Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Niko Stratis: Toronto Mike'd Podcast Episode 1985

Episode Date: October 1, 2026

In this 1985th episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike chats with culture writer Niko Stratis about her career as a glazier growing up in the Yukon, moving to Toronto and writing about music, and the dad rock that made her a woman.A version of this podcast without programmatic ads is available to all Toronto Mike'd Patrons at patreon.com/torontomike.Toronto Mike'd, an award-winning podcast, is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Ridley Funeral Home, Nick Ainis, and RecycleMyElectronics.ca.If you would like to support the show, we do have partner opportunities available. Please email Toronto Mike at [e-mail]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to episode 1985, the drive of 85. This is 1985 of Toronto-Miked. An award-winning podcast. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery. Order online at greatlakesbeer.com for free local home delivery in the GTA. Palma Pasta. Enjoy the taste of

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pillars of the community since 1921. Joining me today, making her Toronto mic debut, its culture writer, Nico Stratus. Good morning. Good morning. How are you?

I'm doing okay. How are you? Good. Where do we find you today, Nico? I am in my living room. which is the entirety of my apartment on Bloor in Toronto. Okay, so I promised you I would give you the business off the top here. So I'll give you the business and then we'll have a great chat.

Okay. Firstly, I'm understanding, first, and I already feel bad. I haven't even given you the business. I might not give you the business because you've got some back issues. Is that right? I have complicated chronic pain problems that are largely back. but are also like, as a lot of people with back problems, no, it is also, you know, shooting pain down my legs

and in my hip and all of these things. So it's a complicated blend of pain problems. This is why you can see I have my cane right behind me, which I need when my back hacks up. I am sorry. Now I'm not going to give you the business because if you're having mobility issues, then of course we can do this remotely.

I was, so I'll tell the listenership, I was going to give you, you know, because until yesterday, I had this in the calendar to be an in-person basement thing. But, like, if you're using a cane and you've got chronic back issues, no, by all means, we can do this by Zoom. I really appreciate you a comment. Like, I prefer to do these in person, too, and it was this one. Like, yesterday, I was hobbling around, and I just thought, I don't know if I'll be able to make it all the way there and back. No, I appreciate that.

And I'm glad we could finally connect. I've been hearing your voice on, be it commotion, or I've heard you on, I want to get the title right, 60 songs that explain the 90s. Do you think I'm close on that title? That's, you nailed it. And one, you got it. Although I don't like the new, the new, I mean, I'm not saying I don't like the new show. I don't like the new title. What is it? 60 songs that explain the 90s that explained the 2000s. Can you help me out with the new one? Do you know the new title? I think it's, I've only done it once. It's 60 songs that explain. the 90s, colon the 2000s, I believe. What are your thoughts on that as a title? I like it because it's obviously, like, it's such a Rob Harville joke, and it, I kind of want to see how far that, like, could go, you know? Like, is it 60 songs that explain the 90s, colon the 2000s, colon the 2010s, colon the 2020s, you know, like how far, how far does this rabbit hole go?

It is a little bit long in the tooth, you know? Well, see, now it gives me, and I like these guys, but it gives me Nirvana, the band, the show, the movie vibes. Sure, yeah, yeah, the photo book, the merchandise, the, yeah. It's very much in that vein. Yeah. So, okay, have you been on this new 2000s season yet? Or, because I remember hearing you on the 90s one, but have you been on the 2000s one? Yes, I have.

I've done it once. when it first started, because when he was first putting the list together of songs he wanted to cover in the 2000s, I got an email from Rob Harvilla, who's the host of the show with a spreadsheet, and he said, which ones do you want? And now it's so funny, because, you know, when you

have enough of these conversations, sometimes you forget which ones you've done, and I can no longer, I think I did maps by the yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, but I don't, I can't quite remember. I remember seeing like three songs on the list that were like, could I do three at once?

You know, like, I wanted to do Wolf Like Me by TV on the radio, and I wanted to do maps, and I wanted to do all these songs. And now, somebody out there will know, we'll have this information. And, of course, I can't remember. Well, I'm disappointed in myself because I subscribe to that podcast. And, but what I found, I found I listened to almost all the 90s ones, but the 2000s, I find I'm cherry picking now. I don't know what that says about me. I'm older than you are, Nico, but maybe I'm stuck in the 90s. We have comparable hair colors, though.

so we've both got that going for us i'll compliment i'll compliment you and myself here which is lately i don't know what it is but lately i've been getting lots of like hair compliments like no which i feel like that's that's not just a humble brag that's a pure brag but uh yeah i don't know what i'm not doing anything differently but lately i feel like it's oh you got great hair it's like people want to tell you this thing but you got great hair you know and it's so funny i get hair compliments too in a variety of different places in a different ways. And often, you know, women will come up to me and they'll say, what color did you dye your hair?

And I will just say, like, this is just the weight of time. I'm 44 years old. I don't know what to tell you. This is just what happens. You're on natural. This is Mother Nature. Yeah. But we were in Ireland, my partner and I,

and we were, like, crossing the street in Dublin. And somebody, like, crossed the street to stop me to ask me what color I dye my hair. And I was just like, it's just great. Like, even if it was fake, it's not that hard to figure out. You just say, give me great. Right. All right. Make me look cold.

Touch of gray. Shout out to the Grateful Dead. That's the, uh, growing up, that was the only Grateful Dead song I ever heard, which was the video. Touch of Gray. What's it called Touch of Grey? I think it was called Touch of Grey. Uh, the one where the skeletons are performing on stage.

It's like their only top 40 hit, like ever, I think. Yeah. I sort of reacted as if I know more at Grateful Dead song. But I was never a deadhead. I never got into jam stuff. So that was never really my scene. Wien was the closest I ever got to being a Grateful Dead fan. I feel like you either get the jam stuff or you don't.

I mean, the closest I ever got, I guess, would be like in the middle of like even flow. Pearl Jane would go off for 10 minutes and do this jam thing. That's it. Okay. So I'll just off the top. So we're going to establish the fact you're not in the basement. You're bluer and something.

in Toronto. Yes. And I'm honored to connect with you. Any way I can and we're connecting this way. But I was at, this is going back to last Friday, six days ago. I was at the Palais Royal for West End Phoenix had their 10th anniversary bash.

And Dave Bidini was thanking a bunch of people from the stage. And Dave Bidini thanked you, Nico, can you tell us Like what did you do to help the West End Phoenix with this very cool event I attended on Friday? Well, I work for Dave at the West End Phoenix. I do some communications work for the newspaper, and I organize and I work on all the events that we put on. So, you know, I was doing a lot of emailing and data processing and details and all that sort of stuff. And then the day of the show, I was too sick to be there.

So I didn't even get to. My partner had to go down and drop some stuff off and was sending me photos of like, look how beautiful it is down here. And I said, yeah, it's great. It's really nice in our apartment that I haven't been able to leave in a week and a half. See, that's another reason I need to be happy that I could connect with you via Zoom. Not even the West End Phoenix got to see you on Friday. Nobody got to see me on Friday.

I was on a little island of my apartment, you know, feeling bad, feeling sore for myself. Okay. By the way, great. Whatever role you played, it was, I thought it was, top shelf. Like it looked great. It all sounded great. I loved the music performances. I shared this with Bidini, and I feel like I'm going to share it with you because you'll actually, you might give a shit about this and most people wouldn't. But it struck me that on Monday morning when I woke up and I got the news that David Marsden had put on his wings. And then I learned, oh, he actually passed

away Friday. We just got to learn about it on Monday morning. And I realized on Friday, Dave Bidini and the the house band at the Palais Raoul, which included my dear friend Rob Pruse, they were performing Spirit of Radio, which is a song Rush wrote about CFNY and of course the term Spirit Radio coined and promoted by David Marsden. Yeah.

