From the introduction to my fictional autobiography:
I come from the wildlands of eastern Ontario. My mother was a traveling seamstress and my father was a train engineer who'd been blacklisted for giving rides to hobos in his cab. Times were tough, until one day they fell in with a troupe of out-of-work circus freaks who had started a commune in an old farmhouse outside Bancroft. There I was born and raised.
The commune eventually failed, so at the age of 13 I hit the road with a stiltwalking Scandinavian violist named Maelstrom. He taught me the rudiments of alchemy and snakecharming, as well as the basic forms of a strange music he called "Hobo Folk Noir." That was the beginning. I became entranced by the mysteries of the resonator guitar, the mouth harp, the horn violin and other antiquated instruments from a nearly forgotten past. I harboured dreams of traveling the world as a professional banjoist.
By the time I left him, Maelstrom's knees had fallen prey to the stiffening disease and he could no longer walk the great stilts, nor pull the haunting melodies from his gut-strings. As we parted he made me promise to carry the old ways forward into the new century. So, while I never learned to stiltwalk, I continue to practice this rare form of conjury known as folk music.
I write songs for orphans, for freaks, for hobos. For anyone either running from or dancing with their demons. The sound is created with strings, with horns, with voices and with the creaking of rusty gates on moonlit nights. There is a killer in all of us and a God as well. Watch for me on the road and together we'll find them both.
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