rob kaniuk Archives - Farewell Transmission

I picked up my tickets at will-call and saw Robert Earl Keen’s guitarist pleading with the window to let his two guests in. They didn’t think he was in the band. I got in the door and heard an organ wailing. It was Geoff Hilhorst. It was Ryan Boldt singing soft like Orbison and the band was The Deep Dark Woods. They crushed with originals like Two Time Loser, All The Money I Had Is Gone, and a rollicking Peggy-O. REK came out and made a joke about them being from Saskatoon and their moose shitting all over the tour bus.

I kept in touch with Ryan. We bet Flyers vs. Oilers games. He said Dave The Hammer Shultz tried to pick up his mom in high school. I bought every record they put out. I paid attention to what he was playing on his Radio Hour podcast. Ryan has a Rainman-like knowledge of traditional songs, and his original arrangements bring the achingly beautiful sound of The DDWs while staying true to the song.

The new album feels very much like all the best parts of Ryan’s sound in one spot. From the early songs like Hallelujah to today’s The Circle Remains Unbroken, there feels like a throughline in his work. He writes of slain lovers and unrequited love, big cities and back alleys, whoring around and trading in your name––and, always in the background, birds softly singing.

Boldt and his many band iterations are Canadian Folk Award winners (2009, 2012), Western Canadian Music Awards Roots group recording of the year (2009, 2012), and a Susan Lucci amount of noms including Junos, Americanas, and, for Boldt himself, a songwriter of the year nod in the 2012 Western Canadian Music Awards.

Go out and buy Winter Hours and The Place I left Behind and Jubilee and lock into the groove that Hilhorst and Boldt lay down. Swipe the new album, The Circle Remains, from Victory Pool Records and go see them live.

When introducing The Deep Dark Woods to friends, it’s always one of two songs, depending on the friend. Since I don’t know what kind you are, I’ll suggest both River In The Pines and Teardrops Fell.

Thanks to Ryan for doing this. Thanks to The Deep Dark Woods for being the soundtrack of my life the past 15 years.

-Rob Kaniuk

Retsoor Asks: Ryan Boldt of The Deep Dark Woods

Retsoor: Can people change?

Ryan Boldt: Of course! I’m a different person upon return from each tour. It can be hard, sometimes I’m a person I like, and other times I can’t wait to get back on the road so I can come home again and hopefully be the type of person I like and others like, especially my wife and daughter. If I’m home too long without any scheduled tours, I start slowly changing in a negative way. I have to keep my mind straight and not watch news programs or sit on my phone looking at all the hellish garbage happening across the world. That’s the most important way to preserve the person I like when I return home.

I believe that in order to be a good artist, you have to allow yourself to age and change, or else you’ll end up like so many 1970s rock stars that still want to be 20 years old, which can be quite nauseating.

RS: Is the belief in God a choice?

RB: It starts off as inherited, and then as you age, you have to make a choice whether you believe in God or believe in nothing. I’ve made my choice, so, yes.

RS: Is everything singular or plural?

RB: We have choices throughout life, but those choices accumulate into one event.

RS: What percentage of the world is evil?

RB: It’s a lot more than I would’ve thought a couple of years ago. It’s quite depressing, to be honest.

RS: What % of your personality can you choose?

RB: I didn’t choose any part of my personality. I’m a mashup of all of my ancestors. I try to tame certain parts of my personality and nurture the good parts, but that can be hard, especially when we’re bombarded with hateful and angry internet content at all times. I have to get rid of my phone, but I keep making excuses to myself, and I never do it.

RS: How has mental health affected your creative life?

RB: It is the driving force behind most of my songs. Making music is a way to help with my mental health issues. When I’m playing music and writing, I try to achieve an almost trance-like state of mind where my body and my brain feel kind of numb and relaxed, like I’m high or something. When I’m playing piano at home, I get that feeling often. Onstage, as of late with the current band lineup, Geoff Hilhorst on organ and Mike Silverman on drums, I’m able to zone out most nights. The high I get lasts for several weeks after I return home. This is the reason I play music. It’s a hard thing to explain to someone who has never experienced it. I’m very lucky to have a very understanding wife who has also experienced that same state of mind.

RS: Which parent do you sound like when you’re angry?

RB: Both my parents are very calm when they get angry. I, on the other hand, get angry, and I’m not exactly sure who it came from.

RS: What % of utility have we lost or gained from the internet?

RB: Most of it. We’ve lost our empathy, creativity, and curiosity. We’ve lost our ability to forgive people and converse with people that we disagree with. It’s mainly the social media that has made us lazy and useless. The internet was fun when it was only available on a desktop computer in the corner of your dining room. Now we have been poisoned with a hellish anger that has been caused by the internet. I liked the world prior to the invention of the laptop computer.