Very fortuitous in a kind of sad way, but it does feel very celebratory of a lot of the people that sort of built the cultural landscape of this country, you know, in its own way. And, you know, these are all people I know from afar because I'm not from Toronto and originally. And so, like, a lot of this is, you know, these are names and people that I've either known because of just, like, their cultural impact or, you know, like living here for as long as I have now, you start to learn who these people are. And, you know, I've known Dave Bidini for a long time. And if you know Dave Bidini for long enough, you eventually learn a lot about, you know, a lot of people. in Toronto in general because that man seemingly knows

everybody but also just like well who are actually like part of all of these things that have made this country and this city and this place so interesting and so lively right so you learn to be yeah what Dave sorry not Davidini what David Marsden

definitely a fixture gone at 85 he would come on and we talk about people like Don Burns and some other local important characters James Baby Scott who was his actual brother. And we'd learn, and every time David would talk about these people who had passed on, he would always say to me, he put on his wings. This was a Marsden, like, phrase. So I use it with Marsden. I actually personally don't believe any wings were placed on anything, but I like that phrase,

and that in itself is a tribute to Mars Bar. So I just thought, but one quick, just before I move on this Friday night event, I think I talked about quite a bit on Toronto Mike. Because the next night, I was at Massey Hall for a Canadian songwriter hall, and I was comparing and contrasting the indie coolness of Friday night with the corporate bigness of Saturday, and they were both entertaining.

Compare and contrast. But it also struck me that on Friday, special guest of Dave Bedini was Olivia Chow. And she did a little stump speech about the arts. I think that a West End Phoenix supporter would be voting for Olivia anyway. But it was nice to hear there. And then, of course, Spirit of Radio is a rush song.

And then subsequently, Getty Lee came out to support Brad Bradford. Do you have any thoughts at all on this mayoral race that we're dealing with here in Toronto less than a month ago? It is a funny mayoral race because it's every now and then we run, we go through these election cycles, especially in Ontario, where it is like, but I know how this is going to go. Like I know that like I'm an Olivia Chow supporter. I've been watching the Brad Bradford campaign with interest just because I kind of like seen how many times a car can smash against the wall, you know, and still be drivable, like still be on the road and be like, no, we're still out there. We're still we're still moving around. We're going from store to store. And, you know, it's one of those things.

I'm like, I kind of just want it to be over so I can stop thinking about it. Because it doesn't really feel like it's as contentious as I think Brad Bradford and his campaign people will probably like it to be. But it is like, I'm also looking at it as like, well, who are the people running for counselors and all these things? And like who are the new voices coming up? Like who is trying to shake things up? I'm always sort of looking for those people in the city of like, well, who is actually invested in? What can we do to make things different? Maybe make things better or at least like offer some new lens or perspective.

and in the mayoral campaign, I don't think I'm getting that. I'm just like, yeah, I know what I'm going to get, you know? Right. Do you think any human, sorry, not any human, any Torontonian will say to themselves, oh, I should cast a vote for Brad because my favorite rock star said I should. Like, do you think that ever moves the needle out?

Or is it just like a way for like free press for the Brad Brad Bradford campaign? Yeah, I wonder. I wonder with this. I didn't know what this Getty Lee thing until yesterday, actually when somebody told me about it and I thought like well you know what he's entitled to his opinion I guess and I wouldn't I certainly wouldn't say that but that's I'm not getting elite um I do wonder if somebody's swayed by that I'm sure there are because there are people that are so easily swayed by celebrity which is kind of why we're in a lot of the bigger problems that we're in is because somebody famous enough has said something you're like well he's it's got to be true you know I know who this person is I'm not going to disagree if you except to say that uh Hillary Kamala had all the cool celebs out, you know, lobbying for them, you know, Taylor Swift with doing this. And it didn't seem to help Hillary or Kamala Harris.

That's true. So we'll see if the Getty Lee bump works for Brad Bradford. This will be a really true test of how powerful Kan Khan can be is if Getty Lee manages to move that needle. Okay, the politics are dancing over here. Were you at all familiar with the music writings of Andrea Warner? Do you know this name? Yes, I was. I knew Andrea. I blurbed her book on Dirty Dancing, and I knew her, you know, very, we were very friendly over the years. I learned that she passed away through another mutual friend of ours, who's also a music writer named Jessica Hopper, who's a mentor of mine and worked with me on my book. And very devastating, very sad. She had cancer. We knew that she had been sick for a while. And I went back, I was sitting on the couch when I got the news.

with my partner who was about to leave for tour and she was planning and we were just sort of chatting and I just sort of stopped mid-sentence and looked at her and I said well, Andrea passed away. I was looking through the last of my messages with her on Instagram, which is where we would often DM and the last conversation we had was me promising to come to Vancouver to see her and to do a reading there and it just didn't happen. But very sad. No, I'm sorry for it. Very lovely, very kind, very talented, very, very thoughtful person who is sadly lost to

soon. No, I'm sorry for your loss. And I feel like Andrea's one of those unsung heroes of our, you know, cultural world here in Canada, where I mean, there's no mainstream, like no mainstream media recognition of her passing or whatever.

We have a couple of bloggers, some social media posts, but I find that, you know, people should know this person existed. This is the good work this person did. It's CBC Music and More. and we lost her far too soon, so I'm glad you could say some nice words about her.

And you, I believe, you put some words out about her too, I believe I saw. Well, I wanted to amplify it because I wanted people to know this is a passing and this is what Andrea did, but although I did get a note this morning, I had to modify that post because I was quoting another writer who blogged and knew her personally and wrote a beautiful, like a beautiful piece about Andrea

that I linked to and shared. and then I was, somebody wrote me to say, that person has removed their post and then I figured if they removed their post, I should remove my quote of the post. So I did remove my quote of the post this morning. But yeah, I wanted to just, I feel like everybody will know when,

I don't know, a very famous person passes away, but I feel like Andrea Warner deserves the same respect. Yeah, I think so too. It is this thing. I've been thinking about this since it happened of like, you know, at what level do you have to be before the work that you've done in this world is mourned, you know, in a way that is like the celebratory way that famous people are mourned in public, you know, whether there's radio tributes and there's all these things. And like, but what about the people that have made such an impact on so many people's lives? And, you know, like, it's not that we necessarily need those flat, those, final flowers necessarily, but I do think it is like, you're right, you know, like there should be more, you know, we're in a hard media landscape as it is. And so it is hard to do these things, but it is, you know, the places where she has written and spoken before, you would think, like,

there should be a little bit of remembrance of these people that have been part of these things. Well, CBC for sure. I mean, she wrote so many, I noticed, I think the most recent post was like early 2025 or something like that. But you said, you know, she's been very unwell with battling a terrible disease. And I feel like there, at least there should be, but regardless, I'm glad that you could say nice words and I can amplify that message. I did have to delete the lovely words, it only because the author deleted those lovely words. Yeah. It's always hard too, because like before the word is out there, sometimes, you know, when you find out that somebody you knew passed away that other people know, and I think a lot of our instinct is to post about it or to talk about it, like those of us that

exist in these spaces. And sometimes, you know, the family doesn't necessarily want that or like close. No, that's a great point. Like, if you're, that's a great point, like, if a partner had reached out and said, hey, we're keeping this quiet, I'd delete the whole damn thing, like a heartbeat. But that's a good point. Yeah. Yeah, it's a good point. The people I've been the closest dude that have passed away, you know, I had an ex-partner that passed away and I had my childhood best friend passed away within a year of each other. And it all happened before social media. Like, this was early 2000s. And, you know, it is such an interesting thing to think back on is like, when it happened, it happened kind of in a vacuum. You know, like, I

was sort of alone in it and didn't share the way that I do now so often when someone, either I know or someone famous or whatever, passes away, it happens in such, this big way. And it's like, I don't know if one is necessarily better than the other, but it is so different now. Now, you know, Andrea wrote, so you mentioned the dirty dancing book and other great books as well. But also she did write, I found this interesting, I suppose, I'd ask you about it, is that she wrote a biography. Before we learned what we've learned, she wrote a biography about Buffy St. Marie. And I was thinking, you know, the expression on Reddit, there's a subreddit, aged like milk.

And I was thinking, eke, like you only know what you know. And then in retrospect, that did not age well, I would think. Yeah, that's a hard one. And, you know, like, of no fault of hers, that's, that was a secret that was really heavily buried, you know, for lack of a better phrase. That was, it was really quite hidden for quite a long time. And, you know, if you don't have the resources to do the kind of reporting that we would take to draw that out, you just would never know. Oh, no, until the Fifth Estate broadcast.

Yeah, really. You know, and that's just, that's a lot of money and resources put into that reporting. But that made me think, this is going somewhere, that made me think about my dear friend Michael Barclay. Do you know Michael? I do know Michael, yes. So Michael wrote a book about, I guess, so the book I'm going to ask you about have not been the same is turning 25, but then there was like a sequel, which is like focused on bands like Arcade Fire.

