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On the Road Again

One of the agents from the agency who had booked me a few small towns out west, balked when I inquired about folk festivals, replying “Liona, let’s face it, you’re too old to do those.” Feeling insulted by his ageist response, I called a woman friend I knew in Toronto who, within a week, had booked me two — too old my foot! No doubt many of my fans presume it’s all easy going for me, but this music business is actually much more challenging than they realize!

Through a referral by one of the theatre managers I knew, in 2013 I started to work with Catherine (Cat) McBride, a woman almost two decades my junior whom I first hired as a personal assistant. Very soon after, seeing how well she presented herself and how fast she taught herself about my career, I elevated her to the role of manager. Everyone from the record label executives to the concert hall managers liked her.

Cat started booking me almost immediately, negotiating a Canadian Snowbird Tour that included both Canadian and U.S. dates. Michael and I shared the program with John McDermott and Bowser and Blue, among others. The Medipac-sponsored shows meandered around Ontario drawing large crowds and had become an annual tradition for many of the performers. Each morning one of the lecturers, “Dr. Bob,” led a brisk pre-breakfast walk for our little clan, and every evening most of the group of executives, volunteers, and performers went out to feast and carouse until the wee hours. I joined them a couple of times but mostly opted to stay back at my hotel to catch up on email and compose new music. When we played Montreal, the handsome and charming Daniel Lavoie, who had guested on The Return, came to hear the show, much to the delight of all the Francophone women in the audience. When he showed up backstage for a few hugs and photos, Cat was instantly smitten and the next day rushed to order his CDs!

• • •

My life in Toronto kept me busy giving concerts, learning new songs, and occasionally giving a speech, such as the one on musician’s focal dystonia I presented for the Room 217 Foundation and another lecture I gave to the General Practice Psychotherapy Association. Michael and I performed “Canada, My Canada” and “Thank You for Bringing Me Home” at the NHL Alumni Awards Gala dinner, and we sang my songs accompanied by the Ottawa Children’s Choir at the Governor General’s History Awards. A concert at the Christ Church Cathedral in Ottawa brought back sweet memories of my many Ottawa appearances over the years. The Canadian Music Competition, which I won over forty years ago in Trois Rivières, Quebec, asked me to be their honorary patron, and I was invited to host Youth Day in Yonge-Dundas Square, a strange choice as I was no expert on hip hop and rap music. It made for a fun experience, as did strutting the runway in a custom-designed red evening dress for the Heart and Stroke Foundation’s gala fundraiser fashion event and donning funky boots and orchid headdress for the Stephen Lewis Foundation’s “Dare to Wear.”

• • •

In January of 2014 the American leg of our Canadian Snowbird tour started with two shows staged in the massive convention centre in Lakeland, Florida, where thousands of Canadians escaping from their cold, snowy provinces flock each year to hear familiar talent and enjoy all things Canadian. Michael and I enjoyed premiering a new song with a Mexican-style chorus melody and arrangement that I had composed specifically for this tour called “Happy to Be a Snowbird.”

“We’re happy and free, the sun and the warm winds agree, we’re happy to be a snowbird, we’ll never be alone, both places feel like home, we’re happy to be a snowbird!”

After Florida we flew to McAllen, Texas, a place with the dubious distinction in 2012 of being listed as the fattest city in America. One evening I took a solo walk around the massive parking lot of the convention centre. For amusement I gave myself a challenge — to return to my room with a new song. Within five minutes I had the chorus and melody to “This Song Is All About You.” I have no clue how I chose such an unusual story — the song addresses a major tycoon, a Steve Jobs character, from the perspective of his wife or ex-girlfriend. In El Salvador I had once used a parking lot as my guitar-tuning dressing room, but this was the first time I had ever been able to sum up any songwriting inspiration in one! I suppose musical creativity is not always dependent upon location. I wrote out the lyrics and melody on a sheet of hotel paper and filed away to show Michael, who was more adept than I when it came to adding interesting guitar chord inversions, thanks to his exposure to the world of rock guitar.

The Snowbird tour itinerary allowed five free days in between McAllen, Texas, and Mesa, Arizona, so I invited Cat to accompany me to Sedona. Fortunately, she was an excellent driver. Had I navigated there myself that evening, I am sure I would have ended up lost in the winding and shadowy mountain roads. The next morning we had coffee at Enchantment Resort, where I had once stayed with Jack. We soaked in hot tubs under the stars, hiked the stony hill trails, and got caught up in a New Age yoga festival, complete with wind chimes, chanting seekers in faded cotton robes, and a meditation session that we gatecrashed. Sedona is supposedly a spiritual vortex, but I don’t think it aligned our energies much, other than giving us a break from the non-stop food and drink routines generously sponsored by Medipac.

On the return drive to Phoenix, Cat and I passed through the once-booming silver mine town of Jerome, a historic, dusty little place, but nothing to compare with the fascinating silver mine towns of Mexico. After two weeks I had completed my part of the tour and looked forward to returning to Florida’s tropical weather. On the way home planes were grounded due to a massive snowstorm in Atlanta, and I had no choice but to take a four hundred dollar taxi from Orlando back to Palm Beach. Ah, these concert tours and all the travel involved were never easy!