RS: Do you do what you do so you don’t get sad or because you are?

RB: I started off playing music and writing songs because I was sad, but nowadays I have to play it to keep myself from being sad. I have to know that there are shows booked and recordings to be made in order to keep myself from being filled with dread. Aside from my family, it’s really the only thing that keeps me feeling sane, that and playing with electronics.

RS: Does answering questions in a public forum worry you or inspire you?

RB: It worries me. I change a lot, and I’m embarrassed by things I’ve said in the past, so I’m usually quite quiet and don’t say a whole lot. That being said, I find these questions much more inspiring than usual questions like “How did you come up with your band name?”

RS: Which list is longer: a list of everything wrong or a list of everything that isn’t?

RB: A list of everything wrong. I should probably change that and start looking at more of the positive things in life, I’d probably be a happier person. It just seems like the world is getting worse. It’s becoming harder and harder to make a living making music. I’ve been forced to work other jobs and after 15 years of being a full-time musician, that can be upsetting. That being said, my life is much happier than it was 10 years ago, I’m not sure if that’s because I’m not constantly on the road or what.

RS: If you had the choice, would you choose to live again without knowing you were given a choice?

RB: Yes. Maybe I would have become an electrician. I would’ve liked to have been an electrician.

RS: Bonus question: Drugs?

RB: No, thankfully.

RS: Bonus Jeopardy: one small regret (big ones also welcome) I have is:

RB: Wasting my time with people that have taken advantage of me over the years. I’ve realized that, unfortunately, some people aren’t as loyal as I’d hoped.

Ryan Boldt is the lead singer and songwriter of the Canadian roots band The Deep Dark Woods. He lives in Ontario Province with his wife, their child, and dog where he spends his spare time curing meats.

Jason Sebastian Russo is a founding member of Mercury Rev, Hopewell and numerous other bands and creative spaces. He holds an MFA from Bennington, was named Lead Scout, holds positions of spiritual guidance with several institutions, and runs the Retsoor accounts, worldwide.

Rob Kaniuk lives in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania with his wife, Erin, and their dog, Virgil Caine. He runs FT.

By Rob Kaniuk

A hot woman followed me on Twitter, but it seemed suspect. I clicked her profile. She was a barista in LA who wrote screenplays. Attractive. Funny. Definitely not real.

My friend Jenn texted me to ask why I didn’t follow her bot back. Said she made it with some Mad Libs style template that would shuffle all the words and phrases she uploaded and the bot would fire off a nonsense movie idea every hour.

Does it respond if someone comments?

Yeah, like, she calls me master when I reply, but she calls everyone else babe.

Oh shit––I should make one to resurrect Jeremy.

Oh god, that’s so sad and creepy––Yeah, and I’ll make one for my mother that tweets the lyrics to ‘Hallelujah’ in a never ending loop and says she’s proud of me when I post about my b-hole.

For a few days I laughed at the concept, played it off, then found myself digging through the ammo box jammed full of letters Jeremy sent from prison. I called Bekah.

“Yo, if I gave you all those letters, would you do me a favor?”

“From him?”

“Yeah.”

“Whatcha thinkin?”

“I just want to make, like, a digital file.”

“All of em? Dude, there’s gotta be like two hundred letters.”

“Can you do it?”

“Why can’t you? No offense.”

“Can you help or not?”

I dropped off the ammo box full of letters from different addresses within the Florida State Corrections system. I told her how to fill the templates with all his -isms. Bekah was the only one capable. She knew the way he spoke and wouldn’t clean up any of the poor grammar or correct words like set to sit.

Weeks went by and I wanted to call and see if she’d made any progress, but I didn’t. It was a lot to wade through. We spoke a few times––their daughter had been enrolled in preschool and started saying goodnight to her daddy’s picture before bed––but I didn’t bring up the ammo box.

The week of Father’s Day, she texted me:

You still got those recordings?

She was talking about the songs we used to sing together. I had piles of recordings from over the years––hundreds of hours of Jeremy and I and whoever was with us at the time.

Yeah. Haven’t figured out how to rip them from the MiniDiscs yet.

I just need one song.

I’ll see what I can do. What song?

Didn’t you and him do Wish You Were Here at Matthew’s?

Yeah, I’ll look for it this weekend.

Think you can get it to me by Sunday morning?

You got it.

Bekah wanted him there for Father’s Day. It had been little more than a year since they kicked the door off the hinges and found his body.She wanted him there to sing a song to their daughter.

I looked at the handwritten notes on over thirty MiniDiscs. Studio 566. Jimmy Mac sessions. Sanford’s vacation. Brickette lounge...I eliminated a bunch because the dates didn’t line up. Which left me with eight. Eight MiniDiscs, three hours each.

