jory picking me up at the airport, 2018


sorry if none of this makes sense, i didn't do any edits. i wasn't planning on using this blog for music in this way but things change really quickly sometimes. i first met jory in 2011. it was a really different time in my life but it was also really the same as now only i booked shows in a small town at the time. i was trying to help my friends from Ontario get a show between Brandon and Sault Ste Marie, and reached out to my new friend Erin in kenora. she hooked it up and said come to town. the morning of the show was the morning after a pool party show in neale's back yard where we drank everything we could find and then some, late into the night. the most hungover i have ever been. me, neale, and andrea hopped in the bus with the REDD MONKEY folks and we all queasily made our way to Kenora with no mechanical issues. desperately needing a drink when we got to town, i asked someone from one of the bands outside the show if there was a beer vendor that would be open. the kid confidently told me there would be with this big grin on his face. i introduced myself and so did he. that's how i met jory. less than a year later we went on a big tour out west. this kid i had barely known for a year was cool with me driving his van across the country even though i didn't have a valid license. i feel like we were able to be friends because we were both operating a bit chaotically.

i realized i was trans in 2013, on my 25th birthday, and spent the next couple years worrying about what to do about it. i was living chaos and i was never sure there'd be a tomorrow. when i needed a place to live in early 2014, i moved into his house in winnipeg. the chaos meant that by the summer things fell apart and i floated around for a bit before ending up back in brandon feeling the end nearby.

but in the first two weeks i lived in that house in april of 2014, there was this one really special day. me, jory, and cran went down into the basement with my laptop to try to record their side project HAVING FUN ON THE WEEKEND. it took like all day, and we had many arguments, but at the end we ate spaghetti and got super drunk and gave each other matching stick n pokes. cran passed out on the kitchen floor despite having a bed downstairs, a quirk that never ceased to amuse me. it's one of the nights i can barely remember that i'll never forget. one of the songs ended up on a split with my old band and the rest were lost to time.

it was hard to be as close after that summer but we still saw each other often for a few more years and then there was a long gap, 6 years or so. my new band was playing in montreal on leap day last year and what do i see beaming through the crowd of people gathering at traxide? jory's big fuckin grin. there's a lot of things i wanted to say to that guy, a lot of stuff i wanted to address. i don't know what to do about it now. i never know what to do about it when friends die. i lost almost everything i owned from the time of my life that i knew jory best, the photos i have are largely copies of photocopies in zines and memories. this recording survived in my mediafire uploads. i figured a lot of people know about a lot of jory's musical projects but almost nobody has heard this one. is it the most groundbreaking thing ever? no. it's a silly and fun recording that reminds me of being young and just doing shit for the sake of it. i really miss these guys.

download here or don't.