- As a kid, Harper grew up playing music in his grandfather’s music store, which was a fertile music grounds frequented by many well-regarded musicians, and Ben had honed a distinctive, original guitar style by twenty.

- By twenty, the legendary Taj Mahal had swooped Harper up to record music with him, and tour.

- His music is wide-ranging and ever-evolving, arguably moreso than  any other artist, and he has been recording albums for over 15 years. 

“Forever” off Welcome to the Cruel World (1994)

“Better Way” off Both Sides of the Gun (2006)

“With My Own Two Hands” off Diamonds on the Inside (2003)

- Frontman for Death Cab for Cutie, Postal Service, amongst other projects … does his own thing from time to time. Including some fantastic, well-varied covers (from Avril Lavigne to Michael Jackson to Bjork.)

- Married to actress/singer Zooey Deschanel

- Gibbard is a super-collaborator. Some quick examples of the many to choose from: he and Jay Farrar did a soundtrack together for One Fast Move or I’m Gone, He and Feist paired up for the charity CD Dark was the Night, featured vocals on songs like Nada Surf’s “See These Bones” and the Sun Kil Moon’s “April,” Played drums for songs for The Long Winters and Kind of like Spitting, played bass for Pedro the Lion and The Revolutionary Hydra … etc …

“You Remind me Of Home” off Home, Vol.5 (2004)

“Yoga” off Read, Interpretting Bjork (2002)

“Train Song (Featuring Feist)” off Dark Was the Night (2009)

- Alternates seamlessly between striped-down, moving piano ballads and rowdy, ridulous rocksongs, in both cases putting the cool back in piano, so that maybe one in a hundred kids might buy something other than a guitar?

- Ben, a multi-instrumentalist,  started playing piano at age nine, when his father bartered one for him off of a customer who couldn’t pay for something or other.

- Ben Folds was the first person to broadcast a live concert over MySpace. He pulled off a prank of a man falling off a balcony during “Jesusland.”

“Fred Jones Pt.2″ off Rockin’ the Suburbs (2001)

“Army” off The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner (1999)

“Still Fighting It” off Rockin’ the Suburbs (2001)

I used to throw a camera in the empty carseat next to me.

And go.

End up nowhere and it was perfect.

Good music, a coffee.

I’d stumble on places I never knew existed, like some broken wharf in Tors’ Cove:

And sometimes I’d keep going until I was 12 hours away and I’d spend the night in some dirty hotel, hearing some man, through a thin wall, treat his wife like shit. Not yelling at her or anything. Not listening to her, is all. Done caring.

The next day I’d go, find out there’s actually a place called Nameless Cove.

I spent three days in Gros Morne once, wasn’t planning on it. I’d ended a five-year relationship. Everything in town reminded me of a girl I had to get used to not being around anymore, so just going felt right. Because we were done, grown apart. Africa and America used to be attached, but there is no proof of that now. And they’ve nothing in common. Like us at the end of it.

Something about that spontaneous trip it remains one of the best weekends of my life.

I ended up ten minutes down a hiking trail during that trip. Wasn’t planning on the hike; pulled over and used four closely spaced trees as a urinal. But there was a trail and a peak and I walked to it, and this fox followed me for thirty minutes, and right back to my car:

I was in university back then, finishing it up. Early 2000s sounds about right. And now 2009 is almost over, and I can’t put a finger on one Godamn thing I’ve done these last few months. Yes: I finally got a book published, and it’s been great: the feedback, the response.

But those days I’d get in the car. go. Those days, life was full, made sense, I was headed somewhere. It was Med School (psychiatry) or it was Environmental Engineering: Suzuki, round two.

And then writing was all that mattered.

And then some girl named Peggy was everything lacking in the world. And I broke both our hearts. Permanently, it seems.

And I’ve stumbled to here.

Trying to figure this place out. This wasn’t where I was headed. All those days I knew what I wanted from life, as I threw my camera in the car and just went. I’m thirty and still waiting for my “calling” to come to me. I think the issue is, really, when you think about it, it is less like a calling, what we end up doing, and more like a yelling from within. I got cursed, and that thing is writing, and that’s not a job job. There’s no promise that works out. Without luck, until Heather or Oprah pick you, out of the thousand other 2009 books.

But I do know life’s not a straight path anywhere. I’ve learned that along the way. I know that much. We’re all ever-changing products of yesterdays, and everything happens for a reason. Whether that benefits us or someone else.

Something big is happening right now, and I am giving in. because too many people fight that.

