Our upcoming Les Chouettes follow-up release is a dreamy one. The song "Fallow or Follow" holds special significance as it was inspired by an invitation to contribute to the Itty Bitty Little Ditty compilation. A group of Ottawa musicians started this project near the beginning of the pandemic to inspire one another to create during this time. The second edition was given the theme (to take or leave) "Forest for the Trees". Krista took it literally and then sent it off to composer, producer, masterer in the UK Fran Ashcroft on a whim. He was delighted by it, suggested a collaboration and ZOWWW Les Chouettes were bairn! 

More news to come...till then here's a sneaky streaming only link of the new single (to be released November 15th somewhere somehow) for friends of hypo records. Photo features the Plague Doctors who appear in the upcoming Fallow or Follow video...

If you'd like to close your eyes and travel to Greece for a moment here's the second Itty Bitty Little Ditty contribution another hypo records project did. A delicate song in Greek about the fall...

We are lighting candles today - the dia de los Muertos - and drinking spicy Mexican hot chocolate. Hope this finds you healthy and safe wherever this may find you.

LES CHOUETTES INTERVIEWED BY CLUNK! 

With the second wave waving its nasty hand at people all across the land we are zig-zagging protective masks (until they are no longer necessito...) and making music to help roll it along - day by day and song by song!

This month we are excited to present to you the anthem that gets us out of bed in the mourning - HA HA HAPPINESS! It's the debut single from psychedelique yéyé'ers Les Chouettes. Are they female owls? Are they tiny cabbages? All we know is they sound great and make a mean salad and we could all use some healthy boosts during this time of the plague. Just say NO to scurvy! Say YES to LES CHOUETTES! 

You can get cruciferous with us on SEPTEMBER 15th! Mark your calendars to enjoy the 2-song single (with bonus Deluxe Dressing Mix...) PLUS accompanying DIY mask maker video featuring some of our international friends whom we've masked! The music will be available directly through our website, bandcamp and other digital distro folks (if all goes as planned...a gamble these days!). If you join our mailing list we'll remind you on this special day! Yé! YAY! And the featured polka dot mask Krista is wearing in the video? There will be 12 available through the @leschouettesyeye instagram account only. First order first mailed! Oh yes...we SUPPORT USPS. Postal is political! Snail mail FOREVER!

LES CHOUETTES: MEDIA 1-PAGE ACTION (click if you are a radio station, zine, magazine, newspaper, organic market, elastic-distributor, or simply a curious cabbage...)

CLICK to check out Krista's MASKON series. Every Tuesday she posts a portrait of someone she's "masked" and how they met. You get discover new artists and why they mask! The first four featured maskees are Shawna Caspi (Songwriter & Artist) Joe Genaro (Songwriter & Artist), Judith Rudd (Illustrator) and John Mata (Graphic Designer). 

SNAP! That's the elastic of time...

After being boxed up in semi-quarantine mode as a long hauler (probable Covidian - just learned the term) recovering slowly but surely from a heart condition (Mr. Peri Carditis) and talking about it with a Covid Coven on the Missing Witches Podcast, I wrote a ode to covid...

Ciao Covid Heart

Don't come near me without a mask...simple courtesy is all I ask 

(Pericarditis can kiss my...)

I've got dust in my heart burning dust in my chest burning

DUST! Da da da da da daaaa....

Featured in the artwork is one of the many masks I've made in the past 4 months. I have 16 on rotation at the moment - using vintage clothes that no longer fit, getting donated fabric from friends with a surplus or supporting local businesses like Espace Urbain been sewing and donating or selling since this all began. You can buy them or gift them online here! It seems, due to human behaviour, we will have to mask-up for quite some time.

Lucil, after releasing The Fartniss Disco, has returned to the pantry indefinitely...she's more comfortable conversing with cans of chickpeas than carbon based life forms. I can't blame her! She did enjoy seeing footage of our first Soiro Bizarro. Here's the fastest version of YOU SUCK you'll ever hear! Lo-fi/one channel hilarity.

September 15th, 2020 will mark the release of Les Chouette's first bilingual single! Sparked by a musical penpal n' secret producer-collaborator across the pond...more details to come...ouéeeeee!