And he puts out this book and it really is celebratory of the icons of this Canadian indie movement in the 2000s Arcade Fire. And I think maybe one or maybe two weeks after publication, Winn Butler, a whole bunch of allegations against him and a whole bunch of like, you know, stuff there that I think Michael Berkeley wishes he could go back and maybe revise some of the glowing words he wrote about them. But it's just, those are the types of things that are interesting when you write something,

and then something beyond your control is revealed, and it sort of changes context. Yeah, and then it is, you know, it is interesting, because then it's like, well, how do I address this? And how do I talk about it going forward? You know, with a book, you know, and the dream is that you're still talking about it after, you know, it's six-month sort of initial period is over,

and you're still doing interviews, and you're still talking about the work that you've done. And then it is, well, how do I talk about the work that I've done, given that there's all this new context on it now. And, you know, it doesn't take away from the work necessarily, but it does make it more important to say, like, well, things have come to light since then, that we're not, you know, made public at the time. Yeah.

Absolutely. It's like writing a biography on Jacob Hogarth or something like that. I need a redo. Okay. Yeah. So I'm curious because you wrote the dad rock that made me a woman. And I am curious if you were at all inspired. And I just want to know if you were at all inspired by

Have Not Being the Same, which was written by three people, Michael Barclay, Jason Schneider, and Ian Jack. And I'm also going to add on to this that Michael and Jason visit me next week to talk about 25 years of Have Not Being the Same. Was that at all an influence on your writing? I hate to say no, but it's a book that I actually have not read. You know, I'm aware of all of them. and I'm aware of their work, and it's just that that's not a book that was on my radar, unfortunately. And, you know, I'm more aware of it now than I was at the time. I think I just must have missed it when it came out. And it just sort of existed around me, and I've unfortunately

never caught it, but it did not, it is not an inform, it didn't inform my work. Well, Nico, that just means I'm not going to pull this clip and play it for them next week. Yeah, unfortunately, I don't have anything I can say about because I haven't read it. Okay, we'll do it again in five, for and just kidding. want the truth. I want the truth. I can handle it. A quick question from Cam Gordon, who just wrote a book called Track Changes, which I recommend for the culture lovers out there. By any chance, have you read Track Changes by any chance? No. I haven't been reading a lot of books lately, though, because I've been doing so much of my own writing that reading books has been

harder to do than ever. Okay, so we'll get back to the Dad Rock that made me a woman. But Cam wants to know, well, he says, you wrote a potential iPod comeback three years ago, do you still think this could happen in the future? And what's your opinion? Is it more of a fashion thing than a function thing? Can you tell us more about the potential iPod comeback that you're lobbying for? You know, I don't know if Apple will necessarily make a physical MP3 player again, but that's sort of like a portable digital music player has been become quite popular in the last year or so.

younger people are getting into these things. Young kids, like the kids, I say the kids, I'm 44, so everybody that's younger than 35 are the kids to me now. But like, you know, I see a lot of younger people that are getting into MP3 players or getting into disc men again, even though the disc man was always sort of clunky in its day. But if you don't have that memory, then it's, you know, it's a shiny, fun new thing. But, you know, like, as much as I would love Apple to go back to making some sort of physical media device, I don't think they ever will, but I think external markets will see that people really want to have something that they can hold that says something about them and the things that they love and the things that they collect.

Because so much of streaming is so ethereal. And young people don't get to really own anything that is theirs. I'm sure you probably have the same feeling as I did. But when I was a kid, I was a young punk rock kid and stuff. And the CDs I had, the books I read, all these things sort of defined me before I knew how to define myself. And I think for a lot of young people that are building themselves and their personalities and all these things, you know, the things that you like are part of that. And if you can't really hold them in your hand, they're never really real in their way. And so I'm seeing a lot of this resurgence to wanting to have more physical media because I think people just want to be able to hold onto a thing that they can remember more than anything.

And yeah, I get what you mean. I mean, I'm much older than you. And yeah, it was, there was pros and cons. Like the pro was you could like, I was a CD guy, so I had hundreds of CDs and they, you know, that's who I am. Look at my CD collection. But you could hold them and there were liner notes and you could touch them. But at the same time, like, if you were in multiple places, like, oh, I'm somewhere without my CD. Like, how do I play it? Like, there's like, there's advantages. There's disadvantages. But I do get the value of being, like, I have vinyl here. I don't even have anything to play this damn vinyl on, but I have, people give me vinyl and I have old vinyl for when I used to buy the 12 inch. There's Maestro Fresh Wess's. Let your backbone slide. 12-inch single here. Sure.

It's like, I've got these things in the studio, and I like looking at them. I can't play them. So I think there is something to what you're saying, though, where a teenager today, it's bits and bites. Like, you can't reach out and touch. It's a playlist.

It was some kind of a streaming algorithm thing. But the only thing about the iPod, my only thing, because I like the idea of an iPod, because I still have a massive MP3 collection sitting on a hard drive. But like, we're already carrying around this phone. So I don't want to carry around two things. Like, these MP3s can just go on the damn phone and that phone can act as my iPod.

You know, I use my iPod a lot. I refurbished my old iPod last year just for fun. And so in the morning when I'm walking my dog, I don't take my phone with me. I just take my iPod out with me. And I just listen to music when I'm out with my dog in the morning, early in the morning and that's been really nice. I try to not look at my phone early in the morning. It's part of my little morning ritual that I have. And so this just makes it that much easier.

When I'm outside, I just don't need to have it with me for a little while. I just have my little iPod with my little click wheel and I go and walk the streets. I love it. Okay. I love it. But how are you counting your steps, Nico? You know, I just keep it all in my head. I keep track of every step I take in my head. That's one thing I'll say is like, so nowadays I have these routines. And one of them is like, if I go for a bike ride, I use Strava, because I went on how far I went and all this nonsense. And then I think, well, I biked like crazy in the 90s,

like everywhere all over the city, downtown, whatever. I never measured a damn thing. I just did it and I loved it. It's like, well, I did that with my, you know, with that brain. It's like, why is it that, like, now I feel like this is going to sound ridiculous. Like, I need help. But I go for a ride without measuring it was Strava. Did that ride actually happen?

You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah, I know. Does it, does it, if a tree falls in the forest, and nobody counts the steps. Does it ever make a sound? And, you know, I used to be a long-distance runner. I ran a marathon when I was 30, and we didn't have all these.

Like, you could get those things for sure, but a lot of people just didn't have them unless they were very serious athletes. And so, you know, we would measure distance to marathon train, but I never knew how many steps I took. And now suddenly I've got to close my ring on my iPhone or else, you know, or else I've had a bad day. And it's like, we are given so much unnecessary data that like we have all, like not we have all,

but a lot of us have just sort of collectively gaslit ourselves and a believing is important. And like, I need to know how many steps I take. Like, but do I? I don't know. I don't think that's that important. My doctor never asks me. No, you're, that's exactly right. It's like, if I go for a ride and I didn't measure it,

I still went on that ride. It still benefited my, my mental health, my physical health. It still got me from A to B. Oh, Nico, I need to like, I think I need to detox on these tech analytic measurement. devices that we're all attached to. This is a big thing in like there's a lot of young influencers. Every now and then I come across these YouTube videos of somebody that's like, you know,

do the digital detox and it's like keep a paper journal and an iPod and all this stuff on you. I'm like, yeah, you just want to live like we did in like 1998. It's not special. It's just different. 100%. I just quick, quick anecdotes. I was, I spent a week in, this is not very, it's a pre-pandemic.

That's how long ago this was. but I was in Copenhagen for a week. And everything in Copenhagen was tap your card to pay. There was no cash. Never saw cash during this week. And then I went straight to Germany to do a thing. I was in like Frankfurt, I think. And I was thinking, oh, good, I don't need euros.

I'm going to tap like Copenhagen. These Germans were like, what are you doing? They can track you? You know, there's an audit. There's some kind of a trail. and a digital trail of everything you buy where you were. They said, we use cash here. Like the Germans just, and I was thinking, oh, yeah.