I remember one time, out taking pictures. I saw two kids skipping stones. And I wondered if it was right or pessimistic to be jealous: they lived in the moment, oblivious of what was to come: bills, decisions, love, hate, reality. What one career can give you that another cannot.

Funny thing happened. Later that night, I saw the same two kids, acting all grown up, catching sculpins, talking a bout how “fadder tinks deys a waste of bait, but I likes catching em’ b’y. Bit of fun is all.”

I think the problem with getting your first book published is cold reality of it: I am nobody. My book could be bland or brilliant; it doesn’t matter. No one is going to know about my book. If they don’t know about it: they can’t possibly buy and read it.

There is a pretty woman in Toronto right now. She probably likes lemon-flavoured water, keeps it in her black, practical purse. And she, Sally, finds time to paint her nails colours she is really selective over: ”Cinnamon,” “Hot Chocolate,” “Licorice.” It’s okay when the paint chips between touch ups. She’s got two kids after all. She’s had a long day, made her boss’s life easier, got no credit for doing so. She’s used to it, to a job that doesn’t excite her, challenge her; she’s smart and she knows it. All As in university, and she still talks to old profs. She reads all the national papers and the Quill, their reviews and articles on the big, big books of the year, from the big, big publishers whose books actually get reviews. Mine won’t make those lists, because who is Chad Pelley to review or award? Some young nobody from St. John’s, Newfoundland, where 2000 people read fiction.

Sally is pretty too, men in grocery stores let her go first, and she feels like the ethereal girl she reads about in all her Random House and Penguin novels, because, who the hell hears about books other than the ones published by the bigwig Toronto publishers? Sally doesn’t anyway. She’ll get the subway home from work everyday, and see the genius marketing posters Harper Collins just set  up in the subway there: Posters with stark images, and you need to jam your headphones into them to see what they are all about. And now she’s interested in the Book of Negroes, because that cool poster was the tenth time she’s heard of it. She’s still never heard of mine, never will up there in Tornoto. She knows, when she sighs and looks down at her chipped chocolate-brown fingernails, that when she gets home her husband won’t be making supper. He’ll be there waiting for her to make it, unless she doesn’t want to, he’ll order a pizza. So she’ll cook something, after that long, brutal Monday at work. She’ll round the kids up and do their homework, bathe them, and at 9:30, life’s okay, because she’s in bed reading her novel. But there is no chance in hell that novel will be mine, because how would she have heard of my novel? Me here in St. John’s, her there in Toronto surrounded by reviews, posters, word of mouth, awards announcements, booktables in book stores with 100 Margaret Atwood books on them. Random House Kiosks in subways selling nothing but Dan Brown. When she checks Chapters.ca and Amazon.ca for new books, there are the same 12 suggestive sells scrolling across her screen, so she picks the prettiest one. Not the best one. Just the one she’s seen seven times already. The one everyone’s talking about.

Maybe Sally and Away from Everywhere could be such a good match? But i have a better chace getting hit by lightning tomorrow than she does of seeing my book, picking it up, reading the backcover, sliding those little chipped fingernails over it.

And now I can’t sleep, can’t care about anything over than knowing all the Sallys will never hear of my book to buy it.

For years, I thought all I wanted, my one ambition, was to get a novel out there. And I did. And it’s been great: emails from strangers with positive feedback. Remarkable feedback from friends, and family, and three amazing writers I admire too kthe time to endorse my book, and it’s now on Chapters in St. John’s “Most requested titles” display …

I go to bed tossing and turning that I’ve wasted years thinking getting published was the goal. It’s not. That’s step one. Reaching the Sallys of the world, that’s the real goal. And only attainable for the writer with the right agent and publisher behind them. The litearary merit of a book will only get you published, and that’s not enough to sell a book.

I’m all for sabotaging my own theory though. For proving it wrong. if I win the Cuffer prize on November 13th … I’m heading up to Toronto, and not one person in that city won’t have heard of my book …

I don’t want a million dollars. I just want my book in book with the Sallys.

- Bat for Lashes is Pakistan-born, art school graduate Natasha Khan. She’s somewhat of a darker, middle eastern response to Bjork.

- Allmusic.com call her sound “Mystical Indie Rock.” I hate labels, but I agree on the mystical: her music has a mystical atmosphere so thick you feel it.

- Not hard to tell she incoporates her visual artistry into her music, based on this description of her 2009 album Two Suns, “the philosophy of the self and duality, examining the need for both chaos and balance, for both love and pain, in addition to touching on metaphysical ideas concerning the connections between all existence.”