Oh hello! Looks like I've haven't posted anything in months. Hmmm...strange and bizarre as I was fairly certain I posted a few things when my NEW MATH EP came out in February buuuut...ZAP! Tis gone! Mmm...It could be that I've been busy recovering from Pericarditis, a heart condition indicating that my body has been battling a virus (Gee, I wonder which one?), and what with the state of the world just plum lost the ooomph to toot toot about things. My doctor and Cardiologist couldn't find anything "abnormal" after the initial diagnosis but my gut instinct shouted "Dude, it's gotta be the dreaded C19!" Yes, my gut can be a bit of a hoser...Although the symptoms have persisted for months and I've now read several scientific articles that support my theory, the good news is that despite my having asthma and being a more "at risk" individual I seem to be on the mend. YAAAAY! 

In the midst of all this quarantine'ing and hermit'ing I've been busy hugging trees and making masks to protect friends, family, strangers - people I love, respect and care about. It's become a bit of a mission - a daily task...When I saw a post by visual artist Emily Jan in late March I oiled up the old Kenmore that I have used to make Lederhosen Lucil costumes and merch throughout the years, and started making masks for myself, friends, family and eventually for others. Using vintage and donated fabric, this project has given me a sense of purpose throughout all this - an anchor-point to each day - and has connected me to people in a meaningful way. I sell them PWYC and donating about 50% of what I sew to those in need. Proceeds support local businesses (ie. favourite restaurants and fabric shops) and non-profits. Some masks I use to barter/trade for delicious food, carpool services etc. Folks are making cloth masks everywhere now so please support your local designers/sewists - protect yourself and others with this environmentally sound option until the virus has a vaccine! 

I've also started writing, recording and releasing new music again...May 1st TOOOOTED out  THE FARTNISS DISCO (Co-written by my magic niece "VV"!). Initially I was listening to it as a form of laughter therapy (hard to resist laughing when you hear VV giggling) which no doubt has helped the healing process along but then I thought maybe others would appreciate it aussi. On May 17th FALLOW OR FOLLOW was released on an Ottawa compilation Itty Bitty Little Ditty. It's currently being re-mixed and extended with a mystery producer/masterer (sooooon to be revealed) and the B-side is currently under construction....yay!

Lastly, Lederhosen Lucil is playing 2 songs alongside a host of other folks from across Canada at the Skeleton Park Arts Festival Livestream Hootenanny so tune in June 18th for some singsong silly times! LL goes on near the end of the show which runs from 7:30-8:30pm sharrrp!

That's all for now! Thanks so much for tuning in...Don't forget your Vitamin C, D, zinc...and pineapples! 

Last March I spent three weeks living on the side of Sleeping Buffalo (aka Iinii Istako aka Eyarhey Tatanga aka Woweyahgey Wakân) - a mountain located in the Bow River Valley of Banff National Park in Alberta.

It was my first time at the centre (cover of New Math one of the many mountains around the campus). The singer songwriter residency was comprised of 30+ musicians, mentor-teachers, and a team of studio and live venue engineers-in-training.

We played and sang on each others songs, hermited away to write, came out on the weekends to perform works in progress, watched movies and magic by Fats Kaplin (who played pedal steel, fiddle and mandolin as part of the studio recording roster), and attended workshops and one-on-one sessions with folks such as Kim Richey and Kevin Welch. I also ate more cruciferous veggies and desserts than I thought humanly possible. Thank-you staff at Vistas for all those washed, chopped and prepared those meals and did all those dishes. Never lived so fancy free of the day-to-day schlep in my life. What a TREAT!

Anyways, back to the music...the original project I'd intended on exploring (a radio drama about my dad's crazy sailing adventure from Hawaii in the early 60's...still on the burner) flew out the window in favour of a group of orphan songs that tugged at my coattails. 'Fine! I'll play with you!" (they insisted) so I gave these songs some attention and ended up going into my 4-hour recording session with several of them.

