Miscellaneous Female: The Journals of Damhnait Doyle

Pauline Carey is an actor, playwright, and fiction writer. She is the
author of Magic and What’s in a Name?

This snappy read from a musician with a good sense of humour and a
lively way with words covers just over two years in the peripatetic life
of Damhnait Doyle, starting with her return from the 2003 East Coast
Music Awards and ending with her thoughts on a benefit she played for
the Association in Defence of the Wrongfully Convicted in Newfoundland,
where she was born.

Doyle, a songwriter, soloist, and band member of Shaye, tells of the
touring that takes her across Canada, to Afghanistan (“a sandbag of
emotions”), and to Japan, which she loves. Her journals include
several poems/lyrics; in between those she writes about doing laundry,
rearranging her furniture, taking pottery classes, practising yoga,
reading books, partying, enjoying other performers, and visiting her mom
and old school friends in St. John’s. Much of her offstage work during
these journal years is the creation of Shaye’s first CD with Tara
MacLean and Kim Stockwood (who is heavily pregnant by the time they play
the 2005 World Exposition in Aichi, Japan), and miscellaneous males whom
she always acknowledges generously.

She says she’s a smiler but she also cries a lot, which may account
for her being a songwriter. There is strong emotion when she writes of
Melissa Etheridge in a Janis Joplin tribute or k.d. lang singing
“Hallelujah” at the Junos, and her admiration for other performers
is always eloquent, whether she writes of Ron Sexsmith playing song
ideas on the piano or explains why Bruce Cockburn’s “Lovers in a
Dangerous Time” or Ron Hynes’s “Sonny’s Dream” would be her
choices for a spot on CBC’s 50 Tracks.

Those who love her or love musicians will enjoy many small insights
into this particular life, such as her story of hearing for the first
time a song she co-wrote sung on the radio by someone else, or her
telling of how the song “Falling for It” came to be when she went to
the washroom while Kevin Fox fooled around on his guitar.

This book comes with photographs and a whole load of good energy.