I don’t know for sure, but I have a sneaking suspicion this might be the most CT$ ever gathered by a non-Canadian-Tire-affiliated citizen.  Five rows long, seven rows wide, and several bundles deep, this is just over a quarter of what I’m hoping to raise by July, 2012.

And when this coup is over, I’m going to walk into a Canadian Tire (which one, I wonder?) with James Paul, and we’re going to put all these bundles (and more) on the counter.  Funny thing is I still haven’t set foot in a Canadian Tire since all this ludicrousness began.  I can’t remember the last time I was in one.  I’m not avoiding them, or anything, and it certainly warms my heart in a strangely conspiratorial way when I see that red triangle with the green maple leaf on it.  But those fat brown rubber bands you see on some of these bundles?  I bought them across the street at Home Hardware, which is where I’ve purchased this caper’s only necessary supplies.

This is me, being twelve years old, shaking my children’s fists!!  And if I’m not mistaken, Sandy McTyre is laughing from his t-shirt vantage point:

Collecting Canadian Tire Money sure shaves the years off.  I think every time a new bundle arrives, I lose a few months.  Another couple hundred and I’ll be eleven again!  Speaking of which, half of that cornerstone bundle, the one nearest us in the picture, contains $82.50 which was brought and hand-delivered to me at Hugh’s Room last night by Debra Shushack, who along with her husband Ken Furman runs one of the best house concerts in Ontario: Music In The Alcove, up in my hometown of Cochenour.  Debra and Ken have been pooling at their concerts and last night she put the stash (which put me over twenty-six hundred dollars) in my hand.  Also with her was the Mayor of Red Lake, Phil Vinet, who incidentally is the one who gave me the phrase ‘the wrath of the law and the lonesome’.  True trivia.  More soon.  Don’t Spend It Honey!  Send it to me, and vicariously satisfy your inner Scrooge McDuck.  39 Oxford St. Toronto, ON. M5T 1N8.

ps.  It was when Jonathan Byrd and I were on tour with Kim Beggs in AB/YK in November that this madcap enterprise accidentally launched itself, so it’s appropriate that these photos were taken by Kim, who dropped by for a visit and documented the stash.

Canadian Alchemy.  Exactly.  That’s the magic at work here.  A thousand pedestrian transactions– all those cashier/customer ‘have a nice day’ hand-offs, all this small-change made of paper– most of which has waited years, in junk-drawer chrysalis– is now being transmuted into beauty.  It’s morphing into love, music, community– the real stuff.  It’s converting beyond any exchange rate the Dow Jones will ever comprehend.

Another, anonymous donation of $5, was accompanied by a single note that said:

Music and Love, it makes the world go round.

$5 in CT money.  No postmark.  No return address.  No clue as to where it came from, but whoever sent it kissed the note with her lipstick lips and left them there for me.

Another anonymous donation had nothing for a return address but a heart.

Then, on Valentine’s Day, of all days, I received $5.85 in the mail, along with a Sea Nymph chocolate bar (dark chocolate, 64% cocoa, sea salt, english toffee, mmmm…) in an envelope that said on the back:

Love to Corin from all the ladies at Cocoa Nymph

CocoaNymph is a shop in Vancouver where they make their own chocolate, and I can tell you right now, each bite of that stuff is a minefield of pleasure explosions.  As if that wasn’t lovely enough, a couple days back CocoaNymph posted this on their facebook page: It’s Canadian Tire Tuesday! Bring your Canadian Tire money and buy some chocolate, it’s for a good cause!  How sexy is that??  A beautiful chocolate shop in Vancouver has introduced Canadian Tire Tuesdays and, ‘We’ll take it on par every Tuesday from now until our friend Corin Raymond funds his new album.‘  And they sent me chocolate!

They sent me chocolate.

That was the second chocolate bar of this campaign.  The first was from Seattle Washington, from my friend Leah.  She sent me a whole package of beautiful stuff, sixty-five cents she collected from some friends on Keats Island (off the Sunshine Coast of B.C), and a Trader Joe’s chocolate bar.  I’ll reprise the theme I started in my last post: there is no granting board on this grant-applying earth that will send you chocolate.  In the mail.  With love.  And art.  And lipstick lips.  This is a case of Canadian Tire Money being translated into love, love into chocolate (which is love), money into music, music into love, and round again.  These gifts are all acts of sorcery.  Canadian Alchemy.

