Podcast appearances and mentions of Michael C Duguay

Hosts Johnny and Rob dive deep into the complex and layered personal journey of singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Michael C. Duguay. He shares the highs and lows of his artistic and personal pursuits that have taken him from Peterborough, Ontario to stages around the world and finally, to Kingston, where he recently finished a first-of-its-kind residency at The Grand Theatre to prepare for his return to live performance. Hosts: Johnny San john@kingstonlive.ca Rob Howard rob@kingstonlive.ca Links: Michael C. Duguay https://michaelcduguay.com Kingston Live music listings, news and more http://kingstonlive.ca Feedback: Your suggestions, ideas and criticisms are important and encouraged. Please let us know what you think by commenting here, or by email at podcast@kingstonlive.ca

Our host Julianne Hazlewood talked with business and restaurant owners in Collingwood about this difficult year and the importance of community - and with Brandon Houston who created an online e-commerce platform for them; A conversation with Prince Edward County musician Justin Rutledge. He performs 'Do You Hear What I Hear?'; Julianne visits Dress For Success in Barrie where client Charlotte LoRusso is looking for an outfit with help from director Linda Reid; Crystal Shawanda performs one of her own songs 'Hey Love'; Thelma Dillon is a nurse at a long-term care home in Cobourg. She holds online Zumba classes and holds distanced dance parties to cheer up residents; Melanie's Leclair and her daughter Kiara Neill created give and take boxes in front of their house in Kingston to provide food and other essentials for anybody in the community who needs them; Julianne talks with Linda Ciceri a client of Manna Food Bank in Bracebridge; Justin Rutledge performs an original song 'Country Full of Christmas'; A conversation with Sam Robinson -- the executive director of the Manna Food Bank; Kingston musician Michael C. Duguay is sober now but he had been living on the streets. He tells us how it was music that helped him rebound. He performs an original song 'Yankee Swap'; We join Gail Ows and her Grade 5/6 class at St. Martha Catholic School in Kingston, where the kids are use sign language to perform an Advent song; Julianne meets with Mark Brinklow who is helping to run a food hamper program for the Tyendinaga Justice Circle; A visit to the Safe and Sound drop in Centre in Owen Sound. Ashley Lynch and Raymond "Nonya" Allen Brown explain why the place is so important to them. We hear more from the centre's executive director Toni McGregor Callaghan; Crystal Shawanda performs 'I'll Be Home For Christmas'. .

You wouldn't to be cursed by the Algorithm Monster, now would you? Avoid being scared for life and discover some of the week's best new releases alongside your host and Dusty Organ founder Kane Wilkinson. Plus there's some special information about merchandise and a full interview with Kingston-based singer-songwriter Michael C. Duguay. Music featured: "Teeth" - Youth Sector (4:33) "Keep On Pretending" - Ashleigh Ball (10:12) "a mistake" - Lokoy & Emilie Østebø (15:00) "Blush" - Beach Riot (20:57) "Wild Woman" - Meg Warren (25:46) "Caroline" - Arlo Parks (31:51) "Leave Me If You Love Me" - Brave Moon (Michael C. Duguay) (1:06:26) (Interview @ 37:33)

