Doing my radio show at CFYT in Dawson City (photo by John Lund)

I couldn’t do it. There was so much fabulous music this year that I just couldn’t narrow it down to a Top 10. So here—alphabetically because there was no way I could rank them—are the twenty-five albums I listened to, and enjoyed, the most this year. Yeah, twenty-five (and it was hard enough getting it down to that).

• Europe – Allo Darlin’
All Music Guide calls this “twee pop,” which doesn’t sound like something I would want to listen to. But I love this album. Why it isn’t on more lists is beyond me. Here’s “The Letter”

• The Carpenter – The Avett Brothers
True, there’s nothing as infectious as “I and Love and You” on it, but this is another great album from these guys. Here’s “Winter in My Heart”

• Barchords – Bahamas
Laid back and lovely. Here’s “Lost in the Light”

• Break It Yourself – Andrew Bird
If I had to pick one album as the best of the year, this gorgeous one might just be it. Here’s “Orpheo Looks Back”

• The Marble Downs – Bonnie “Prince” Billy
Another gem from Will Oldham, this one a collaboration with Trembling Bells. Here’s “Love is a Velvet Noose”

• Sun – Cat Power
Almost left this one off the list because I made the mistake of going to see Cat Power instead of The Mountain Goats, but then I listened to “Nothin But Time” again

• Old Ideas – Leonard Cohen
When I saw Cohen a few weeks ago, he played all his old classics and the songs from this album were still among my favourites of the night (though I was bummed he played “Show Me the Place”  his second night in Toronto, not his first)

• Swing Lo Magellan – Dirty Projectors
Thought this might take me several listens so I was surprised I liked it so much so quickly. Here’s “Impregnable Question”

• End of Daze – Dum Dum Girls
Good thing this is only an EP because if a whole album was this great, my head might explode from joy. Proud to say I am a Dum Dum boy. Here’s “I Got Nothing”

• Nothing’s Gonna Change the Way You Feel About Me Now – Justin Townes Earle
How many brilliant albums does this guy have to put out before we forget he has a famous father? (And I ask that even though I love his father.) Can’t find the album version of “Am I that Lonely Tonight?” so here’s “Memphis in the Rain”

• Fear Fun – Father John Misty
Lots of fun live, too (especially when he did a Canned Heat cover to end the show). Here’s “Only Son of a Ladiesman”

• The Lion’s Roar – First Aid Kit
Two Swedish sisters put out the best folk album of the year? Works for me. Here’s “In the Hearts of Men”

• Celebration Rock – Japandroids
One of the few albums on my list that is on most of the year-end lists I’ve seen. And deservedly so. Great fun. Here’s “The House that Heaven Built”

• Blues Funeral – Mark Lanegan
“If tears were liquor, I’d have drunk myself sick.” Here’s “St. Louis Elegy”

• I Can See the Future – Eleni Mandell
Another lovely album from Eleni. And while I am not really a fan of videos, I can watch “Magic Summertime” again and again and again

• Transcendental Youth – The Mountain Goats
Why did I go to Cat Power instead of seeing John Darnielle again? Here’s “Transcendental Youth”

• My Head is an Animal – Of Monsters and Men
I really need to get to Iceland. Here’s “Little Talks”

• Strange Weekend – Porcelain Raft
I listened to this a lot during my three months in Dawson City and it brought me a lot of joy. Here’s “Put Me to Sleep”

• Between the Times and the Tides – Lee Ranaldo
Why didn’t more of you people listen to this fabulous solo album from the Sonic Youth guitarist? Here’s the album version of “Xtina as I Knew Her” and a great live version of it

• Interstellar – Frankie Rose
Synth pop done right. Dreamy. Here’s “Know Me”

• Provincial – John K. Samson
Maybe not as consistent as the work he’s done with the Weakerthans, but some great stuff here, including “When I Write My Master’s Thesis”

• Sweet Heart Sweet Light – Spiritualized
“Hey Jane” is one of the best songs of the year

• Tramp – Sharon Van Etten
Talented singer-songwriter. Here’s “I’m Wrong”

• The Something Rain – Tindersticks
Haunting. Here’s “Frozen”

• Local Business – Titus Andronicus
It’s not The Monitor, but I got over that and just enjoyed it. Here’s “In a Big City”

Honourable Mention:
Beach House, Best Coast, David Byrne & Saint Vincent, DIIV, Kathleen Edwards, Grizzly Bear, The Heavy, the list goes on…

Another Yukon sky

This photo is from the canoe trip I did on the Snake River in the Peel Watershed with friends this past summer. A few days later, though, the sky wasn’t so peaceful. In fact, the end of our trip was pretty wild, but as I wrote in “In the Yukon’s Stormy Embrace” for Up Here magazine, my love for the Yukon remained unshakeable.

