At Christmas in 2017, I was completely broke. So was my friend Dana Schiemann, who happened to be an extremely talented singer and comedian. She suggested that we record a Christmas album of duets, and then we could each give it to our families rather than buying gifts. We called it "Roses Are Red, I Have No Money, This Is Your Present, Happy Christmas." We recorded the whole thing in the bedroom of my Toronto apartment. After our sessions, we'd go for a beer at a pub across the street, or watch a Christmas movie on the couch. It was a wonderful December.

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What Are You Doing New Years Eve?

I've had two major, can't-eat, can't-sleep, can't-do-anything-but-be-miserable breakups in my life, and after each one, I've found myself buried in Dylan albums. And, after each one, I've latched onto one song, called my extremely talented friend Jessie Peck, and asked her to sing it with me. The first breakup, in 2013, produced a version of Boots of Spanish Leather, which I arranged badly enough that you won't find it here. But in 2017, the album I disappeared into was Blood On The Tracks, and the song I couldn't get over was this one. When I learned to play it, I found myself slowing it down, picking out my favourite verses and phrases. It's no surprise, then, that the verses I chose are about a woman, obscured by the past, but remembered with something like longing, comfort, and regret. Jessie came to my apartment and arranged the harmonies one night in October, then I called my friend Dakota, a bassist and sound designer who worked at a studio. The three of us were able to get in after hours and record this. What you hear is basically the bed track - we had intended to flesh it out and finish it later, but lives change and time marches on and somehow, it never happened. It's unmixed and unfinished, without so much as a hint of reverb, but it sounds like Jessie and I working out how to sing a song together, and for that reason I'll always love it.

Shelter From The Storm - Demo

I wrote this song over the Christmas holiday in 2015. My girlfriend at the time was gone to China for three weeks on a music theatre internship. We were 22 and we'd never been apart more than a few days since we got together, it was a trying time for us. Because of the difference in time zones, we only had about forty-five minutes every thirteen hours to try to get a video call in, and usually there were two or three other people in the room with her, so it felt like we couldn't really talk. After a particularly unsatisfying call, I wrote this song from the fetal position on the floor of my childhood bedroom. It is, at moments, so full of self-pity as to be almost parodical ("at least I'm good at being sad"), but listening to it now, it still rings true to me, so here it is. Only a few weeks after I wrote this, my friend Kyle and I rented a good microphone and drove up to my parents' cottage to record what I thought would be my debut album. It was January and the cottage road was snowed out, so we had to wrap all our gear in garbage bags and load it into a snowmobile trailer to get it in. We wanted the record to sound authentic - like it had been recorded in a couple days in the middle of the woods by two guys who didn't really know what they were doing. Unfortunately, that's exactly what it ended up sounding like. We did six tracks in a weekend, and this is the only one that I still think is any good. Musically, I think I've grown out of what we were trying to do that weekend, but it taught me a lot. It was a wonderful way to fail.

Thirteen Hours - Demo

This song was brought to me by my friend and frequent collaborator Zane Elliott. Zane is a phenomenal guitar player and one of my favourite songwriters - he has a knack for that effortless, half-talkin' half-singin' country & western feel that is so hard to do honestly. I loved this song instantly and did the bare minimum to warrant a co-writing credit - I changed the second-to-last-line of each chorus, I switched a chord, I suggested a key change at the end. It's Zane all over. Zane's been away from his Alberta home for a long time, and you can hear the distance on this track. It's a terribly difficult subject to write about without falling into the pitfalls of cliché, but Zane dips his bucket in the well and up comes this clear, country water, fresh and clean and full of truth. This demo was recorded during maple syrup season, 2020, at the beginning of a global pandemic, so sadly Zane doesn't feature on the track. But someday we'll record it properly.

