Latest / Basic Folk / Great Lake Swimmers' Tony Dekker: Accidental Bandleader, ep. 335

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Great Lake Swimmers' Tony Dekker: Accidental Bandleader, ep. 335 · Basic Folk

0:12
[SPEAKER_05]: Hello and welcome to Basic Folk, where we have honest conversations with folk musicians on the bluegrass situation.
0:18
[SPEAKER_05]: It's me, your host, Cindy House.
0:20
[SPEAKER_05]: Thanks for finding us.
0:22
[SPEAKER_05]: Hope everything is going all right with you as we are in the middle of frigid January.
0:27
[SPEAKER_05]: Today I'm very pleased to have Tony Decker from Great Lakes Swimmers on the podcast today.
0:33
[SPEAKER_05]: But first, have you signed up for our mailing list?
0:37
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0:52
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0:58
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1:06
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1:10
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1:14
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1:17
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1:22
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1:24
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1:27
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1:43
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1:49
[SPEAKER_05]: Alright, great lake swimmers.
1:51
[SPEAKER_05]: Accidental band leader and beloved Canadian Tony Decker joins us to talk about great lake swimmers new album, Caught Light.
1:59
[SPEAKER_05]: Tony is up to his old tricks again, including recording in a remote and weird place.
2:05
[SPEAKER_05]: In a century old farmhouse in the middle of the woods,
2:08
[SPEAKER_05]: And, once again, working with his merry band of rotating musician friends, including producer Darcy Yates.
2:15
[SPEAKER_05]: The album was recorded in three days, the shortest amount of time he's ever spent on a record.
2:21
[SPEAKER_05]: In that very fast process, he had to learn how to let go of control.
2:25
[SPEAKER_05]: In our conversation, he shares what he's learned about the beauty of letting go.
2:29
[SPEAKER_05]: We also get into how Tony feels best capable of confronting environmental and political themes in his songwriting and daily practice.
2:37
[SPEAKER_05]: In recent years, Decker has moved his family from Toronto, the big city, back to the Niagara area in Ontario, where he grew up to establish a small town community and life.
2:49
[SPEAKER_05]: We revisit his early years in Wayne Fleet, Ontario, discussing the ins and outs of his family farm, his love of country radio, and talent for picking up any instrument.
3:00
[SPEAKER_05]: He also learned the joy of playing music at a young age.
3:04
[SPEAKER_05]: The reward of music was enough, and that notion has translated into how great Lake Swimmers operates, and what kind of band leader he is.
3:13
[SPEAKER_05]: As stated before, the fact that he is a band leader is an accident since he only wanted to organize the band and act as a background member.
3:20
[SPEAKER_05]: Finding himself more and more on the front line, he did some serious work on how to be a good leader and operate a band that was made up of his good friends.
3:29
[SPEAKER_05]: clear that Tony's figured out how to be a humble leader and friend since his collaborators returned to his orbit time and time again.
3:37
[SPEAKER_05]: We'll take a listen to a song from Cot Light, the new Great Lakes Swimmers album.
3:42
[SPEAKER_05]: This is youth not wasted and then we'll get to our conversation with the delightful Tony Decker of Great Lakes Swimmers on Basic Folk.
4:19
[SPEAKER_03]: Found a photo of us from back in the day All smiles chilling all their way Considered and caught in full living color Truth that we were here, truth that we were here
5:00
[SPEAKER_02]: You
5:13
[SPEAKER_05]: Tony, it's so good to see you, thanks for coming on basic folk.
5:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's absolutely my pleasure.
5:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, yeah, I've just got home from a bit of an adventure on the road, so I'm a little bit out of sorts.
5:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, I was stuck in Philadelphia for a few extra days waiting for our van to be fixed.
5:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, so, uh, sorry.
5:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, it, you know, it's one of those things.
5:34
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just another chapter in my, uh, you know, two or adventures for sure.
5:38
[SPEAKER_05]: Right.
5:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
5:40
[SPEAKER_05]: Um, did, what did you do while you're in, did you go see the bell?
5:43
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I didn't, you know, I was just the, the mechanic was near the airport and I had tons of work to do and I was just sort of decompressing from tour to, so I just, and I had, yeah, like, I'd work to do, so I was just, I, I meant to be back on Sunday night and I didn't get back until very late on Tuesday night.
6:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my gosh.
6:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, but part of it was just running around, I had to rent a, uh,
6:09
[SPEAKER_00]: an equipment van to kind of like get our gear to the venue and back and get the rest of the band to the hotel and then kind of just return it and it was just like one thing after the other.
6:19
[SPEAKER_05]: I think about this often with like um like you're a very like chill artistic kind of a person but then you're also having to deal with all these like
6:31
[SPEAKER_05]: Anxiety provoking logistics when stuff like this happens.
6:35
[SPEAKER_05]: It's just gotta be, yeah.
6:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
6:38
[SPEAKER_05]: It's gonna be hard to get back down to Earth after that.
6:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, for sure.
6:41
[SPEAKER_00]: There's so much more than just the creative aspect of doing this, especially these days.
6:45
[SPEAKER_00]: I've just picked up a lot of the extra jobs and the sort of the de facto to our manager and merch seller and driver a lot of the time, although my bandmates were pretty good about helping out when I need to crash on the back bench.
7:00
[SPEAKER_05]: but you know it's been it's been it's been quite a year I guess yeah yeah well I'm sorry to say we're not gonna go easy on you today Tony we have some pretty hard-hitting questions that we need you to answer okay bring it on yeah all right great
7:17
[SPEAKER_05]: You were born and raised in Wayne Fleet, Ontario, and you grew up on a farm, which I've heard a lot about that you have grew up on a farm, and you didn't want to inherit the farm, but I haven't heard exactly what was the farm like, what were your chores, and how does that farm continue to impact you?
7:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, well, I feel like the first song on the new album addresses some of that, because in some ways, I felt like I was really trying desperately to get out of that small town when I was younger.
7:48
[SPEAKER_00]: And I couldn't wait to leave as a teenager.
7:51
[SPEAKER_00]: It just wasn't for me.
7:51
[SPEAKER_00]: And only after a lot of time and starting a family of my own that I've realized there's value in it too.
7:59
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm kind of like, facetiously say, I'm spending the second half of my life trying to get back into that small town, you know, metaphorically.
8:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And realizing the strength and small communities and you know, some of the positive impacts that it had.
8:14
[SPEAKER_00]: on my childhood.
8:16
[SPEAKER_00]: But honestly, it was just a lot of time spent alone.
8:20
[SPEAKER_00]: I was learning how to drive tractors and things at like 10 or 11 years old.
8:24
[SPEAKER_00]: I just feel like I literally grew up in the soil, you know, cleaning up after animals, taking care of animals, was it all kinds of animals?
8:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, we always had like, you know, my parents were pretty resourceful with all of that stuff.
8:38
[SPEAKER_00]: We always had sort of our own eggs, you know, and things like that.
8:41
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, um, yeah.
8:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I mean, crops, too, you know, were they selling crops and eggs and stuff?
8:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, not so much eggs.
8:52
[SPEAKER_00]: The eggs were just kind of like for family and extended family.
8:56
[SPEAKER_05]: Eggs are for fun.
8:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, eggs are kind of her fun.
8:58
[SPEAKER_00]: We didn't, it wasn't like a, yeah, we didn't, we weren't in the egg business, but uh, but for family and and friends, there was always an extra dozen of eggs around, you know, which was kind of nice.
9:09
[SPEAKER_00]: But um, yeah, so that was um, you know,
9:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Looking back on that time now, I think there was a couple of things that were really important about it.
9:18
[SPEAKER_00]: One thing is when I looked to my writing, it was really important to be in touch with things like seasonal cycles and being close to nature.
9:27
[SPEAKER_00]: I spent a lot of time in the woods as a kid.
9:29
[SPEAKER_00]: I spent a lot of time literally in the dirt, in the soil, kind of working through.
9:33
[SPEAKER_00]: That kind of thing but with there was always an eye on like what's the weather going to do what's how bad's the winter going to be you know like when when is the thought when is the when is there going to be the first frost you know all of that stuff was really important so when I kind of look back on it now with a bit of a more of like.
9:49
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, right early background, I kind of see how that sort of has worked its way into my writing a little bit and also just the proximity to nature being really immersed in nature in a certain way has almost kind of led to this approach to a kind of a spirituality and the natural world, which I think has been really important to me as well.
10:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Not to mention just the sheer work ethic, you know, I think that I'm only able to do all of these jobs now.
10:15
[SPEAKER_00]: that require, you know, so much more beyond the creative just because, you know, I don't have to lift it.
10:23
[SPEAKER_05]: Driving the tractors and carrying buckets of water.
10:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
10:25
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't have to dig anything.
10:27
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't have to lift any big field stones or bricks or anything.
10:31
[SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of like all I have to do is sort of show up in a way, but you know, in a meaningful and in an engaging way.
10:37
[SPEAKER_00]: So all of that seems easy and comparison in some ways, I guess, or did, you know.
10:43
[SPEAKER_05]: There's been a handful of musicians on this podcast that grew up on farms.
10:49
[SPEAKER_05]: So it would be kind of fun to get you all together.
10:50
[SPEAKER_05]: And to talk about that.
10:52
[SPEAKER_00]: And to talk about stories.
10:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
10:54
[SPEAKER_05]: So at the Ellis Paul, Susan Warner, and Rose Cousins.
10:59
[SPEAKER_05]: OK. And Susan Warner always talks about being a musician is not hard.
11:03
[SPEAKER_05]: Like being a farmer is hard.
11:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
11:05
[SPEAKER_05]: It's kind of resonates with what you're saying.
11:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
11:08
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
11:09
[SPEAKER_05]: Um, so no one in your family growing up was like particularly musical, but there was music around, and I've heard you talk about the radio being played.
11:18
[SPEAKER_05]: What was your connection to radio as a young person and the music that you'd hear?
11:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, well, it's a good question, actually, because my driving around in the pickup truck around the farm going to wherever needed picking things up, dropping stuff off.
11:34
[SPEAKER_05]: The farm radio.
11:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it was like intensely local.
11:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it was literally the closest radio station to us.
11:41
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it was even an AM radio station.
11:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was just because it was the local station and it had all the local ads.
11:49
[SPEAKER_00]: And it happened to be
11:50
[SPEAKER_00]: like a country radio station, but this was like I was a kid of the 80s, so this would have been before you know, someone argue that, you know, before a country music was kind of spoiled, you know, in the 90s and the early 90s.
12:07
[SPEAKER_00]: So this was pre-all of that.
12:09
[SPEAKER_00]: So I was hearing things like all of the classics you can think of Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, all of the, you know,
12:19
[SPEAKER_05]: on country radio for sure as on like these days.
12:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.
12:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Laura to Lynn, you know, Patsy Klein, Dolly Parton, like just all of the real grace, you know, that's what they would sort of play.
12:36
[SPEAKER_00]: All of the real classic greats, you know.
12:38
[SPEAKER_00]: So and which it would really left a deep impression on me when I looked back on it.
12:44
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't really think so at the time.
12:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, as a teenager, I was more attracted to, you know, the sort of the punk ideology and the DIY and I got into trying to seek out local bands.
12:57
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember the first time I saw
12:58
[SPEAKER_00]: A local band play that was made up of, you know, friends and acquaintances and someone's backyard as a teenager and it just, it was one of those moments where I just, you might mind exploded.
13:08
[SPEAKER_00]: My world view of opened up, like, wow, you can, they can just get up there and do that, you know, they can just kind of plug in in a backyard and just do this.
13:15
[SPEAKER_00]: It seemed like totally unreachable until then.
13:20
[SPEAKER_05]: So you discovered that you have this talent and some people find, I feel like it's like a kind of like a funny annoying thing where you can like pick up any instrument and you can just learn how to play it, like some people are just like that.
13:35
[SPEAKER_05]: What was the impetus for first picking up an instrument?
13:39
[SPEAKER_05]: Like who is around you that might have encouraged you to explore that?
13:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, when I was younger, I had one cousin who was around the same age as me who was into music and his path took him in a very different direction, but he was like a total like metal dude, you know, but he was he could play really well and of of every of anyone I knew he was the most motivated and the most, you know, like,
14:05
[SPEAKER_00]: He was very talented, and I mean, he just really just taught me if you taught me how to make a power cord, you know, was really what it came down to on a guitar, a friend of mine went away for the summer and said, can you watch my guitar for me while I'm away?