• • •

That March Cat booked Michael and I a tour of western Canada promoted by Bill Stevenson, and more than once I asked myself why I was braving the winter winds in chilly Victoria and Calgary when I could have stayed sipping iced macchiato in Via Flora, three blocks from my Palm Beach house. Warm weather alone is obviously not what fulfills me for any great length of time, as performing for appreciative audiences stimulates me in ways only a fellow performer can truly appreciate. Every time I find myself onstage singing, I still pinch myself that I have somehow pulled off this major career reinvention and become a singer-songwriter, while still using the classical guitar as my main instrument of expression.

I caught Michael’s cold toward the end of the Western tour, and now that my vocal chords were an essential part of the show I was not in the best shape. I felt bad for my fans, but somehow I rasped my way through to the last song, drinking water at every opportunity. In my previous career as a classical soloist, I could be feverish with flu yet still play to my highest standards. Now that our program depended upon my voice, this presented new challenges, and I understood why most singers were so neurotic with regard to germs and draughts!

• • •

Sharing the stage with Christopher Plummer at a fundraiser for London’s Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre and a private fundraising dinner for the Markham Stouffville Hospital were interspersed with a few mini tours in Ontario. I was concerned to learn that Prince Philip had to spend his birthday in hospital having an abdominal operation, but most happy to receive a letter assuring me that, although life was a bit frustrating, his healing was going well. At ninety-two anything could happen, and I was immensely relieved by the good news!

• • •

In June of 2014 Michael and I played for the Wounded Warriors at Vimy Ridge in France, the site of the imposing monument to Canada’s war dead in the First World War. My poem, written on the return flight from Paris, expressed the sentiments I had felt while walking in the very same trenches where so many of our young Canadian men had tragically perished.

Vimy Ridge

Thick green grass and barbed wire fences

Sun and shadows on distant fields

Wartime secrets, flashes of thunder

Bucolic scene of shifting light

Grazing sheep, unaware of danger

Land mines buried beneath their hooves

Tread gently my friends, beware your moves

On this mounded earth no humans dare

Your grass grew rich from blood-soaked soil

Blood of courageous Canadian boys

Who fell by the thousands … Canadian men

From Rimouski, Prince Rupert, North Bay and Red Deer

From Grand Bank, Nanaimo, The Pas and St John

Brave soldiers who collapsed in sandbagged trenches

On this muddy ridge where they fought and prevailed

So many died that we might live

But their dream survived … brave countrymen

Cream white monument stretching skyward

Wind on the wreaths and each soldier’s name

Homage to tragedy, a silent prayer

Mother Canada mourns her dead

Mother Canada mourns her wounded

Her wounded warriors she can’t forget

Inconceivable insanity of ugly war

And the war that followed, and all our wars

I pray we’ve learned, but fear we’ve not

Thick green grass and barbed wire fences

Sun and shadows on distant fields

Wartime secrets, flashes of thunder

Vimy Ridge, Canada’s sorrow

Vimy Ridge, Canada’s pride

• • •

Each summer I have been fortunate to enjoy being the house guest of two women friends from Toronto. International traveller Sis Weld has a wonderful home in Niagara-on-the-Lake, where Canada’s Shaw Festival is based. Unpacking a travel case in one of her flowery pastel bedrooms, I feel that I have arrived back in the English countryside. Sis has always been one of my glamorous role models for how to live an adventurous life well past middle age. She has played hostess to so many actors and actresses and is an avid reader and theatregoer. What delight to sit around her lovely shrubbery-fringed pool, sipping wine or tea, munching on the locally grown peaches, exchanging travel stories, and listening to her lively niece and grand-niece, Lisa and Sofia, both actresses, bubbling about their latest roles and passions. When Sis’s elegant young friend Antony, whose full name is Count Antony Dobrzensky de Dobrzenicz, came over for tea, Sis persuaded me to bring down my guitar and I sang for everyone, including Robin, whose mother, Kate Reid, I had seen in many leading roles in Stratford, Ontario. By now we all felt like family. Sis’s relatives and friends have added much to my annual Niagara-on-the-Lake experience.

My friend Naomi, who has a schedule almost as crammed as mine, has invited me every August to her cottage on Lake Rosseau in Muskoka, two hours north of Toronto. What a tranquil and pristine part of the world! Swimming in the lake with her and mutual pals of ours, paddling along the shore in her canoe, taking saunas, and hiking along the country roads does me a world of good. It has also given me a much welcome break from the city stresses of Toronto with its often-muggy summer air, wailing ambulance and fire engine sirens, and continual traffic soundtrack. Soaking in peaceful natural surroundings has always refreshed me physically and emotionally. It was while at Lake Rosseau that, in the early mornings before anyone had stirred, I arranged several Christmas pieces for an album that was formulating in my mind. They say men come and go in and out of our lives, but girlfriends remain forever. Nevertheless, great girlfriends are hard to come by and I am indeed blessed to have several, albeit a couple of them in faraway California and Florida, but that is part of the price I have paid for my restless life.