Tag Archives: Victoria BC

Not a weekend warrior I swear! 😜

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Cookeilidh the Celtic Band : Me, Woody Wilson, Kim and David Cook

I know! Day three and I’m already out lol! Still here, I swear!

Spend extra time today gearing up for this show on Sunday and then a show next weekend at the new water tower in the Western Communities here in Greater Victoria. Been very lucky to have a situation where we can do these socially distanced reduced audience shows this summer so I want to make sure I do good work.

One thing I found was how working on drumming has had me focused more rhythmically on my playing. Seems silly but I swear it’s like different musical things have you focusing on different things. When I started playing bass it was like I was a pointer spaniel every time I heard the bass in the song do something.

If you are over hear definitely come out. If not follow our Facebook, our Instagram or head to our main site at cookeilidh.com which has lots of links, clips, photos and more!

Thank you for stopping by!

Hoping to write tomorrow even it’s short like this one!

Cheers,

Tom Pogson 😊

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Starting Songwriting Somewhere

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Just DO IT! – Shia LaBeouf

We all start somewhere. And we are all not that great when we do. I started actually really late. I have had songs on the radio a few times which got me Socan membership here in Canada but I certainly didn’t start at 8. Not real songs anyways…

My first instrument was bass which is still to this day my strongest instrument and the thing I get hired for the most. I presently play in the celtic band Cookeilidh which I’ve been in (when I wrote this anyways) as of about 2006. Nobody is actually sure. We started so gradually and went through a few changes so nobody really knows exactly.

Anyways who’d write it down? Wierd…

Songwriting always seemed like lead guitar to me, something that was like “super talented genius” types only. But being a bass player I think slowly introduced me to how it actually was pretty reachable. And oh yeah, at first everything was pretty clunky and simple. That one on the top was one of my earlier, but that was one of the good ones. I think the first one was called Passages and it was described once as a “Car on square wheels”. Not really complimentary. I did have one song called Take Me Higher though which is now on my first album that I wrote back then in about 96 and it worked. My production of it wasn’t amazing but it was my nineties open stage winner at the time. How did I write it? It was lyrics first, it was guitar chords that seemed to work in church and other than that it was so simple and basic I though it obviously wasn’t any good.

Lots of songwriters I’ve played bass for are like that by the way. Everyone discredits their best songs because I think of how easily it comes out.

Playing guitar for came from a bass teacher who said I should use a chord instrument of some kind and my mom had this discarded classical guitar so I learned all the basic chords from a book. The church thing came when my first thing of playing bass for them switched when the guitarist left and i was thrust in front of the congregation. They were forgiving (hehe) but it got me to learn the basic open chords and basic fingerstyle fast.

The main thing is to just start. The story of famous musicians who literally learned on the job is almost a cliche and as a bassist I can give you multiple accounts of proof that you are never to old to try. Songs are great fun and have the effect of being like a sound and words version of a diary like “where I was then.”

I have just tapes and tapes (autocorrect fought me on that. Yes, tapes!) of my music from back then. These days people are using more computer software to mix songs but I still use a Zoom L12 multitrack which is just the digital upgrade from how I used a four track tape recorder. You had to use the good tapes to get the full four tracks and you heard stuff backwards when you flipped it over which was wierd but fun.

Anyways I got to get ready for work and I’m totally pushing it. I’m going to see how these posts go. Thank you for reading!

Cheers!

Tom

Top ten references when writing The Quiet City

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Here, in no particular order, are ten that stood out for me straight away!Lots of honorable mentions as you can see from the racks behind me, including Henderson’s phone directory that told you what was where street by street in 1910 to 1911. Research was always a big deal in this, partly to make sure I got it right, but also to transport you back with all the color, sounds and sights of being in downtown victoria just before the great war.
Part of the book is set in present day which is how the room gets included as of course Victoria’s first library was the one on Yates and Blanshard donated by Andrew Carnegie.Click on the writer section of my page to read now! Thank you for checking out my work!Cheers,Tom

Videos in the can!

