Montréal, driving to rehearsal in Chris's car

Chris, David G and I are staying in the 'coach house' at the back of Susie Napper's house, so for the last couple of days we've only had to walk across the courtyard to get to rehearsals, stopping only to pick up wonderful home baking on the way through the kitchen. How does Susie have the energy to run a festival, play in several of its concerts, and still get up early to bake? Incredible. The three of us lads have never actually been in the same place together before, so staying in the same house is an added bonus and camaraderie is in abundance. Unfortunately the building site across the alley starts work at 7am, but as I'm in 'just crossed the Atlantic westward' mode I'm waking up early anyway. Our house has just had a heart-shaped 2-person bath put in, and I spent some time yesterday morning trying to get some hot water, until I realised that the revenge of the Anglophone plumbers had struck, and the 'chaud' and 'froid' taps were on the wrong way round.

Chris and I were teaching masterclasses at McGill University last night, and he got his revenge for my 'word of the day' triumph in Alabama last year, working his chosen (unrepeatable) phrase seamlessly into one of his classes, while I in my jet-lag completely failed to get the words 'jack' and 'off' in the right order in mine. It's a legitimate phrase to use when discussing harpsichords, honest. 

Once woken by the builders this morning, I headed for a very cool internet cafe this morning to try to co-ordinate a ConCal board meeting - for some reason BT had flagged all my previous messages about this as spam.

In the back of the car right now is my newly-acquired Estey folding harmonium. It needs a bit of TLC and maintenance, and it's a few beats sharp of 440Hz, but I think it could prove very useful. Despite its being out of tune and there being a few notes missing at the moment, we're planning to use it on this record. Until a better option comes along ...

Speaking of which, it's going rather well: the three of us and Suzie leBlanc are joined by Betsy Macmillan on gamba and Sylvain Bergeron on acoustic and baroque guitars, and it's gradually refining itself from a raucous jam session into something approaching music. Great songs too. And Pierre Chartrand will be doing some spectacular step-dancing on a few tracks. Today we're moving into the church where we'll be recording, 3 days of sessions to follow, then open-air concert on Sunday night. And the plateau of Montréal is a very cool place indeed.