A Kazoo to you!

Today's blog is special. It's cross-posted on the blog over on the website for my music project Jeremy and his Kazoo. If you want to read the exact same thing but with a different page design, head on over there! I'm also taking today to launch the website since it's National Kazoo Day. So be sure to stop by the website and check out some videos and other info! 

Happy National Kazoo Day! 

I'm dropping a few fun things today to celebrate including a kazoo instrumental on my social media channels and officially launching my website! 

One of my goals with the website and the blog attached is to talk a bit more about my journey as a musician, share some of the things I'm learning about kazoo and just generally be a bit funny and connected. In time, I'd genuinely like the website to become a community hub. 

So to that end, today I'd like to talk about my motivation to include the kazoo as a feature instrument in this project and maybe some of my early impressions of playing the instrument. 

Jeremy and his Kazoo had its inception in mid-July 2024. I was mid-vacation, finally getting some distance from a stressful workplace and pondering what I'd like to start doing with all the spare time I had now that I was done with school, radio and several other "side hustles." I'd already identified that I wanted to play guitar and sing with people a lot more last year but playing covers of old John Denver songs just wasn't giving me quite what I wanted. I needed a creative outlet. 

I quickly realized that I could connect comedy and music and start performing funny stuff for people. Music and laughter are amazing ways to connect and I knew I was up to that challenge. Maybe the biggest impediment for me was my abilities as a guitar player -especially in the solo space. I can play reasonable rhythm guitar but my talents aren't deep and trying to play leads and rhythm was going to be hard. But I found just acoustic and vocal to be a bit two-dimensional. 

I considered a few instruments that could fit the bill. Harmonica is nice and something I've played in the past. But it's not that funny and it starts becoming very Bob Dylan. That's a problem for me. 

I looked at other, funnier instruments like slide whistle or kids toys. But those required the use of my hands. 

It's when I landed on kazoo. It's really perfect when you think about it. It's ridiculous, it sounds ridiculous, I can play it hands-free (with the help of my old harmonica holder) and it fills the hole of being a lead instrument, a texture and cheap and available. Plus, I clearly remember having a tin kazoo as a kid and playing it on occasion. This wasn't new, it was rediscovery. 

FUN FACT: I had an early theory that I may have invented using a kazoo with a harmonica harness. Nope, Jim Croce beat me by at least a few decades. And who knows if even he was the first?!

I made buying a kazoo one of my souvenir goals on my trip to Toronto in September. I came home with two Schylling tin kazoos that are my favourites to this day (despite a pretty deep dive into the options out there). I immediately started integrating little lead lines into my songs using the kazoo. 

I was admittedly hesitant to share it publicly at first. It is a pretty derided instrument in some circles and some even argue that it's not an instrument. I can see that and in fact, I conceptualize the kazoo more as an effect than as an instrument since it's your voice making the sound. The kazoo just changes it. It's like a distortion pedal. And that kinda played into the use case I'd made for the instrument. I wanted to capture a bit of a Neil Young feel. 

My first performance assuaged all my fears. I played the song Beef Dylan at The Cure and the feedback was immediate and positive. And it has been ever since. I think I've found the right balance of using kazoo in my music that adds to both the humour and musicality of the choice. 

Not only that but it's something that's going to help me separate from the pack. There are lots of musicians around here. Lots of comedians. There might be a handful of us on the prairies doing music/comedy. But I think I stand alone in the arena of music/comedy/kazoo players. 

That's when I decided to lean in and update the project from just "Jeremy" to "Jeremy and his Kazoo". It has a flow, it's interesting and eye-catching. It's good PR and frankly silly as hell. 

And leaning into learning kazoo has been rewarding too. I'm having fun playing and trying lots of different types of kazoo - they cost a few bucks each. So even my seeming obsession with new kazoos is still only around a $50 investment to date. And if everyone thinks I'm crazy for it, it's succeeded as an attention-getter! 

I've figured out a few new techniques and styles that I equate to more effects in my arsenal. I'm totally aware of the electric kazoos out there but my act is acoustic and I think I've got a lot of territory to explore before I start dropping big money on electric pipes and plugging them into my pedals. Although I admit to being curious about wah-kazoo. Maybe after my second album. 