Let Alberta Be My Grave - Demo

This past March, when the pandemic began, I was up north with my dad at our cottage, making maple syrup. Everywhere was locking down, so we just stayed put, and ended up living there for over a month. I know it was a terrifying time for the world, and the beginning of the strangest and most difficult year in many of our lives - but I can't help remembering that month fondly. We developed daily rituals, spent huge amounts of time walking in the winter woods - and, eventually, looking for things to do, went over every inch of that old place. I found myself digging through a drawer in my bedroom that I had forgotten about. My family used to spend our whole summers up at that cottage, we'd leave the day school let out and wouldn't come back until the day before it started up again. It was an amazing way to spend a childhood, and an even better way to spend your teenage years. But one of the last summers we spent there, I had just started a relationship with a girlfriend back home. She was my first girlfriend, and I was head over heels in love, and going away that summer was not the fantastic experience it usually was. I had a 1999 Nokia Muchmusic cell phone with a pay-per-text plan, and there was no service at my cottage except in one spot at the end of the driveway. She was staying at a summer camp as a Counselor-In-Training with limited landline access. So we wrote each other letters. She would spray them with perfume so that they smelled like her. I kept them in the bottom drawer of my bedside table, and read them every night before going to sleep. Over the years, that drawer became the home for everything to do with my first love. Birthday gifts, anniversary letters, little origami swans she made out of magazine pages. Then it became a place for all nostalgia-inducing things. Old photgraphs, a tiny baseball glove, broken guitar picks. Then one day I closed it and didn't open it again. The thing I couldn't believe, when I finally rediscovered it this spring, was the smell of her perfume. It filled up the room, clear as the day she scented her letters with it, and I was transported. And as I sat there, digging through the artefacts of a forgotten life, I thought, "this is a country song." I recorded this demo the next day. When I do this tune for the album I'll add pedal steel, I'll arrange the guitars a little differently, and I think I'd like a woman's voice doing the harmonies on the chorus. But there's also a lot I won't change. I think plenty of people have an old drawer like this one somewhere in their lives. If you have one, open it up.

This Old Drawer - Demo

Greg Solomon joins host Danny Hamilton this week and quickly reveals that he doesn't know how to play rock paper scissors. Greg interviews an alligator wrestler from Texas named Gladys Antisnow and Danny interviews an eager young actor whose name I've forgotten. Music by the Quarter Heads!

Ep. 8: Leap Year

Liz Tanner returns to the show to join your host Danny Hamilton for another very standoffish episode of Welcome to the Show! They come up with a new way to determine who goes first, then Danny interviews the author of a series of tween fantasy novels and Liz interviews a young pro Mario Kart racer. Music by the Quarter Heads! NOTE: This podcast episode is unrelated in almost every way to The Force Awakens but I couldn't think of a title and it IS episode 7 so it'll have to do.

Ep. 7: The Force Awakens

Kyle Macdonald joins your host Danny Hamilton and makes him a few drinks this episode. Danny interviews the man who invented the double-necked guitar. Kyle interviews a skipper from Deadliest Catch. We talk about our makeshift studio and Danny is still sick as a dog. Music by the Quarter Heads!

Ep.6: Panty Hose

Jeff Follis and Gillian Reed both return to Welcome to the Show to join Danny Hamilton for the WTTS Christmas Episode! Danny interviews some Christmas orphans, Gillian interviews some Christmas quilters who are definitely from Sweden, Jeff interviews a pair of Christmas lumberjacks and then Danny interviews some Southern Christmas Carolers!

Ep. 5: Christmas Orphans

Liz Tanner joins your host Danny Hamilton this week and makes his life very difficult. Danny interviews the lead singer of 80s Hair Band "Fruit." Liz interviews Shmaniel, an Amish gentleman who sells homemade goods. Music by the Quarter Heads!

Ep. 4: Hair Band

Your host Danny Hamilton is joined by seasoned improviser Tyler Check this week, and things take a sportsy turn. Danny interviews supreme heavyweight fighter Jerry Lee Abidieser. Tyler interviews the world's oldest competitive eater. Music by the Quarter Heads!

Ep. 3: Sports Radio

Your host Danny Hamilton is joined this week by the wickedly funny Jeff Follis from The Enlightenment of Percival Von Schmootz at Theatre Sheridan. Jeff interviews Spongebob's cousin Spongebert, and I speak with the king of a new country founded in Wyoming. Music by the Quarter Heads!

Ep. 2: One Moose

Gillian Reed and Dan Spragge join me (Danny Hamilton) on the first ever "Welcome to the Show!" Danny interviews a pair of professors at the holistic healing centre, Gillian talks to the innovators of a new workout for women, and nobody's really sure what the hell happened while Dan was the interviewer. Music by the Quarter Heads!

Ep. 1: Hydrochloric Acid

We're a funny podcast! Here's a joke to prove it. Knock knock. Who's there? Welcome to the Show. You mean that funny podcast? Yes.

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Welcome to the Show

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