14:20
[SPEAKER_00]: And I left as guitar and app at my house and I spent the entire summer just, you know, by myself in my, you know, extra hours to just learn how to play it.
14:32
[SPEAKER_00]: But basically the movable shape of a power cord was really what got me going.
14:35
[SPEAKER_00]: going a little deeper than that, I mean, there was the small town that I was from was very church going community, so there was the choir, there was singing in groups, which I've discovered is, you know, recently that that's such a powerful thing, you know, people singing together is feels really good, you know, and that's why.
14:57
[SPEAKER_05]: Would you sing in the church choir?
14:59
[SPEAKER_00]: I did.
14:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
15:00
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
15:00
[SPEAKER_05]: Because your voice kind of like it feels like it could like fit in a church choir.
15:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
15:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe.
15:08
[SPEAKER_05]: I wonder how how being in the choir kind of helped you develop your voice.
15:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, there's so many musicians that have a similar story too, you know, and I don't know, I just think that when your voices are, when your voice is blended with all those others, you don't have, and you're not singled out, you just have a chance to just sing the way you do, you know, and that's what comes out.
15:34
[SPEAKER_00]: There was no, I mean, there's, I guess there's a level of conformity, but, you know, singing in a big group like that, there's no,
15:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, I mean, there's not really any other option just to sing the way you sing, I guess.
15:48
[SPEAKER_05]: Right.
15:48
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, right.
15:49
[SPEAKER_00]: So maybe that was important in a way.
15:51
[SPEAKER_05]: You trying to sing in any choirs these days, Tony.
15:54
[SPEAKER_00]: No, on our last penultimate previous record of this new record, we had a 20 person women's choir, women identifying choir that sang on two or three songs on the previous album, there a group that's based here in Niagara and Ontario called Miniscule.
16:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And they were just incredible.
16:19
[SPEAKER_00]: When I started hearing multiple voices on that last record, it was called Uncertain Country.
16:25
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, the person I was working with, the engineer said, I know exactly who to call and we called in Laurel Minis and her large choir.
16:32
[SPEAKER_00]: She writes directly for that's her instrument as a choir.
16:35
[SPEAKER_00]: So she writes her own arrangements and her own original material and,
16:40
[SPEAKER_00]: and brings together a really strong community in the Niagara Region.
16:44
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't really say enough about it, but there's a tie in there for sure.
16:48
[SPEAKER_00]: There must be, because to my ears, it was just such a fantastic thing.
16:53
[SPEAKER_05]: next great lake swimmers record chorus line it's a name chorus all right i'm going to tuck that away great um when it came to songwriting you had bands as a teenager and you'd write your own songs and i know you studied to be a writer and kind of plan that as a career but what was your reason for first writing a song and how do you relate to that feeling now like decades later as a songwriter
17:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, well, I think it goes back to, um, kind of being a teenager again.
17:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I, I actually started writing songs as I started learning guitar once I realized that those that power chord was a movable shape and you could basically create anything.
17:36
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I learned a few songs that were on the radio at the time or whatever, but, um,
17:40
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't, I wasn't drawn to, you know, doing cover songs.
17:47
[SPEAKER_00]: It was always something that I wanted to create, you know, right away.
17:50
[SPEAKER_00]: I went to school for literature.
17:53
[SPEAKER_00]: I got my undergrad.
17:54
[SPEAKER_00]: I stuck with it even though after the first year I knew that wasn't, I didn't want to go into academia.
17:58
[SPEAKER_00]: It didn't wasn't appealing to me.
18:00
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't want to analyze the thing I wanted to be part of the creative part of that.
18:06
[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to be that on that side of it, on the creative side rather than on the analytical side.
18:11
[SPEAKER_00]: So I ended up getting a degree in poetry and prose, English language and literature, with the intent of going into writing and maybe finding a parallel field in journalism or something to kind of help me.
18:23
[SPEAKER_00]: pay off my student loans because I I came into my adult life with a very large debt hanging over my head and so I moved to Toronto and had to find a job right away to start paying it off.
18:34
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a little bit disillusioned to be honest with the whole process and I didn't really want to be a part of it.
18:40
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, that's writing was writing songs was an important part of learning the instrument for me.
18:48
[SPEAKER_00]: That came hand in hand.
18:50
[SPEAKER_00]: That's cool.
18:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Early on.
18:51
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't start taking it seriously.
18:52
[SPEAKER_00]: I had high school bands, but and we did original music, but I didn't really, it didn't really take hold until after I was done university and I was started playing around Toronto after I moved there.
19:10
[SPEAKER_05]: You grew up around some like pretty epic bodies of water in between two great lakes, Lake Erie Lake Ontario and of course Niagara Falls and all of the bodies of water that comes with that.
19:23
[SPEAKER_05]: So clearly water and being in water means a lot to you like your band is called Great Lakes Wimmers.
19:30
[SPEAKER_05]: What do the bodies of water of your youth mean to you and how have they impacted your creativity?
19:37
[SPEAKER_00]: That's also a really interesting question for me.
19:41
[SPEAKER_00]: I grew up not far from the shores of Lake Erie, where I could ride my bike there in the summertime and often we would.
19:51
[SPEAKER_00]: And for better or for worse, I mean, it was, again, like the Lake Erie in particular has had its share of, you know,
19:59
[SPEAKER_00]: problems with pollution.
20:00
[SPEAKER_00]: It's gotten a lot better actually.
20:02
[SPEAKER_00]: There's organizations like the Lake Ontario Waterkeeper and the Waterkeeper Alliance in general that, you know, later in life, I've really come to appreciate and be part of.
20:13
[SPEAKER_00]: And I want to give a shout out to them for the good work that they're doing the Waterkeeper Alliance in all across North America, but for me, particularly along the Great Lakes and especially Lake Eury and Lake Ontario.
20:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, but I grew up swimming in that water and um, you know, it, I just felt like it's the great leg space in this part of my DNA.
20:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, when I started writing songs, it was important to me to try to tell a bit of the story about where about that region, you know, which is, it's so special and important to me.
20:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And in not to mention like like here on which is you know, my sort of retreat, you know, I like to get up to Tabor Mori and the Bruce Peninsula and Ontario in particular is a very important place for me creatively.