I'm excited to start sharing tips, tricks, effects and other discoveries I've made in the kazooinverse. I want to do some reviews of different types of kazoos so that others getting into it have somewhere to gather information. And I want to have fun connecting with other funny, musical people who want to engage in this crazy fun little project of mine. 

Fix it up

"The toilet isn't flushing right."

It's one of those vague but concerning things that I often hear when I walk in the door. I'm often criticized when I say that I'm not allowed out of the house. But then when I do leave, I come back to a disaster statement like this. 

Well on this particular Sunday, indeed the toilet was having some issues. And in fixing those, I created another - the shut-off valve started leaking. Oh good. 

I'm not a person that's too interested in home improvement and I can't say that I've ever been bitten that hard by the renovation bug. It's just that I'm poor as dirt, live in crap houses and I gotta fix it because I can't afford to pay others to do it. And that plays to my benefit on days like this past Sunday when things start to leak and it's going to be at least 12 hours before I can get a plumber in. 

Happily, I was able to fix the problem - if only temporarily - with a crescent wrench and about 2 minutes of work. But I know a lot of people - really smart people - who would not have been able to fix the issue. 

It's a paradox for me. On one hand, I don't enjoy doing it and have about 100 things I'd rather do than renovate the bathroom or replace my roof. On the other hand, I'm glad some sense of Mr. Fix-it was instilled in me when I was young so I can take care of the little things when they happen. 

But it creates another problem - namely that I don't have a lot of experience working with tradespeople and I don't even really know what it costs. Our house is starting to have some foundation issues and we have a chimney that's on the verge of collapse. I need to hire a contractor but I don't even know who to call, let alone how much this mess is gonna cost to fix. Maybe I'll just buy some concrete and try to patch it up myself. (NO PILOT DON'T DO THAT)

Anyway. I stopped the toilet leaking and wanted to write a blog post that wasn't just me bitching about my life again. 

And I failed. Maybe next week I should talk about Zelda. 

What's your favourite emergency home repair? Got any good plumbing stories?

SILENCE!

In yesterday's blog post, I alluded to the concept of silence and how that was an important concept I was going to look at this year. The post got a bit long so I committed to posting again this week. 

I should have stayed silent. 

Social media algorithms are a strange thing. You know they're predicting something about you, but sometimes it's hard to see what the root of that prediction is. I've been getting a lot of self-help philosophy-type videos sent to me on YouTube lately. I don't know if it's just the larger societal New Year resolution phase or if it's cluing in that I'm working on myself a bit. But boy oh boy does YouTube know I'm 40 and going through it.

The advice isn't simply mental self-help. There's a lot coming at me about how to be more creative or how to enhance my creativity. And that's where the concept of silence has entered the chat.

And it's not entirely new in this ongoing conversation. The Navigator and I have talked about meditation in recent blogs. 

So here's the gist. Our world is too loud. And not just in terms of sound volume. More in terms of noise. Gone are the days of doing a single task in silence. We fill the background with music or podcasts, spend our downtime scrolling through endless reels and generally feel compelled to fill every waking moment creating or consuming. 

Sometimes I need to watch my dogs or cat to remind me that always being busy isn't the natural way of things. They can look out the window for hours, take a nap when they're tired. Nature doesn't want us to work an 8-hour day then spend 6 on a side hustle and everything else keeping it together. It's too much. It's overloading our brains. 

In a recent discussion with a coworker, we talked about how you can waste a morning scrolling videos and not feel at all rested. The brain processed hundreds, maybe thousands of ideas in that time. We surmise that this is probably at the core of why we're all always so tired and burnt out. I even offered that the looming TikTok ban could actually do society a lot of good. If only in the short term. 

And it's not just the effect it's having on our brain. I think we're missing out on some things too. Harrison Ford recently released a video called "Listening to the Quiet" where he argues we need to listen to nature and to the natural world to begin understanding what we lost. He talks about hearing ants and caterpillars. My first reaction was, "You can't hear a caterpillar." Until I realized - yes you can and I have. Just not recently. Because I haven't stopped to listen. 

