"It
isn’t a personal, private journey anymore; it’s
a journey that they’ve made with us. Anybody who ever
bought one of my records or came to see my show, they were
there, or they wouldn’t be there with us now. It’s
an interesting lifestyle. Hilda and I talked about this
a couple of days ago.
"She
said, ‘I’m so glad we don’t have a job.’
Because this is the best way you could ever work and make
a living. We don’t have to worry about an employer,
we just do the best we can, try to make good recordings
and put on good shows, and the rest of it just happens by
itself. It’s not even a career, it’s a way of
life, and we’re really lucky."
Cormier
may be his own boss, but in that role he’s a taskmaster,
with a work ethic that makes other musicians dizzy. Since
last year he’s released the Lightfoot tribute CD The
Long River, the Primary Colour: The Owner’s Manual
guitar tablature book, a pair of best-of discs concentrating
on his dexterous instrumentals and his impassioned songwriting
and, just this week, his new banjo-centric CD Take 5.
Cormier
says he and Hilda are happy with the comfort level they’ve
achieved, secure in the knowledge that they could continue
to record and tour for the rest of their lives, but even
he recognizes there are limits to what he wants to do.
"We
were gone for one 13-week stretch there, from June to the
sixth of September," says Cormier. "That was too
long. We went from Milwaukee to Chicago, to New Hampshire
through Ontario and Quebec. >>
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