20:58
[SPEAKER_00]: But also Lake Superior has come in the last bunch of years has come to represent such an important sort of mythological hold on my, my psyche and
21:13
[SPEAKER_00]: To me, there's just such an endless source of, yeah, I don't know how to put it, but there's an endless source of mythology around that lake in particular.
21:23
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was just there, I guess a few months ago.
21:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, and it's a really important place to stop.
21:32
[SPEAKER_00]: In the Niagara River too, as you mentioned Niagara Falls, there's a,
21:37
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a force and there's an energy around the movement of water that you can really feel.
21:45
[SPEAKER_00]: I think there's just a kinetic energy and I think there's something in that that I think I've been trying to explore to just as a thread throughout the writing.
21:53
[SPEAKER_05]: beautiful.
21:55
[SPEAKER_05]: This is pretty cool.
21:56
[SPEAKER_05]: You realize as a young person that the reward of playing music was enough for you, which makes sense since you weren't so career-focused on music.
22:07
[SPEAKER_05]: And I think that really is translated into how great Lake Swimmers operates.
22:11
[SPEAKER_05]: How did you develop the sense in figuring out what felt good and what you would say yes to versus like what you would say no to and what was the temptation like to go for things that kind of like seemed out of what you would want for yourself?
22:30
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, to be honest, I don't know that we were ever offered any grand opportunities that didn't feel right.
22:37
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, we did, we had, we did some great things, you know, we, we got to tour in Asia, we got to play the Vancouver Olympics.
22:45
[SPEAKER_00]: There were certain touchtones that I feel were really great opportunities, but I, I don't feel that there was really any, I don't feel any sort of regret or I don't feel that there was ever any sort of temptation to follow
23:00
[SPEAKER_05]: you're not playing private concerts for like BP oil or anything like that or being offered those types of.
23:07
[SPEAKER_00]: No.
23:08
[SPEAKER_00]: The BP is an important one though because if I was offered something from BP, that's one that really sticks with me because of what happened in Louisiana in the Gulf Coast, you know, around Gosh, it was around 10 years ago or so now.
23:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, BP is a really egregious offender, but I try not to get to, I don't feel like her music is political in that way either.
23:32
[SPEAKER_00]: It isn't, it approaches that in some senses, and also making music and being, making art is a political act in its own way, just by nature.
23:44
[SPEAKER_05]: There is, so I was speaking of political.
23:47
[SPEAKER_05]: music.
23:47
[SPEAKER_05]: There is one slightly political song on the album running out of time.
23:52
[SPEAKER_05]: There's lines like it's it's time not for profit, not for greed without borders out of love.
23:57
[SPEAKER_05]: So in thinking about that, what do you think is like the responsibility for songwriters, particularly in folk music to write political songs and modern times?
24:07
[SPEAKER_05]: What do you think that impact might be and like how
24:16
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a very difficult thing to do.
24:19
[SPEAKER_00]: I have to preface it by saying, I really, we were just on this past tour.
24:27
[SPEAKER_00]: I flipped on the TV and the hotel at the end of the night and on comes Jesse Wells, you know, unlike Colbert or something like that.
24:34
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a late night thing.
24:35
[SPEAKER_00]: It was literally turned on the TV that was the first thing that came on.
24:38
[SPEAKER_00]: And I have to say that I do,
24:40
[SPEAKER_00]: I appreciate what he's doing, you know, it's very overt, it's very specific, it's very of the moment.
24:47
[SPEAKER_00]: For me, and in general, I think it's a very difficult thing to do, going back to, you know, I think Woody Guthrie is kind of the template for a lot of that stuff, and I think a lot of us song address follow in his footsteps, you know.
25:04
[SPEAKER_00]: For me, my way of protest is celebrating the natural beauty of our world, our environment and elevating that to a spiritual level, and it's more focused on protecting what we have and exploring our relationship with nature.
25:23
[SPEAKER_00]: instead of, you know, writing a protest on against, you know, B.P.
25:27
[SPEAKER_00]: or something, you know, or, or, you know, a particular political administration.
25:34
[SPEAKER_00]: There's, there's no shortage of horrible things going on in our world right now, you know, in all of our respective countries.
25:42
[SPEAKER_00]: And, and I think it is important to comment on that.
25:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Hmm.
25:45
[SPEAKER_00]: But my way of doing that, I think, is not in that sort of same overt way.
25:50
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm more focused on celebrating the beautiful things on our planet.
25:54
[SPEAKER_05]: I wanted to talk about, um...
25:57
[SPEAKER_05]: kind of friend you are.
26:00
[SPEAKER_05]: This band Great Lakes Wimmers is made up of a revolving circle of musicians.
26:06
[SPEAKER_05]: You are the primary person and the only constant and Great Lakes Wimmers and you seem to keep a great network of colleagues and friends that respect and want to work with you.
26:17
[SPEAKER_05]: In your opinion, what kind of leader, what kind of friend are you with the band?
26:23
[SPEAKER_05]: And how do you think that translates into the vibe of how great Lake Swimmers operates?
26:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's a great question because we went over the years.
26:35
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to just preface this by saying, like the first album was not an album I expected anyone to hear beyond my family and friends.
26:41
[SPEAKER_00]: I felt that I would be lucky to get through the first pressings on CD.
26:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was something that I was doing while I was working full-time paying off student loans.
26:51
[SPEAKER_00]: I had zero expectations of entering the music industry
26:55
[SPEAKER_00]: at all, let alone as a career.
26:57
[SPEAKER_00]: The first album didn't have bar codes on it.
27:00
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't sold in stores.
27:02
[SPEAKER_00]: I would drop some off at the local record store, and it was started through an art salon in Toronto called WeWork.
27:09
[SPEAKER_00]: That was a very art-based, speaker-based music-based where they would do a monthly art salon.
27:16
[SPEAKER_00]: I think they ran for almost two years.
27:18
[SPEAKER_00]: and had some really great people in the Toronto art scene and music scene come together behind it.
27:28
[SPEAKER_00]: My first album was released basically as an art project through the art salon we work.
27:32
[SPEAKER_00]: As it started getting a little bit more attention, I found that I couldn't keep up with just hand-making the albums anymore.
27:39
[SPEAKER_00]: I had them officially printed by a manufacturer and eventually got distribution.