From a creative point of view the argument is generally, that as a consumer of content, you've probably consumed all you'll ever need to be creative. And if you need something else, you'll find it when you need it. But it's time to shut off consuming content and start creating. 

For me, this looks like writing songs or writing text. Or finally getting a start on that Doomsday Device. For others, it might mean finally redecorating, cleaning the car or planting a garden. It's not a strictly artistic exercise - it's about building and creating. 

And it doesn't need to be like sitting in a dark room with no sound or input. It just means cutting back on how much we consume. So, don't bring your iPod on the walk with the dog, don't put on a podcast while folding laundry. Shut the phone off and sit at the table for supper. Engage in a conversation. 

I'm just at the start of this journey of silence. I'm doing well in finding places to quiet things down and doing very well at recognizing when I'm on social media when I could be doing other things or when I have far too many stimuli happening around me and I need to shut some stuff down. 

I can't say that I've felt the effects yet, I'm still tired and extremely grumpy. But I'm going to give this a few weeks. And hopefully, the act of slowing things down and focusing a bit more will start to lift the fog of modern life a bit so I can start thriving in 2025. 

How about that? This whole blog set was really about New Year's resolutions!

Time to take stock

mmmm. 

Stock. 

It's been a tumultuous few weeks, with the usual holiday chaos, the passing of a loved one and some good work done getting my music in front of some new audiences last month. I'd considered talking about resolutions and some new thoughts for the year but I feel like I'm a bit late to the party on that. And to be frank, none of it is that original or that interesting. 

But coming out of those busy weeks, I've spent the last weekend really feeling like I'd lost sight of some of the goals in my music project I'm pursuing and some of the activities that I'd taken on to try and improve my mental health. 

And as of noon yesterday (Monday), I realized I wasn't that far off the path and that my wandering wouldn't take much to correct. 

Let's start with the mental health bit. My counsellor and I have spent a lot of time talking about journalling and the benefits it could provide. I was journalling a quick and dirty entry daily for a few weeks but intentionally stopped over Xmas. I felt like I needed to be silent for a moment - not spit it all out but just sit with the silence (more on sitting with silence in a moment). So I stopped for a bit. Fast forward to the weekend and it's been over a month and time to start journalling again. So I started again.

I'm going to reconsider when I journal. I've chosen to do it when I'm on my morning bus ride, but it doesn't feel great and the entries have been overwhelmingly negative. Mostly because I've just woken up, gone out in the cold to get on a stinky bus. I might do the journal before I catch the bus or later in the day. Again - a pin for a bit later, but I need to replace some old bad habits in the next few months and I think journalling could be a good contributor there. 

I feel good about getting this back on track and making a habit of it. But besides this, I realize that I journal as part of my daily life a LOT already. I've kept a notebook at work since 2014 and use it religiously - a form of journaling. I'm blogging here weekly - journalling. I write songs - journalling. You get the point. Writing down my thoughts and feelings isn't absent in my life, I just need to be a bit more mindful of journalling for the benefit of my mental and physical health. 

Musically, things have also been excellent. Things have moved faster than the goals I've set throughout this project and I'd say that it continues to move at an impressive pace. I managed to play my tunes at three parties over the holidays, launched my website and social presence, solidified the name for the project (Jeremy and his Kazoo) and ordered my first batch of stickers. I'm now in excellent condition going into the new year. 

But I still haven't managed to book that first real gig - not an open mic or someone's pity at a party but a genuine show at a venue with admission and everything. I've also significantly slowed my writing from 2-3 songs a week to 2-3 a month. 

In terms of booking the gigs - that's coming. I started reaching out to venues, and talking to people and I've set out a list of venues and dates that I want to apply to them. Sooner or later, one of these bad boys is gonna stick! 

I feel silly feeling bad about the writing slow-down. Like with the journalling, it's been a busy season and 2-3 songs a month is still 2-3 songs more than most people write in a month. The reason I feel bad is that much of the slowdown is me pushing it off. I've set participating in FAWM as one of my goals and I'm finding myself writing a riff or a line and then putting it into the archive to use in February instead of chasing the idea down. I sat down to organize those little tidbits on Friday and found I have about 4x more material than I need to meet my goals next month. 

