Hi all, from the weirdly mild-temped-for-the-season North, Yesterday I caught the tail-end of a CBC Radio program featuring Don Freed, and of course my little ears perked right up even though he and Joni are no longer an item.
The person being interviewed was telling Norah, host of Definitely Not the Opera, about Don Freed's project for the past nine years, which was to write and record, with the native children of northern Saskatchewan, songs about their own lives. You can check it out by going to this website: http://www.ourveryownsongs.ca/ The interviewee said that Don had been discovered by Bob Dylan when Don was about 19, and Bob took him to the States to groom him for songwriting/recording stardom. Apparently Don soured on the music business and became, as the interviewer laughingly said, "a real pain in the ass to work with." It was when Don discovered he had some Metis blood in his ancestry that he decided to go into the north and examine the history and lifestyle there. Now that he has completed this particular work with the kids up north, it sounds like he is going to go back to doing his own "work." That's my story and I'm sticking to it, Kate
