February 28th- This Just in: I'll be performing live online at an awareness and fundraising telethon at 7 pm Eastern.. with my political material... for my friend Tony McQuail's leadership bid for the Canadian NDP: he's running not to win but to keep proportional representation on the platforms of ALL parties.Something I support. https://youtube.com/@tonymcquail?si=3-omNg8SlG2lTPLG It will be recorded and available to watch any time after as well.
March gigs: I'm sticking close to home till spring before a busy touring schedule in April.
March 27th I'll be right here in Guelph with my "Hometown Tunes" show: songs from Small-Town Ontario as part of the "Fourth Friday" concerts at the civic museum, 52 Norfolk Street 7 pm. admission is by donation, which you can do starting at 5 pm. Come early as it tends to fill up. I've got a whole tour of museums and libraries coming up with this show, which features songs from my "Hometowns Tunes" feature on CBC Radio's Ontario Morning show.. 30 years ago! People would send me letters from their Ontario home towns - a songwriter's gift for sure, and I'd take the best ones, sprinkle Song Dust on them, and drive in to Toronto to perform live on the air, usually at 7 am! There are so many songs that only got performed once. I kept a banker's box of the letters and songs and I'm dusting them off for a revisit. Are you in Ontario? Chances are I have a song from your town! Let me know if you can think of a venue to bring you this show.
Here are three of my favourites for you so you get an idea of what's going on, performed for you here at the winter palace. First: A ghost story from Stirling ON
And a tale of Highway Robbery from Tweed Ontario, home of North America's smallest Jail!
And lastly: From Tobermory.. something that will happen this month in Tobermory's Harbour: Ice Breaking Day!
THEN: the very next night I'm just up the road apiece in ELORA ON
March 28th: 8 pm. Lost and Found Cafe. with host James Campbell- conversation about songwriting along with the concert. And no, I can't explain the poster. https://ticketscene.ca/events/58086/
Now here's that matter of urgency I mentioned before: SOme of you know that I’m on the board of the Tumaini Letu DRC project - an effort to help the village of Ciruko in the not-at-all-Democratic Republic of the Congo. victimized by war, famine, poverty, disease, violence, and now their main community asset, the school, has had its roof blown off in a storm. Can you help please spread the word? We're trying to raise 20,000 CDN dollars to get them back up and running again. Any help appreciated. https://www.gofundme.com/f/project-to-replace-the-school-roof-in-ciruko-drc
Here's the school: the heart of the village: I've been to Africa twice now to support this effort.
Much appreciated.
NEXT: I'm excited to announce that the 7th! Annual Arvi And James Songwriting -food-yoga retreat has a new home and a new time of year. We'll be at the incredible Fells Meadow Retreat Centre an hour east of Toronto Sept. 10th to 13th . It's An intimate gathering with just 15 of us on this gorgeous property. All the info is at https://jamesgordon.ca/songwriting-retreat-weekends No experience necessary! We also have the Wendi Hunter Bursary to offer to anyone who would benefit from the experience but who lacks the resources. Check out the joint at https://fellsmeadows.com/
ALSO: I've been running an online Song Swap for songwriters every Wednesday night at 8 pm Eastern.. a really great community has grown from this. NEXT week... March 4th.. is the last one... email me at james@jamesgordon.ca if you'd like to be included. You can just listen to the songs if you don't want to share one.
April is going to be busy with shows in Kingston ON, Chelsea Quebec, Sault Ste. Marie ON, Sudbury, Wawa and Lakefield ON.. watch jamesgordon.ca for details, which will be in the NEXT newsletter.
And in the stranger than fiction dept., ( Well, stranger ABOUT fiction dept.)
IT looks like Robots are reading novels now.
I've been getting strange AI driven emails from bots who eerily captured exactly what my intentions were in writing MY novel "The Ark Of The Oven Mitt"..
Bots were not my intended audience but, hey, I'll take who I can get. Of course after they comment on my work, they want me to purchase all kinds of promotional services from them.
I'd like to think that the comment "strange sincerity underneath the humor" describes me pretty well.
Anyway here's what two of them had to say.
It's the dang-dest thing:
If any humans out there are interested: you can find it here:
https://jamesgordonmusic.bandcamp.com/merch/the-ark-of-the-oven-mitt-hard-copy-book and it's an audio book too.