We had the pleasure of interviewing Michael C. Duguay over Zoom video!On The Winter of Our Discotheque, his first album in nearly a decade, Michael C. Duguay immerses listeners in his complex universe through work which is both familiar and inventive, equally whimsical and stone-cold stoic. The songs in this collection were composed over ten itinerant and disastrous years, in and about his life lived in hospital beds, shelters, and addiction treatment centres. This quasi-sophomore release finds Michael C. Duguay returned to wellness and rapturously reunited with his craft, writing with startling clarity and remarkable candor, withstanding the conventional singer-songwriter label. The Winter of Our Discotheque is a triumphant reemergence, establishing Michael C. Duguay as an idiosyncratic punk-poet whose mercurial work, while firmly rooted in the vernacular tradition, combines adroit pop and the avant-garde to ecstatic and often devastating effect.On Summer Fights, a song which morphs from pastoral alt-country ballad to jubilant, psychedelic honky-tonk, Michael sings the album’s central thesis; ‘there’s a time and there’s a place for all variety of grace’. This declaration is one of many which draws attention to the beauty that surfaces, and which so often goes overlooked, in a world of chaos and struggle. Describing his time spent battling addiction and mental illness, which found him drifting from the gulf islands of British Columbia, to Halifax’s north end, to a halfway house west of Thunder Bay, Michael remarks, ‘I completely lost hold of my identity, and as my emotions and thinking became increasingly compromised by substances and trauma, my relationship with my practice dissolved; first my ability, then my desire to try’. Despite the hardship endured, in broken moments of lucidity Michael was able to shape new personal understandings of the varieties of human experience, and his own relationship to privilege. These revelations have resulted in a body of work which neither dwells in the darkness nor trivializes his own experience, but which describe in poetic, naturalistic, and sometimes droll language, the realities of his lived experience “I spent a lot of time in places that others might describe as ‘bottoms’, where I never predicted myself landing, and these songs have helped me make sense of those experiences’.  The narrative spun by TheWinter of Our Discotheque is both bildungsroman and poioumenon (a work of art that tells the story of its own making). Revealing its own metfactions as it progresses, his writing draws comparisons to the literary school of Southern Ontario Gothic writers including Munro, Findley, and Urquhart.  The album draws its title from John Steinbeck’s final novel, which in turn references the opening words of Shakespeare’s Richaed III. More than just clever wordplay, the themes on Duguay’s record can be understood as contemporary expressions of both of those writer’s existential anxiety.On the haunting and vertiginous Tithes, overtop of swirling reeds and reverberating electric piano, Michael sings ‘there’s no cause for your applause.’ First sketched in a hospital bed in Moncton in 2014, these words make clear that Michael is not writing to solicit sympathy and validation, or to abide by convention, but to devoutly recommence his work with a new, refined focus and an unshakeable joie de vivre. Musically, this outsider ethos is also present. Soaring brass parts are unexpectedly paired with layers of synth drones and percussion, and the arrangements feature billowing woodwinds and iridescent piano in lieu of guitar solos and other conventional indie-rock signifiers. Clocking in at just under an hour, the album’s eight songs are meticulous, and the genre-defying arrangements are palatial. Simply put, The Winter of Our Discotheque is an uniquely indulgent album, and audibly the work of an idiosyncratic artist skillfully working out a decade’s worth of pent up creativity. In Michael’s patient and thoughtful hands, this sort of indulgence is a virtue. While the album sonically references a wide spectrum of influence – post-rock, mid-nineties midwest emo, oblique Americana, and cinimetac psych-pop – an impressive clarity of aesthetic vision, supported by Michael’s distinct vocals and lyrical style, has resulted in a record that is both boldly obscure and remarkably cohesive.Michael C. Duguay first surfaced in the Canadian music landscape as a collaborative multi-instrumentalist working with a number of a number of critically acclaimed projects, performing on breakthrough albums by Evening Hymns and The Burning Hell, and in east-coast supergroup Weird Lines (with Julie Doiron and Jon McKiel), among others. While touring the world and gaining a reputation primarily as a backing musician, Michael was covertly recognized in the Canadian music community as an enigmatic personality, fervent community organizer, and a gifted artist, songwriter, and poet whose busy touring schedule and reckless lifestyle often stood in the way of formally documenting his own work. In 2012, he self-released Heavy on the Glory, a collection of eight songs written and recorded between 2004 and 2010, produced by James Bunton (Donovan Woods, Ohbijou), and featuring over thirty contributing musicians. Recorded in the shared living space of the communal artist co-op that he inhabited in Peterborough, Ontario, the album showcased Duguay’s emerging knack for lucent storytelling and his penchant for thrilling compositions, entrenched in stalwart punk rock ethos and energy. Though considered by those in his circle to be a captivating documentation of Duguay’s conspicuous ability, Heavy on the Glory was never formally promoted or toured as Duguay’s health and personal life unraveled. Following a move to Sackville, New Brunswick after years of substance abuse and undiagnosed mental illness, Duguay suffered a series of mental breakdowns, eventually leading to institutionalization, poverty, and homelessness. From 2014 to 2018, Michael disappeared from the Canadian music scene completely.In 2018, Michael resurfaced near Kingston, Ontario after sustained and determined efforts from his friends and family contributed to his return to health and stability. He compiled and completed his poetry and song-sketches from the preceding decade, and set out to record and produce a new album. With a revolving and diverse cast of friends including members of Evening Hymns, Pony Girl, Little Kid, Minotaurs, Alanna Gurr, Merival, the Two Minute Miracles, and Omhouse – his partner performs the trombone parts, and his 87 year old Grandfather also sings on the closing track – the album was produced out of heralded Canadian studios including Port William Sound, The House of Miracles, and Little Bullhorn. The result, two years later, is The Winter of our Discotheque; a fascinating and compelling collection of songs that offer a sobering insight into the mind of an artist deeply invested in the meticulous craft of honest songwriting. With storytelling rooted in genuine grit and hard-earned mettle, Michael has finally been given the chance to have his voice heard. On the album’s sprawling opening track, One Million More, a powerful eight-minute testimony of forgiveness, and a humble and compelling commitment to personal accountability, sobriety, and his craft, Michael sings, ‘‘I’ve heard the song remains the same; I think I’ll write one million more.’ With this proclamation, Michael C. Duguay announces the long-awaited arrival of his distinctive voice. The batch of uniquely thoughtful, compelling, and resonant songs that follow serve as a promise of what is destined to be a rich and prolific career for one of Canada’s finest and most formidable young songwriters.We want to hear from you! Please email Tera@BringinitBackwards.com.www.BringinitBackwards.comAmerican Songwriter Podcast Network#podcast #interview #bringinbackpod  #foryou #foryoupage #stayhome #togetherathome #zoom #aspn #americansongwriter #americansongwriterpodcastnetwork​​Listen & Subscribe to BiBFollow our podcast on Instagram and Twitter! 

Outro music: Caesura by Michael C. Duguay