So no more putting off writing. We're getting back into it now- in fact finished one song on Friday and started a new one on Sunday. I think more important than having a backpack full of song ideas next month will be actually practicing at writing and having those skills honed. 14 songs in 28 days is gonna be tight, I need to be in shape! 

PHEW.

Well if you've read to here, you're a stronger person than I am. Clearly since I can't even quit a non-addictive substance. Yeesh. Overall, I know that life is good but I think I'm just feeling the lack of vitamin D and the hangover from the holidays. It doesn't hurt to make sure I'm still on track and to look for a way to feel better about myself. 
 
I'm not looking at any of this as a New Year's resolution. Most of it was happening before Jan 1 and the smoking bit is just something I need to try at every 8 months or so.

Oh man and I didn't even get into the silence bit I foreshadowed earlier. Well I don't know how to go back and edit that out so I guess I'll just promise to do a supplementary blog this week? It'll be my journal for that day! 

Until then - keep your stick on the ice. 

Bye Grandma

A sad post for today. As The Navigator spoke about late last week, our grandmother, Irene Pilon, passed away last Thursday. 

When someone is able to leave peacefully on her own terms after an amazing 99 years of making the world a better place, it's selfish to be anything but grateful and celebratory. Which isn't to say I'm not feeling a bit selfish and sad this week. I am, but I'm more happy and relieved.

Of course, there has been plenty of remembering and story-sharing. I shared some on the Navigator's post and I've been talking with a few cousins about some of my memories and maybe some general themes we could use in a tribute to her. Innovation, kindness, firm love, generosity, charity - all of these things come up over and over again in describing her. She gave to her community and lifted up those around her. 

One of the fun moments that Grandma and I shared was an ongoing disagreement about Elvis Presley. He was her favourite singer and I really don't have much admiration for him at all. I always loved teasing her about it and she was always unapologetic about her love of his music. Frankly, I think children shouldn't be exposed to that kind of gesticulation. 

I went out to Yorkton with Dad on Sunday to help clean up a few things at her apartment. Shortly after leaving Regina, Dad switched the radio over to Jack 94 and I shit you not, the Sunday Morning Oldie Show was doing an Elvis special. It was his 90th birthday (actually tomorrow, but they were celebrating Sunday).

Grandma got the last laugh. 

We listened to Elvis all the way there. 

Speaking of suddenly coming into possession of a bunch of things that you need to find space for, the visit was full of "hey do you need one of these?" or "you should take this, we don't know what to do with it." I'm not in need of anything and I'm happy to see that some of my cousins and other relations are going to get some much-needed things to help kit out their homes or save a few bucks.

But I did come home with a lamp, a mirror and of all things - an iPad. I have no idea how I'm going to clean off that iPad so that I can make use of it but they were going to donate it to goodwill and I just didn't trust that her personal info would be handled safely. I was thumbing through it last night to see if there was anything of historical or family value that I should preserve before hitting reset. It's revealing to kinda see what someone who's 99 has going on in their digital life. I didn't dig too deep, her personal conversations, health stuff and banking are none of my business. But it's interesting to see the photos she kept, the emails she cherished and the games she played. And goodness, she was good at ordering food in! They mustn't have made very good food at the home. 

We're having the funeral tomorrow in Melville. It strikes me that I have very few visits to Melville left in my life. The town I was born in but rarely visit. I might visit when some of my family in the area have weddings or funerals but probably, I'll rarely go there again. I hope that the day affords me a few minutes just to drive around, and soak it in a bit.

Rest in peace Grandma. 

You've left a legacy that will continue for generations, not only in your family but in your community and in the world. You've touched lives across Saskatchewan and as far away as Nepal. 

I'm so happy you're with Grandpa again and that you're reunited with your Dad and your Mom who I know you've missed desperately since you were 7 years old. Rest well and save a spot for me. Someday I'm coming to insist that you teach me to play Bridge. No matter how much of a cheater my Dad is.