and they will come. And you think in the early days of the internet, everybody's like, oh, you'll have access to the world.

We know that that's not entirely true. But I mean, in theory, I guess it still is. But really, yeah, instead of being a grumpy old man like I usually am about these things and being a Luddite and an anti-tech enthusiast, I've really idea. I've never applied. I've never been asked to be on terrestrial radio or television. But like I was able to in my literally you've been here. In fact, because I said that, let me just tell the people if they want the Hawksley Workman deep dive. I urge listeners to go to episode 536. And here's the short description I wrote at the time mike chats with hoxley workman about his career as a musician from striptease to around here yes i even wrote that i do everything

around here so uh and you only i remember distinctly like sometimes guests would come over and there was no time limit like it would end when it ended but i distinctly remember when hoxley workman came over i had an hour right there was something yeah and we like i see here the time stamp on this is 56 minutes and 36 seconds so i uh obeyed all the rules there but back to the internet like the i'm only able to talk to you now on on the little radio station i created right with, with my own hands in my basement studio here because of the internet. So, I mean, I'm a big fan. I think for, you know, again, I've been thinking a lot about the, you know, all of a sudden

I will be, I don't know what, let's say in five years or so, or maybe I am, I have lived more than, just over half of my life during the time of the internet, and I lived half of my life before the internet, and I think that if you came of age before the internet, your brain is wired a certain way, and I think that there's, it's, I think in a lot of ways, why I've written a couple of records about, you know, that are really heavily marinated in nostalgia, it's a lot about looking back at growing up in rural ontario with you know what living in a three channel television universe and really relying largely on your imagination for your own fun like my brother and i grew up

in the middle of nowhere we didn't have friends that lived nearby we had our dogs we had a lake we had bicycles we had sticks you know we had tree forts. And I really think that that kind of lifestyle led to why I have an imagination that I can really lean on. You know, I've made a living from my imagination for almost 22 years now. And I've been very grateful for it. So I was reluctantly, you know, thrown into this internet thing. And I think in my sort of grumpy old man thing, it's like, well, it used to be better. I don't know if you know that joke about how many folk singers does it take to screw in a light bulb? Four, one to screw in the light bulb and three

to sing in harmony about how they like the old one better. That's me. I'm that guy. I'm a folk singer reluctantly changing the light bulb. But like you say, now that I've got my Huxley night in Canada, I do think that I'd even seen an interesting statistic during the heat of sort of COVID news, which was, even though people could have worked from home all these years leading up to COVID, they didn't. And there was the sense maybe that, what was it? Was it middle management getting excited to lord over their people in an office environment and be excited about having that power over people in person? Because what evidently was revealed is that people are at least as effective by working from home as they are in going to work. So does this not throw

an interesting spanner into the works if you're a business owner who says, look, maybe I don't need expensive business real estate, maybe I can rethink this whole thing. But it took COVID to sort of force the issue and to create a situation where it was like, well, hey, we could have done this easily over the last 15 years, but now we have to do it. Now I have to make Huxley Night in Canada if I want to continue to connect with my audience and do something interesting for myself. Is Huxley Night in Canada, if I want to continue to connect with my audience and do something interesting for myself. Is Huxley Night in Canada free? It's not free, no. It's once a month, and we've been charging $12 for the entry. Do you sing? I sing. There's different segments in the show. There's a segment called Hawk Talk, and in Hawk Talk, you can call me on a landline telephone, and we have it on speaker, and we have a good old-fashioned chin wag. Wherever you come from

in Canada, we will chit-chat, or if you've called in from elsewhere outside of Canada, we can chit-chat about how you're doing. There's a segment called Pet Songs. Years ago, when I was sort of a young rock star, I'd talk to my manager, because I grew up with pets, as I was saying earlier, and I would, my brother and I would anthropomorphize our pets, we loved our pets so dearly, and I always anthropomorphize animals, and I remember saying to my manager back then, you know, who was busy trying to make me into a rock star, I said, I have this great side hustle idea where I'd like to, I'd work by a commission, and you could like submit your, an essay and some photos about your pet, and then maybe I'd like to, I'd work by a commission and you could like submit your,

an essay and some photos about your pet. And then maybe I could like write a song. And of course, my manager at the time said, it's absolutely absurd. There's no, like, we're not going to, it's very off brand, but you know, fast forward, I'm 45 years old. Um, I, my rockstar days have sort of come and gone. I'm very happy with where my career is at. I'm very happy with the sort of where my life is at. So it seemed like an, it seemed like an excellent time to kind of revisit this idea. So people have been submitting pictures and lots of stories of their pets. And so there's a segment on HuxleyNet in Canada where I write a song about your pet. One selected pet per episode, I create a video for your pet.

And it's very exciting. We did a last episode was a dog named Thurman who came from a shelter in New Mexico and has sort of wiggled his way and lives now in Tobermory, Ontario. But I've received well over 200 entries for people with their pets and I read them every day and I cry and laugh all morning.

I'm up very early. I like to get up at around 5.30 and I drink coffee, cry and laugh and look at everybody's pet entries. So is this the deal that Tom Power got early. I like to get up at around 5.30 and I drink coffee, cry and laugh, and look at everybody's pet entries. So is this the deal that Tom Power got the other day? That's right. Okay.

That's right. So Tom has a pet. What's that? Tom has a pet. Tom has a pet called Chapman, but also Sobeys. But I couldn't. So I just settled on Chapman. But like a lot of people who name a pet, then that pet starts to take on new pet names. And so Tom had a, he also called his pet Chappy Valley Goose Bay and Chappy Gilmore.

And so this became part of the song. And this is what I do. So if you write me a detailed enough description of your pet and it sort of feels colorful and has like a real, a beautiful sort of emotional narrative, I can really run with that. Okay, so many things here. Firstly, the lovely Jennifer, who I met, I never saw her, but I heard her voice. Wonderful voice. How long have you been married to Jennifer? I never saw her, but I heard her voice. Yeah.

Wonderful voice. How long have you been married to Jennifer? We just had our 10th wedding anniversary last week. So on that note, I want to say happy anniversary to my wife because today is my seventh anniversary. That's right. Happy anniversary. I saw the photo of you guys at the Louvre. Yeah.

We got engaged in Paris. So that was funny. Oh, so great. Yeah. And so I don't know. We can't go out to a restaurant or anything. So that was from the... So great. Yeah. And so I don't know. We can't go out to a restaurant or anything. So I don't know.

Maybe we'll order in something fancy. I don't know. But I don't know. Whatever she wants. So love you, babe. The last episode, I was going to make you episode 666. I saw that. Frankly, I was a bit... I think about that kind of stuff.

I'm not embarrassed to say that I mar i was a bit i i think about that kind of stuff i'm i'm i'm not embarrassed to say that i marinate a little bit in the what might be considered esoteric sort of you know thinking and i was like oh i feel a little bit spooked by that well you're lucky i gave it to my wife so uh saturday night i realized you were gonna just you know just by a happenstance, like the way the calendar was arranged, you were chosen to be 666. 666 was choosing you. And my wife and I did an hour together Saturday night for episode 666. So you're 667. So you're off the hook.

I feel better. Off the hook there. Your hat you're wearing. No one can see you. So the original plan was that I was going to do some things so we could live stream and see you. And there is some issues with the audio. So I didn't do that. So we're not live anywhere.

