When “The Vinyl Cafe” began broadcasting on MPBN a few years back, it was only a matter of time before Maine fans of the Canadian radio program started amassing.
For one hour each week — 2-3 p.m. Sundays in Maine — author and storyteller Stuart McLean shares with his audience essays and fiction, along with performances from Canadian musical guests. It’s often laugh-out-loud funny, sometimes sad, and always delivered with a sense of down-to-earth good humor.
Americans can relate to it, and yet it’s distinctly Canadian. In nearly every episode, McLean tells a “Dave and Morley” story, about a fictional Toronto family. If the show is on tour, he’ll start out the episode with a colorful description of the community it is visiting.
At 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 24, “The Vinyl Cafe” will tape an episode at the Collins Center for the Arts in Orono; on Friday, Feb. 25, it’ll be at the Merrill Auditorium in Portland, both with musical guests David Myles and Madison Violet.
Just what will Stuart McLean say about Orono and Portland? You’ll have to be there to find out, or tune in later when it broadcasts. In the meantime, the Bangor Daily News spoke with McLean last week, while he was traveling by train from Montreal to Toronto.
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BDN: Besides the obvious fact that Maine and Canada are neighbors with a long, shared history, what’s your connection to Maine?
McLean: There are lots of connections for me. The first is that I summered there as a child. My parents took us to Wells, Maine. As an adult, I spent time at Biddeford Pool. My wife, before I married her, was living in Ellsworth, and we got married in Bar Harbor. One of my writing heroes for a long time has been E.B. White, who lived in Maine for so long. So I feel a deep kind of connection of the heart to Maine, through my childhood, my wife and my writing. I feel very much at home here. We come down to Maine for a week every June to plan out a year of “Vinyl Cafe” shows.
BDN: What other writers have influenced you?
McLean: There’s a writer named Bob Greene, who wrote for the Chicago Tribune and for Esquire for a number of years, who I’ve always been a fan of. He writes very simply and dealt with big feelings and big questions in little stories. When I was a journalist, I would always be attracted to the so-called unimportant moments, which actually reveal a lot about the world. That’s something E.B. White understood as well, but more so with humor. He wrote a great essay called “Some Remarks on Humor” that was very influential on me.
BDN: Does writing stories every week get easier with time, or more difficult?
McLean: You’d think after 17 years it would get easier, but it actually gets harder. You work along at a certain level, and then one day you do something that you know is much better than you’ve previously done — and then you always have to write at that level. You’re always setting the bar higher. If you’ve hit singles all your life, and then you start hitting doubles, you know you have to hit doubles all the time from that point on. My editor and I have long phone conversations, talking about stories. Eventually, I take it on the road and it becomes a collaboration between the audience and myself. It can change quite dramatically then. The audience finds things funny that I never knew were funny.
BDN: What kind of reaction does the show get, when you’re touring in the United States, as opposed to Canada or overseas?
McLean: Coming to the States has been a thrill for me. We’re in our 17th season, and it’s only been in the last five years that we’ve begun to travel in the States. We’ve been incredibly warmly received everywhere we went. I feel there’s a big conversation that should be happening between Canada and the U.S. It happens in the business world, but not so much neighbor to neighbor. If we can contribute to enhancing that conversation, then I’m thrilled. When we first started broadcasting in the U.S., some said we were “too Canadian.” What we’ve learned is that the Canadian part is what Americans seem to like. It’s a window into a world that’s a little dif-ferent, but still the same.
BDN: What’s the biggest difference between Americans and Canadians?
McLean: The U.S. is a country of trapeze artists, read to leap off into the wild blue yonder. Canada is a country of net holders, who always want to be there if the trapeze artist falls. I think if we take on a little bit of each other, it would be to the greater good. We’re both well served, the more we communicate.
Tickets for “The Vinyl Cafe Live” at the Collins Center for the Arts are $37, and can be purchased by calling 800-622-TIXX.