Of course, not all prostitutes are women and the rights and safety of prostitutes shouldn’t be solely a women’s issue and language is something everyone should love, but the people most upset by this piece seem to be women.

Chris Chenoweth

This guy died this week and that really pissed me off because he was my friend.

Calling Chris Chenoweth a character seems like too much of an understatement. He was a complete nut–often infuriating, he was nevertheless totally loveable. And totally memorable. His obit nails it: “Full of fun, bluster and bonhomie, he was a grand personality who inhabited a wonderful world of his own invention and then invited everyone into it. Friends, baseball, hockey, sports memorabilia, the fair sex, kids, the law, politics, journalism, the Grateful Dead and cha all figured among the favourite things of this good, generous ‘iron man’ who was wise enough to never really grow up, and sadly, to never grow old. He had opinions on everything, and he was happy to share them.”

Back in 1999, we did a road trip to Detroit before Tiger Stadium closed. I wrote a piece about it for the Globe. Chris didn’t like my story much — I think some former girlfriends recognized the crazed labour lawyer in and gave him hell about it — but I think it captured him pretty well.

Call of the open road

Tiger Stadium was the excuse: Four guys take to the highway to reprise adventures from younger, giddier days.

Monday, September 6, 1999

Special to The Globe and Mail

In the classic American film Animal House, the fraternity pledge Flounder arrives at Delta House in his brother’s shiny black Cadillac. Without missing a beat, the frat boys yell, “Road trip!” And, in the next scene, they’re on their way to misadventure.

These days I need a reason to pile into a car and go someplace just for fun. But, as my wife regularly reminds me, it doesn’t take much. Recently, four of us squeezed into a Toyota and drove to Detroit. The excuse: to catch a couple of baseball games at Tiger Stadium before it closes.

A road trip is a dangerous experiment in interpersonal relations. At every turn, it seems, dissension looms. There are uncomfortable hours in a car, shared hotel rooms and decisions to make on what to do and where to eat and drink. Throw in the obnoxious tics and habits, differing political views and clashing personalities of four men and a road trip is a donnybrook waiting to happen.

Against all odds, however, most road trips go smoothly. And the ones that don’t usually fall into the someday-we’ll-look-back-on-this-and-it-will-all-seem-funny category.

When I was in university, a Montreal car-rental outlet advertised a sweet 24-hour deal. So we decided to pick up a car at 6 a.m. and drive to Boston and back by 6 the next morning. As soon as we crossed the border, we stopped to buy beer — please, please, don’t try this at home — and by the time we got to Beantown we were drunk and in rancorous moods.

We managed to stumble out of a bar not too long after midnight and headed back to Canada. But with his passengers passed out, our driver missed a turn and ran out of gas somewhere in the mountains of New Hampshire. The only house with lights on was filled with college kids on a ski trip. We played cards until they served breakfast and sent us on our way. Needless to say, we’d blown the cheap deal on the car.

I’m older now, of course, so the logistics aren’t so problematic.

Getting along isn’t necessarily easier, though. On a Cleveland trip, one guy decided that Saturday dinner was a good time to tell me what he really thought of me. It made for a chilly ride home.

The driver on the Detroit trip was a crazed labour lawyer. He put a tape in the player, turned down the volume and ranted against Internet porn, dished scurrilous gossip and crowed about his sexual prowess. Every now and then, for no particular reason, he’d bellow, “Heeeee struck him out.”

His blue 1990 Toyota had, until a few months ago, belonged to his mother. Despite its four doors, there wasn’t much leg room in the back, where I, on account of my stubby little legs, sat. The car did, however, have a handicap parking sticker. He insisted on its legitimacy because he’d had seven knee operations — the same number, he reminded us, as Bobby Orr. Whenever we swung into a premium parking spot, we broke into gleeful laughter.

I’d travelled with him once before and I was apprehensive about doing it again. Fifteen years ago, on a trip to Ottawa, he drove at 130 kilometres an hour in a driving snowstorm and stopped every hour or so to get something to eat and play video games. Fortunately, we made it to Detroit with just two stops.

