Ten minute tea with Afternoon Tea. Spend ten minutes with Afternoon Tea. In the time it takes to boil one kettle, and let one cup of tea steep (or a cup of Joe brew), we will have your daily art + music fix covered. Take your afternoon break with our Afternoon Tea curators. Need an extra lump of sugar? One more sip? If you have five minutes more, we have one more hit.
Today’s tea + soundtrack + visuals curated by Fraser Teeple.
Shaped by two decades of work as a climbing arborist, London, ON’s Fraser Teeple approaches music like a tradesman: he respects the strong tradition he stands within, and works carefully and with dedication to master the skill of telling a story, creating an image, or crafting a melody.
His upcoming album, We Built a Fire, sees Fraser collaborate with producer Matthew Johnston at Slow Magic to create a record that is at once ethereal and rooted, dirty and clean. Something that feels built in the tradition of songwriters like Bonnie Raitt and Bruce Springsteen, but sounds completely like itself: northern, soulful, gritty, rural, well-traveled, honest, desperate, hurt, generous, hopeful, warm.
The music Fraser makes is tied to the country music tradition, in that it tries to respectfully hold a light to stories of broken people, of anti-heroes, and of folks on the outside. He delivers his songs with as much soul, courage and vulnerability as he can. The gritty and soulful new single, “Went Off,” taken from We Built a Fire, offers an observance of the opioid and cost of living epidemic ravishing North America.
Stream + share “Went Off” now:
I wrote this song after watching people in my neighbourhood – the decaying east end of a middle class city – end up carrying the judgment of the people around them, through some brutal match of choice and bad luck. – Fraser Teeple
Music: I Love, I love by Noelle Frances
Visual: Take a walk in a forest or find a tree nearby and have a good look at it.
Drink: My choice is a travel mug with black coffee.
The song I’ve chosen is a real beauty, both lyrically and musically. It’s by Noelle Frances, a folksinger, whose voice is sweet and cutting (in the best emotional way) at the same time. The forest is your visual companion for the song. So much of Noelle’s work is tied to her relationship with beautiful natural spaces – trees, mountains, water… so get to the forest! Black coffee is the drink. Apologies to the tea crowd 🙂 Enjoy!
Tea + Me 