9:00am on March 15th, 2019 (I'm not a morning person...) I walked down from the "wooden place" (PDC) into the JPL building nervous and excited to record several songs (1? 2?) with the session musicians live off the floor. Chord/lyric charts in hand I stepped into the control room and was greeted by Christian Aylward and Joaquin Gomez at the board while Howard Bilerman made everyone feel at home - calmly conducting musicians and engineers while serving up espresso shots (Café Vito from Mtl no less!).

What you'll be hearing on the upcoming New Math EP release is this rare session - 6 musicians playing together while working out songs from start to finish while Howard offered guidance and kept things moving along. New Math was an epic start to the day (I had barely awoken...), Honouring Heirs ended up more ethereal than I could have wished thanks to the conversation that emerged between Carla's synth, Fat's pedal steel and Mike's guitar.

When we got to the third song Beautiful Trap - a ode to Montréal - we had about 30 minutes left on the clock. I started to run it on baritone uke (the instrument I wrote it on originally in a drafty old apt. on Bernard in Mtl) but halfway through I was all "bleh...this doesn't sound right..." and Howard, suggested I switch to the piano. BOOM we were off and what you hear is the product of about 20 minutes together feeling it out, running through maybe once or twice and then - HIT - RECORD! 

FUN! SCARY! Mostly fun...check it out on bandcamp when it drops digitally only on February 21, 2020! Till then here's NEW MATH live with me on bass.

And I will be returning to TEXAS in March 2020 to see Pee Wee Herman at the Aztec Theatre in San Antonio so if I book live shows, collaborations, or workshops I'll be posting them ASAP. If you want me to play your town PM me on my facebook or instagram with suggestions for house concerts, venues, cafés, schools that might want one of my Album Visioning Workshops etc. 

TONIGHT is the ARC MTL Gala bénéfice/benefit at la Sala Rossa! Sous la forme d'un cabaret en premier lieu, il sera suivi d'un concert mettant en vedette les groupes Some Became Hollow Tubes, projet spécial entre les membres de godpseed you! black emperor et Thisquietarmy, et Crabe musique rock avant-gardiste. I'll be there to MC!

PWYC: 12$ - 20$  / La Sala Rossa, 4848 Saint-Laurent ( coin St-Joseph ) Billets en ligne/Tickets online / Facebook event

Arcmtl soutien les créateurs du livre et de l’art imprimé avec ses projets Expozine, Volume Mtl, la Grande Foire d’art imprimé et les machines d’art Distroboto, dans lequel plus de 450 artistes participent à chaque année. Arcmtl apporte une visibilité aux artistes grâce à son double mandat de promotion et de conservation de la culture indépendante.

LAST SATURDAY the Studio 303 Eternal Saturnalia was a brilliant eve!

An ongoing, joyful celebration of big shifts and new social orders, we celebrated the 30th anniversary of this interdisciplinary dance studio with vegetarian feast, performances by Éliane Bonin, Gabrielle Garant and Solène Laurin-Laliberté (from Productions Carmagnole), Alida Esmail, a second-generation Shia Ismaili Muslim Canadian choreographer and performer, Hanako Hoshimi-Caines and Stephen John Quinlan, Mykalle Bielinski, and The Right Honourable “Justin Trudeau“.

I created Bonsoir Saturne! Ciao Saturne! for the night - sending theremin messages to Saturn's orbit before landing back on Earth for an electropop dance serenade duet with cloud! The night ended with Miriam Ginestier, co-director of Studio 303 (and of the Hot Flash Dance Party series) playing the role as DJ...SO - MUCH - FUN!

CLICK HERE to visit the online benefit auction that includes local goods and services - KNIFE Sharpening, health services, tickets to dance/cinema/circus, and one of my CHANSON-O-GRAMMES (custom song writing service). Shop locally and responsibly while supporting art innovators!!

NEWS soon to come about my new recording project/s and upcoming tour dates. I'll be returning to France in 2020 and possibly Texas as well...and maybe Whitehorse?! 

At least once a year we like to release electro pop 1-frau sensation Lederhosen Lucil from the pantry. 2019 brings LL back to the Pop Montréal festival for a mini set at 14h (2:00pm!) sharrrp for kids of all ages. FREE! Piccolo Rialto. SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 29th! She’ll most likely be sporting her Harvesthosen and will spiel both alt und neue tunes! Let’s HOSE!