Like if I go to the store and I give them a $20 bill, nobody knows I was there. No one knows I bought milk and bread. It's like, I'm like, oh, yeah. Digital, you can track everything. I used to have this friend back when I was still drinking, which, like, this is maybe alcoholic math, but like he would take out $200 cash and he would never carry a debit card with him.

And he would say, I've got my $200 and I have, this is my walking around money for the week. And when it's gone, it's gone. And I always think about that. And like I should, I started carrying cash again recently for this, for kind of the same reason of like, if I'm going to the coffee shop, why am I, you know, touching my phone to a thing or whatever? And like, you know, I grew up in cash. And it's still every now and like, okay, what do I do I do again? I got a, I got, I give you the money and then you give me some annoying version of it back. And, and, you know, like, I worked at a grocery store in the 90s.

So did I. And remember when people would, when somebody would do the thing where they would, you would tell them, you know, like, it's 1754. And then they would give you like 20, 54. All the time. It would be easier. And it's just like, this is easier for you. But I was, you know, I started working there. I was 13 years old.

And like, I'm not, I'm not that good at math. You're telling me it's easier. And it's actually harder for me. me but now I kind of do it every now and then I'll do that now like well I do actually have weird exact change map that I can do I until until this till I stupidly went all tap and I wonder why maybe it's this what do you call the points you get from law blas no frills and uh oh like a PC points or whatever maybe they sucked me in of that I get you get a 10 dollar maybe but 100% I was the guy like if it was five dollars and 54 cents I would give you a 10 dollar

bill and 54 cents like that was that was absolutely my move yeah what an age we used to live in where we used to do like weird math at the at the cash register where now everybody is on a phone call while they're tapping their phone to a thing and it's just like wow yeah very different making me nostalgic here okay so obviously i want to just learn a little more about unique over though i'm enjoying this but i one last point is you said these words you said if a tree falls in the forest okay and then in my head right away i'm hearing Bruce Colburn. If a tree falls in the forest, does anybody care?

Like, I'm hearing it. And then I remembered, oh, yeah. So work with me here. I go, oh, yeah. I actually had a one-hour Zoom with Bruce Coldburn, like a couple of weeks ago. But Bernie Finkelstein said, Mike, you can't share that until mid-October because there's some new album coming out, like mid-October. And I'd actually never do that.

But, of course, to get an hour with Bruce and whatever Bernie says, I said, okay, I'll shelve it. But I actually forgot, I think, do you think about that for a minute? This is somebody I've wanted to talk to since I started a podcast over a decade ago. I had so many questions for him about tears are not enough. The bare naked ladies, so many questions. And I finally got an hour, and I did it via Zoom, and I forgot I did it. And this sort of ties into what we're doing right now.

Last point on this, and hear what you think. But you talked a lot of musicians and different people. You know, we kind of touched on it off the top. But I am, again, you have mobility issues. This is different. but if somebody can get to my home studio like I would rather wait two years for you to come to the basement than do a Zoom today at like 3 o'clock

like I am so personally tired of remotes because I find they don't like I don't remember them it doesn't feel like I don't know if I'm meeting you right now I don't think I'm technically meeting you right now even though we're having an hour chat or whatever so I'm just here to say this I was going to you know I'm here to say that mobility issues aside and geography issues aside.

And Bruce was in L.A., so there was a big geography issue. I know, San Francisco, I think. But if I can get somebody in person, I'll wait for that. I am personally exhausted and fatigued by remotes. End of rant.

It feels kind of like what we were talking about before, too, with, you know, the kids going back to analog media or whatever. Like, if you can, if it exists in the physical world, it is easier, I think, to build a memory around it as opposed to so many of these things are ethereal, unless something really important or monumental or whatever happens.

Like I interviewed Sharon Benetton once over Zoom, and she had seen me posting at the time I was having an existential crisis about turning 40. And so we got on Zoom, and she was like, hey, I saw you posted about Turn 40 on Twitter the other day. And I said, oh, yeah. And then so she was like, okay, let me give you some advice on Turnin 40, and we talked about it. And Liz Fairhood also sent me this really nice DM about Turnin 40. And so we were having this whole conversation.

And I don't remember anything else in that conversation that Sharon Benet and I had. But I remember she gave me that advice I would turn 40 at the time, which was almost five years ago now, but like, yeah. What is it? Don't fight what you can't control. Was that the advice? She was very much, like, and Liz Fair kind of had the same

thing of like my 40s is when everything kind of started for me. And it was the decade I was the most afraid of. And it was the decade that ultimately is where I feel like my life kind of began. And I feel the same way now. Like I'm halfway through pretty much my 40s and I'm like, oh, I'm just getting going.

Okay, good to hear. I mean, I'm in my 50s and I never, my mindset is stuck on the fact that, oh, this is a measurement of time on earth. There's nothing you can do to slow it down or speed it up or do anything. It's just a measurement. It's like, yeah, it's not a non-negotiable thing that you just sort of have to like

make lemonade out of whatever lemons the ravages of time bring to you. And it sounds like you're dealing with some like back issues and some chronic pain. So that, I'm guessing that. Is that, I mean, you're only in your mid-40s, but that's related to aging? Kind of. And I used to do a very physically demanding job. I, you know, I'm not a writer by trade. I'm a glass worker by trade. When I was 18 years old, I started working in my dad's glass shop in the Yukon where I grew up. And I'm a journeyman glazier, which is the fancy

term for being a glass worker. It is an extremely physically demanding job. I did it. I started, I was 17 or 18 when I started working my dad shop. The last time I ever worked like that, I was 33 or 34. So I spent a long time doing it. And it's really physically demanding. When I was young, I was stupid. And when I was young and I was stupid, I pushed myself way harder than I should have. And, you know, I had a series of, I fell off a roof. I fell off a ladder. I rolled my vehicle once on the highway, do a 90 and, you know, fully rolled over. I've had a lot of near-death experiences and serious accidents and all of those things are just sort of compounding interest on the body.

Whereas now I'm, and sometimes you'll see me and I'm walking totally fine and my mobility is just fine. And then sometimes it just goes out for no rhyme or reason. And when it goes out, sometimes I can barely stand up on my own and I just sort of have to lie down. Okay. So if you don't mind, let's learn a little more about you. Let's go back to the Yukon here. Okay.

First question, because I'm naturally curious, how old are you when you moved to Toronto? 306 37 late 30s you know that's not that long ago like to me maybe because it feels like you feels like you've feels like a fixture of this city for a while that's that's a pretty good impression you've made in a short period of time I'm extremely fortunate I didn't even start writing it until I moved here so like it's all been a pretty short time frame all told and yeah you know like I was I was already old by the time I moved here. Okay, so here you are in Canada's largest city. Okay, I won't call it the center of the universe, but maybe Bidini would say that. I wouldn't say that. But you grew up in the Yukon, so that's a long way from, you know, Canada's cultural centers. Like I feel like this country writes about things and thinks there's three cities here. It's like, oh yeah, there's Vancouver,

there's Montreal, and there's Toronto. Yeah, there's the three. Yeah. Like, so what do you, when you're growing up in the Yukon, what do you think the rest of Canada is like when you're a kid in Yukon. Everything I know about Toronto, I know from watching kids in the hall on CBC late at night. Like I would sneak out, we had our TV was in the basement, we had our big TV that you couldn't move and I had the like brass buttons that you had to push for volume and whatnot. We only had CBC and I would sneak out at midnight to watch kids in the hall and I would turn the volume down real low and I would record it on a little tape recorder that I would hold up

to the TV so I could record the bits. And everything I know about Toronto, I know from the theme, the shadowy man on a shadowy planet themes. Having an average weekend. Because it was so far from us and like it was really expensive when I was a kid to leave the Yukons. We barely even went to Vancouver, which is the closest city, which is where a lot of my extended family lives. So Toronto was so terrifying to me because it is sort of, you hear it's the biggest city

in the world and you think of it as this sort of like gargantuan thing. And I was almost the first time I ever keen here was for a music festival that used to happen in Christie Pittsburgh called the Bloorosington Folkfest that hasn't run in a number of years now, but I remember I came here for, I don't know, 10, 15 years ago, and I was so scared of the city because everything I had ever known about it was through TV or through whatever, and it's just like,

oh, it's this big city where everybody's on the go all the time. And I remember staying at a, I was staying at an Airbnb at college and Lansdown, and I remember waking up and being like, I got to go out and face Toronto. I'm a college and Lansdown for people that know we're college and Lansdown. is you couldn't find a quieter part of the city, especially then.