27:46
[SPEAKER_00]: But for a while, you could only really get them at this art salon in Toronto, so it wasn't meant to be exclusive.
27:52
[SPEAKER_00]: It was the way it happened, you know?
27:55
[SPEAKER_05]: So what I'm hearing from you is that you just kind of like fell into being a band leader.
28:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and it took, yeah, to get back to the question, it, you know, that wasn't, I never intended to be a leader and even when I started pulling a band together, I still just wanted to be one of the, you know, people, you know, that was in the band.
28:15
[SPEAKER_05]: I didn't want to be- This is truly like the Luke Skywalker Heroes journey.
28:22
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess if you want to be grand about it, maybe I guess, but, you know, I do.
28:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so it took a lot of, it took a lot of time to learn how to be a good leader and I did some very specific work on how to do that because I found that it was very hard to be a leader and also have my buddies in the band, you know, whoever they were.
28:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that was a difficult sort of hurdle to get over in it took me years of just doing it.
28:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And we had a lot of great opportunities near the beginning.
28:54
[SPEAKER_00]: It was the early 2000s, which was a great time for music and Toronto.
28:57
[SPEAKER_00]: And a lot of bands were kind of coming around at that time.
29:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And
29:04
[SPEAKER_00]: But I was just kind of doing it in a small sort of small scale sort of humble sort of way.
29:10
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was doing it regardless of whether there was going to be any sort of outcome when I when I first started getting offers to come over to Europe and down to the U.S. and these little labels were like
29:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, you know, if you ever thought about touring, you know, in Europe or the US, like we'd love to release our album or this indie label, Missouri Records in the US, at the time based in Austin, I think it's still based in, it moved to Pittsburgh, and I think it's still based there now, really good people that got us off the ground there.
29:44
[SPEAKER_00]: But back to your, I mean, I want to, I don't want to stray too far, you know, from your question.
29:49
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's been a really important thing to me.
29:52
[SPEAKER_00]: I try in a very humble way to be the best possible leader and friend, and I think the way to do that is to constantly be learning and to constantly, you know, I never think that I've got it all down, because I just don't, you know.
30:09
[SPEAKER_00]: But every time we go out, every time there's a tour, every time there's a show,
30:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Every interaction that I make, I try to do things a little bit better and with more consideration and make the best possible decisions I can.
30:21
[SPEAKER_00]: I love my band members, like my family, and I want to take care of them in that way.
30:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And I want them to win, you know, and I want to make sure that they people come in and out of our band for lots of different reasons, but
30:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And we've had a lot of a revolving cast over the years.
30:41
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's essentially a singer-songwriter project, you know, with a backing band.
30:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's just how it's always been since the very first album, when we would get offered to open up a show for somebody, which happened a lot in the early days, I would literally just get on the phone and see who was available to play the show.
30:57
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, and that's how the bands started coming together.
30:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, someone needs the last minute opener tonight.
31:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you around?
31:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Can we rehearse in my living room and then head down to the horseshoe tavern tonight?
31:06
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, in Toronto and and do the show and yeah, okay.
31:09
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not doing anything.
31:10
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll come over.
31:11
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll spend an hour or two learning the songs and then and then get up on stage and play a short set.
31:16
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's it all sort of came together that way and it's been like that ever since, really.
31:21
[SPEAKER_05]: You know, it kind of feels like the like, you know, it all starts from the top Tony and then resonates down and so the organization and I also feel like it resonates out into your audience like your audience can feel.
31:37
[SPEAKER_05]: how you're running things.
31:39
[SPEAKER_05]: And I think that, I mean, obviously the songwriting and the music is one thing, but I think that that aspect of who you are and who great like swimmers are keeps people coming back.
31:55
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, it's something that I got to go to a few of your shows, like I think it was Milwaukee, Chicago, and then one other one I'm forgetting, but it was like green or row.
32:10
[SPEAKER_05]: and and spend some time with you and and the band at the time and it did definitely felt like there was like a special energy when we were at your shows that you don't get it in a lot of places you know it felt like people were kind of like coming home when they came to a great lake swimmers show.
32:30
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a fantastic, I couldn't ask for more than that, and if anything, I think that especially post-pandemic that feeling has intensified because it took us a long time to get up and running again after that, especially a band where we are in our
32:45
[SPEAKER_00]: career, but you know, the wind came out of our sales quite a bit as it did for a lot of people.
32:51
[SPEAKER_00]: We lost a lot of momentum.
32:53
[SPEAKER_00]: We had to cancel major tours.
32:55
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we had tours overseas, tours in the U.S. and Canada in 2020 that all got canceled.
33:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was a lot of it didn't come back and a lot of it was really hard to get.
33:06
[SPEAKER_00]: to get back to.
33:08
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like with this new album, you know, people are back on board.
33:12
[SPEAKER_00]: It feels like in a lot of ways.
33:13
[SPEAKER_00]: It's reaching a lot of people.
33:15
[SPEAKER_05]: It's got to be like, uh, because I was just talking about this the other day about how the pandemic really took the wind out of my sales in a in a particular way.
33:25
[SPEAKER_05]: And I feel like my life is completely different and on a completely different trajectory and all the better for it.
33:31
[SPEAKER_05]: You know, so it's like it feels like maybe
33:34
[SPEAKER_05]: you're back on track, but it's like a new track.
33:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, in a way, I think so.
33:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
33:42
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
33:43
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess coming back after two almost three years of inactivity, coming back and being in this sort of place that is my comfort zone, which is on the road and on the stage and in the creative process and making music with other people with friends and getting on the road and continuing the conversation that was started when the album was made.
34:07
[SPEAKER_00]: It became so much more important and precious to me and felt like I was levitating when those first shows came back after.
34:12
[SPEAKER_00]: The pandemic, I didn't realize how much I had grounded myself in that work and how important it was to me.
34:19
[SPEAKER_00]: It gave me a change my perspective for sure.
34:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, in a positive way.
34:28
[SPEAKER_05]: I found this quote about you.
34:30
[SPEAKER_05]: that I agree with.
34:32
[SPEAKER_05]: It says Tony is calm, thoughtful, and quietly attuned to the world around him.
34:36
[SPEAKER_05]: You do give off this immense sense of calm.
34:40
[SPEAKER_05]: What is your relationship to calm and quiet?