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I usually start working on Christmas in September.

The reason for this is because not only did Cookeilidh’s Celtic Christmas season just have its first show yesterday at the Kiwanis but I also try to have some own music ready for social media set up. Seems silly but most of it is building towards this little tradition I now have of posting a song on Christmas Eve.

First year was Il Est Ne Le Divin Enfant in 2016 which I did on my fretless with a video of the Victoria legislature in the snow.

Next year and around the same time I did this I was pushing to learn to actually play piano properly so I could accompany my own songs. So the challenge was Oh Holy Night. I don’t play an acoustic piano due to being in an apartment but I liked the idea of finding one somewhere and so booked 30 minutes to use this beautiful upright in the hall of the Cook Street Activity center I’m pretty sure I was on the way to a show right after this as well as work so that was quite the day!

This time around there’s actually three. Ok, four but my band does Silent Night and I think I did it before too on a bass. I just recorded one now which drops soon…

( follow me at @tompogsonmusic by the way! 😁 )

…and I just did Here We Come A-Carolling, which seemed right to kick it off. I’ve been following folks on YouTube like DanTheComposer and Joseph at Creative Piano Academy and so much of this I owe to them. So many that I listen to at work as well, putting YouTube on Premium so it goes with me…

For Bass… Scott’s Bass Lessons, Talking Bass, Adam Neely, Talking Bass

For Guitar and everything else…Rick Beato. His “Beato Book” is something I am strongly considering as his musical depth of knowledge is absolutely vast.

Still trying to find time to write as well! That’s part of the reason I locked this down, so now its Quiet City, shows and some script ideas I’ve started. Keep you informed about that as things go.

And of course there’s video 3. The December 24th one is actually one that just happened, wasn’t planned but was so fun that I absolutely had to use it.

For more about what I do musically check out the music page. Same goes for my writing including the free Prologue of the Quiet City.

Please follow and thank you so much for reading down to here!!

Cheers!

🙂

Tom Pogson

The Quiet City – Halloween announcement

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Really stoked to finally let this cat outta the bag!

🐈 – meow!

Ok so, like I mentioned in the last blog, but now across the other platforms…

Twitter @TheQuietCity1

Instagram @thequietcitynovel

Facebook @thequietcitynovel

…the prologue for the Quiet City is scheduled to drop here Thursday, October 31st at 7:30 am PST.

Make sure you follow this blog so you dont miss it, and wordpress should send out a reminder email as well!

If this is your first time at my site make sure to check out the About, Musician and Writer pages to give you more of an idea of my background such as my band Cookeilidh, my other writing and music projects!

There is lots of older blogs here as well on everything from creativity to Georgian wine so feel free to cruise around!

Thank you for your support!

Cheers!

Tom Pogson

Who was Jack the Ripper? The Quiet City blog article

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The year was 1888.

The place was Whitechapel, east London, England.

In a year of Queen Victoria’s Jubilee and the height of the British empire a single person would thrust the world into the next century. A single murderer, a serial killer would push social change and create a legend that is still mysterious and compelling today.

From a letter that started “Dear Boss” referring to George Lusk of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, the name was born. Whether it came from the killer we will never know, but it was crudely signed “From Hell, Jack the Ripper.”

Between August and November of that year is believed to be the Ripper’s main period of activity. During that time seven or more kills are attributed to Jack, with five that cannot be questioned.

Called the Canonical Five, their deaths shocked people around the world with the sheer brutality and the Ripper’s ability to kill so savagely and then seemingly blend into the night. It did not help that crime scene investigation was still in it’s infancy with the exception of the French legend Eugene Francois Vidocq in 1857 who incidentally inspired both Sir Authur Conan Doyle with his character “Sherlock Holmes” and Victor Hugo with his character “Jean Valjean.”

The Canonical Five were, in order…

Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly

Whitechapel 1888

Named the Whitechapel Murderer and Leather Apron for a piece of cloth that was left at the crime scene of Catherine Eddowes (though it could have also been a piece of her own clothing) the number of possible suspects are numerous.

