Discount Everything: Where It All Began

Once upon a time in Winnipeg… wait, or was it somewhere on the west coast? Probably both. Anyhow, the title track to an album came to be. Though written and recorded nearly 20 years ago, the album was officially released in 2013.

The image on the album cover comes from a storefront on a beloved stretch of Ellice Ave. in The Peg. Located in the heart of a city that loves a good deal, it fit right in there - a sort of accidental emblem of the community. Apparently, there are now a few songs/albums that made use of this concept and storefront photo, but as best we can tell, this was the very first.

In this original song, the take is a bit different. It plays on imagining that Discount Everything was not just a bargain shop, but a place where ideas, certainty, perspectives - anything - could be discounted (the verb meaning, as in ‘deconstructed’). And, occurring in the midst of many years drifting from prairies to mountains and back, the imagery takes the form of ascending, traversing, and descending.

Revisiting this is a way of moving forward by first looking back. Enjoy!