But I wish people could see your Guns N' Roses hat. When did you buy that hat? I bought this hat not that long ago, actually, like a month or so ago. I bought it for a video I was shooting where I don't want to necessarily get too much into the narrative about the video but I felt that the Guns N' Roses motif was really going to speak to the character I was creating for this video I also love I mean I remember the first time I heard Sweet Child of Mine was at a school gym what do you call that an assembly and i went to a school

i went to elm aguin highland secondary school in south river ontario and there was a lot of bands and this band that had an electronic drum set barry botham played the electronic drum set and it was fronted by a guy named davey malloy who had long red hair and was kind of, he was a wonderfully sort of prickish little arse. And he played a cool guitar. And the first time I heard Sweet Child of Mine was in an assembly, and it just blew my head off, you know. And then obviously, for the next few years, all you heard anywhere was Guns N' Roses. Yeah, I think we're the exact same age. And I can tell you, I remember buying remember buying the appetite for destruction cassette and you know,

when you open the liner notes or whatever, there's some like crude drawings in there. I don't know if you remember, uh, but it felt very dangerous. Like I distinctly remember feeling like, Oh, this is,

this is dangerous. Like it felt very cool to young Mike when I was, uh, and I love that album. I still like, I still will listen to appetite for destruction. A lot of power love that album. I still, like, I still will listen to Appetite for Destruction. A lot of power in that record. And man, I don't know, even I've got a lot,

there's a few jumping off points with what you just said. Like, so, you know, I had a mom who watched very carefully the media and music and movies and television that my brother and I took in. It meant that I saw, I didn't see a lot of the stuff that my friends saw. I didn't have access to certain things.

I wasn't allowed to have Guns N' Roses, Appetite for Destruction in the house. My mom had a hair salon in the basement of our place. And I think that she caught wind of that there was maybe some untoward lyrical content on Prince's Purple Rain. So I remember that tape being extracted from my Calgary collection. Darlie Nikki. Darlie Nikki has the bad content. Darlie Nikki, yeah. There's

the masturbation references. So that cassette went on the top of the fridge while it went under review for two weeks in my house. I would walk by and look up to the top of the fridge and see the Purple Rain cassette sitting there. And again, like you said, it felt dangerous. And I wasn't exposed to a lot of dangerous stuff. Like I had friends who obsessed over Nightmare on Elm Street. And even like I wasn't allowed to see Footloose or anything that even had like mildly suggestive, like, you know, cloaked somewhat, you know, quasi-nudity. Anything like that was off.

So there's a lot of gaps I have from my childhood in the 80s where I didn't get to see or hear or own anything that felt dangerous so I had to kind of keep that on the very much on the DL anything dangerous going on but you're right I mean not to mention that I could you know I'm a drummer first and foremost and when I moved to Toronto from the sticks the whole idea was that I was going to move to Toronto to become a drummer for hire and to this day drumming is still my passion I think a lot about it I think a lot about drummers and drumming and Steve Adler who was the original drummer in Guns and Roses who was the guy who I think tangled the most with illicit substances and you could see he was on one of those reality

tv shows where they followed his life into rehab and he he was pretty messed up what I will say is his drumming versus Matt Sorum who came later Matt Sorum was kind of like a uh you know like a heavy metal studio guy as I kind of took it and you know he played he played drums effectively and and I think he was probably a reliable guy to have in a band and not sort of wondering is Steve Adler going to be in jail when we need him or is he going to make it to the gig? But the drumming and the fierce, tangible excitement and just danger that you feel from Steve Adler's drumming, like when I listen to that record and I hear the explosive nature

of what it is to be young and reckless, that record is like a clinic. And Steve Adler's drumming and the way he hits and just the energy that pours off the parts he plays. Like he's somebody who, once you remove him from the, from the equation of Guns N' Roses and put Matt Sorum in, the band starts to get a little bit more methodical.

It's definitely not people like, you know, peeing, peeing into, you know, police cruisers, open windows and stuff like that, that apparently they did in Hollywood or maybe that was Motley Crue, but anyway. It all conflates at this point. But my favorite, I don't know what your favorite cut was off because there were a lot of big hits off that, but I still, my favorite cut might be Mr. Brownstone. Like I'll still break into, you know,

I get up around seven, get out of bed around nine. Like I love Mr. Brownstone. I think it's still Sweet Child of Mine for me. to uh you know i get up around seven get out of bed around nine like i love mr brownstone i think it's still sweet child of mine for me um like i can't go deep with that tape like i said i didn't own it so i had to listen to guns and roses covertly and there was guys the weightlifters on my bus they all sat at the back and that's how i could absorb um of Puppets, Appetite for Destruction, anything that wasn't allowed in my house, I could listen to because the weightlifter guys at the back of the bus would always be playing that stuff on a boombox. So I know more of the hits, the touchstone stuff. And for me, Sweet Child of Mine, that D major, and it it's later revealed that that lick is slash sort of practicing string skipping techniques.

And I guess it was sort of like somebody in the band said, whoa, whoa, that's pretty cool. And then, of course, it turns into this epic ditty. And it's got that story to it. I hope it's true. I think it's true. But where they didn't have lyrics, so Axl's kind of like in the rehearsal or whatever, he's going like, where do we go now? You know, where do we go? Where do we go now?

Like he's literally asking like what, you know, and that ends up sticking. Yeah, I think that kind of stuff happens more often than you'd think. Like, I don't know why off the top of my head, I think of it that lyric from Spando Ballet, like, why do I find it so hard to write the next line? Like, it's like, that has to have been his first thought was writing the next line. It's like,

oh, hell, well, why don't I just write about how hard it is to write the next line? It's a great, it's a great moment. I think that's, you know, I love that stuff about how people write, you know, it's, it's, it's all accidental. Good stuff happens when you're not, because you're not thinking about it. Okay, I pulled a jam, like, we're gonna play some hoxley stuff and i'm gonna find i need to get an update on like where you were at when the pandemic struck and some more details on that but here's a song you referenced the first time you were over here bring it up a little bit for you oh right leave the bureau in the snow catch a train to uncle paul right I'll bring it down a little so you can talk over it but uh orchestra yeah I don't know this is not

quite kicking out the jams, although you were kind enough to... Yeah, I guess we're kicking out a jam before we get to your stuff, but what do you love about this song? I'm going to talk about drummers. I'm convinced this is the great Toronto drummer, Mike Slosky,

Michael Slosky, who played, who was sort of... I discover Michael Slosky because he was Bruce Coburn's drummer through the 1980s. And he was also in a band with Chris Tate called Big Faith that used to play

at the Ultrasound on Queen Street that I was way too young to get into. But I would drive down to Toronto from my place up north of Huntsville when I could borrow my parents' car and I would sneak into Ultrasound to see Mike Slosky's drumming is, I could hear it a mile away.

And I'm convinced that's mike slosky on that on that track yeah cool hey i'd say so drum drum nerd stuff no i love drum you know i'm not a drummer but uh love hearing the nerd stuff are you kidding me uh cool so i'll let it i'll keep it brewing in the background for another couple of minutes just because I'm digging the jam. But what exactly were you up to in mid-March or whatever when everything shut down? So I was on tour. I was doing shows with Sarah Sleen. We were doing a show that we'd put together that featured the two of us on stage at the same time. show that we'd put together that featured the two of us on stage at the same time. We had rehearsed a band that sort of created a set that was our music sort of shared together. But there was a

couple of days off. And in those days off, I had shows in Paris, Ontario, of all places. And in Paris, Ontario, we were at this really nifty bout boutique hotel and you could tell the world was turning upside down when we were watching the the cbc news channel all day and it felt like the world was kind of coming to an end and uh we did our first we did two nights in paris ontario the first it felt like yeah like where are we it's clearly something big is going on. The next day, CBC News Network, it was like, I felt like the world was never going to be the same again. That show never got canceled. Okay.

So I did the show. It was like the big elephant in the room was the fact that there was this illness. Do you remember what day we're at? Like, what are we at now? Because the Friday was the 13th. Do you remember? Yeah,

this was the 11th and the 12th. Okay. Yeah, right. The Friday, I was meeting up with the Sarah Sleen tour again in Ottawa. So I met the tour vehicle at a gas stop on the 401. And the guys who were running the show in Ottawa, it was a city run venue and they were waiting for the city's sort of definitive list of things that were going to close. And we

kept calling and calling and calling as we were getting closer to Ottawa like can we just please turn this vehicle around like we know the show is not going to happen everything is being cancelled the world is being cancelled fun is being cancelled um but they were like while we're waiting for the city of Ottawa we're waiting for the city of Ottawa we're waiting for the city of Ottawa well we waited for the city of Ottawa until we got to Ottawa. We got to the venue and they said, yeah, it's been canceled. So we turned around and drove back home. I came back to my father-in-law's house because my wife and I had sold our house in Montreal where we lived for two and a half years back in the end of January.

