Wednesday, December 24, 2008

In the news

For the past while I've been musing about quitting the music business, at least in terms of music being my primary source of income. And by December I'd made up my mind, as the Xmas gigs just did not come through for me this year, and have been dwindling steadily over the past decade. And not getting a New Year's Eve. gig for the third year in a row cinched it. (More on all of this at a later date.)

On Wed. the 17th I had a noon-hour gig at the Clarica Centre downtown, and I was looking at it as my last pro gig. And on the morning of I got a phone call from Kate Porter, the Arts reporter with the CBC. She had been referred to me by another CBC employee, Emily Chung, who I know from the HPVOoO cycling gang. Kate was conveniently doing a story on how Xmas gigs for local musicans have been dropping off, and we arranged for her to interview me after the gig. Emily also showed up, and took a photo of me playing in Tom's trio, and that ended up on the CBC website with the story.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2008/12/17/ot-081117-xmas-party-music.html


Kate also called over a cameraman (the CBC building is across the street from the Clarica Centre) as she wanted to get a video of me loading my drums onto my trailer and cycling off. The guy hustled over and seemed a bit unimpressed that this was "news", but the footage ended up on the TV news that night, though I did not see it. Kate's story ran on the "All in a Day" radio show, though it was only 2 minutes long (I need to learn to talk in soundbites - the poor woman probably spent far too long trying to find a snippet out of our rambling 20-minute chat).

The highlight for me was just after the story, as News Producer Laurence Wall (whom I'd met earlier in the year when he was MC for an IJO performance) chatted with host Adrian Harewood, and described my bike and trailer and how dedicated I was. :) Thanks Laurence!

And Emily just informed me that a photo Kate took of me using Emily's camera ended up in a CBC photo gallery:

http://www.cbc.ca/photogallery/canada/1858/ (photo #23)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was going to ask, "so what next" and then I read it in the CBC article. Sounds like a good plan! Got anything specific lined up yet?

Mark said...

Nothing specific, but I have an idea or two and will see how it plays out in January.