And I was just like psyching myself up to go out into Little Portugal basically and walk outside and be like, oh, there's like no one here. The coffee shop's not even fucking open yet. Well, this is all I know. But what I also, so I was born St. Joe's in Parkdale and I've always lived here. But Toronto's just a bunch of neighborhoods. Like it's almost like you can't think of it as this like blob of Toronto. It's like, no, it's just a stitch together, you know, dozens of neighborhoods. I've been here long enough now that someone the other day mentioned to me that there was a new coffee shop in, I think the junction that they were like, oh, you really like that.

And I was like, where is it again? And they're like at the junction. I was like, that's too far. Well, then South atopical is way too far. Way too far for you. But yeah, the junction. Yeah, like shout out to my buddy Joe growing up. My first best friend is dad cut hair at Dundas and Kiel. So that's where he was. Oh, wow. Okay. Like, it was little Malta. My best friend was Maltese descent. And that was like, that was like. like little Malta. I think it still has like the Malta bake shop and like Malta Park. And there's still these little fragments left that this was, where Maltese people collected.

It's very funny when I go home to Whitehorse, which is where my parents and my sisters still live. And so I'll go home and visit family when I can afford to, which is once every couple of years, because flying from Toronto to the Yukon is more expensive than going on a European vacation. So why would you? And like when I'm there, I'm like, okay, so I'm staying with my folks in my parents' house.

And if I want to go visit my sister, I don't know, it's a 15-minute drive. I got to go up a hill. But it is so different. Time math becomes so different in a small town of like 30-something thousand people. Versus here, if I'm in Toronto, like, you know, if I'm doing commotion, for instance, and I got to go down to the CBC building, I'm like, well, it's not so bad. I get on the subway and I go over to St. George and I go down to St. Andrew, and then I walk over and blah, blah, blah. All told, it's only like 45 minutes each way.

And it becomes so different. Oh, I can only imagine. I can only imagine. So when we're back, you mentioned your dad's working in the glass trade. It sounds like you follow suit. But I'm thinking music, right? Because I've written and heard you talk so much about music. And I love talking about music and listening to people talk about music.

But what was the soundtrack in the family home in Yukon when you're growing up? Where do you find your music back then? Well, it was a really fun mishmash when I was a kid because it was my, dad's record collection, which was minimal because his brother had stolen most of his records. My dad was most notably a really big Gord guy. He loved Gordon Lightfoot. And so the first time I ever heard Gord was from my dad who really liked it. And the one time I got to meet Gord once. And I told him the story of how I first heard his music through my dad's headphones. And I said, I grew up, my dad listened to your records all the time. And Gord said, your dad sounds fucking cool. And that's like,

that's my lasting legacy of Gordon Lightfoot. It's the one time I met him. And my, but my mom, but my mom, mom who my mom started my mom has a chronic illness and has been sick most of my life and so she wasn't really able to work because of it and she would bake a lot and my mom when she would bake she would listen to a lot of music so I grew up with my mom's music most notably and like my mom really likes Dwight Yolkham and Paul Simon and Katie Lang and people like this and so that's a lot of the music in my house when I'm growing up is my mom's stuff you know like I didn't have parents that liked the Beatles necessarily although my parents both went to a lot of concerts growing up in Vancouver.

Then I'm asking my mom to catalog now because she's starting to lose some of her memory. So I'm getting her to write them all down. I remember the time you went to see the Rolling Stones and the surprise opener with Stevie Wonder just by chance? Which is like what an amazing show that would be. And then I have an older sister. My sister's two years older than I am. And so a lot of the music I learned was through music that would like come through the bottom of the... Because she always had her door closed.

And the phone cord was stretched as thin as it possibly could. possibly could and then snakeed under the door into her bedroom. And she was always listening to music in her bedroom. And so I, that's, you know, I first heard bands like hole and elastica and stuff like that through her. And she would get these mixtapes that like her friends or like some guy that wanted to date her or whatever would make. And then I would steal them. And then I would be like, hey, what's this? You know, the first time I heard Mr. Jones by the counting grows, it was on a tape that some guy made for my sister. And, and so I learned, and the Beastie Boys and stuff like that. And Nirvana, I learned about Nirvana through my sister in 1994, I believe, was the first time I was sort of aware of

of them shortly before Kerr died, kind of, because I'm right at that age where I was a little bit young, but I was old enough to have these memories of it. So it was like this really fun. And my dad, because my dad kind of worked all the time. He still does, but less so. And he would sort of be gone when I woke up, and he would come home, and he would have dinner. We would listen to Petersoski on the radio while we had dinner. And then my dad would lie down and he would listen to music and headphones. He would listen to the water boys and Gordon Lightfoot a lot and he'd fall asleep reading a book and they would always, I could just sort of picture my dad in the corner of the living room and he's lying down his big green oversized pillow and he's got a book open at the spine

on his chest and I can just hear, you know, Fisherman's Blues by the Water Boys sort of coming out from around the headphone cops on his really worn out headphones that he had. And so it was like everybody in the family had their own taste. And then I got into punk rock when I was a teenager in like the mid-90s and that was sort of that was me and that's why I got put in the basement. because I had the loudest music. Any specific punk bands you want to shout out from those early punk discovery years? I really got into the descendants when I was younger because the songs were very short and very fast and very aggressive, and I just had so much excess misplaced anger that I didn't

fully understand. So a lot of it really came through that. And, you know, like, I really got into that sort of mid-90s Southern California skate punk scenes, a lot of those bands. And, you know, Green Day was one of the first cassettes I ever had. And like bands like that really spoke to me. And, you know, but I also got into really big into Weezer at the time. Like when the blue album came out, I was really into Weezer and stuff.

And now it's funny because my partner used to be in an all-female Weezer cover band in Toronto called Sheezer. And so it was always sort of funny to me that I ended up dating somebody that used to play in this band. Yeah. Well, recent, there was an episode of Toronto Mike where Andy Pandy kicked out the jams because she was born in 19. I don't get the years right, but she was born in 1978. and this was episode 1978, so it was tied to that. And she kicked out a song from the blue album.

And then I was overwhelmed with memories of picking up that blue album because I heard the sweater song, what did they call it? Undone, the sweater song, whatever, yeah, undone, and then dash, there's no parentheses or something like that. The sweater song, anyway,

picking that up at Sam the Record Man and loving every second of that blue album by Weezer. Like, I loved it so much. You know, we were talking about my vision of Toronto from growing up in the Yukon. And this is the one thing I never got to do is I never got to go to Sam the Record Man. And that is a record store that you knew about, right?

Like we would hear about because we had two local record stores in Whitehorse. And so you go sort of got, if they had it, you could get it. If not, you're out of luck. And like you would hear about Sam the Record Man. And it was the sort of like iconic place to me in my head. And I never got to go there. And it kind of kills into this day. Like the one thing I would love to have a memory of and it just I will never have it.

No, you're, well, I feel like there might be one. one in Belleville. Like still, I know it's not the same thing. I can't go to the junction for a coffee shop. I don't know if I'm going to go to Belleville to go to a weird Sam the Record, man. You're right, you're right. That's a great point there. There is, I think, one left.