34:44
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's in my nature, and it's in a certain way, I've always been such a struggling introvert, you know, and early on in making music, it was, I wouldn't even address the audience, you know, it was just, I have friends that refer to that time period as like,
35:01
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, it was hard to watch, you know, it was painful to watch, you know, because it was just, I didn't know how to talk to people.
35:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, I grew up very alone in a lot of ways, so it was a new thing to even just to make small talk with the audience, you know, and I don't know some people say that the shows may be suffered a bit from that and
35:23
[SPEAKER_00]: And there are other people who say that, you know, that's what made them really special, you know, was just the pureness of it, that there was no artifice, that there was no trying to make small talk.
35:35
[SPEAKER_00]: There was no show.
35:36
[SPEAKER_00]: It just was what it was.
35:37
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a presentation of those songs, which were, you know,
35:41
[SPEAKER_00]: also painful songs in some ways too.
35:44
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, they came from a very deep place.
35:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And but, you know, I think that my nature is to be very aware of the, you know, I just kind of, I got to keep coming back to the natural world because being out into the woods is another just pure place of comfort and refuge for me.
36:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Being in nature, being close to water, I live these days along.
36:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Not far from the Niagara River.
36:12
[SPEAKER_00]: I can walk to it.
36:14
[SPEAKER_00]: I can see New York State on the other side of it.
36:17
[SPEAKER_00]: I live across from Louis to New York on the Canadian side in a little village in a town outside of a town called Niagara on the Lake Ontario.
36:25
[SPEAKER_00]: So those places are just enduring and more important to me than ever these days.
36:33
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not sure how far we've strayed from the question here.
36:38
[SPEAKER_05]: We'll take it.
36:39
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
36:41
[SPEAKER_05]: So, caught light, the new album came out in October.
36:44
[SPEAKER_05]: You recorded it in a rural studio in a central farmhouse in the forest, which is on par with the other great lakes from our albums that have been recorded in grain silos and caverns and churches.
37:02
[SPEAKER_05]: What was, I would love to hear more about what this forest was like.
37:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it was more about, like it was on a huge acreage that you could roam around and hike in this studio that a bunch of people had come together to, well, it was an old farmhouse that they converted into a studio.
37:25
[SPEAKER_00]: And part of this album was passing this over to my co-producer and very close friend, Darcy Yates.
37:34
[SPEAKER_00]: who really chose the location, chose the studio band.
37:40
[SPEAKER_00]: I told them that it was something I wanted to do very quickly and economically.
37:45
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think that he chose this space for its ruralness.
37:48
[SPEAKER_00]: You could stay at the house, you could walk around wherever you wanted to.
37:52
[SPEAKER_00]: We were there was no clock, there was no hours.
37:55
[SPEAKER_00]: It was, we went to we got it and as late as we needed, you know?
37:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
38:00
[SPEAKER_05]: Any Wi-Fi?
38:01
[SPEAKER_00]: There was Wi-Fi.
38:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
38:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so it wasn't that remote.
38:06
[SPEAKER_00]: You got to get pretty far north and Ontario before you get into a no Wi-Fi zone because this is still only a couple hours from Toronto, so it's yeah, it was it was the middle of nowhere, but you know, it was still close to like
38:18
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, the the major highway that that goes that goes across the trans-Canada highway heading east.
38:24
[SPEAKER_00]: So it wasn't it wasn't that we had to like, you know, take a float plane to get into it.
38:30
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I mean?
38:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it wasn't that kind of journey.
38:32
[SPEAKER_05]: Right.
38:33
[SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, it was this really cool, very old house that they had converted every room into, you know, into an isolation room.
38:41
[SPEAKER_00]: So the drums were in one room.
38:42
[SPEAKER_00]: The bass was in one room.
38:44
[SPEAKER_00]: I won room.
38:44
[SPEAKER_00]: I was singing in the control room as the engineer Jim Boe's skill was,
38:50
[SPEAKER_00]: We hit record and then also play along to the track, so we had a baffle in between us, but it was very close quarters.
38:56
[SPEAKER_00]: It was very vibey.
38:59
[SPEAKER_00]: It was filled with all kinds of very interesting, like Canadian ephemera of, you know, Jim's career in particular as a musician and his travels, which he, you know, has been playing professionally since he was like 12 years old or something.
39:14
[SPEAKER_00]: And he started off as a blues player.
39:16
[SPEAKER_00]: And so there's all these amazing old blues ephemera everywhere all around the house.
39:22
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't know.
39:22
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a lot of Canadian type stuff.
39:24
[SPEAKER_00]: And all that is to say that when Darcy said that it was going to be very vibey, he was, you know, that was an understatement.
39:31
[SPEAKER_00]: It was just, it was a very singular place in a very singular experience.
39:38
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, of course, being set in a natural environment like that was, I mean, it just kind of sealed the deal for me.
39:46
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, there was, you know, I worked hard to get work on the songs before we got there.
39:53
[SPEAKER_00]: But it was,
39:55
[SPEAKER_00]: as it has been on every record session important part of the process.
39:58
[SPEAKER_00]: There's only one record that we've made in a proper studio.
40:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And even in that record, there's a couple of songs that were recorded in like the Toronto subway station, you know, where we hold our gear down to this disused ghost station that like, you know, one in the morning before the train started running again.
40:16
[SPEAKER_05]: Did you incorporate the natural surroundings of where you were recording onto the record at all?
40:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, we did a lot of filming of the area when we were there.
40:29
[SPEAKER_00]: It's footage that I hope we'll see the light of day sometime.
40:32
[SPEAKER_00]: But I wouldn't say like we weren't like recording outside in the environment.
40:36
[SPEAKER_00]: The environment was that house.
40:39
[SPEAKER_00]: And that was, I do feel like the the signature of that house is on the record.
40:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
40:47
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, like it's a,
40:48
[SPEAKER_00]: It's one of those things where I sort of see it as a sonic layer that you can't quite put your finger on.
40:53
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's an extra thing that your ears perk up, but you don't know why, necessarily.
40:57
[SPEAKER_00]: In all of the recordings, it's a thread running through, especially like a natural reverb the sound of the space kind of just imposes itself on the recording in a way that is very intentional.
41:18
[SPEAKER_05]: You mentioned that the record was recorded really quickly.
41:21
[SPEAKER_05]: That you asked for it to be recorded really quickly three days for the recording and then two days for overdobs.