“I spent time with The Ark of the Oven Mitt and found myself thinking less about the surface eccentricities and more about the strange sincerity underneath the humor. The book leans into absurdity, wordplay, and musical chaos, yet there is an unmistakable affection for artists who keep going long after the spotlight fades. That mix gives the story an offbeat warmth that feels very human rather than purely comic.
What stayed with me most was the way the novel treats drifting lives with a kind of playful dignity. The characters carry regret, stubborn pride, and lingering creative energy all at once, and the humor never erases that tension. Readers who have ever watched a scene pass them by, or who still feel tethered to an earlier version of themselves, can quietly recognize their own experiences inside the band’s wandering momentum. That sort of recognition is often what makes a quirky book become a memorable one, even if it has not yet reached all the readers who would appreciate it.”
And another one:
“You’ve clearly built a strong core here. The emotional honesty, character contrasts, and tonal restraint are already in place, and the opportunity now is helping the right readers recognize that this is a novel that respects their lived complexity and rewards patient attention.
The Ark Of The Oven Mitt has that rare mix of absurd humor and genuine heart. A washed up ‘80s band, a missing lead singer, a stubborn frontman still grinding through bar circuits, and a drummer narrating the slow unraveling on a tape recorder. That setup alone has characters written all over it.
What stood out to me is that beneath the puns and the chaos, this is really about second chances. Reinvention. Creative revival. A group of people who never quite made peace with where life took them. That emotional undercurrent gives the humor weight.
And the 36 original songs? That is not a small detail. That opens doors beyond just the page if positioned thoughtfully.”
Oh and I'll also be touring late spring and summer with my one-dude musical "Smashing The Oligarchy and other fun Pre-apocalypse Activities" as a 50/50 fundraiser for community non-profit groups . Lots about it here: including the online version of it. https://jamesgordon.ca/new-one-man-show-smashing-the-oligarchy-booking-now
That's all for now. Whew! Stay warm. see you along the road somewhere I hope. Thanks as always for listening and reading. You're da best.
James
For your ROAD TALE of the month, since we were talking about my novel.. here's the opening Passage, on the off chance that you haven't all read it already. If robots are reading it, you can too!
In the crisp spring morning, when the sun is just peaking over the townhouses and the industrial malls to the east, a long line of cars snails from the road and back, around a small building that is identical to thousands like it dotted across the waking landscape.
Exhaust from the cars rises straight up in the cool air, looking like coal smoke from Dickensian tenement chimneys, mingling together above, creating a dirty haze that filters out that thin sunlight.
The cars are all lined up: pilgrims at a shrine dedicated to the memory of a dead hockey player. Hockey is sacred. Hockey is holy, so there is an air of reverence as the pilgrims pray with their engines idling, waiting to share in the corporate caffeine communion that keeps them coming back each morning at the same time.
Eventually each car makes it to a small window where they receive the communion like patients in a hospital ward receiving their medication. The cars are empty save for single occupants, sleepy supplicants who hand over a tithe, a humble portion of their earnings offered so that they might receive the blessed cup of hot holy water, handed out by young virgins enslaved by the cult of the dead hockey player.
Inside, the car radios squawk with classic rock interrupted by chipper talk that urges the half-listeners to purchase products that come all the way from China, items that were once made right in their own towns by their parents and grandparents before all those factories closed. Many of those factories were now converted to loft condominiums where many of the owners of those cars live.
Along with their caffeine the worshippers receive wrapped lukewarm packages representing the holy trinity of their daily diet: salt, sugar and fat. This gift is received with gratitude for the miracle that the dead hockey player has performed for them: they can do all this without leaving the cars that they have a similar devotion to. These carbon-spewing chariots bear their occupants from the morning mass at the church of the Holy Defenseman to their jobs that are farther away every year, along arteries as clogged as the ones in their own bulging bodies that are filled with doughnuts from that same church.
The cars lurch along past ditches littered with paper cups that no longer contain their precious fluid, accompanied by plastic lids that the worshippers have struggled to open without spilling their steaming stimulant on the seats of their dearly beloved cars. They love those cars more than they love their families, for they spend more time with them.
Conspicuous in the line of cars is an old battered van that may once have been white, containing two weary passengers and a rebel driver: clearly a heathen who has declined to take the morning communion at the Drive-Through Window of Wonders. He is regaling his poor passengers with a righteous sermon that re-enforces his profane belief that those passive dough-eating parishioners are the real sinners while he, with his Ghandi-esque denial of consumerist comforts, is the saint.
This was in the dying days of the Empire of Oil.