But the two more little, just before we get to the Dad Rock, that made me a woman, there's two more on things that you touched on there that I feel like this is the nostalgia episode, even though I've got like eight years on you. But you talked about Peter Zowski. And then, of course, I don't think it's still the same. at the same level, but CBC Radio did unite this country. And I'm just going to tag on to that before you respond that the legend Brent Bamboree, who hosted for many years Brave New Waves, which is how somebody older than you,

but somebody would discover cool new music in the Yukon would be, oh, it's on Brave New Waves across this entire country. Brent Bamboree is retiring at the end of this month. I was lucky to have them over here twice. So I'm just tagging that little tidbit on to the fact that CBC, radio and you're on you know you can be heard on commotion etc but it is the tie that binds yeah and it was such an important thing for us you know it played at home and in you know in the glass shop when i was working with my dad we would have it on in the shop a lot and it was either you know cbc north which

was the local broadband that covered you know at the time just the northwest territories in the yukon because nuneva it hadn't been incorporated or hadn't been had been created yet and you know when that happened and so it would cover sort of are the three north territories or we would switch over to the national station to get you know the news or whatever and you know you would hear all these shows and we would hear all these bands and i even wrote a bit a little bit about it at my book of the first time i ever heard nico case was on cbc radio uh and it was such a big thing and we've kind of lost that because the the nature of radio has changed so much but even you know cbc radio three used to be such an important thing especially for indie bands in canada

And that going away has been a real blow, I think, too. Because it is, like you said, it is a unifying thing. It is a thing that can exist in everybody's house. And somebody in Toronto, somebody living in Parkdale, will be listening to the same thing as somebody living in the Yukon. Yeah, totally. Like, at a different, you know, in a different time zone, but the same, we're still getting, we're, we are part of the same country,

even though we're divided by so much distance. And it was a real unifying force in that way of, like, I don't know what Toronto looks like, but I still feel like it's a city, the existence in the country as I do, which was important for me as a kid who was in an isolated place and really wanted to get out. Right. Now, did you watch much music? No, because I didn't have cable, so I would only ever watch it if I went to a friend's house that had it. So I was very unaware of the top 10 in any given time, but it was, you know,

I remember seeing Strombo on there obviously and Rick the Temp and people like that. And like, I'm aware of all of the people because I would see them through the periphery, but I never had cable, so I never really got to watch it. Because that would be the other unifier, I suppose, across this country, as we were all watching the same much music videos. Yeah, yeah. And so, like, I'm aware, like, Strombo, especially, which is, like, such a dominant force,

even from such a young age when he was on much music. And so, like, I was aware of him just because he was such a personality even then. But, like, that stuff is sort of all lost to me, sadly. I know bits and pieces, but not as much as I wish I could, just by isolation. Strombo gave me a hug on Saturday. Oh, that's nice. That's how recently I got a Strombo. Well, he was hosting this.

At the Songwriter Hall of Fame, I'm sure. Right, right. And then he's off to this, this kind of boom. I was in the front row. I moved to the front row just because it was an empty scene. And it's on the side of the Massey Hall. And he was by the stage and he saw me.

And he's been over here and we're buddies. I don't know if he'd meet me for coffee tomorrow, but we're friendly. And he came over to say hi, which was nice to see Strombo. But one more thing, one more memory you unlock. talking about your older sister was mixed tapes.

I miss mixed tapes. Like it's like, let me hear this. You curated these songs. Like I know now today you can subscribe to somebody's curated playlist, but for some reason, doesn't feel the same

as when you had that physical tape that you could put in your Walkman. Yeah, and like I still make playlists and I have friends that make playlists and we will often share them with each other and stuff like that. And it doesn't feel the same. It feels close to.

Like you can sort of see. So I've got a bunch of tapes behind me on the wall here. And some of them are my partner's mixtapes that she had from her high school and growing up. And she has a binder that she had made because every time she made a tape, she would write the playlist out on a piece of paper. And so now she has a binder that is a chronological order of every mixtape she's ever made in her life. And we've converted a lot of them to playlist just to have them on hand. Because playing a tape can sometimes be cumbersome and annoying.

But like it is such a fun memory to have of we've got all these tapes. Well, it's not only, so the wonderful Dave Rosencrantz who worked at Sub Pop in the 90s, and they put out, Never Mind the Mollusks, which was four Maritimes bands, Eric's Trip, and who's on this? Sloan is on there, of course. And, yeah, it's really cool. But he said, he gave me this tape from 1993. So this is an actual tape in 93. And then I have a tape player here.

I was going to play it. He said, oh, he was worried it would, like, disintegrate. and fall apart if I actually play the damn tape. So there's one negative about these cassettes is that he's worried that this thing will just blow up in my cassette player. The tape just degrade so quick. And depending on the quality of cassette you initially recorded on, because often, you know, if you're getting them dubbed or whatever, they're just using some cheap tape.

They're not using a Memorax or whatever. I feel like when Eddie Vedder, when he auditioned to be the voice of Pearl Jam, which is coming out of Mother Love Bone or whatever, that he, He just dubbed it onto some existing tape. I wish I could remember what tape. He just overwrote an existing. Yeah, that's right. I have to Google it because it's like a famous story,

and I can't remember what tape. I'll Google it while you chat. Let me set you up by asking you the big question. What exactly is Dad Rock? Yeah, the question that I have to answer all the time now. You did this to yourself, Nico. I did really do this to myself. I took the idea of Dad Rock,

specifically in the book, the initial inspiration point is, the moment when Wilco gets branded a dad rock band when they put out Sky Blue Sky. And there was kind of a snarky review of it that said that they were in their dad rock era. And Jeff Tweedy really took on bridge without and was kind of offended by the label. And so I sort of took it as like, but what does it actually mean when Wilco is at this point in their career? And I created this criteria in my head for like, well, what I actually think dad rock is because it's the sort of, as I talk about it in the book, it's a nebulous idea that doesn't really have form. it's just a term that people use if they want to be derivative of something,

but I actually don't think it is a pejorative at all. I think that Dad Rock can be something really beautiful. And so I started working through a lot of these bands that fit this criteria that I made of like oftentimes I think it is somebody that is trying to do the work of a dad in some way, which is different than a father. You know, like a father gives life, but a dad helps move it through the world in its own way. And so it's sort of never trying to tell you how to live your life, but is trying to tell you how they lived theirs and trying to help you through and trying to do all this stuff.

And so I created this criteria for Dad Rock based on like what is the purpose of a dad in this world. And I open with, so it's it, the book is structured as a series of essays. And in the first one, which is sort of the intro is about my dad. And I used Fisherman's Blues by the Water Boys specifically for that because it was such a, it is a song that reminds me of my dad so much. And then, yeah, I sort of moved through it. And I took Dad Rock and I was like, but it's not really a gender. thing. And it's not really any of these things. I can actually really sort of deconstruct this and build a new framework for it. And yeah, you know, I really sort of lost myself. And in my desk for a long

time just looked like if the Zodiac Killer had a day job. And it was just like notes everywhere. I can't even proceed with this conversation until I tell you that when Eddie Vedder recorded his Mama San audition vocals, it was an existing Merle Haggart Best of the 80s cassette tape. Amazing. I know. That's an important detail. and it should be locked. Like those things usually like implant in my brain will all remember them on my deathbed or whatever. But for some reason I could not pull that out.

Merle Haggard, best of the 80s. Okay, shout out to Merle Haggard. There you go. That's a fun piece of it. But I, can we talk about Wilco for a moment? So yeah. Sky Blue Sky. Yeah. What was it about that particular record

that got under your skin, so to speak? I mean, it got under my skin in a good way, ultimately. But like, it is where Jeff Tweedy gets sober. And he's got a young family. His kids are young. He's in a different place in his life for the first time. He's coming off of two really different records. You know, Yankee Hotel Foxtrad, obviously,

which is like the landmark Wilco record that everybody knows. And then a ghost is born, which came after, which is really him suffering through addiction. And it is palpable on the record. You can really hear it. It is really anxious in a lot of spaces. And sky blue sky is where he's gotten sober. he's sort of working through a lot of the demons that have been plaguing him, and he's in a

comfortable spot in his life. And a lot of the songs are written from that perspective. And so they're softer and they're a little bit more reserved and they're laid back in their way. And I think it's kind of a beautiful place to be able to arrive at in life. And I think when you're younger, it's sort of like all of my sort of my punk rock youth really sort of brussels against this, like, I will get old and I will get happy and I will be able to be a little bit pensive about the life that I've had. And I really appreciate that he was able to be at that spot in his life. And like a lot of later Wilco stuff kind of lost me.

They're not a band I kept up with as much as I did when I loved them so much. But I always think about that record. I'm like, I actually think there's a lot of beauty in that record. But I think maybe you don't appreciate it when you want him to be writing another, I'm really struggling record because you're really struggling. And you want him to be in the same pit as you. And when you find out that he's actually climbed out of it and he's saying like, you know what?

Maybe there's a line in a song that's like maybe the sun will shine today. And I think about that line all the time of like he would not have written that line for Yankee Hotel Foxraub because he didn't think that would happen. You know, he performed on Saturday night. I saw him at Massey Hall. Yeah, he did. He covered a Leslie song. Yeah, Feist, yeah.

