Hint! The Wax Mannequin Supersale is still active. All seven albums are currently PWYC on Bandcamp (including my notoriously hard to find ‘Embarrassing Early Works’ Self-Titled record circa 2001). You can purchase my entire discography (or any missing pieces of) for any price you’d like. Even no price at all. Share and Rejoice!...

The Wax Mannequin Supersale is go. To celebrate my upcoming Maritime and Ontario tour with Kim Barlow, I have made my back-catalogue available on Bandcamp, priced pay-what-you-can for the next week. Now is a Fine Time to complete your collection, or to trick your friends into enjoying all of the scrappy, unsettling delights that the Mannequin has to offer. Share and...

It’s still cold out and the layers of ice fused my recycle bin to the ground. That box is packed with cardboard: box within box within stuffed in. I hoped to make it ’till pickup day. When the temperature warmed during afternoons, the drips from my roof soaked paper and corrugated packaging to something near pulp. Still, I packed new material on top. At...

This house will keep its value whatever we do. We sleep in and pipes rust, slowly dripping through the drywall. If we sell, the creeping mold will be extracted anyway. It’ll be quaint– part of the rustic appeal. Sticks and binders epoxied one on the other. If we stick with it becomes an art. What scraps around and prop this structure up. There are leaks and...

I’m making easy things every day for 40 days. This is thing 10. I figure if I repurpose one hour a night for creative purposes, and if I commit to ending said hour with one completed thing, irrespective of quality, I will be winning at life. Or I will have at least begun to come crawling out of the sort of soul-drought in which I, from time to time, find myself...

Martti and I returned to Hessanau on the penultimate night of our tour together — not to perform, but to rest on our way to Winterthur. We stayed at the home of a gregarious, moustached, folk-punk named Kurt. Kurt is one of the longest-standing members of the Hessenau community.  Here he builds things and helps to manage the bizarre parties that happen...

I have this notion that I might conquer my creative inhibitions if I make something every day for forty days. I’m on day 8. These makings leave me little time to second guess the output. I am forced to make do with what I make. I allow myself to refine somewhat after the fact, but the release schedule is such that I don’t have time for more than a few edits....

We had to rip up part of the carpet in my basement because of water damage that my kids caused. For some reason I can’t explain, I occasionally I imagine taking a pickaxe to the exposed concrete floor. I would crack through to the gravel and clay below. I imagine working away at this absurd project a little bit every night for months on end until I have hollowed...

At about this time on a Sunday night I get to thinking about my home. There is a hole in the ceiling of my front hall. I cut it open because brown, bubbling water marks were appearing along the seam between two drywall pieces. I started with a tiny square. Sure enough, there was black mold covering the top of the gypsum plug. I instantly taped up the opening and...

The Cotton Factory is a refurbished industrial space on Sherman street North in Hamilton. The building, occupying an entire city block, was once owned by textile magnate John Patterson. He was one of the notorious ‘Five Johns’ — industrial lords who basically ran this town in the late 1800s. After the textile industry caved in the 1970s, the building stood...