And we moved to her hometown of Peterborough, but we hadn't found a house that was working for us yet. So we were at her dad's house while we waited to find a house and then COVID hit. And then it's been four months of living at my father-in-law's house. We did find a house eventually, but we don't get to move into it until August. So there you go. Okay. So you weren't going to attend the junos by any chance i guess because the junos were that weekend right i remember in saskatoon right yep and i remember i

had a like i had a buddy who was going to do some work behind the scenes at the junos and he was like i don't think they canceled his flight until like the saturday like this was they were really late and kind of canceling that too. But then eventually of course they did cancel it. So, so want to hear an interesting coincidence? Sure you do. Okay. Uh, on Thursday, like the Thursday that just passed. So a few days ago, I, I produce a podcast for Ralph Ben-Murray. Oh, cool. And it's called not that kind of rabbi and everyone should listen to it. And I consider Ralph Canada's spiritual guide. And so I was recording and producing his conversation on Thursday with Sarah Sleen.

Okay. Ah, okay. So it's just coincidence. So coincidentally. That's funny. Yeah, I know. And I actually invited Sarah to join us because at some point i want to talk about the music you've recorded together and i thought hey let her pop in for that part but she uh

i asked her too late she had other things on her agenda so busy person very busy person so um but so so so you were on tour with sarah and then everything shudders, and you end up in Peterborough in your father-in-law's, like what, you got the basement? How does it work there? It's a split-level home. There's a lot of these houses that were built in the 60s and 70s. It's a split level, and we're on what they call the lower level. I've been corrected. We're not in the basement.

The Huxley Night in Canada set, which is where you see me right now, that's in the official basement. So we've been here um at yeah at don's place we opened the pool though so things are looking pretty good for me no sounds sweet now uh when did you buy in peterborough we bought a house in peterborough yeah okay so this is where you're putting down your uh your roots now you're uh yeah i feel like you know i i have a very peripatetic existence and I've moved a lot and I live a lot on airplanes and I live a lot in foreign places. And I think that, interestingly enough, over the 20 or 21 years, I guess I've been doing this, like there's those moments when I started and when you're young and you're sort of climbing the hill and stuff. And, you know, like anything you do for 20 years or more you you kind of fall in and out of love with

it I think and um and I think that the funny thing was with my job is that I also quit drinking about eight and a half months ago and I've been finding doing my job sober was also quite fascinating and I actually just as this whole COVID thing was happening, I was touring Canada sober last year. And let's just say that the sobriety part, like it's maybe a 20%, it plays a 20% importance in the overall narrative. But I think it's interesting because alcohol accompanied my job for so many years. But I've been loving my job, like loving it. Loving being a 45-year-old guy who gets to sing, the, write the kind of music I want to write, gets to do his own TV shows, gets to put out children's books. I, I really like, I'm one of

those very strange middle-class artists that there's not many of those people who can get to sort of live in that lane in Canada. And, and all of a sudden I just had the wherewithal to realize that, man, I have just a very funny and interesting life. And, and maybe I'm the right age, you know, my hormonal apparatus is changing. And, you know, my next record is called less rage and more tears. And what's happening to me happened to my dad. Like when you're young, and you're raging against things, and everything makes you angry. I was an angry young man for a very long time. And, and something happened, like all of a sudden, my hormones to change and what used what used to make me and i'm crying all the time and i remember that happening to my dad and i feel like within the context of that sort of that new

hormonal arrangement and where you start to like look at life very differently because it's like oh shit like i'm really like i'm on the downswing now like my my best you know my my my best years are there's as many behind me as there could be my best, you know, my best years are, there's as many behind me as there could be ahead of me. You know what I mean? And so why not fall back in love with this great job that I have, which, you know, I think too, when you go through the ringer of being in the music business,

the music business, it has a dictionary's worth of ways to humiliate you, you know, and so like, and if you can live through that and kind of come out intact and, and have a real, and continue to have an authentic sense of yourself, I think that you can really make an interesting mark. And so all that to say that COVID came just as I was falling back in love with my job, and I couldn't tell, oh, and to travel too, and I'm seeing your picture, your wedding picture, or the part of me, your engagement picture from the Louvre today on the Twitter, gets me thinking, so I, when I was younger, I became famous in France, and it was very, a fascinating time in my life, and I lived in Paris, and I still, I was in Paris like four or five times last year, because they still kind of

treat me like I'm a something there, and I get to kind of go back and I was like moonlighting I was going over for weekends of of promotion and media and stuff and that's just a city I have a long long history with that um was almost a separate reality from my like Canadian uh career was this like famous in France guy and I this of all the the bellyaching I've done about getting on planes, I saw a plane crash when I was a kid. And I, I struggled to get on planes to this day. And sometimes, and even the drinking, like, so I don't drink now on planes. So I've sort of with my fear and its intensity. But I will never bellyache about travel ever again. Because honestly, if somebody has said to me last year, like, hey, if you never again would that be great i'd be like absolutely i never want to travel again but the fact of the matter is is that i want to go back to paris again there's lots of i mean i was

in tokyo 12 years ago it's the most fascinating place i've ever been i want to make sure i got to get back to japan i got to take my nephews to japan like what like i know that the the world of travel might not ever resume into the same. It might not be the thing it was, but the idea of travel, it's changed the person I am. And now I'm greedy for it. I'm wanton for travel. Were you as big as Jerry Lewis in Paris? No way.

No, absolutely not. No, I was famous there for about 18 months. How come? Because I had this similar chat with Danko Jones. So Danko Jones, the reason I compare you to is I feel like striptease is like bounce. Okay, you remember Danko's bounce, right? Absolutely. That's probably the only song 99% of Torontonians have heard on the radio from Danko Jones is bounce. I would argue right and then not to compare you know we've heard more than that than striptease from you i'm not

saying that but but uh danco's bigger in europe than he is home why do you think uh france embraced you like what was it about your music that resonated with the French? The French have a very closed media system. So if you get a good review in Uncut Magazine or Mojo Magazine out of the UK, that tends to be able to set your career on fire for all of Europe. The Germans refer to those two magazines. But at the time, France's system was kind of its own closed media system it really felt like look we make our own decisions here of what we love Jeff Buckley had just passed away and Jeff Buckley had become the French made him famous first and I think I came along as this young skinny kid who could sing really high with an operatic style

and I had frizzy hair and they almost like they they I became a placeholder for Jeff Buckley after he left and in all the interviews it was like you're the next Jeff Buckley or the next Jeff Buckley and even though I are the timbres of our two voices are nothing alike, but I think at the time, like this was even in some ways pre-Coldplay. This is before you heard men singing falsetto on the radio as a rule. That became very popular later. Coldplay kind of opened the door to having men sing in a falsetto voice. But when I was doing it, you didn't hear it very often, hearing men singing up into those ranges.

Just Tiny Tim. You didn't hear it very often, hearing men singing up into those ranges. Just Tiny Tim. You didn't hear it very much. And that's why for Tiny Tim, it was such an absurdity. So partly that, it was just something about the way my thing and the way my thing looked. Like it was just absorbed into the French culture very quickly. And then all of a sudden I was like hanging out with famous people and and France was in some of the last big tours

I did in France I was touring with some of their biggest artists but I also played with like The Cure and David Bowie and there was a summer where all I played was Roman Roman Colosseums in the south of France and it was kind of a strange and wonderful time that came and went. And again, when you're young and you have a young hormonal apparatus and you're drinking all the time, you're not aware that what's happening is so extraordinary as to never probably ever happen ever again. I look back at my silly self and thought i should have taken a few more photos of that because it was really a very interesting time it's france seems to embrace a lot of the greats when they're you know i'm thinking of nina simone and like artists

like that right where it's right like i mean i just saw a great doc well i didn't just i saw it a couple years ago but great documentary called whatever happened to Nina Simone. And, uh, yeah, she's playing little clubs in Paris essentially at the end of her life. And, uh, do you ever think maybe you and Jennifer end up,

uh, living in, uh, living in Paris? It's a city that two of us love very much. It's a city that the two of us have spent a lot of time together in and separately in. Um,

but like any big, any great city in this world, that city does not look the way it looked when I first lived there in like in the year 2001. You know, just like every time I keep going back to London, England, it just gets exponentially bigger and more difficult to navigate. And the great cities of the world that I know, the Paris's, the London's, the Toronto's, these kinds of places like are harder to live in. And I feel like they're just bigger, they're more expensive, they're more congested.

Basically the fee to pay to play in those kinds of places is just, it's out of my league now and I feel that I had junky junky junky apartments all the times that I lived in Paris but I don't even know if I could afford to or want to afford to live into those cities now but there's still places that I love dearly and love to be in but I don't know about living there although we were in Toulouse on our last tour and Toulouse is kind of a college town and it's a little bit more off the beaten path I felt quite comfortable in Toulouse actually that's a south of France right southern France yeah mid-south of France

yeah it's it's the headquarters of Airbus and I also I flew out of Toulouse to go to uh to Cork Ireland the last time I was there. And I was, because I battled back some of my fear of flying by a lot of the other things I follow on Twitter, a lot of like avgeeks and people who love flying and love airplanes and sort of normalize flying and normalize airplanes. And so I sort of, I moonlight in this world of avgeekery. And I found that the Toulouse airport is just loaded with avgeeks who are there to see the Airbus factory.

And man, it was just a wild experience to see all these kooks with their long lens cameras and getting all, you know, they collect and trade things like, you know, the safety, the little safety booklets and things like that. It's an interesting community. Before we get too far away from Huxley Night in Canada, when the next one, just for, is it this coming Thursday? So Thursday night at 8pm Eastern Standard Time. And you can get tickets at my website at HuxleyWorkman.com. If you don't follow me on Twitter, it's a gas. I'm so good at Twitter, at Hks the Workman, and I love Twitter.

It's a thing. I know that if I get the chance to be on my dying bed, my dying bed, my death bed, I guess they call it, if I get to have that chance where I'm there and I'm lucid enough to kind of think through my regrets, one of my regrets will be the amount of time I've spent on Twitter. But it's also an interesting platform. I feel like in its pure form Twitter is just a great opportunity to make collaborative art in real time and I love that part of it but there's a lot of parts of Twitter that I know um yeah if I'm on my deathbed I'll go

should have been off off Twitter a lot more uh you're preaching to the converted here uh I of all the social media channels and I dabble in all of them at some point or another but the only one i enjoy is twitter like i would pull the plug on all the other ones and i i i really still enjoy twitter like i enjoy i follow you and i enjoy your tweets and i enjoy the interaction i just i like the fact that i can have a little real-time conversation with uh i don't know a steve pakin or ho a Huxley Workman or a Leo Roudens or whatever. Like, we're all kind of in this together and we can kind of share something and, you know, respond on it. And, you know, I know there's, like anywhere else, there's jerks on Twitter that are just there to cause chaos.

But I'm pretty good at muting or blocking and ignoring those people and the vast majority of people I interact with on Twitter it's quite uh it's quite lovely really like I just uh I just dig the community yeah well and I feel you there and like I like what I feel like I know about your life you know you and I don't know each other outside of the fact that I met you last year when we did our first episode number 547 or whatever it was, but like, I get a lot of, I get a lot of good vibes just watching you being you and you basically committed to Toronto Mike podcast and like, that, that you're a guy who's still doing his thing like i feel like i follow a lot of those types of people who seem to just be you know have that callous on their forehead

and they're just still knocking through walls and making stuff and i those are the kinds of people i feel a real kinship to or kinship with i know i hear you and i dig what you've been you know i dig what you're doing and even the idea that you're going to, you know, put on your own television show on Thursday night, and people can buy tickets and attend like your own, it's your own cable 10 access show, like it's like Wayne's World or whatever. Like, that's cool, man. And I love creators who just do it themselves. Like, some people are out there applying for jobs, I don't know, the CBC and CTV and these different traditional media outlets. Like, you know, then you're just sort of like, you're just sort of like a, you're a hired gun that you're going to be spotted in here. But you can, you can control your own destiny, man.

Like you are the creative controller of this, this, this production. Like that's amazing. It is amazing and i'm lucky that my wife um she she's um she's very good with the computer like i like i said earlier i've already sort of stated my uh luddite credentials here but like it's been i remember we we applied we i was looking for a record deal like two or three records ago and And it just was like, I'm not going to get a record deal. How interesting is that? Like, that's just the way it's going to be. And then I thought, well, I'm going to have to learn how to run Final Cut Pro.

I'm going to have to buy a camera to shoot my own videos. And then all of a sudden, like I'm thrust into a universe where, I mean, I remember the video budgets for the back in the day when I was on Universal Records and videos were $50,000 to $100,000 minimum. remember the video budgets for the back in the day when i was on universal records and videos were 50 to 100 000 minimum and what you got was a three and a half minute clip that you know may or may not play on much music in my case i got a lot of support from much music but um you know these were little 70 80 000 television commercials for a song you're trying to sell and fast forward to the universe we're living in like you say I've had to learn a lot of stuff and I've had to learn a lot of tech and I see some of my music friends of a similar cohort who are openly um they're openly

negative and they're openly um they're they're vocally against having to learn anything new. And I'm just not ready to be that guy. Uh, I am not ready to say, look, I've, my learning days are over. Like I thought I was in this for a nice, easy, you know, ride down the hill until I didn't have to make stuff anymore. I think ultimately, I remember years ago when my wife and I were sort of in the middle of the last, let's say five years ago, and I was bitching a lot about my job. And she's like, I said, you know, when I retire, and she's like, well, just hold on a second, what does retirement look like to you? And I said, well, it'll be, it'll be the time when I get to do whatever I want. And she said, well, what do you do now?

I'm like, oh yeah, I do do whatever i want and i'm in a really lucky position so that instead of like why did the music business have to change so irrevocably why did it have to not be a thing that pays musicians you know fairly why did it have to turn into a thing that ground the very essence of who you were out of you while you like attempted to try and like attract new followers to new media forums and then you have to like try to tell people who you know I'm 45 years old a lot of my fans are my age their reluctance to move to a Spotify universe they want to a lot of them still want to buy the CD or the record so you know you'll get people say, why aren't your Spotify numbers better?