I listened to the first few tracks, just to hear his voice. He never knew how to close a song. He just kept playing. It was annoying as hell. I’d look at him, try to cue him the song was over, but with all the bong rips and Busch pounders, his eyes were always shut. The song would only end if his makeshift matchbook pick finally disintegrated. Or if he was ready to steal another cigarette. Every track ends with him laughing at me for bickering at him for ruining an otherwise solid recording.
I popped in the disk marked Half Spent / Stemmer’s Run and advanced a few tracks. A calloused finger drags along the E string. He inhales sharply through clenched teeth. Shakes a cramp from his hand. A click from a lighter and I smell bong water, stale Marlboros and the rotten brown couch. A car goes up Westdale so I know the windows are open. It’s summer. Hot. He’s got on his tattered beige cargo shorts but probably not a shirt.

We’d always bitch about never doing anything fun, but my fondest memories have nothing to do with Hershey Park or chartered fishing boats. I miss the moments where we’re bored and talking shit. Shit talking is where the love is. Ninety degrees with a box fan in the window, six-pack of pounders sweating on the coffee table. Working on a song. Telling my best friend he fucked up the end.

I’d forgotten Bekah was on this disc for two songs. “All in This Together” and “How Can I Try.” The three of us harmonizing caught me off guard. They’d known each other less than a week.

****

I met Bekah at an NA meeting and told her about my best friend who was locked up. I told her I was the only one who wrote him and as a kindness to me, she asked for the address. Pretty soon she was asking a lot of questions about him. I told her all the stories about us growing up and getting in trouble. The arrowheads we forged on the riverbank as children to fool his dad. Quitting our jobs because we figured out the bass at Longwood were hitting a white spinner bait. Coming to blows in the hotel room on Fisherman’s Wharf over a handful of missing oxys and a woman whose name neither of us could remember.

She asked if he was reckless. She had fallen in love with reckless before and it landed her in rehab. I laughed because he was in prison. But I saw what was happening––he was courting her and she was falling. I told her the only true thing I knew about my friend.

Jeremy’s like an old dog. He’s been kicked around and left in the backyard too long by his former owner, but he’s yours now. He’s gonna do dumb shit and cause you grief, but he’s fiercely loyal. Doesn’t matter how far you throw the ball, he’s gonna bring it back. Yeah, he’s reckless. And that’s why I love him.

Florida Corrections gave him fifty bucks on a Visa card and an open bus ticket to anywhere in the lower 48. Bekah came with me to pick him up at 13th and Filbert when the Greyhound came in. They had never met, never touched, but they were in love. I peeked in the rearview. They smiled and glanced at each other but this wasn’t a love letter. He’d always been so confident, but I could see he was afraid of a five foot three curly haired girl wearing a Last Waltz shirt. It was at a stoplight when I turned around in my seat. I asked him what he wanted to eat and I saw it. Did she reach for his hand, or was it he who reached for hers? Their fingers were sewn together and they were smiling. After three years in prison he told me to decide what we’d have for dinner.

****

On her mother’s porch Jeremy noodled on the Simon and Patrick guitar Bekah and I bought him. I’d mailed handwritten lyrics and tabs of new songs, and on the rare phone call we had together, I’d play a few bars so he could hear the melody. He practiced in the chapel every week before Sunday church service. Bekah wrote to him about the ones she liked, so he focused on those. I listened to the songs we sang on her mom’s porch and there’s a part at the end where the laughter dies down and it’s quiet for a few seconds. He was looking at a spiderweb between the yew bush and the brick of the house.

“Ain’t it funny how that web is home for one thing and certain death for another?”

“Wish You Were Here” was a few tracks after our songs from the porch. I had found the song she wanted and two more. I couldn’t figure out how to digitize the tracks in a way that would preserve the sound quality. So I hooked up an auxiliary cord from the MiniDisc player to a Bose speaker, then I set up the voice recorder on my phone and recorded in real-time. I labeled each one and sent them to her in a text message late Saturday night.

Along with my morning coffee, a text from Bekah:

Thanks

***

I’d forgotten about the ammo box letters until Bekah emailed me. I copy/pasted the file into the Twitter bot generator.

>@IrishHillblybot: What say me and you find a quiet spot and get as high as a giraffe’s asshole?

>@kaniuk22: @IrishHillblybot haha hell yeah

>@IrishHillblybot: @kaniuk22 what’s up, brother?

>@kaniuk22: @IrishHillblybot i really miss you

>@IrishHillblybot: @kaniuk22 what’s up, brother?

>@kaniuk22: IrishHilblybot i wish you would’ve called

>@IrishHillblybot: @kaniuk22 what’s up, brother?

Rob Kaniuk is a proud uncle and has the best wife in the world. His mm is pretty cool, too.