Bringing it all Back Home

After lack of sleep, constant driving, mental distraction, poor eating habits, too much time in bars, and failure to focus on getting a haircut... the biggest bummer about my semi-career as a singer-songwriter is that it's all about me.

True, I believe I am doing good by "sharing my gift," and true, I sometimes get the feeling that it all matters on some larger level than my sorry ego could occupy. But still, I spend one hell of a lot of time singing my words, booking my shows, drawing attention to myself. It can drive you nuts after a while.

So it's been a tremendous pleasure over the last 6 months or so to be involved with a band that isn't about me at all. We're just about tunes for tunes' sake. I spend half of my time playing the ukulele. How much of an ego boost could that be?

In this band - I think we've settled on calling ourselves The ZimmerBoyZ - we have just a couple of rules: The only songs we play are Dylan songs, and the only reason we play is to have fun. And it's been a pleasant surprise, how much fun we really do have as a result.

We've been jamming in a former Catholic girl's school in The Annex in Toronto. Uh, yeah. Anyway, they're converting it to condos, so we're losing our space. Too bad- we had a very inspiring, 400 seat theatre to ourselves for about half a year there.

We figured the least we could do was a fond farewell. And on Sunday, we did just that: we held a geurilla gathering of dilettante disciples of Dylan, and we Brought it All Back Home.

Tunes for tunes' sake. Here's to that!