Kev Corbett

What music are you listening to / art are you checking out these days?

Music that generally displays a good heart, and stunning writing. See The Swell Season, Catherine MacLellan, Old Man Luedecke, Jill Barber, Acres and Acres, Rose Cousins, David Myles, Bruce Cockburn, Stephen Fearing, Steven Bowers, and Ron Hynes, among many others.

What music are you listening to / art are you checking out these days?

Music that generally displays a good heart, and stunning writing. See The Swell Season, Catherine MacLellan, Old Man Luedecke, Jill Barber, Acres and Acres, Rose Cousins, David Myles, Bruce Cockburn, Stephen Fearing, Steven Bowers, and Ron Hynes, among many others.

What music are you listening to / art are you checking out these days?

Music that generally displays a good heart, and stunning writing. See The Swell Season, Catherine MacLellan, Old Man Luedecke, Jill Barber, Acres and Acres, Rose Cousins, David Myles, Bruce Cockburn, Stephen Fearing, Steven Bowers, and Ron Hynes, among many others.

Why should people, especially youth, vote?

Why everyone needs to vote: because the environmentally scared - the international and unborn majority - are being marginalized in the interest of short-term economic growth, and neither that fact nor the status quo of a dictatorial, vindictive, secretive, unaccountable right-wing government are acceptable to me, or, I think, to you.

For you, is there a connection between art and democracy? What is it?

Democracy didn't create any fear in the airline industry: United Breaks Guitars did. Fringe voices are drowned out by our first-past-the-post system, and the lowest common denominator dominates. My art not only gives me a sense of having a voice, but gives voice to what my 'people' have always felt, but maybe rarely expressed, validated by someone else. Art is the fire under democracy's ass.

Why do you care about your community, when it is so easy not to?

I tried isolation, cynicism, and apathy when I was younger, and it's stupid. Community means mutual support, deep friendships, true richness, and ultimately individual and collective survival. I see the current trends of the western world - towards narcissism, debt, cheap imported stuff, and profit - as parallel to the decay of communitarian thinking.

What do you look for in a politician? What do you expect from your Member of Parliament?

If you got elected to bring accountability to government, you bloody well answer the phone. If someone questions our involvement in a foreign war, you don't obfuscate why we're there, nor robotically accuse them of hating our military, nor let our people fall through the cracks when they come home not OK. There are real conversations to be had here, and speaking in talking points does not serve the national interest. I expect my MP to be an iconoclast, not a yes-woman. I expect my MP to speak for my area, which she does. I expect my MP to push Canada to be better, which she does.

Wha causes do you actively support?

As a musician mine often have to do with listening - I keep myself aware of public issues, away from advertising, and engaged with other songwriters by listening to a variety of public media - CBC, Democracy Now, Rabble Radio, Folk Alley, and WUMB Folk radio.

Aside from that, we're involved in an ongoing process of switching our house over to a mostly local/seasonal/organic menu. Food supply is our cause. We've 95% fired the grocery store. We decided not to buy winter tomotes, or any bananas, or Chilean red peppers, etc. Nothing processed, nothing industrial. Read the   ingredients and question them. We know our farmers by name, and know where and how our food is grown. What goes unto commercial pet food ISN'T COOL, so our cat eats raw, local organic red meat (he's gone from morbidly obese and bitchy, to trim and happy and shiny). We are highly invested in suppoting local producers, and I talk a lot in shows about my local farmers' market.