Some days the mailbox is made of stars and hearts and kittens… I got this from Greg and April Hamilton, along with their stash of CT bills, which you’ll see pictured below:

Yes, cocaine does have an ‘e’.  But how beautiful is this note?  When was the last time you had that much fun with a dollar eighty-five’s worth of coupons?  I love:  ’… any more than is artistically necessary.’  It’s like, ‘… do it if you have to, but, you know…. not unless there’s just no other way…’  Got it, Roxy.  I promise.

Hey friends, while we’re still in kittens-and-hearts territory, I’d like to redeem myself a little.  At one of the live album shows at The Tranzac, I read aloud from a card sent to me by little Will Snedden in Kelowna, BC.  It said:

Hey Corin heres $1.55 I’ve been saving for a soccer, it’s not much but it will still get you that much closer

Will

I thought he meant ‘soccer ball’, which is what I read when I shared the card, and of course the crowd was like, ‘whoa dude, now you’re taking soccer balls from children???  Hey, it was fun up till now, but that’s not right…‘  I was thinking, ‘man… before this caper is through, I’ve gotta send this kid a soccer ball…’ but recently, I received this note from his mom:

Mom suggests you keep the $1.55 because he was actually saving for a bouquet of those suckers they sell at the till! That’s Canadian Tire gold to him.

Suckers!!  That’s what he meant by ‘soccer’!!  So, please.  Don’t think of me as someone who steps on the soccer dreams of children to get to my album.  The case was reopened; new evidence was received; the sucker-truth came out, and the file can now be gently closed.

More Canadian Alchemy soon.

ps.  Last night, counting up the latest donations on the bar at The Cameron House, we broke twenty-five hundred Canadian Tire dollars!!  The new total is $2,508.95, and it was the $14.20– handed to me by various fans and friends at The Cameron last night– that put me and my caper over the quarter line.  Twenty-five hundred and eight dollars and ninety-five cents, in Canadian Tire money.  And counting.

Alchemically yours, CR.

Speaking of which, I got this from a kid!!  The only donation which– mysteriously– was sent to The Rogue Studios:

Mystery Donator sent a few bucks in CT$, along with a note on the back of a torn Marvel Comics postcard:

This kid is after my heart!  Here’s what the note said:

Innovative… plus cool.  Encouragement does not get better than this.  I promise you that no granting board in the world ever sent anyone a torn Marvel Comics postcard that congratulated the recipient for being Innovative… plus cool.  This kid also sent me a very large band-aid.  Yeah, not sure about that either.  I guess that’s what makes it a mystery package.  Maybe he’s not a kid.  Whoever he is, I love him.

Some of the greatest, and most entertaining, encouragements I’ve received have been from musicians.  I got this note from Winnipeg’s Andrew Neville, who’s got a song on the album which the Tire Money is helping me to make:

Subtitles, if you need ‘em:

This should help some.

I’ve had this pile of bills sitting around for a long time, might as well spend it on something that’s worth it!

Love the song man, but then again, I love all your songs.  You are often played over the house system late at night at the Times.  Everybody knows ALL the words.

Anyway, talk to you soon my friend.

OH!!! The next thing I send you will be our new CD.  Check your mail around spring time.

STAY HARD!

Andrew Neville

Again, no granting committee ever tells you that they listen to your records after hours, that they know every word– and they definitely never tell you to STAY HARD!

I’m getting letters like this from my favourite songwriters in the land!!  You can’t apply for that kind of support, man.  There is no substitute for it whatsoever.  Only a community is capable of it.  I guess that’s what happens when you’re Innovative… plus cool.

ps.  I shouldn’t leave without letting you know the latest total, which is $2,462.20…. just thirty-seven dollars and eighty cents away from a brass-ring total of $2,500.  Who’ll put me over the quarter mark?  Wouldn’t you like to see what $5,000.00 in Canadian Tire Money looks like, all in one place?