And I'm like, well, because most of my fans are not 19. And they remember the experience of buying a record, they remember the experience of opening up a tape or a CD and reading the liner notes, this is my cohort, these are my people. So I feel now like, you know, a lot of the ways I used to make money have disappeared. And instead of bitching my way through that, I feel more emboldened to enjoy the creative aspects of what I do because it's actually fulfilling this little TV show for the first two months, we didn't know what we were going to do. Um, I'm, you know, I, I had money saved, so I was going to be okay, and I knew that I could, like, last a while, but I was like, man, like, sitting around is not what I do very well, like, I thought that, oh, this will be great, I'll be a total rest, and

we were walking, and it was great, and then it was like, absolutely not, so I ordered a bunch of camera equipment from Henry's, and I said to Jenny, I was was like I think we can make a TV show like I I'm gonna buy a camera switcher I'm gonna buy some lights like I think we can do this I know we can do this because it feels like and I was in the middle of uh developing a couple of theater projects as well and some of my theater buddies were saying like in their sort of closed door meetings theater is talking about not really getting back into any kind of normal swing of things until 2022 and i was like i started to hear these numbers and i felt like am i really going to be sitting for two years like absolutely not like right so this hoxley night in canada show which i had actually pitched to cbc 10 or 12 years ago and it was rejected um it was like no this is the time to do this like there's

the camera equipment in total and and my camera switcher and all the lighting and stuff which i bought as much of it as i could from henry's or local local people who had remained open or at least mostly open through the covid stuff i don't think i spent more than fifty five hundred dollars or six thousand dollars to get into a place where I'm putting out world-class content from my father-in-law's basement. Like five years ago, what it costs $20,000 to do the same thing. Like I'm, I'm the only one who can see right now, but you, your video looks amazing and you sound great. Like, like, so, and I always say, cause I've had to kind of do similar things. You know, I'm,

I really liked the theater of the mind of a podcast. It's audio only in this episode, by the way, I did have a light go off a moment ago. Uh, I actually probably should have put you on zoom and then started up my other thing to get the video streaming work. And I'm just right now, I figured out what I did wrong. I did in the wrong order and it messed everything up, but okay. work and i'm just right now i figured out what i did wrong i did in the wrong order and it messed everything up but okay but uh and but but it's brick by rip it's brick by brick you know you've got yourself the good mic and you know you got your switcher and you got your lighting and you just brick by brick you build yourself your uh your uh your your presence and very cool very cool yeah well you were a real inspiration to be honest with you mike like i said to you after i

saw your show and and went to your house last year i was like man who is this guy like again like my luddite credentials are are sort of true enough that that walking into your scenario was like a brand new thing i was like man this guy's got mics he's got he's got he's got a systems like how did he do this why did he do this you know like right right no thank, thank you. I'm so excited you shared that with me because if I can just say I inspired Huxley Workman, then I feel like my work here is done. I don't see why you didn't. Like, to me, like, that's,

I'm really attracted to people who have an innovative sense or really, honestly, trying to sound as, like, you know, as normal as possible. I'm attracted to greatness in any capacity. Like anybody who's doing anything great, I want to be around it. I want to smell it. I want to see it. I want to like touch it. It's like, well, how are you doing this so great? Like in any field, in any field, greatness blows my mind. I'm just attracted to it. And I think I was like, I walked into your thing. I'm like, who is this guy what is this thing like okay because you you you did not i can always tell when a guest doesn't listen to the program like i can always tell i could tell and it's and it's it's a lot of guests

come on and they have steve pakin's a good example i knew when he sat at where you sat and we had our you know we went we had more than an hour together not like when i have hoxley workman and he's like you got 60 minutes but i knew i knew he'd never listened before but he actually went home i guess he went home and he maybe he listened to his episode and then maybe he liked it and he tried another one but i was getting emails like as he was going through the back catalog and he's like this is the best thing i've heard and oh my god you're you when aaron davis came over and you cried like that was so amazing like i started getting uh notes and all of a sudden paken's a This is the best thing I've heard. And oh my God, when Aaron Davis came over and you cried, like that was so amazing.

Like I started getting notes and all of a sudden, Paken's a regular listener of the program and he's on for the third or fourth time tomorrow. But yeah, hearing that you come in and you dug what I was doing here means a lot to me. It means a lot to me. Well, I think this is how the world of like inspiring people kind of works you know like I think too growing up as a kid who was a drummer and who all of my heroes

were in the in the liner notes in the record like I bought records for the drummer not normally for the guy who's on the front cover like so for me um the idea of stardom or like wanting to be the guy who's at the front of the picture whose name is on the ticket like i've always been interested in who's poking the buttons who's making this thing go you know and i have a real fondness for people who make things work you know in the music business there's a there's a there's there's a whole community of people who make things go for the handful of names of people that we can detail. And brick by brick, you know? Yeah, you don't just snap your fingers and suddenly it's all there.

Like, I mean, sometimes I map out the evolution of things and I'm like, I don't think I could have ever got here. Yeah. Like, you can't just start here. I had to go through a whole bunch in eight years, by the way. Some people are like, oh, overnight whole bunch in eight years, by the way, because some people are like, Oh, overnight success story and eight years in the making. But now Hawksley,

I got it. I got to talk more about the, the Sleen, the Sleen workman stuff. Okay. But, um, firstly you're in Peterborough.

So I know this, this should work for you. And, this is your homework. If you will, you are to go to, uh, garbage day.com slash Toronto Mike and sign up for the,

for the yard waste and recycling and the notification program that they have there. This is basically takes the guesswork out of everything. You've got like you're building a TV show and recording music. You can focus on all that. You don't have to start thinking, Oh, is it garbage day? Is it recycling? You're going to get the notification, okay? So garbageday.com slash Toronto Mike. It helps the show.

They're great people. I actually have their developers. The developers of the app are going to be on soon and we're going to talk about that. So Garbage Day. Hi, Barb. There was a recent episode with Barb and there were four different listeners

who wrote comments. You know, most listeners never comment on toront episode with Barb and there were four different listeners who wrote comments. Most listeners never comment on torontomic.com, but four different listeners came in to say, I thought this might be an infomercial and I really didn't expect much, but this was freaking good. So if you've been skipping the Barb Paluskiewicz episode because you figure it's one big ad for CDN Technologies,

you made a mistake. Go listen to the Barb episode. That was a couple of weeks ago. And you can reach Barb if you have any problems. Like, Hawksley, if you've got a problem with your network and connecting the cameras and everything with the internet there. I don't know, any questions, problems with your computer or network there. CDN Technologies, you can talk to Barb now at 905-542-9759

and tell her Mike sent you. If you were here in person, I know you don't drink anymore, but does Jennifer drink by any chance? She drinks, she usually drinks one beer a day. So there's six, there's a week's worth of beer sitting right there. Right.

And this is a rare eight pack. I give out six packs just for the cameras here. I have the eight pack. The, uh, yeah, I would have given you a fresh case of, uh, Great Lakes beer,

uh, for Jennifer to enjoy. That would last a while. Maybe your father-in-law enjoy the beer. They're great partners. Um, I'm going to have a catch up with all the partners. Like how are they doing three weeks?

Sorry, three months into the pandemic, we're going to catch up on things. So I'm going to talk to Troy soon from Great Lakes. But thank you, Great Lakes. Thank you, Palma Pasta. I'm going to be speaking with Anthony shortly. Austin Keitner, the Keitner Group.

If you have any questions about GTA real estate, you can text Toronto Mike to 59559 to engage Austin. Ask him anything. That guy's a wonderful guy to talk to. And stickeru.com when you need the, uh, I don't know, the Sleen Workman stickers for when you finally get to go back on the road, hopefully that vaccine shows up. I don't know. I don't know anything more than you do, but I'm hoping it's here, uh, sooner rather than later. But stickeru.com is where you go and order your stickers and your temporary tattoos and your decals

and all that great stuff. So I'm going to play a jam. So we're going to let this simmer for a little bit and then we're going to talk about all the great stuff coming from Sarah Sleen and Huxley Workman. Let's start with, okay, my mom's second favorite musical artist of all time. It's not Hoxley Workman.

It should be. But it's the band who originally wrote this song right here. Here we go. Strange and beautiful love starts tonight That dance around your head And in your eyes I see that perfect world I hope that doesn't sound too weird and I want

all the world to know that your love is all I need all that I need That's all I need, all that I need. And if we're lost, then we are lost together. So pretty.

You guys sound good together. I guess you already know that. That's why you keep singing together. All right. Firstly, that song, Lost Together by Blue Rodeo, is the perfect pandemic anthem, sort of. Right? Yeah, it definitely could be.

