The Cherch: Place of Art Worship

Last week gave me the urge to hit the road, to book the next tour, to be out there on stage every night again. Lately, I’ve been building a new nest—a barn in fact—and making a new creative space where I can write and play and sing. The barn is no metaphor—we actually restored an abandoned confectionary store in Saskatoon, and inside, we recreated a small barn with salvaged wood from an actual barn out on the prairie. In front of those big barn doors is a small stage, perfect for house concerts. And inside the barn, my guitars hang on the wall, books line the walls, and amps clutter the floor. Beside the barn, we built a grain elevator where my lover’s office lies. And the kitchen is wrapped in corrugated steel—a grain silo in the middle of the space. We took a confectionary store and turned it into a creative incubator full of these structures and named it the Hayloft. And so we’ll build and tweak and fix and love and live and cook and feed and sing in the Hayloft forever.

Last week, we filled the Hayloft with our friends, as it was meant to be. On Tuesday, Coco Love Alcorn, Simon and Michael (her bass player) stayed over while they were touring through Saskatoon. And Peter Katz, also on tour, came a day early. Peter played at the Hayloft on Wednesday for our first house concert since moving in. The company was fantastic—an odd mixture of people I did and didn’t know. And we started the night with storytelling by playwright and CBC radio host Kelly Jo Burke. There was a lot of heart and soul flowing through the Hayloft that night, and as people left, they literally glowed with inspiration and wine and food and conversation.

Hanging out with Peter and Coco made me so eager to go on tour again. In March, I’ll go to Nashville. In June, I’ll head east on a Canadian tour. And I’m so restless for these adventures. But last week also reminded me of how new and inspiring my own town can be when we’re creative, bring together amazing people, participate in making great art—okay the wine, the food…also enticing.

Maybe this is the vision that Curt and I had in our heads when we saw the church. The abandoned Chinese Mennonite church is located in a sketchy area of town that suburbanites fear and artists love. We bought it not entirely sure of what we would do with it, and immediately put the call out to every musician, artist, performer, writer, and dancer we knew seeking ideas for how this space could be used. The response was so overwhelming that we totally committed to using the church as an art space, no matter what that meant. So we designated it The Cherch: Place of Art Worship and started getting to work on the most important first step to develop this space….planning the party.

I’m using The Cherch as an excuse to bring together as many artists from as many different disciplines as we can for a crazy party on Dec 12 (get tickets here!) So far, we’ve got DJ Gaff to set a party groove, interrupted with “art happenings” all night. The art happenings are diverse: we’ve got a poet, performance artists, musicians, an opera singer, dancers, actors, and visual artists. We’ve got galleries displaying their work, a small publishing house selling poetry, and a fashion designer setting up shop.

So until I’m on the road again, I’m keeping my scene pretty fresh and the music flowing—songwriting in the barn, worshipping in the Cherch. Hope to see you there Dec 12.