Him and Charlotte Cornfield. Who I love, by the way, I got to say hi to her on Saturday too, but she's been over here. I love, I also, you can follow her in Strava. I'm just letting the world know, Charlotte Cornfield, you can follow her in Strava. And she will give you really good plain advice. We were both, Charlotte's, she's the greatest, she's a national treasure, I think, and we were both at a music festival last winter. And my flight had been abruptly, she was doing a panel that I was hosting,

and we were, and I've known Charlotte for a long time. And so we were sort of hanging out in the green room afterwards. And mid-conversation I looked at her. I was like, oh, my flight got canceled. I'm supposed to go home tomorrow. And she was like, okay, you got to get on the flight that I'm on. It's a porter flight. It leaves at like five in the morning.

And so Charlotte and I were only two people waiting for a port. of like another Frederick 10 at like 5 o'clock in the morning. Well, she was nominated for that Polaris Prize, which is a big deal. Yeah. Although I feel like the winners were obvious. Like from the moment they announced the

candidates, the nominees. That's the word I'm looking for. It was obvious, I think, and I always mispronounce the name, so I'll just call them ADP if that's okay with you. ADP was going to... Egin de Poitrine? I'm bad at it too.

That's actually pretty good. I feel French, yeah. Yeah. Eugène de Poit-Trin. I just, yeah. They were going to win. I know this because my partner on tour right now and she sent me a video from the

tour van. My partner plays in a band called Bydevine, right? You've had Jose on your show before. And Feist was in that band. Yes, that's a... And Brennan Canning. 100%. Again, Brennan started in head with Noah Mintz and yesterday

I was at the review cinema in Roncys to see my friend Hayden. And of course, famously, when Hayden was in the 1993 new music search for CF and Y, he submitted a song called Take and he was too nervous to sing the vocals, So he submitted it, but he had his friend, Noah Mintz, his Thornley collegiate friend,

Noah Mintz, record the vocals. And Head ended up winning that 1993 new music search. There you go. All webs connect to the same tree, you know? Like, they all sort of go back to the same place. Yeah. So my partner is in BDR, and they're on the road right now, and she sent me a video from the van just of the scenery going by.

And in the background, there was some music. And I was like, what are you guys listening to? It sounds like a bunch of guitars falling down the stairs. And she was like, oh, we're listening to Anjean de Poitrain. It's a band we all love now. And it's a band I told her because I don't play music. And I remember she played it at the house yesterday. And I was like, I totally get the appeal of it.

But it's completely not for me because I don't understand what's happening in this music because it's too complicated for me. I'm too dumb to know to get that band. Math rock requires math, right? Like, I mean, to appreciate these. I failed math. I did so bad at math that I almost got expelled from school because I had a teacher lose it on me because I was such a bad.

student that she told me to fuck off in front of my classroom of students. Do you have a high school diploma, Nico? Not really. No, well, I'm only pointing that out, not to, I'm not being snobby with you or to judge. No, no, no, no, no, no, no high school. And you're a hell of a writer. Like, was this just an innate natural ability that you, uh, nurtured? I guess.

I read a lot. I was a really good, I could read and write before I was in kindergarten. I was what they called their predominantly accelerated child at the time. They tried to put me in the third grade when I was in the first grade and my mom said no, which ultimately was a good idea that I was really salty about when I learned this information. But, you know, steal yourself, we're going to enter a conversation on class in this country. My dad is a trades worker and my mom is unemployed because she's chronically ill. And nobody thought that I would be able to do anything but work for my dad.

because the children of trades people went to trade schools and that's what we did so when i showed any promise in english i was really good at english i was really good at my creative writing classes that i took but no one really looked at me because they knew where i was going and so why bother investing in me if i was just going to go to trade school anyways and um so it was never really nurtured and i just never really felt like it was the thing i was allowed to really engage in so i just just never did. And so I, you know, I loved reading my whole life. I especially loved reading music books when I was a kid. And it just never really felt like a career that could possibly be mine. And it wasn't until I was in my 30s that I was like, well, I have nothing left. I can't work in

trades anymore because, you know, I transitioned. And I, as you can imagine, being an open trans woman in building trades is not a safe prospect necessarily. I had one death threat stuck to my windshield at my vehicle. And I thought, that's probably good for me. I know all these people and one of them wants to murder me. I should probably get out of this industry. And so when I moved to Toronto, I just kind of started writing. And luckily, people asked me to do more. But, you know, it was just, it was a lifetime of reading that allowed me to learn how to be a writer.

Because I wasn't a good student. But I just, I really liked to read. And I think I was a good writer. I just nobody ever really gave me the time of day. Well, I'm glad you brought this up because I watched this. Every seven years, they put out these documentaries in the UK. It's called Seven Up. I don't know if you've heard of this, but they started.

I've heard of these, yeah. Like 70 years ago. So there's a new one. I just, halfway through it right now. These children are all, well, they're not children anymore,

but they're now 70 years old. Some have passed on, but the ones who are alive are 70 years old. But every seven years we catch up. But the idea is we started when they were seven. And the idea is,

the premise was, similar to what you're saying, they would follow people, you know, born at the silver spoon in their mouth who were going to go to these private schools and see what happened to them.

And then you had, you know, children, blue collar people, like your, who maybe were, you know, you're going to work in trades because there's no other path for you, Nico, right? So it was just that series, I find fascinating because it really does seem to be

that those who went to the private schools and had these expectations ended up being like lawyers and judges and all these like, you know, jobs and they all have, I just seem to be like the destiny was fulfilled because people were put into these classes. A lot of classism in the UK, but we have it here too, of course. Of course, yeah. Well, you know, we got all our best ideas from the UK, including classism. And like, you know, when people, when former teachers would see me, like when I was working as a trades worker and they would see me, they would sort of regard me with this. Like, of course, this is where you ended up. And I was talked down to so often as a trades worker because people assumed that I was stupid because I worked with my hands for a living. I like, I had designed it. Eventually I started, I had my own company where I did automatic door installation and repairs. Because if you work with glass, you work

with that sort of stuff and eventually I learned how doors worked and I just started doing that and I started my own company and I did that for a number of years and I redesigned and installed a new entrance to the Walmart and Whitehorse and I remember at one point I was outside with some architectural drawings and I was going over some detail stuff and I did it all myself and a guy walked up and he said oh you're having some problems and I just said oh yeah yeah because old guys always like to talk to you if you're building a thing you know and he said oh I've got the solution for you and I said what's that and he probably should have graduated high school and then he walked inside and I thought and when he walked through the doors that opened by magic, I was like, you know, if you didn't have me,

you wouldn't even be able to walk into this goddamn store. But I had people talk like that to me all the time. And so like now I write a lot about, you know, labor and building trades and all of these and my upbringing. A lot of my writing is informed by my upbringing. And a lot of the reason why I write a lot about it is because I think I'm informed by all those things. Like somebody asked me once if I regretted, you know, like not having a proper high school education and not going to at an MFA and doing all these things. I lived the life that I live. And like, you know, my dad is 72, 73, and he still works in a glass shop. He wakes up every morning and goes to a glass shop. And my dad is not a stupid person. My dad is a very smart person. He's very well read. He's all

these things. But he works with his hands for a living. And for a long time, I was disparaging of my education in my background. And I realized that what I was doing was insulting my dad. And my, you know, my grandfather, who I never met, he died before I was born. He was also a glasswork. I'm a third-generation class worker. When my father's from Cardiff and when they immigrated to Canada, my grandfather opened a glass shop after the war. And so the reason why I talk about it a lot now, and I write a lot about it and I don't hide away from it,

is like, those things are actually, the reason why I'm able to write is because I was a class worker. And the reason why I'm able to write is because I fell off a ladder and hit my head and I thought I was dead for about five minutes until I woke up. And, you know, most of my body's been stitched back together at some point because I worked with glass for so

long that you just end up being cut and scarred until your skin is like an alligator. And that's all the reason why I'm able to write. And so I focus on a lot of those things now because I do think that that's more important to me than a fancy education that I would have had to spend a lot of money on. Trade school was covered by the government. And, you know, I went six weeks out of every year from my apprenticeship until I was done. Unfortunately, my dad came in when I was writing my red seal journeyman's exam. My dad was hired as a consultant to rewrite the exam because my dad is so good at the trade that they had him come in and do it and I was like oh my god not only do I have to live up to how good they all think he is but he's writing the goddamn test I have to take yeah so

