Veda Hille

hello friends.

as you may know, my health has been up and down for the last few years. i seem to be in a delicate stage again, and my doctors (i have 3!) suggested that i cut down on travel. that said, i am feeling really well. rather than cancel the whole tour, i have opted to bow out of my 3 uk shows in may. this means that after new york i can go home and rest for a week before heading over to germany. i am really sorry to disappoint any folks in england and wales, but truly this feels like the right decision. peace of mind and rest of body. i promise to make it up to you on the next tour. 6 hour shows! burlesque dancers! an elephant!*

thanks for your understanding. and for you canadians, this is why i haven’t been able to tour canada with This Riot Life yet either. this and the darned opera that takes up all my head. but i will travel again. my psyche would not permit a quiet loner life.

and don’t worry. x v

*promises of elephants are not binding.

so, i’ve been slightly negligent in my wifely duties. my husband’s band no kids is in the middle of a usa tour with dirty projectors. they’ve been having a grand time, playing great shows, getting drunk, kissing lesbians in the village. if you feel like heading to a show you can check the links above for dates. and then no kids will be in europe in may too! if you attend, feel free to let me know how he’s behaving.

oh, he’s the cute one in the argyle. i guess you can’t really see him in this picture, but take my word for it. cute.
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weston has fixed up the paypal, there should be nothing stopping your shopping now! thanks for your help in noticing that right away.

cheers, v

hey gang

as a few of you have kindly pointed out, we have a little glitch on the site. we just changed servers, and it seems that now when you try to order a cd you just get sent to a test area of paypal, called the paypal sandbox. which isn’t as much fun as it sounds. we’re getting that fixed up for you, but in the meantime if you’d like to make an order you can send the appropriate amount of money to payment@vedahille.com and then send an email to the same address giving us your mailing coordinates and record choices. i wondered why the orders had suddenly stopped flowing in. sorry for the confusion.

and also to reassure, i just sent out 2 weeks worth of orders last wednesday. i have been quite swamped, and as a result i am going to hand over the mailing tasks to my most capable friend melissa. she can take care of it while i am on tour as well, which will help get rid of these pesky delays. i hope the personal service has been worth the quirks.

thanks all! xv

whew, i haven’t had a second to myself for weeks. finally here is a couple of pictures from our show on march 9, where we officially flung This Riot Life out into the world. these were taken by adam pw smith, and his website is here. he took a marvellous picture last year of geoff berner and carolyn mark lipsmacking at the railway club. sweet.

we had a nice little jaunt down stateside last week, to seattle olympia portland. and now i am home for a solid month! in which i will rehearse neil young songs, write an ice dance score, mail out all your orders, figure out our touring repertoire, and do my durn taxes. crikey, things are just not slowing down. but for now it is easter, and i’m making puff pastry thingys and prepping for an egghunt on monday. there’s something to look forward to.

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oh, the first free saturday morning i’ve had in about 7 weeks. we made vegan pear ginger pancakes, i had a cinnamon coffee, and had little jumpy feelings of something like….relaxed happiness? very nice.

thanks so much for the orders for riot life that are literally pouring in. i will be sending out the first round on monday, after our rocking party on sunday night. i’m going to buy the most indulgent amount of tulips that i can afford, to decorate the hall. i’ll make sure we have some posted photos soon too. and for all those outside of vancouver, you can have a listen to a radio show that i taped last week with my friend andras jones. it’s called radio 8 ball, and it uses music as a divination tool. it’s so totally westcoast, i love it. i’ll be doing a live version of that in seattle on march 13. gosh, that’s next week. the wheel turns round again.

okeydoke folks, the album is up on the music page! you may buy it! i see that we have a few orders in already. we are still working out a way to have a two-tiered price system, because i need to charge more for orders that are going outside north america. but we haven’t figured it out yet, so there you go. go ahead, take advantage.

what other news? i’m in workshop this week with 4 opera singers, running through some initial music for my children’s opera about trees. it’s wild, give a song to an opera singer and suddenly it sounds like opera.

things are looking good for the upcoming cd release in vancouver. at the wise hall on sunday march 9, doors at 7:30, show at 8. with duplex! (although alas, i have just discovered that the show is NOT all ages. the wise hall has to get a special permit for that, and i failed to ask for that. sorry, small ones.) and we had a grand time in toronto too, it is so gratifying to be playing live shows again. here’s to the next 3 months of fun. xv

ok, so i’m home with the flu, which is fine because i just have to talk on the phone and write songs about trees. but instead, for the last half hour, i’ve been on youtube watching the oscar acceptance speeches and mildly weeping. i’d blame the illness, but this would get me either way. and tilda swinton is the absolute bomb.

hallo friends

so this slightly unexpected thing happened yesterday, here in toronto. we played live on the internet! i didn’t realize that “live” really meant “live”, so i gave no warning. but you can still go see it at zunior. it’s very casual, and for a big chunk of it i’m on the phone with justin, blowing his mind and waving to him on the Internet. we basically rehearse for our show tonight, live in front of the possible world.

and for all those asking, i will be putting up the new album for sale on this site later this week. i just need a few free hours. also, a warning: we’re raising our prices. some new postal hikes are in place, and i have to reflect them. c’est la vie mes petits choux.

god, i just spent 10 minutes trying to get a sesame seed out of the computer keyboard. success!

other successful operations: the 2nd round of life support packages (which means the new record) went out on wednesday. depending on where you are, you should have them sometime between today and the end of next week. huzzah! and there are new songs up on myspace, and soon (when i have more than half a second) we will put some up on this music player as well. i did just add a few shows to the tour page, in nyc and the uk. every day a little more.

also, as fran so nicely pointed out in the comments to the last post, you can go and listen to the raft of the medusa choir piece on cbc 2 anytime you like.

what else? i did a cute interview with sook yin lee for dnto (cbc1) on wednesday, i think that will air on saturday afternoon…..or maybe that’s not for a few weeks. it was fun though, i played casios in the woods and hugged trees with her. the mascall dance shows continue to go well, and the weather keeps getting slightly warmer. i think that’s all i have to report. til next xv