Many are connected to aspects of the crimes and a few have confessed but with no final conviction ever publicly made.

William Henry Bury caught the attention of Ripper investigator Frederick Abberline for the fact that Bury had killed his own wife in a similar way to the death of first victim Mary Ann “Polly” Nichols.

Thomas Neil Cream who had been a killer in both North America and England, and was a doctor with the knowledge of anatomy that would have assisted in the killers more vicious trademarks famously had the last words while being hung “I am Jack the…

There is the Royal Conspiracy, portrayed by Johnny Depp in the movie “From Hell”, which involved members of the freemasons leaping to the defense of the Royal family who were being blackmailed by a prostitute.

There was polish immigrant George Chapman who had poisoned three of his wives before being hung in 1903. Like Thomas Cream he had a high degree of medial knowledge which is still debated as to whether necessary. Many maintain that a butcher could have been just as effective, provided the person had the strength to inflict the wounds that were done so deeply and quickly. The change in way of killing makes Chapman also potentially unlikely.

Francis Tumblety was another possible killer who knew Whitechapel well. Arrested for gross indecancy he collected uteruses and pretended to be a doctor. He fled London in November 1888 at the end of the murders though his kind of kill never came up again in the North American cities where he fled to, something unusual for a serial killer.

Most famous and considered very possible was Aaron Kosminski, a 23 year old polish immigrant who was certified insane in 1891 and was committed an asylum. His name first appears in a police constables memo as a possible killer with a strong hatred of women and homocidal tendancies. One theory is that the police themselves kept his incarceration quiet as no good could come from the suggestion that a polish jew was guilty of something that had already incited antisemtic and racial hatred in the London streets. Kosminksi also resembled a man who ran from a constable during one of the murders. But there is also every possibilty that his connections to the murders was put in place to create the perfect hated scapegoat so even with recent findings involving the DNA of a decendant of Kosminski we will never know.

In The Quiet City I will bring in my own version of the ripper again, one connected to Whitechapel but in very new and hopefully unexpected way.

Thank you for reading my blog post and if you like it and want to know more about my historical thriller set in Victoria Canada, please follow and give this post a like! I have more blogs planned before I launch the book as well as the “Writer” section of my site which has links to some of my other work including the Telus Optik winner “Ollie and Emma”.

Thank you again for supporting indepedant artists!

Cheers,

Tom Pogson

The Quiet City – the characters

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On a fall morning in 1910 a Vital Statistics clerk was found with his neck broken inside the west tower of the Victoria, British Columbia legislative buildings…

And that was just for openers.

Developing characters and how they interact is the most important part of any work, from drama to comedy to even this kind of historical fiction. Two are based in modern day Victoria BC, the rest are in 1910.

Born : May 5th, 1887 Kingston

Government employee and veteran of the Boer War, he never left his standard of military excellence behind, or the thingas father told him about why they had to leave his hometown behind.

Born: Sept 1st, 1997

Having worked at the Royal BC museum as an archivist for a year, this 23 year old First Nations anthropologist came home one day to more than she bargained for.

Both born : October 31st 1870

Highly educated, not just in England but as far flung as the Al-Qarawiyyin libraries of Morocco, James and Penny are the illustrious fraternal twins with connections from royalty to architect Francis Mawson Rattenbury.

Born : August 21st, Cridge home Victoria .

Daughter of Lekwungen mother Marie and French Canadian father Rene, Jenny tries to take care of her mother since father went missing. One day, taking care of everyone as the cheery nurse she was known to be, she met a very interesting man.

Born : November 13th, 1987, on a ferry.

Resident of Beecher Bay reservation and his own private retreat on southern Pender Island, to say Michael is an unusual man is an understatement. His strength with special gifts started very, very early in life, so much that he has found crowds too uncomfortable. He will soon have to face this head on.

Born : 1844 London, Whitechapel

Now the Sergeant at Arms for the British Columbia parliament buildings, Roger takes his role in security seriously. He doesn’t talk much about his life before he settled in Victoria.

Stay tuned!