I mean, it's a hell of a song. On Tom Power's TV show, Jim Cuddy was on last night it's so funny these guys were heroes of mine when I was a kid and I used to go see Blue Rodeo almost every summer at the Quai de Bala in Bala, Ontario

among other places that I saw Blue Rodeo when I was a kid and I remember distinctly the day my dad brought home the 45 of Tri and I think he came my dad was a big record buyer so and he would come home from work and he would have records and I remember the 45 of try and the 45 of crowded house don't dream it's over I think came in our house like the same week or at least in and around the same time and I remember even at the time like being cognizant

I think maybe it was grade seven or grade eight and I was cognizant of the fact that I was hearing great songwriting. Like it was the first time I was like, man, like, what are these words? Who are these people? Like all of a sudden I was cognizant of like something was going on here. And so fast forward, like when Selene and I finished that, like, you know, we nervously emailed Jim Cuddy. Like I'm like, okay, well, I I wonder I don't have Greg's uh email although I I lost my hearing years ago and I was in actually in France and Greg uh was was dealing with some hearing issues as well and he was one of the first people that reached out like I heard some bad

stuff happened to you in France blah blah so anyways fast forward like if if the 16 year old version of me knew that I was going to be like making a Blue Rodeo cover and then lazily emailing Jim an MP3, only to have him email back telling me I love it. Like, that's what's so funny when you're in the, you know, you're seen behind the curtain of the entertainment business. It all, you know, the mystique does sort of wear off, but it was still quite a thrill to, A, that's the other thing. You can take any song that is as well written as that one,

and you can kind of, you can put it in the idiomatic any idiomatic framework you like and it will work and that's what's so great about a song that is like mathematically airtight which that song is okay so when was this recorded i feel like we went into the studio back in February and did this. And maybe even a little background here. Is this an EP people could buy right now? Like where? So you can go to Spotify and I believe it's only available for streaming. It's probably on all the different streaming platforms.

So you go to, you can probably find it through the Huxley Workman portal or Sarah Sleen portal or put in both of our names and that'll probably show up. And where in the, like the life cycle of the Sarah Sleen, Huxley Workman relationship did it, did you realize, oh, we should record something? Like, is it just that you were on tour together and your voices, because they're really pretty together. Is it just that, hey, we should put something down? I wanted to, you know, 20 some odd years in, I had produced Sarah's sort of first big major label record. And she sang on some of my earliest records.

And we kind of came from a time in the Toronto music scene where songwriters were this like fashionable creature that we would all be sort of roaming around Queen Street back in those days before there was a lot of you know chain retail stores and what have you this was Toronto in the late mid to late 90s and songwriting was like fashionable and cool and there was a lot of songwriters and there was a lot of venues where you could go and see songwriters and And those were my influences at the time, even going back to people who'd come before my cohort, like Jane Sibury and Martin Tielli and Spooky Rubin to some degree. And another guy from my pals, John Southworth, who is absolutely brilliant. So there were all these characters. brilliant. So there were all these characters. And I think that in the new media landscape with all of these likes and followers, and how many spins has your song gotten Spotify, how many

spins has mine gotten? The thing about the songwriter scene in the mid 90s in Queen Street in Toronto was that, of course, it was all quietly competitive, because a lot of those sort of artistic realms are and you would go out to see a gig and go, man, that guy just wrote, you know, that person that, you know, he, she, everybody, they've just written a song that blew my mind. That means I got to go home tonight, and I got to try and figure out how to either write one as good or better. So fast forward to the times we're living in, and all of a sudden, people can see your statistics right up close oh this youtube video has only got 30 000 views oh that's too bad it should have got more oh that's that song's only been streamed you know 46 000 times and so and so's has been streamed a million

all of a sudden there's a new competitive atmosphere that people in music have been thrown into that nobody got nobody asked you know we didn't want to see each other's stats we didn't want this to turn into a sort of a pissing contest that could be that had a metric that was so absolute for people within the industry to go oh well you're you look by the numbers you're more popular than this one and this person is less popular than this person it's sort of trite and unrealistic and I feel like Celine and I started to talk a lot about some of the more negative aspects of how the business has changed and the new realities that we were under, especially as middle-aged people. And it was

like, you know what we should do? We should go out and basically re-establish a notion of creative community. And that if the two of us were on stage singing each other's songs, you know, from a similar time, similar cohort of people from a time in Toronto that sort of came and went, it would be great to reignite this, this, this memory and to kind of have a bit of nostalgia, but also to, I think as well, the music business is obsessed with youth. And there was a lot of times when I was young, where I could feel my youth, like you trade on your sort of sexual viability to some degree. I remember when I was losing my hair, I was like, man, like, what's going to happen? Like,

if rock and roll is hair before it's music, like it was the four mop tops from Liverpool, we hadn't even heard a note they'd played yet, you know, punk is a hairdo before it's music, you know. So I was very cognizant of what aging and what like playing, if you're going to play a part in this, in the narrative of this archetype of being a rock star, like you've got to be eternally young, you kind of have to embody a certain sexual ideal for, you know, I look at Bowie who didn't really age or a Beck who doesn't age. These people who don't age, they get an opportunity to live in the music business a little bit longer because you're just that much, you look younger for longer, you can be traded, your youth currency doesn't ever diminish. And so I think that's another thing is that I, my competitive side, like I still go out to write and create Hawks at Night in Canada or to make a children's book or to do any of these things.

I still do it from a competitive angle or at a creative level that it's every bit as potent I feel today as it was when I was in my early 20s. Like I don't really feel any different on the inside. I still, every time I write a song, I want it to be the best bloody song I've ever written. Like I still swing for the fences every time. And so applying this to the Sarah Sleen thing, I think there was that like not wanting to re-establish the idea of community in the face of these, like, this new metric reality we're living in, and alongside that narrative, it was middle-aged people can still have a creative vitality that's exciting, and I wanted Sleen and I to be on stage to share that energy together and to kind of reimagine what it is to be a songwriter or a person who makes music in a time where the celebrity has overtaken music, sexual, this,

the sexual currency of the artist has overtaken music. You know, of course I grew up on pop music and I know all that stuff. We were talking about Prince like but in a way my heroes that the heroes that were put forward by the music industry in the early 1980s were heroes derived from I think in some ways an idealism that the music business had created in the 19 the late 1960s and I feel like like anything that I heard that was put forward to me, Paul Simon's Graceland, Prince, Michael Jackson, even Duran Duran, this stuff, like the version of pop music as it was sold to me as a kid, when the zeitgeist was speaking right to me in 1987 or 1983, like the quality of stuff being given to me as a kid by the major players in the media industry. That was high, high, high quality stuff. A lot of it made by geniuses

who are still regarded as geniuses to this day. Born in the USA. Born in the USA. I mean, that record in and of itself, like, or Dire Straits Brothers in Arms, or even Sting's early solo records. These are records that were sold to me as an 11-year-old kid.

This is what was like hair kid um go buy zz tops eliminator and it's like who are these 50 year old guys with beer it's like i remember being at robbie earl's birthday party his mom had bought us a flat of pepsi and i remember her bringing it to the table at the at the birthday party his april 3rd is his birthday and he she'd bring it to the table and said i got you guys pepsi because this was michael jackson drinks and we stayed up to watch good rocking tonight with terry david mulligan with robbie's older brother scott and here comes zz top it comes i've never seen this before and we're all like is it zz top is it zz top is it zz but i mean the the mere fact that there was a boardroom

somewhere in in the u.s where there where there was record execs gathered around, and they're like, you know what? There's these weird guys who are in their 40s with these beards. I think we need to put some carpet on those guitars and sell it to some kids. We need to sell them Steve Wynwood, and we need to get that Aretha Franklin back. We'll put her in a pink catalog.