I’ll post more very soon.  For now, let me just tell you that I’ve broken $2,500, thanks to the good folks in Norfolk County.  We’re now entering the realm of Canadian Folklore, and we’re doing it together, one crinkly nickel at a time.  You might have heard the rumours that Canadian Tire is planning to take the fun out of the funny money, that the Sandy McTide is turning; that Rewards Cards are the way of the funless future.  I’m not worried.  It’ll be a while yet before the cute little Scotsman ceases to be legal tender, and in the meantime, we’re perpetrating what might be the last poetic act committed with Tire Money on a national scale.  I’m blowing the Canadian Tire Money Conch now, long and low, so that my plea reverberates like a fog horn in the cold atlantic east, blasts loud as a thousand eighteen-wheeler horns across the prairies, echoes in the Kootenays, and round the bays of the Sunshine Coast.  I’m raising the Tire Money Conch and blowing it so that it shakes the dust off every shoebox and every kitchen drawer; so that it’s heard by every wrinkled dime in every forgotten coat pocket, and in the cramped dark of every glove compartment from the Atlantic to the Pacific and back.  I’m calling my flock now.

Corin Raymond
39 Oxford St.
Toronto, ON
M5T IN8 (My 5 Tortillas I Never

Furthermore, a fella named Adam fed me maple syrup whiskey, from Quebec, mixed with equal parts apple cider (the kind that still has bits of apple in it… and I have to say, if you want to turn your children onto booze, this would be the way to do it– it was like dessert in a glass).  I was sipping maple syrup whiskey while the Canadian Tire money was being counted and tallied up, and this is what I love about this project: it just gets more Canadian every day.

Speaking of Canadian, like many of us, I grew up on the poems of Dennis Lee and the drawings of Frank Newfeld, and, as for many of us, the words ‘In Kamloops I’ll eat your boots.’ have stayed with me.  What’s happening with this project is as Canadian as that poem, and it brings those words back to me.  For instance, I got this photo a couple of days ago from Kamloops, BC.  It was taken at Erwin’s Bakery (which is full of deliciousness, by the way), where the owners, Robyn and Shawn Haley, have instituted ‘Canadian Tire Tuesdays’, which means that on Tuesdays they’ve been accepting CT$ at par.  How incredible is this?

Robyn also sent me this photo of what they’ve collected so far:

In Kamloops they’ll fill your boots!!!  To paraphrase Dennis Lee.

As soon as I can do it (I’m hoping tomorrow), I’m going to post some of my favourite letters, cards, and messages I’ve received in the mail recently.  In the meantime, keep feeding your kids maple syrup whiskey while you read them those poems from Alligator Pie.  And thank you, again, for being so Canadian with me.  In the Gatineaus I’ll eat your toes, and in Kingston I’ll play the Folk Club!  Tonight, between 930 and 10pm, at 193 Ontario St.

ps.  Huge thanks to Deanna MacDonald at the Kingston Frontenac Public Library, for putting on Bookworm (its first ever public library appearance!) and thanks to the Kingstonites who brought their CT cash… see some of you again tonight!!  Oh, and in Napanee I’ll eat your knee.  But you knew that.  C.

   … and the floors of the places we played looked like this:

or like this:

It came down like confetti, like New Year’s streamers; it made the sound of autumn leaves; it curled and collected itself in drifts.

It was also delivered…

…. counted, accounted for, rubber-banded…

… handed to me by good folks like Ian McKiernon…

… ruffled and flapped, like a challenge; like a high roller’s stake…

… but it went straight to the counting station…

… or it rained down like manna:

It was beautiful.

For a moment, it was almost celestial.

In the end, I wore it.  Like a stripper.  Like a scarecrow.

Last week was a crazy week.  If you want to see just how ridonculous it got, watch what happened at the matinee house concert we played in Kitchener last Sunday at The Rookery (Brian and Radhika’s place).  This caper is providing me with a lot of firsts, and that afternoon was definitely the first time I’ve been decorated like a human Christmas tree while singing.  Well, maybe it’s not quite a first- but nothing like that’s happened to me since the night The Undesirables entertained the Russian mob… but that’s another story, and shall be told another time.  What happened at The Rookery is what happens when you turn the fun percent loose:

And it’s still arriving, still being delivered; handed-off, strewn on the floor, stuffed into my clothes; it’s still falling from above, every day.  I don’t know exactly what the total is right now, but tomorrow we’re gonna find out.  I have a feeling we might have broken two thousand, but I’m not sure.  Later this week I’m gonna show you what it all looks like; I’m gonna show you how much mail has been delivered in the past three weeks, and I’m gonna share some of the letters, surprises, and the pure mad unadulterated joy it’s been causing me here at 39 Oxford St.  I’m also gonna tell you more about the album all these Sandy McTyres are helping me to make, and give you a taste of that.

And you’re going to see me open that package from This Hour Has 22 Minutes…

Soon.