The others on the trip were a bond guy with a Henry Fonda-ish demeanour, and an eccentric writer with a knack for accents. The bond guy and I have often travelled together, so we shared a room. Since the other two barely knew each other and the lawyer is a compulsive neat freak (his dowdy clothes notwithstanding), while the writer is an absentminded slob, we eagerly awaited the fireworks. Somehow, though, they bonded quickly.

And so did we all. While looking for the Henry Ford Museum, we ended up at the Henry Ford Estate, where a wedding was under way. After the lawyer disappeared into the mansion, we went looking for him, and twice a woman who seemed to be guarding two entrances at once kicked us out.

It was the classic road-trip moment: three guys standing in the stifling heat waiting for a fourth. We imagined him sipping champagne and chomping canapes — or having his way with one of the bridesmaids.

When he finally showed up, I berated him with a line he’d used so often on me: “There’s no I in Team.” Typically, he defused the situation with inane humour. “That’s right,” he barked at me, “There’s no I in Tim.” And that became the running joke of the weekend.

Every time there was a threat of strife, we ended up in giggles.

That’s the magic of a middle-aged road trip: By driving away from our everyday lives, we are free to act like kids again. And there’s nothing a guy likes better than a chance to act like a kid.

After my second year of university, I spent four months working in a mine in Elsa (I lived in a bunkhouse just like this one–maybe even this one–though it was in better shape back then).

That was the first time I fell in love with the Yukon, but the summer of ’79 was more than that, as I explain in this memoir.

“Dawson City — big city problems in a small northern town” is a piece I wrote for Spacing magazine’s blog about what to do with unused (and underused) heritage buildings in the Klondike.

My Maisonneuve magazine story about singing, tone deafness and how we hear music is now online. Includes some science, some culture and lots of personal humiliation.

The Snake is a river in the Peel Watershed, a massive area of unspoiled wilderness and home to a fragile, biodiverse and invaluable ecosystem. Along with concerns about what climate change will do to the Peel, the watershed is now under special threat because the new premier of the Yukon Territory has decided to ignore a land use plan hammered out over many years by all the stakeholders.

I was fortunate to paddle this river in the summer of 2012, before greed and ignorance destroy this jewel of nature. It sure didn’t disappoint as we started off high in the mountains above the tree line and dropped about 1,500 metres as we travelled 275 km through canyons, valleys and plateaus, past fireweed covered hills in the aftermath of forest fires and many other sights as the water changed from turquoise to aquamarine to brown. Along the way we saw Dall Sheep, a couple of peregrine falcons (one put on quite the show as it went turning and turning in its widening gyre) and much more. At one point, a grizzly bear sauntered down a cut and then swam across the river right in front of us (furious back ferrying at that point, needless to say).

Here are some pics:

The trip started off cool and wet. We woke up the first morning to tundra, willows and low clouds high in the mountains at Duo Lake:

View from our Reptile Creek campsite:

Fly fishing at Reptile Creek (photo: Alex Hutchinson):

I caught the first Arctic grayling of the trip (photo: Alex Hutchinson):

The appropriately-named Milky Creek flows into the Snake:

Every view is gorgeous. Here’s a typical vista:

Watto on the portage:

Me on the portage:

View from the portage:

Watto and me chilling  (photo: Alex Hutchinson):

At about 2 am, after everyone else had gone to bed, I saw these red streaks in the sky:

Another Yukon sky:

Mick, Steve and Alex catch some rays after dinner (because you can do that in the Yukon in the summer):

And another Yukon sky:

Centurion time (photo: Alex Hutchinson):

Long shadows:

The trip ended at Taco Bar on the Peel River — across from a smouldering forest fire. That made the sky seem apocalyptic so naturally we discussed Cormac McCarthy’s The Road around our campfire. The next day may not have been quite apocalyptic, but there was a deluge that made the Peel rise several feet and meant our plane was thirty hours late picking us up (photo: Alex Hutchinson):

The sun didn’t stay above the horizon until midnight. Close, though (photo: Alex Hutchinson):

Flying back to Mayo in a Beaver (photo: Alex Hutchinson):

The obligatory end-of-trip pic (photo: Alex Hutchinson):

Rian Lougheed-Smith (a Dawson City artist, entrepreneur and bartender) wrote this lovely piece about me and my time at Berton House for What’s Up Yukon. Bonus: story includes Joe Strummer lyrics.