Nico after all those years working in the skilled trades and then then you built a career here as a writer now like what was the biggest culture shock when you entered this big bad world of professional media people don't like when you email them really early early in the morning sometimes because I'm an early riser like I wake up at about 430 or five o'clock in the morning every day because when you have to work on a job site, that's what you do. And so my body just naturally wakes up now. I unfortunately can't control it. So I've just become an annoying morning person by nature. And sometimes I will email people and it'll be too early and they'll be like, hey, what do you do? And email me at like 10 a.m. I still like, I have the structure

of a labor job in my head so hard that every now and then, if it's 10 a.m., I'm like, oh, but it's coffee break time. And I get my 15 minutes. Like I have this structure. in my head. Even though, even like when I ran my own company, I certainly didn't live by those rules. But like I worked on a union site in the University of Alberta campus for a year where I was working on a high-rise building, you know, going up in a swing stage with a 300-pound window, put it into a wall, go down. I did that 12 hours a day, six days a week. And so you live on a structure. And so like my life does has no structure now, but I cannot get over the guilt of, you know, sometimes being a writer and sometimes being a creative person is like you don't actually do anything

that day, but you do a lot of nothing that day. Like, if I'm writing a piece, sometimes I have to think about it a lot, and I have to do a lot of other stuff while I'm thinking about it, or if I'm reading a bunch of stuff, but if I haven't made anything, like, physical with my hand, some days, even now in my career where I'm at, where, like, I'm a somewhat successful person who has made a career of this thing that I don't know anything about, I get really guilty, and I'm like, but I didn't do anything productive today, and it's a week day, and I'm such a waste, you know, and I get like. I know this feeling, yeah.

Yeah, sure. Yeah. So I was just like, like today, I'm doing pretty good because I did a lot of stuff this morning. But yesterday, you know, my partner had to go on tour. So she left and then I had a bunch of meetings. And by the end of the day, God, and I was like, I sent like two emails today. I wasn't productive, even though I wasn't a two hour meeting in the middle of the day. And I did all this of the stuff. But I'm just like, I have so much guilt about the things I don't do. What are you currently writing? I'm right now. I'm rewriting in a novel that I've been working out for a while. I had a. Is it girls? of summer? Yeah, so it's a novel that I pitched that got me my sign with my, my, my, literary, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, did you hear that? Nico, can you hear me anymore? I've lost you. Yeah, I don't know. You skipped. I'm actually not going to edit that out because it was, okay, wild to me that you'll hear if you listen back or something. It just did a, like a skip. But pick it up, tell me, Girls of Summer.

Yeah, so I tweeted the idea of a novel, which was a queer love story set at the Vance Warp Tour, the Calgary Speedway in 2001, because that's the one that I went to in 2001. And I got an email that afternoon from a literary agent who said, was that a real idea because of it is, can I be your literary agent? And he's a, you know, he's a big deal, very well-respected agent. I had just had that email to a bunch of other people. I was like, is this real? Or did I just get a prank? Right. And so I've been working on this novel. I've written a draft of it that, you know, we've made a lot of revision notes and I'm sort of working through that while I'm, you know, writing a bunch of other stuff. I read a monthly column at Paste magazine and I'm starting writing for a magazine called The Rumpus, so I've been working on, I think, for them and a few other things here and there. But the novel is, especially if my agent is listening, is my main focus. That's going to be your debut novel because, of course, we've been talking about the dad rock that made me a woman, which people should pick up.

Not a novel per se. This is a different category of press. But can I ask you, speaking to press, can I ask you, what is Girl Dad Press? Oh, yeah. So Girl Dad Press is a press I started with a friend of mine named Tucker Woodstock who lives in New York City. we had a joke idea that we took to its absolute limits in which we won a literary award for a book we made called Two TransDufurious, where we had all trans writers and artists making a book about the Fast and Furious franchise. So we made this collection of this anthology of works entirely by trans people about the Fast and Furious movies. And it was a thing that we were like, wouldn't that be funny?

And every step of the way, we were like, isn't this funny? And then we won a Lambda Literary Award for it. And once we were done telling ourselves, isn't this funny that we won a fancy literary award for this book that we thought was a joke that we took very seriously. We worked very hard on it, but it was just like,

this is such a silly idea. We started a press because we were the only people that won awards that didn't have a website. So we started a press called Girl Die Press the next day. And we put out another book in the same vein called Sex Change in the City, which is a collection of all queer people writing about sex in the city.

And that's what Girl Dieuress does. When do you think I could read Girls of summer. You had to guess. No one's going to hold you to this, Nico. The literary world is so funny, too, because it is, once you're done a book, they're like, okay, great, it'll come out in two years. So my hope is 2028.

2020. Okay, I'm going to live that long. Okay. So that's amazing. The dad rock that made me here. That's my goal. The dad rock that made me a woman is available now. You've been amazing.

I couldn't, like, I just checked the clock because I think I was going to do an hour with you and I could easily do several hours with you. So here, one thing. can you pledge to me that should you feel healthy and mobile and full of spit and vinegar, that you would do another episode with me in this South Atobico Basement? I would love to come to Otococco to chat on your basement for sure. Because then, you know, there's lasagna in it for you. Just shouting out Palma pasta here.

I was, you know, like, I love an in-person conversation and I'm sad I won't be there for that. And I'm also sad that I won't be able to get the lasagna. Yeah, I know. I see it and I'm so... Next time, but I would like to do it in-person with you. So let me leave you with this. I mentioned I saw Hayden. I've loved Hayden since I... Well, since Take, to be honest,

which was the Noah Mince thing I told you about for 93. But love this guy. Proud to call him a friend. He's been down here. Love this guy. But Hayden, I saw him at the review cinema in Ronsies. Not far from you. Not far from me.

And to this day, my go-to-Haden album is everything I long for, And last night, we only got one song from everything I long for Because he closed with bad as they seem, which is like as much music, quote unquote, hit, okay? But yeah. And I personally would love every music fan to listen carefully to everything I long for. That's my wish.

But I'm asking you, Nico Stratus, if you could force every music fan to listen carefully to one album from beginning to end, which album would you choose and why? Okay, can we do a quick fake break while I look up? I'm really bad with titles for things. You can look up, listen, there's no rules here. There's no rules here.

You can take your time there. You want me to shout out some sponsors while you look? You, well, I'm so close to my answer. Okay, go ahead. I enjoy this. Oh, I'm so close to my answer. It's an album by a friend of mine, and I'm ashamed that I didn't know off the top of my head,

but my brain is bad. It's called I Can Wonder What You Did With Your Day by Julie Dwaron. Julie is a national treasure. She is the sweetest. She's on this? funny issues. She's on that. She's like, you mentioned Eric Tripp, which made me think of Julie. Julie is a long-time friend of mine, and she's just an incredible person, and I write some of the most beautiful heartache, sad songs that are so hopeful. And she's also just like one of the funniest people I know. And so that's my album. That's my choice.

Yeah, you're absolutely blowing my mind right now because I mentioned Eric's trip organically earlier in this conversation. and Eric's trip. And here we are. And she's amazing. Okay, so Nico, you just made your Toronto Mike debut. You're now an FOTM that's friend of Toronto Mike. I loved every minute of it. And you will be back in person when you feel 100%.

I will for sure. I count on it. Thanks so much for having me. Thanks for chatting. Thanks for doing this. And that brings us to the end of our 1,985th episode. Go to Toronto. Thank you, Toronto Mike.com for all your Toronto Mike needs.

And much love to all who made this possible. That's Great Lakes Brewery, delicious fresh craft beer, palma pasta, delicious authentic Italian food. Nick Iienes, he's at Old Mill October 7th with Karen Stints. Free tickets available. You got to register online. Be there. I'll be there.

Recycle my electronics.c-ca. Safe, secure recycling for residents, business. and the environment, recycling electronics and appliances with local Recycle My Electronics programs is free, fast, and easy. Find out more at Recyclemyelectronics.ca. And of course, Ridley Funeral Home, listen to Brad Jones's excellent podcast, Life's Undertaking. See it tomorrow. That is Friday, October 2nd at 6 p.m. when we record FOTM cast with the VP of Sales. and Cam Gordon, be there.