There was so much holdover from the 1960s in the early 1980s that there was like a still an instinct for like let's get you know like why in the world would would they think that hoxley workman as a kid in 1983 would have any interest in zz top like the industry would never do that now they were never you know we got some 40 year olds with facial hair do you want to see if the kids are going to get this thing hoxley you're so right i mean because we're both the same age and yeah top 40 radio like today there's no one over the age i don't think there's very many people over the age of 30 on top 40 radio anymore but absolutely you're right you're absolutely right like you'll have a hit i mean i'm yeah i'm thinking back at the this you're right

the paul simon would have a big hit. Big hits. Like, I think about that record. Yeah, basically. Not only that, like, you know, the sort of the cultural appropriation part of what Paul Simon did aside. As a songwriter, and however you feel about that record,

that record made a massive impact on my life. And I think it's Paul Simon's greatest work. And it was the work done by a guy who was in his middle ages. He was in his, or he was a middle-aged man and he made the best record he's ever made in his entire career after a fetid career full of innovation, full of like, of, of giving the world some of the greatest songs that we've ever heard in the English language. Yes. And here he comes along, and I'm a kid

who's allowed to see him and Chevy Chase airbanding saxophones in the video. Again, there's no boardroom meeting in all of popular music that would be like, let's get these guys together. Let's get them pretending to play saxophone in the video. Kids are going to love this. Kids have no idea now.

Back then, I was allowed to see a middle-aged man do his thing make arguably the greatest record of his career and it was on tv for me to like absorb as this is what the zeitgeist is given to me i want i want to get a star wars millennium falcon for christmas and i want to get brothers in arms for uh tape in my stocking like yeah it's it's an absurdity wild and and you can fast forward a few years not too many years get to the late 80s or whatever and you got the traveling wilburys are they're all the rage and uh ah yeah unbelievable you know and roy orbison on this just at around the same time just before he dies of a heart attack, he's got a big comeback album with big top 40 hits on it. I think that the industry really started to overfeel itself.

And I think that what you started to see was with video, they knew that if they put a beautiful enough person in the video, we could start to move units. And of course, when video came and killed the radio star in the early we could start to move units and like of course when video came and killed the radio star in the early 80s i was like you know i'm not so i'm not i'm not so mad at that like i love thomas dolby thomas dolby is a hero of mine like any of these kooks that kind of came into the mainstream thanks to video you know she blinded me with science or any of these like one hit wonders um but i think once the industry started to overfeel itself and go like, okay, like, if we're always putting this sex symbol person up front, all of a sudden, if you were like an alien from outer space, and you started to watch MTV at a certain point in the mid 90s, you'd go, oh, I guess on that planet called Earth, only good looking people know how to sing.

Because you're only ever going to hear the musical ideas coming from good looking people. And then once it was like, geez, these good looking people, they're not writing songs that anybody really wants to hear. So it's like, well, we have these slightly less good looking people, even funny looking people who are in studios, a lot of them from Sweden. And of course we know they're not funny looking, but it's like, what if we get them to write them the songs? So we just need the good looking person.

We don't necessarily need them to write their own thing, but we need, and if they sing this person's song, then we're're good and then that's sort of what started to happen and all of a sudden you had a whole industry built on people who write the songs and then good looking people who can sing or at least dance around in the video for the song oh now i'm all frustrated now hoxley this is uh i feel like uh abe simpson you know i'm shaking my fist at the clouds right now. Okay. I do want to, I do want to play another song that you and Sarah did together because it's a

cover of a song by one of my favorite bands of all time. Let me play it and we'll talk about it. Does it diminish your super capacity to love? Walk like a matador. Don't be chicken shit And turn breezes into rivulets Sarah's got a pretty voice. Especially when she says shit. I heard that. All right, a little tragically hip uh who i just saw

this week uh jake gold is going to do some work with the surviving members of tragically hip with and i did send a note to jake because he's an fotm like yourself and jake says uh right now he's all action but the minute uh there's something to announce he's going to send one of the guys on toronto mic so oh amazing i i was actually thinking that I should reach out to Jake too. I know Jake a little bit and maybe just not quite enough to go, hey, what's the scoop here, Jake? Just drop my name. Everything will be fine.

I really like Jake, actually. I really like him. He's still working with, I believe he's still working with the Pursuit of Happiness. I think. Is that right? I think with, I believe he's still working with the Pursuit of Happiness. I think. Is that right? I think so. I think he still does some stuff. And I know he used to,

no longer active, but of course he was very big with great FOTMs, The Watchmen. Oh, yes. Yes, yes, yes. And he grew up with a great TMDS client,

Mark Hebbshire, host of Hebbsian Sports. But please, great song, great cover. Uh, just, just,

uh, like, like how did you pick which tragically hip song you were going to do a hip song? I mean, this was actually Sleen's choice. Um, I think that we're all in a,

still in some ways in a state of shock, I think, with the hip and with Gord dying. I look at the hip as this thing where I was a hip fan from the very beginning. In my high school band, I was in a band with guys who were older than me. And I remember we used to play Blow It High Doe and New Orleans is Sinkin'. And so I heard the hip through them before I actually heard the records. Because I wasn't really old enough to be hip to it. Because I was the young kid who could play drums pretty good. And so I played with older guys.

And I'd go to rehearsals. And they knew music that I didn't know because they were just a little bit more on the tip. And they said, we're going to try this song from a new band. I was like, oh. And then they played the riff on. And I was like, man, this sounds pretty badass. So fast forward, and then all of a sudden, you know, I have the Up To Here CD, and I'm in a long-term relationship with the Tragic Hip like a lot of people in Canada.

And so, yeah, here we are. And so, yeah, here we are. I would say that it's, if the hip isn't the most artful mass produced, like creative product that's been made by Canadians for Canadians, like it's so funny too. I was a bit kind of grumbly when Gord was dying and after he died, like I remember how the media got so excited for a new tragically hip record just so they could tear it apart with bad reviews and now magazine giving things bad reviews. And because I think that it was one of those things like the, that Sloan lyric about, it's not the band I don't like it's their fans or whatever. I think that, you know,

Gord democratized poetry to some degree. And even if you were a guy, you know, who was in the front row with. And even if you were a guy, you know, who was in the front row with your shirt off and you were just singing along phonetically, let's say you didn't even like, maybe you don't even know what these, but the fact is, is when you democratize poetry at that level where all of a sudden

tens of thousands of people, hundreds of thousands of listeners throughout Canada, maybe millions of listeners throughout Canada are all of a sudden on the same page, and we're all being influenced by this abstract poet guy who's kind of backed up by like, almost like a bar band, like it's like very palatable music, but with this undeniable genius guy bouncing around in the front, like, I sort of think that the amount of cultural win, as a guy who like looks at culture, looks at how culture, sometimes culture is good, a lot of times culture is bad,

entertainment products are good, a lot of entertainment products are bad, I look at the hip and go, the things that went right with the hip, and the things that are good, and I think, again, like that democratization of poetry, bringing poetry to the masses at that level, especially stuff that is so abstract. I mean, I will be eternally grateful because I feel like that wedged the door open for absurdist thinking. A lot like Kids in the Hall as well. I've been talking a lot about Kids in the Hall that like there was an absurdist thing that was normalized on CBC television. When I was a kid i would watch the kids in the hall with my girlfriend over the phone and like i think that in a lot of

ways comedy affected me equally to music i look at letterman and early seinfeld um actually pre seinfeld show seinfeld like when he was a stand-up gary larson comics, and Kids in the Hall, same kind of thing, where, like, they normalized that Canadian absurdist viewpoint, and Gord had it as well, where, like, 30 Hellens Agree, like, 30 Hellens Agree could have been a song off of, you know, Fan of Power, you know what I mean, like, that there's an absurdist thing that was sort of normalized and it was became popular like I think that's another thing I was I did Sean Cullen's podcast the other day and we were talking about how kids in the hall coming in and normal normalizing indie in a way I was talking to Michael Barclay about his new book which is going to sort of document Toronto in the in the late 90s and sort of the birth of indie in Canada

which was a very specific thing and it it went on went on to in, in large part, in many ways to influence the whole world because ultimately all of these indie people, it resulted in Arcade Fire and a couple of other very big things that went on to sort of define indie for the world. And I said, I think that if you were a kid at a certain age, you got access to kids in the hall and you could argue the tragically hip which are big indie products that became famous in Canada and normalized indie instincts normalized handmade efforts normalized putting an absurd conscious like an a consciously absurd viewpoint ahead and that kind of stuff that defined me when I was a kid. It absolutely defined me.

