Something that virtually no one knew about while all these fantastic festicular times were flying along, is that on the very first gig of this permafest tour, I finished the last song of the night with a literal crashbang that left me on my back with a broken fiddle next to me. I don’t know what I slipped on or how I ended up falling, but as many people know, my feline-faced electric violin was passed down to me from my mentor, Oliver Schroer, and it was no small distress to see it’s neck broken in half…
Definitely the most traumatizing moment I’ve had in years, but like many things, it became a blessing in it’s own way… I did the rest of the tour on my acoustic 5-string viola (known by many as Oliver Schroer’s Camino violin), to which I’d had a wonderful pickup recently added. It was an exciting new experience to play this instrument on the road, as opposed to only in the studio (I believe that fiddles, {like all friends} take on a new depth when you travel with them).
The happy ending of the story is that the incredible Toronto luthier Johann Lotter spent many a long hour hours working some love into the instrument, and within a month it was back up and running, and sounding better then ever. (Also, by some freak stroke of luck, I happened to get instrument insurance a week before the accident, which covered most of the repair costs! As my mother often said to me “Boy, you’ve got horseshoes up your ass!”. On the night I fell, it was actually horsehair… but I’m not one to sweat the details!)