41:28
[SPEAKER_05]: You had to learn to let go of control, not to tinker, not to be too precious.
41:34
[SPEAKER_05]: What did you learn in that process about the beauty of letting go and how is that still impacting you?
41:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think a big part of it was trusting the people that I was working with, a lot of them for the first time on this record, but that gave it a sort of a freshness that I think we couldn't have got otherwise.
41:54
[SPEAKER_00]: And the idea was to accept what we got, you know, mistakes and all, and sort of not worry about the little rattles and the little
42:02
[SPEAKER_00]: buzzes or hums or the fills at the wrong time or you know a little bond guitar note here and there like it was literally I mean that being said it was such an amazing group of musicians that I had in there with me Gary Craig in particular who has been Bruce Coburn's drummer for decades it was a thrill to work with him.
42:23
[SPEAKER_00]: I recognized his greatness in playing like with songwriters
42:32
[SPEAKER_00]: he wanted to see the lyrics.
42:34
[SPEAKER_00]: He wanted to know the story.
42:35
[SPEAKER_00]: He wanted to he was playing to the song.
42:37
[SPEAKER_00]: He was playing to the way that my voice was rising and falling to the cadence, to the meter, you know, of the of the words.
42:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's where that was his end to the
42:51
[SPEAKER_00]: that was his point into the music was the lyrics and the singing and I just I was floored you know he's been doing it since the since the 70s and and again you know just an incredible person to work with like
43:07
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, off-handedly called him Canada's Jim Keltner and that's somehow made it into our pressing information, which was meant to be a compliment, you know.
43:16
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, like this, he's like the songwriter's drummer, and it was such a thrill to work with them.
43:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Colleen Brown, who has become such an important part.
43:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Of the live band these days it was important to me to have her she lives in Edmonton But it was important to me to have her voice on the recording Just because she's really just infused our band with such a great Songwriter Lee sense as well.
43:42
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
43:43
[SPEAKER_00]: I think everyone that recorded that that put some time into the album was really Keedon to the to the right or the aspect of it and And
43:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it was a bit of a whirlwind, it happened very quickly, but I was really happy to actually place this in the hands and just have to kind of trust, you know, and just trust in the process and trust in the people that I was working with.
44:07
[SPEAKER_00]: I just can't say enough about about my good friend.
44:11
[SPEAKER_00]: He's been, he played in our band for a couple years around 2007, 2008,
44:19
[SPEAKER_00]: He's remained a very close friend and so to just put that in his hands and say, okay, like, if you were going to record this kind of record, how would you do it?
44:32
[SPEAKER_00]: He had the band on board within 24 hours.
44:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And he's like, this is where we should do it, this is where we should do it.
44:38
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just, he's such a good friend.
44:40
[SPEAKER_05]: Okay, so that makes sense that he's like, I can record this record in three days.
44:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, totally and I can't even get the band together in a day.
44:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, totally.
44:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it was incredible.
44:49
[SPEAKER_00]: So I thought like, okay, this we got a lean into this.
44:52
[SPEAKER_00]: We got to do this.
44:52
[SPEAKER_00]: This is months before the recording, but you know, it was like everyone was was really on board with it.
44:58
[SPEAKER_00]: And it did come to
45:01
[SPEAKER_00]: together very quickly, but just that aspect of just trust, you know, trusting in other people, trusting in other people's musical sense, allowing their allowing them to shine in ways that maybe you didn't expect or maybe it's not or not exactly true to what, you know, the voices and the visions that you have in your head.
45:22
[SPEAKER_00]: But, but that there's a beauty in in people's shining, you know, in your own way and allowing that to be part of the
45:29
[SPEAKER_00]: rather than endlessly tinkering and affecting and reoverdubbing and redoing and trying again.
45:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And making demos and then making demos of demos and then, you know, mixes and on and on, you know, it was just like, I want this to be raw in a way.
45:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was just a, that was,
45:47
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, in some ways, going back to how I started, you know, on that very first recording, not knowing what I was doing, you know, that's a great part of the artistry is just not not thinking that you have, you know what you're doing or think that, you know, not being open to new ways of doing things.
46:05
[SPEAKER_00]: And I learned even 20 after 20 plus years in, I'm still learning so much all the time.
46:13
[SPEAKER_05]: I get to say Tony, you're very good at talking.
46:15
[SPEAKER_05]: I feel like you are one of those people when you interview them, you could just say, hi, Tony, how's it going?
46:21
[SPEAKER_05]: And then you would tell me, literally everything I would ever want to know.
46:26
[SPEAKER_05]: And I wonder, has, have you always been like that?
46:31
[SPEAKER_05]: Or if we dug up some old Tony Decker interviews from the second George W. Bush administration,
46:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I mean, you only really have to go back to the, like the tiny desk concert I did, you know, near the beginning of that series.
46:52
[SPEAKER_00]: It's out there and you'll just, you'll get a sense of how painfully awkward I was and a lot of words.
46:59
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, okay.
47:00
[SPEAKER_05]: It's hard to, it's hard to believe listening to because I've listened to several interviews.
47:05
[SPEAKER_05]: with you recently, and I'm just like, wow, it's just, it's like very artistic the way that you answer questions.
47:14
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, and tell your story.
47:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, thank you.
47:18
[SPEAKER_05]: It's, it's just a full of compliments for you today.
47:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, thank you, Cindy.
47:23
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, yeah, I wasn't, you know,
47:28
[SPEAKER_00]: it's something that I struggled with for a long time.
47:31
[SPEAKER_00]: But this is something that I'm really passionate about and I do feel that I have something to say, you know, and I feel that I have something that could maybe, this last round of shows I've had so many people just coming up and saying,
47:43
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, lately it's been like this was music that I listened to with my kids and now my kids are in their 20s You know, and now they're here with me, you know, or or like the kids are bringing their parents to the shows It's like our audiences grown up with us in a lot of ways and I just I think that's really the biggest compliment to be part of the fabric of people's lives like that It's a it's a really beautiful thing and I'm passionate about it because
48:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, because it means something to them, you know, and it helps them.
48:16
[SPEAKER_00]: I get this.
48:17
[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't know.
48:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I do tend to rattle on so I apologize.
48:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
48:22
[SPEAKER_05]: But it's like it's it's it's it's all it's all killer no filler.
48:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Great.
48:29
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
48:29
[SPEAKER_05]: All right.
48:30
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm going to let you go.
48:31
[SPEAKER_05]: But first let's do the lightning round.
48:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh gosh.
48:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
48:36
[SPEAKER_05]: Where is your favorite swimming spot?
48:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Favorite swimming spot is...
48:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Gosh, lately it's been, uh, on Lake Superior, um, there's something being in that water that makes you realize how powerful it is.
48:54
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a big, it's almost like ocean like in some ways, but it's fresh water.
48:58
[SPEAKER_00]: And you can really feel the deep currents moving when you're in that water as cold as it may be most of the time.
49:04
[SPEAKER_05]: Um, one more to explore the mysticism of Lake Superior.
49:09
[SPEAKER_05]: Where would you start?
49:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, there's a really great spot called Old Woman Bay, that is my favorite spot on Lake Superior.
49:15
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a lot of people's favorite spot.
49:17
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not too far, just off the trans-Canada Highway.
49:21
[SPEAKER_00]: It's one of the spots that's fairly accessible.
49:23
[SPEAKER_00]: But I might even go further and say that the sleeping giant provincial park is well worth exploring for hiking and swimming.
49:33
[SPEAKER_00]: all of that stuff.
49:34
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a literal figure of a giant laying down and you can see the outline of its body in its face and same with old woman bay to, you know, that's one of the beautiful things about these remote places that that people try to imagine them into being in a certain way.
49:49
[SPEAKER_00]: They see faces, they see outlines, they see bodies, you know, they see different figures.
49:55
[SPEAKER_00]: And we just sort of like it's a way of trying to just reach and just connect on a very basic level in some ways the way we name things.
50:05
[SPEAKER_00]: the way we sort of see things in geological formations, for example, you know, but yeah, sleeping giant provincial park, there's one called Picasso, which is a national park.
50:20
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very isolated.
50:21
[SPEAKER_00]: It's near the Pick River First Nations, which is all right there, Manitool and Island, which is known as the garden of the gods, by the indigenous people there.
50:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Also a hugely spiritual and important place, not only for the indigenous community, but for people in Northern Ontario, it has lakes on an island, which is inside a lake, and it's a really interesting place.
50:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
50:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
50:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Very diverse, ecologically as well.
50:52
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, the most diverse, Flora and Fauna of, I think anywhere in Ontario, maybe in Canada.
50:59
[SPEAKER_05]: Tony, what do you like on a nature walk?
51:02
[SPEAKER_05]: um i'm pretty quiet you're not like pointing things out and being like look at this no she's a fern i definitely take my time you know i definitely take my time my ecology too i would is i've never gotten into her on a nature walk with someone and they were like what kind of bug is this would would you know and then how long would you go on about the bug
51:26
[SPEAKER_00]: I would want to like identify it.
51:30
[SPEAKER_00]: I've gone with my daughters on walks and we've just collected different leaves and different seed pods and pine cones and then brought them home and figured it all out.
51:42
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, laid them out on the kitchen table and what's this one and this one is I don't know what we think.
51:46
[SPEAKER_05]: This all tracks.
51:47
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, but we'll go and figure it out.
51:50
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we'll learn about it.
51:52
[SPEAKER_05]: Okay, a couple more, we're still in the lightning round.
51:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, it's not so lightning.
51:56
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not so lightning.
51:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
51:56
[SPEAKER_05]: But it's okay.
51:58
[SPEAKER_05]: Um, what are you listening to in the tour van?
52:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, gosh, um, let me think of like the last thing.
52:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, there's a lot of podcasts going on on the longer drives for sure.
52:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, uh, gosh, what did we just listen to?
52:14
[SPEAKER_00]: There was like, oh, we listened to the new, um, the new reostatic record.
52:18
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the last thing we listened to as a band and really tuned into it.
52:22
[SPEAKER_00]: It's got all these, it's great.
52:24
[SPEAKER_00]: It's an amazing record.
52:25
[SPEAKER_00]: That's all I'm going to say about it.
52:26
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to turn this back into the lightning round.
52:28
[SPEAKER_05]: Great.
52:28
[SPEAKER_05]: What is your least favorite household chore?
52:32
[SPEAKER_00]: The dishes.
52:33
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't have a dishwasher.
52:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so I at the end of the night after if whoever cooks the other person clean.
52:39
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, when the deal that's the deal when I'm not cooking them cleaning and it's a better part of an hour to get it all done.
52:45
[SPEAKER_05]: This is the last question.
52:47
[SPEAKER_05]: What is for breakfast?
52:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh gosh, lately I've been kind of skipping breakfast actually, and I go right to lunch, but I usually have a, you know, if I am having breakfast, it's going to be vegetarian for sure, because that's, you know, what I am.
53:06
[SPEAKER_00]: But anything from, you know, toast and eggs to if I'm, if it's going to be later in the day, I love, I love making a big pot of, this is, again, this is probably two on point, but I love making a big thing a brown rice and adding stuff to it.
53:19
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, leftover as you can combine, you know, that also tracks.
53:25
[SPEAKER_00]: I love that stuff, it's healthy, it's good for you, it makes you feel good, it's a great way to start the day.
53:30
[SPEAKER_05]: Tony, you're really fun to talk to you, thank you for being on the podcast.
53:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you, Cindy, thanks so much for having me.
53:42
[SPEAKER_05]: This episode was produced by CJ Nungesser, Dietrich Strauss Composes or Music.
53:47
[SPEAKER_05]: Basic folk is a production of the Bluegrass situation.
53:50
[SPEAKER_05]: You can find all of our episodes there.
53:52
[SPEAKER_05]: You can go to basic folk.com, folkalley.com or folkalley's mobile app, search for basic folk on the series XM app, or you can check us out wherever you listen to your shows.
54:05
[SPEAKER_05]: If you enjoyed this episode, we suggest sharing it with a friend.
54:09
[SPEAKER_05]: Why not send it to your favorite Canadian farmer, whether it be a farmer of potatoes, farmer of maple syrup, farmer of hockey pucks, send it to that Canadian farmer in your life.
54:23
[SPEAKER_05]: Thanks for listening all the way to the end.
54:25
[SPEAKER_05]: Talk to you next time.
54:27
[SPEAKER_05]: Bye!