Oh and by the way, the photos you’ve seen above were taken by Brian Kelly (the house concert pictures) and by Kevin Lamb (the Tranzac pictures).  The ‘manna’ pic was taken by Jordanna Rachinsky.  Manning (and womanning) the Canadian Tire Counting Station, that’s the amazing Emma Jane, on the scene as Sandy McTyre, and the incomparable Erik Bleich in the visor and tie.  Thank you all.

Oh and if you want a tiny taste of the music we recorded, I’ll leave you with this one.  Jordanna Rachinsky was in charge of merch the nights of the recording (along with her sister Pearl, the artist who created all the art for the campaign).  The night of Tuesday, January 24th, Jordanna crept round behind the piano and caught our performance of ‘Time To Leave’, by David Ross Macdonald.  We recorded 23 songs on those nights by other writers.  Here’s a sidestage listen to one that’s a beautiful song no matter how you look at it:

And that’s exactly what it is now.  Good night (or good morning, depending on your politics).

The photo above was taken by NOW photographer Graeme Phillips after the second night of live recording at The Tranzac club here in Toronto… and THIS picture was taken after the cast of This Hour Has 22 Minutes finished their live studio taping on Monday:

That 22 Minutes plugged me and my crazy caper at the end of the show (which aired Tuesday night) is pinch-myself news enough… if you wanna pinch yourself too, find the whole episode here…

… but to wake up today to this picture of Mark Critch stuffing the envelope for me with the Tire Money gathered by cast and crew– as well as the thirty-five cents from props that appeared in the episode itself– well, forgive me if I’m not convinced I’m actually awake:

And no one’s been contributing to this delicious sense of January delirium more than Andrew Shay Hahn…

… but I’d like to thank the friends and fans who sold out The Tranzac on Tuesday and Wednesday, and who brought all your love (and Tire Money) to those events…

 Both nights were beautiful, and I think we got most of the album on Wednesday night.  Here’s a video NOW posted of the show’s finale….

Thanks for being so Canadian with me everybody… more on all this zaniness soon.  Right now Jonathan Byrd and Raghu Lokanathan and I are off to play at The Pearl Company in Hamilton tonight, at The Magnolia Cafe in Guelph on Saturday, and at a Kitchener house concert on Sunday afternoon… find details for any of these shows here.

 That’s right.  The wonderful cast and crew of This Hour Has 22 Minutes has started a collection!!!  Not only that, they’re also donating the 35 cents from props which appear in the episode ‘Double Double 7, James Bland’, which will air tomorrow night (Tuesday, January 24th) at 8:30 pm on CBC TV.  There is mojo in this money, friends, and it’s all going into an album of songs from across this country.

For those just walking in now, the story is told in the posts under this one… the upshot being that I, Corin Raymond, a full-time Toronto singer/songwriter who travels a lot, and I’m making an album of all the most undeniable songs I’ve learned from other writers in this country over the past ten years.  I’m recording it live at The Tranzac, this Tuesday and Wednesday (both shows are SOLD OUT), with my band The Sundowners, and The Rogue Studios, which is doing all the production work for the album (I learned this at the end of last year) accepts Canadian Tire money at par.  I’m also going to make the next Corin Raymond album at The Rogue, and I’m determined to break every record ever set in this country by raising $10,000 in Tire Money– which I will be documenting all the way so that everyone can see just what that looks like, and the result will be two killer albums and an absurd amount of fun.

The support I’m receiving from folks like This Hour Has 22 Minutes, people whose job it is to generate fun, is only making this adventure all the sweeter.  Stay posted friends.  I’ve got a couple shows to do tomorrow and Wednesday, but I’ll be back after that to share all recent happinesses, and I can promise you one thing: this zany caper is only gonna get better and better.

How frickin’ cool is THAT!!??  You can’t even say how cool it is, can you?  Because they don’t measure cool that far!  This is some next-dimension shit!  If Andy Warhol and Salvador Dali had been Canadians, and played together when they were kids, this might have happened before now… I was awake when I saw it for the first time, but I wondered for a moment if I was still dreaming…  This is a diorama by Andrew Shay Hahn, which he made yesterday.  I saw Shay at The Cameron House tonight (where another regular, Chris Coupland, delivered the $70 in CT bills he’d been saving for the last ten years into my hands!!), and Shay said he’s gonna make one of these every day until the 26th….

These are the next two that Shay created:

This flag was hoisted on January 20th…

Shay loves what I’m doing and this is his way of showing it…. wow.