Man, we were inspired by a lot of the same things. And I just got to say, because you mentioned him, I got to say Sean Cullen, Michael Barclay, and Kevin McDonald from Kisnahall, all of them FOTMs. So just throwing it out there. But yeah, Kisnahall, big deal to me. And a lot of those, I mean, not so much the stand-up Seinfeld,

not so much, but like Letterman, you mentioned Gary Larson, Kids in the Hall, then Early Simpsons, Conan O'Brien when he first launched. Like I was, you know, in the year 2000. Like this was all this stuff kind of cooking up. Did you ever watch uh early conan or no uh no i don't remember okay no so that that thing i did there was a bit he do and at the time i swear to you it felt like the year 2000 was so far away like i just think this far off future and it would be in the year 2000 anyways it was a hilarious bit uh i won't go that i'm not

a singer like you i won't go that high again but the um although some people say my natural speaking voice is rather high already so but uh yeah just a lot of these things shaped my sense of humor i'd say and um to this day absolutely to this day i have one I'm going to close not close because we're going to chat a little bit before I actually close I'm going to close with lowest of the low

because that's how I roll but the I want to play one more song that you did with Sarah because I mentioned earlier that I do these pandemic Friday episodes so these are

these things sometimes these go two and a half hours it's we all have a thematic like we pick a theme for the week and each of us

bring five jams so it's myself Stu have a thematic like we pick a theme for the week and each of us bring five jams so it's myself stew stone and cam gordon and let's say we each take turns picking the theme uh that last week i chose the theme or no stews chose the theme um protest music so we each had to bring five protest songs and then play it and talk about, you know, why we love the jam or whatever. And for whatever reason, we've done a lot of duet stuff. There's been a lot of duet themes. So Guys and Gals was one week's theme. And this song was played during that week's theme.

So this song is brought up quite a bit on Pandemic Fridays. And here it is, yourself and Sarah singing it Who knows what tomorrow brings In a world where few hearts survive And all I know is the way I feel If it's real, we'll keep it alive The road is long And there are mountains in our way But we climb a step every day

Love lift us up where we belong Where the eagles cry on a mountain high Love lift us up where we belong Far from the worlds we know Up where the clear winds blow Oxley, who chose this fantastic jam? That was my choice, that one, yeah. My dad had that single too.

From the original, I guess not the original recording, but the first, you know, the cover, the version I think that the world knows the best by Jennifer Warrens and why joe cocker it's joe it's joe cocker right joe cocker yes thanks sorry my brain was skipped a beat there yes joe cocker and elizabeth warren so you know i think you know we all associate that you officer and a gentleman is that right yeah but it's jennifer right not elizabeth warren is the politician. Oh, Jennifer Warren. Elizabeth Warren. This is what happens, hey?

This is what happens when you're so stuffy. They stuff our livers with, we're like, they're trying to fatten up our gizzards to be a pate, you know? So our media, we don't know anymore. We can't discern what's the corn feed and what's dry meal anymore. So yes, Jennifer Warren's, correct. But I love that song. And I think that Celine and I wanted to go and cover Canadian songs without going back into the sort of standard picks of the Neils and the Jonis and the Leonards. We were like, Canadians are just really good at songwriting.

It's just something where it's just in our guts. We have an affinity for it. So it was like, let's choose stuff off the beaten path. And I don't even know if people really knew that that was a Buffy St. Marie song. No, I don't think I knew that until right now. Wow, okay. Because I know, I mean, maybe you have the same memories,

again, same age, but I knew Buffy as somebody I saw on Sesame Street. I guess that's true. I guess that's, I don't have that same. We are, we only, did you grow up in Toronto, right? Yes. So you have to remember, we were mostly a two-channel universe, and then we were a three channel universe with TV Ontario

and then at some point in the very early 90s we became a four channel universe with global television which is when I got to start to see Late Night with David Letterman and so a lot of TV stuff we missed

just because we had Bush television right well you missed you missed out on what basically my entire education, I think, was Sesame Street. So I'd be a big dummy today, I think, without it. Did you ever perform on the same stage the same night as Ron Hawkins and the Lois Lolo?

Yes, a couple of times. I played with Ron at the rivoli years ago i played with him in buffalo as well i think at least maybe even twice wow yeah they're big in buffalo because uh 102.1 played so much low and a lot of the cool cats in buffalo were listening in so uh hoxley we got to do this again like don't don't be shy, like, any time, because I feel like... I love this. I love this. Tip of the iceberg here. Again, people can go to, uh...

By the way, you'll know you made it with Hawksley Night in Canada when Roger's communication sends you the cease and desist. Because when that happens, then you'll know you've arrived, because I feel like you're right, you might be a little below the radar, but when this blows up, you're going to have that letter in the mail. I think, let's hope not.

We're all, we're all, we're all just family here. Maybe not because you don't want to pick, if you pick on Hoxley workmen, then you get all the, all the Canadians mad at you. So don't do that.

So everybody should get the tickets to see Hoxley night in Canada. You can, it sounds like you got to, you got to seek out the Sarah Sleen, Hoxley workmen Canada. You can, it sounds like you've got to seek out the Sarah Sleen, Hoxley Workman. Do you call your duet, duo, when you're a duo doing duets, do you call yourself Sleen Workman?

Is that like the name of the outfit? I can't even remember. I don't think there was any thought put into this, Mike. Honestly, I think it's just Hoxley Workman and Sarah Sleen, but probably Sarah Sleen's name comes first. Probably because it's alphabetical. It comes before Workman. But yeah, amazing conversation.

You're two for two. I don't know if you want to tempt fate by going three for three, but let me know, and we'll happily do this again. I will do this whenever you want because honestly, I told you this before, I'm pretty sure.

I'm a radio fanatic. I used to have a walkie, I had a walkie-talkie set I got for Christmas and I would broadcast to my mom in the kitchen from my bedroom. I would hold the walkie-talkie up close to my tape player when I was doing songs and I would act as the announcer in between. For me, radio is the pure art form, man. It's where it's at for me. I still, you know, I love the CBC so much, my kidneys hurt. Like, I'm fanatical for radio.

So, and I'm a guy, hey, I don't need stuff put in my eyes anymore. If you're awake and you're seeing it, just let me just have a break. I just want to hear somebody. And, you know, podcasts are the new radio. So when do we get to hear the Hux hoxley workman podcast i started one years ago and then didn't follow through my wife is a podcast fanatic in fact i i always say that you know um when she's she likes to she cleans up the kitchen at night and it's for

her time that's when she gets to sneak away and have her emotional affair with ira glass and i know that like you know it's like man well i'm gonna have her emotional affair with Ira Glass. And I know that, like, you know, it's like, man, well, I was going to have her date with her other boyfriend after dinner. I'm going to put in a good 45 minutes with old Ira there, and they get all googly-eyed together. I can suffer through it. Well, let me know. I know a guy who produces podcasts,

so let me know when you want to start one up again. And that, not sales pitches, but no. And that brings us to the end of our 667th show. You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike. And Hawksley is fantastic on Twitter. And is it at Hawksley Workman? Yes, it is.

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Well, I've kissed you in France and I've kissed you in Spain. And I've kissed you in places I better not name. This podcast has been produced by TMDS and accelerated by Roam Phone. Roam Phone brings you the most reliable virtual phone service to run your business and protect your home number from unwanted calls. Visit RoamPhone.ca to get started.