In the centre of the ruckus, there’s a dude who absorbs all the light in the room without demanding it. He’s an unlikely frontman, but when you look straight at him, you realize that the collection couldn’t be configured any other way. He’s the one who can talk to anyone but doesn’t claim to know anything. He’s the one who writes, who sings, who plays rhythm with flourishes. He’s the one who everyone looks toward to get this forest jam started. 

 Welcome to the Forest

A door opens and a small but sturdy fella in a white t-shirt and a grey bandanna holds back a big black dog with a loud bark and a soft heart. He says it’s really good to see you and a couple people are jamming downstairs. You close the door and he offers a hug before leading you past homemade paintings that line the stairway down, and inevitably, the whole Hardieville basement jam space. The smell of stew cooking on the stove fills the spot where kids’ artwork and multivitamins litter a tall kitchen table. Upstairs, you’re in a warm home. But downstairs, you’re in the forest studio.
    One painting is Bob Marley. Another is John Lennon. Images ranging from an old Irish castle to Led Zeppelin cover art to various ornamental eyes face the delicately assembled stage. Colourful curtains line the walls to muffle outside sounds. On one side of the stage is a flute player with a microphone and a harmonica at hand. She has a warm smile and a keen disposition, practicing a line of notes to fit the chords that the guy behind the vintage Rhodes beside her plays. The keyboard player has a miscellany of audio equipment on top of the Rhodes, something labelled a Reface, a mini-mixer, and even a trumpet. They struggle for concordance—and find it, to the satisfaction of the guy with the Martin acoustic, centre stage. The one in the white t-shirt picks up his guitar and effortlessly peels off a series of licks spanning from Dorian to blues pentatonic to Phrygian.
    In the centre of the ruckus, there’s a dude who absorbs all the light in the room without demanding it. He’s an unlikely frontman, but when you look straight at him, you realize that the collection couldn’t be configured any other way. He’s the one who can talk to anyone but doesn’t claim to know anything. He’s the one who writes, who sings, who plays rhythm with flourishes. He’s the one who everyone looks toward to get this forest jam started.
    We ready? he asks wordlessly. He’s in a hoodie, his face clean-shaven, his golden curls holding the brightness of the stage lights like snow on prairie grass. He may not have used words to call the song, but everyone knows what’s going on.
    A whisper of sound comes from the guitar somewhere between Dm, F and C6, even if no one agrees which, it doesn’t matter. The core four harmonize, no matter what theory might call it. This is a music that defies rationality, that doesn’t ask for a chorus or bridge or really anything unusual to justify its repetition and poetry. The groove evolves, arpeggiates, waxes, wanes, ebbs, flows. The singer closes his eyes and anyone would give in to the somatic progression, anyone would sway with the forest of sounds presented them. It’s not music anymore so much as pure melodic rhythm in a place beyond the temporal.
    The big black dog with the loud bark and warm heart joins in. He’s howlin up a storm, a storm where the wind whips, the hail chips, the rain descends like diamonds leaking from the silver heavens. The humans think they’re leading this thing, but the beasts know better.
    Songs lead from one to another. The frontman’s voice holds it all together. Flute sounds here, a guitar lick over there, the trumpet bursting in, the key guy swaying, the lead guitar stepping in. All of a sudden the frontman’s voice is joined by the flautist’s, and humming, ooohing, echoing and adlibbing brings the intensity of the flow to an upper realm. The lead guitar and key guy can’t help it, and they join in the chorus. Music turns into colours. Colours turn into dream. You wake out of it when the song ends, when the frontman tells a little story of why he wrote the song. There’s the chuckle of audience, the small union consisting of you and the core four, down here in the forest.
    Your cellphone buzzes, chiming reality in to bring you back to the world outside. You don’t want to leave, but responsibility compels you.
    It’s okay, says the clean shaven face of the centre-stage light being. We’re playing next week. You can hardly wait to feel this way again. Welcome to the Forest.

Forest Folk
11/8/24

I stood by the Army Navy centre in downtown Lethbridge. I’d just come from a hot jam where we were going over melodies for Josh’s first EP with the band. We had seven songs to fill forty minutes on vinyl: Dinosaurs, Love’s a Shadow in the Darkness, Museum of Memories, Palisades, Mama, Love Built on a Graveyard, and Reflections.
    Our set tonight would be a simple three songs: Reflections, Museum and a classic we’ve been loving lately, What a Wonderful World. The wind blew from the west as I stood by the entrance waiting for the guys to arrive. If the crowd was what I anticipated, we’d be young bucks in front of the far more experienced musicians that we’d watched the night before at Theoretically Brewing.
    We’re talking about the music teachers of Lethbridge, the wise owls that taught the whole generation of musicians that flooded the open mics and struggled for gigs in town. And for some reason we were on our way to share a stage with them. Trial by fire.
    I prefer to be photographed in my innocence, and invisible in my opulence. I lay low in this unfamiliar environment. A source of creation has spawned this polite club that silently listened to every act.
    Words do not matter nearly as much as the meanings underneath them. “Folk” in this context meant a variety of things. An expert flamenco guitarist accompanied by a hand-drum percussionist, a guy ripping it up solo with an electric guitar and a kinks cover, couples’ bands and a Celtic group. Then we walked up on stage. The frontman draws immediate attention to my new brass. Now I’m in a spot, I can’t hide anymore. We take our time with B on the lead, J rumbling rhythm vibes and singing sweetly. My head is down, waiting for parts. This is the most attention I’ve ever gotten. Every single eye is on us. You can’t hide from the faces of local musical professionals all trained on you. It’s humbling.
    I thought of cracking jokes. How many times in a paragraph could you say folk instead of fuck. Thank Channing Tatum and Gandalf for coming together in the same room. It was imbecilic, but I was happy for it. It was something to keep my nervous brain occupied. I had no intention of actually doing anything of the sort. It would kill the magic. The gorgeous scenes ape the sensation of sublimity in your mind as the music flows. For the time that one spends in silent admiration of the splendor of organized noise, the chaos of dealing with many other venues is soothed. I love chaos too, in its practical context. This was not a time to joke in a bar. This was a time to be watched.
    I’d learned my parts, but I didn’t have a piano to lean into if my lips got tired. I’m only a tourist here. My strongest songs were Wonderful and Museum. I had precise, exact paths to match every note and pause of both those songs. Not a mistake. But Reflections, I have no idea where to go with that one. I’ll get there. I guess it’s new. I didn’t think much of my performance at the time and exchanged pleasantries with some of the other players after the performance. I admired the skill in that room, and also its willingness to accept new things.
    As for the other guys, any deviations or detours only added to the song. A little creative splash here or there is allowed if it doesn’t crash the song. It’s not “jam band”, there’s a touch more organization. But the vibe is fun, overall. We walked off stage smiling.
    The cookies were 50% off at till, the coffee was urn, the tea was bagged, and it was all perfect. The folk were fun. Folking fun. I had a folkin good time, for folks’ sakes. Folk me, that was a folkin riot. I folked and found out. Or as my dad used to say when he’d hit his hand with his hammer, “Gord done folkin G-sauce folkin cries! Gord folkin willin they can made a Gord dorm proper folkin hammer! This split is the folkin reason everyone’s a folkin apple these days! I’m gonna tell that gurd turd prink suckin hardware Harry where he can stick this split eatin splinter prickin made in folkin gyna hammer and if he doesn’t folkin do it himself…”

Ahhhhh, so satisfying.