Thank you for reading and supporting independent artists. Please follow as I get closer to my first The Quiet City teaser!

Cheers,

Tom Pogson

“The Quiet City”, Behind the Scenes of a novel

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Having done many years of work in bands and filmmaking projects, I love the idea of sharing the journey of a project. The art is how it’s jumbled together and smoothed into a work, but this is the slow moving factory. With something like this, set in actual history with fiction trying to run through it, it’s going to be huge. You have to return to your own notes regularly to keep it connected. You are connecting dots well outside of the storyline.

The scope of the full timeline starts in the 1880s and ends as recent as tomorrow. That’s a big factory floor.

Telegraph Bay, 1900

This was one of the reasons that The Quiet City had an earlier start approximately seven years back. At the time I was working as a cleaner and going to Uvic writing full time. One of the inspirations was being in some of those buildings like the Dunsmuir’s summer home that became the Fort Rodd Hill administration building. I also lived about a ten minute walk from this…

I wanted to include some of my favorite things about early Victoria such as the Victoria and Sidney Railway, the streetcars now gone with only slight remnants of their existence remaining as well as the birth of my own corner of town…Cook Street Village.

With about ten places to get coffee in two and a half blocks, Cook Street is a popular chill out part of Greater Victoria but before about 1909 it was a marshy dairy pasture to quote painter and writer Emily Carr. Incidentally Emily doesn’t make a personal appearance but she gets involved in the story along with a person who deserves a movie of his own…Francis Mawson Rattenbury.

Anyways with these in mind the story was set in partly 1910 which set me off to every place that I could go, besides online to see and hear what it was like back then here…

Fort Street near Douglas. Yeah, I’m in the new Tim’s.

The image pictured about is at the Heritage Room of the Greater Victoria Public Library where I spent most time, but also the archives near the Museum where part of the story now takes place along with Victoria Archives, Saanich Archives and Sidney as well as the Royal BC Museum.

Back years ago I actually stopped to work on something else as I wanted this to have more time to actually focus on it. I want to make the details as accurate as possible as the stranger fiction needs a firm support. Not only that but it is fun to get the details. I was so excited by the Betty Bell’s book “This Fair land, Saanich” which goes into life in the Saanich Peninsula in fine detail as she lived there. That photo of myself reading is in the local history room (aforementioned Heritage Room) where so many treasures are hidden.

Even just wandering around Victoria can get your imagination going, whether it’s trying to find the hidden tunnels under the city or looking at houses in Fairfield.

There have been lots of little parts of the story that have been either created or effected by the research outside of just the setting which was of course very different and more languid than today’s pace.

Fitting in this perfectly was the often late Victoria and Sidney Railway that was that way due to its often late ferry connection, the Iroquois that could take you from the Pier in Sidney to Nanaimo.

Sadly this boat met its end a little ways after 1911 which didn’t help business for the Victoria and Sidney either, a train so underpowered that when it climbed northbound through Royal Oak towards Elk Lake, passengers could jump off, grab a beer from the nearby pub and hop back on without missing a beat.

But of course history was about more than just locations. There’s details on current events, fashion, and what it was like to live back then.

Above is a modern Government Street, but back then this wasn’t just the actual main drag, but actually the oldest street in Western Canada. If you wanted it, it was here with government offices on the west side of the road (your Post Office) and your green grocers, stores and pubs on the east side. The Brown Jug was a particularly famous one on the corner of Government and Fort, now a jewelry store.

And of course, the aforementioned world of paranormal and my very evil special guest, Jack the Ripper.

The legend and mystery of Jack and the canonical five victims has also been a major part of the story, so it naturally lead to going over any books and videos I could get my hands on. My take on the Ripper is very different from what’s been before and specific to this story so, without giving too much away I had to research some other things to compliment this.

Anyways that’s about it for now.

Thank you for reading and please follow so you can catch the next entry on the creation of this historical thriller. And definitely check out the writer page here at tompogson.com to see my other work, along with my music projects such as Cookeilidh.

Cheers!

Tom Pogson