“Sad Eyes” off Fur and Gold (2006)

“Glass” off Two Suns (2009)

“Daniel” off Two Suns (2009)

-  Funny attempts at capturing their sound include “grungegrass,” “folk-punk,” and “indie bluegrass.” All suche ridiculousness speaks to their unique goodness. Sometimes it’s like someone threw a banjo at a Neutral Milk Hotel Song, and other songs are just pure stripped-down acoustic beauty. All over the place, but in a good and cohesive way.

- Declared “the Artist to Watch of 2009″ by Rolling Stone magazine, and swooped up and recorded by Rick Rubin that year as well.

- Brothers Scott and Seth Avett were formerly in the band Nemo. They’d write songs on the side, with friends, in what they called “the Back Door Project,” before breaking away and pairing up with stand-up bassist Bob Crawford to form The Avett Brothers back in 2000.

“Ill with Want” off I and Love and You (2009)

“The Ballad of Love and Hate” off Emotionalism (2007)

“For Today” Jessica Lea Mayfield Cover

When I think back on it now you’re always wearing this white and pink striped shirt. Big thick stripes, so there’s only 3 white bars, and two and a half pink ones. The half-pink shirt didn’t look unmanly, all frayed and loose, and maybe it wasn’t even pink. I’m not sure. I’m sure you’d call it purple.

We were kids, we played punk rock on guitars and basses and when I wrote No Effects in my agenda you laughed as you scratched it out and wrote in NOFX. But my punk rock phase didn’t last long anyway. I can remember playing Bush X and Pantera in your parent’s basement, how indecisive was that, radio to rah-metal? The formative years, figuring out who we were. I’d forgotten all about that hand-me-down amp I had, until today. it was heavy, it banged off my shins as I lugged it around town.

When I try and think of all those ten- to fifteen-year-old memories — like that time the crabby businessman took a swing at me on a crosswalk in Montreal, or the time we played Caps in a snowbank, talking about how our jeans were literally frozen – you are laughing, hard, from your guts, always. And I’m having a good time.

You laughed right. Is that a weird thing to remember about someone? There was something Bill Cosby about you, and I’m sure no one gets that but me.

And then there’s a ten year gap, a thick curtain, muflling out the details of the memories. There’s just  that laughing coming through it all.

The odd email trickled in over the years:

“Hey, man, finally checking this Facebook thing. I’m in Alberta now. I have a daughter now, ou should see my daughter!”

“Saw your photos of Newfoudland on Facebook today, Chad. I might like to get a few when I’m home, cool?”

“Hey, Chad. Did you really write a book? Count on it being the first one I read since high school.”

Three emails in ten years, maybe three sentences in each one

And today: “Chad, it’s Kim, I have bad news. Gerry Ford was driving home last night and lost control of his car … his poor girls.”

Ten years, three emails.

And you had kids, and a wife. One of them in your arms in any picture I’ve seen of you.

And I never even asked their names when I emailed you back that time.

I can’t picture you in that car because I can’t picture you in anything other than that thickly stripped pink-and-white t-shirt and the 1990s Cobain hair,

is that good or bad?

I can’t picture you not laughing, I’ll take that,

always laughing at how hard those tokes ripped at my lungs, like hot fish hooks hauling themselves back out, and I haven’t smoked a joint in maybe ten years. 

Haven’t saved someone “a bottom” in ten years.

Haven’t been up to no good in ten years.

When I think back to all those crazy times I had in my late teens, I’m surrounded by people I don’t see anymore.

Is that how it goes from university on?

Obituaries shaking up anything left in you, maybe for a day or two, as you drift through life with fewer and fewer people around you from “back then.”

Collecting faces on Facebook while you work, sleep, and keep your house in order.

Ten years since we were close, and you’d think that’d have been long enough that today’s news would keep knocking me out of myself.

My thoughts aren’t with your family tonight, Gerry, your kids and your wife.

My heart is.

- The fact Zach Condon was 23 when he headed up Beirut is unbelievable. Beirut make the most complex, unique, broad-audience ranging music I’ve ever heard.

- Zach was done with school by 16 or 17 and travelling Europe, where he discovered Balkan folk music. He has since then melded “world music” into something of his own, and something more accesible to the masses, and the cool kids.

- He came back from Europe and went to university to study photography and Portugese, while recording The Gulag Orkestar in his bedroom. He took it to Jeremy Barnes at Ba Da Bing! Records, and Beirut was borne from there. Jeremy (formerly of Netral Milk Hotel and Hawk and a Hacksaw) joined the band.

 ”Prenzlauerberg” off The Gulag Orkestar (2006)

“Scenic World” off The Lon Gisland EP (2007)

“Nantes” off The Flying Cup Cub (2007)