Category: Music

Yesterday, I got a phone call from Toni Thomas, Talent Coordinator for MTV Live, the flagship talk show for the newly-launched MTV Canada. She told me that she’d been referred to me by Shelley “Burningbird” Powers and asked if I would like to appear on the show and talk about blogs. Seeing as Tucows pays me to talk about tech and that I rather enjoy the whole appearing-on-TV thing, I said that I’d love to show up at their studios — the old Masonic Temple, a.k.a. “The Concert Hall” for those of you of a certain age like me — and talk about the strange hobby in which I’ve been partaking for the past four and a half years.

This morning, I got email from Toni asking me if I could bring the accordion and what songs I could play so that they could get about the business of clearing the rights. I emailed her back a list of the songs which I can play even when three sheets to the wind. Those of you who know me well have probably already guessed the songs on the list. I wonder which one they’ll pick.

A little talking about blogs, a little playing the ol’ squeezebox, all on a new TV channel that’s getting a fair bit of fanfare. Business, pleasure and shameless self-promotion. What could be better?

My thanks to Shelley Powers for the referral!

Barely a month after that fateful day when Karl and I decided to take our accordions out onto the street and play them in public for the first time, he phoned me with an interesting offer.

“Hey, Joey! How’d you like to play accordion on the radio?”

“What? How?”

“John Southworth’s going to be doing a live session on CBC radio to promote his new album. I did session work on a couple of numbers on the album, and one of them has an accordion. He thought it would be cool to have two accordions backing him up when he did it live.”

“Count me in!”

Karl brought me a copy of John’s then-new album, Sedona Arizona. He didn’t send me an MP3 file: you have to remember that this was a month before the original Napster was released and that I was considered to have advanced home connectivity, what with my 56K modem.

The song we were to play was called Veto Valvoline, a whimsical laundry list-type song featruing words beginning with the letter “V”. We transcribed a chord chart and practiced it ourselves; a day later, John came to practice it with us. We rehearsed in my condo’s gym as the puzzled-looking cleaning staff looked on.

On the day of the studio session, Karl gave me a call with a wacky idea.

“We should dress up for this big event. Suits, ascots, hats.”

“You realize, Karl,” I said, “that we’re dressing up for radio.”

“Aw, c’mon, it’ll be fun.”

So we did, and John and the hosts of the show were rather amused to see these two guys with accordions walk in, dressed like Fuller Brush salesmen. Here’s a photo of us in action: