MY NEW BOOK IS OUT TODAY!

To celebrate I randomly called some of the closest people in my life to talk about the release of my new book! I had to call Sara, but I also called my wife Sofia, my manager Christine, one of my besties who I met in 9th grade and fellow musician, writer, Albertan, Vivek Shraya. Who doesn’t love a random, unscheduled call where you’re being recorded!!!! If you like the sounds of that, you’ll love this weeks contribution to the stack!

It would mean the world to me if you went out and bought Merry Christmess (signed copies available here). It’s a great holiday stocking stuffer if you have a middle-grade kid in your world. I’d say roughly ages 8 to 12, but like most things made by Tegan and Sara, it’s really aimed at anyone who likes Tegan and Sara.

The book is loosely based on Sara and me. It’s about identical twins Stevie and Jordan, whose parents are friendly but don’t spend the holidays together. Their dad is a traveling musician. Their mom runs a community center. And the twins quietly, behind the scenes, daydream about somehow getting everyone together for Christmas.

Think National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation meets The Parent Trap meets Tegan and Sara.

Happy Tuesday, everybody. Enjoy!

Tegan

My book Merry Christmess is coming out Tuesday! CRAZY!!!

It feels a little weird because it’s a Christmas book—or at least it’s set over Christmas—and it’s not even September yet. Still August as I write this. But that’s how it works. You’ve got to get the book into people’s hands before the holiday season, which means it needs to come out now.

We’re planning some events closer to the holidays as we speak, so stay tuned for that. But today’s Substack is going to be about why I chose to write this book.

Sara and I dreamt up the Clementine twins, Stevie and Jordan, together. We wrote and wrote and wrote a different story, but kept running off the track or getting busy with other things. Last January, I decided I was going to sit down and write a whole new story, and with Sara’s blessing, that’s what I did.

I delivered the first draft at the end of March. I was headed to Montreal with Sofia and felt very nervous. I’d never done something like this on my own. Writing a book is incredibly hard, even when you have your twin sister writing the other half. So writing one on my own? I was not prepared for how much work it would be.

When I got the notes on my second draft, I felt intensely overwhelmed. I sat frozen in my office for hours. There were so many notes. The metamorphosis from draft one to draft four cannot be overstated. I learned so much last year from my editors, Wes and Hannah. I’m also so grateful to my friends Robin, Krista, and Anne, as well as my mom, Sara, and my manager Christine, and most of all to Sofia, for reading my first draft and other drafts along the way.

I love writing. Before I played music, I wrote short stories, and English was the only class I ever did particularly well in. As a songwriter, I think of myself as a storyteller, so it’s a great privilege to get to tell stories in different formats: memoir, graphic novels, and now my first chapter book. I am proud of myself for following through and finishing this book!

The middle-grade audience this book is aimed at—roughly 10-to-12-year-olds—feels ideal to me because that’s when I really found my passion for reading. There’s an enormous amount of adventure to be had in books. I know everyone is looking at a screen these days, but I hope people will go out and get this book. And if you have someone around that age in your life, maybe you’ll pick up a copy for them for Christmas.

But even if you’re not 10 to 12 years old, I think you might enjoy Merry Christmess. There’s plenty of adult humour in it. I try not to write down to kids or think too much about writing “for” a certain age group. I wanted to write a story I thought kids would love, while still writing a story I thought anyone could enjoy.

I talked to the Calgary Herald about the book if that is something you’re interested in reading.

Anyway, that’s what I’m thinking about this Saturday.

Tuesday’s Dream Dump won’t be Dream Dump at all. Instead, it’ll be a bunch of conversations I cut together of me randomly calling people in my life, without warning, and immediately asking them questions about Merry Christmess. Were they excited it was coming out? What was their favourite part? Did they even remember reading it? Normal questions you love being surprised with on the phone.

A shocking number of people answered, and an even more shocking number agreed to let me use the recordings. There’s also a conversation between Sofia and me that I think all of you will enjoy very much.

Stay tuned for that.

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend.

And if you’re interested, can you can order Merry Christmess here. Or grab an autographed version here.

-Tegan

Very excited about this week’s guest. I’ve known Liz Feldman since we met backstage in 2008! We talk a bit about it on the podcast, so you can get all the details on our friendship there, but I’ll just say that Liz is one of the funniest, smartest, most interesting, helpful, generous, gracious people I know from my time living in Los Angeles and working in entertainment.

Liz is a writer, comedian, producer, and showrunner who got her start in stand-up before going on to write for television, including several years on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, where she won multiple Emmys as part of the writing team. She later created the Netflix series Dead to Me, starring Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini, and more recently created No Good Deed, starring Lisa Kudrow, Ray Romano, and Linda Cardellini. She also hosts the podcast Here to Make Friends, with Jessi Klein, where they talk to people they admire about friendship, connection, creativity, and life.

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Liz also happens to be married to one of my dear friends, Rachael Cantu, who we’ve toured with and collaborated with over the years (I’ve known Rachael twenty-two years!) and who I think is an extraordinary musician, artist, and storyteller. If you haven’t checked out her music, you should.

Recently, Liz was up in Vancouver with Rachael and their daughter, along with some other friends from LA, on their annual pilgrimage to Canada to hang out with Sara and me. Over dinner one night, Liz and I got to talking about how much we both like being on podcasts and decided to do a podcast swap. So this week, Liz is on Dream Dump, and very soon I’ll be on Here to Make Friends.

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In today’s episode, we talk about dreams, creativity, what it’s like to be a showrunner, Liz’s recurring stand-up anxiety dreams, her recent work with a sleep therapist, and I tell her TWO dreams and so much more.

Enjoy this week’s episode!

Tegan

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Happy Saturday, loners.

A year ago, Sofia got me an Oura Ring for my birthday. I know wearable tech isn’t for everybody, and I’m definitely not trying to convince anyone they need it, but I’ve found it super interesting. Mostly, I like being able to look at how I slept and compare it to how I actually feel when I wake up. It’s also been fascinating to see how dramatically my sleep and body temperature change over the course of a month. Pretty much every stretch of terrible sleep lines up with the days right before my period. Duh.

I think I find it so interesting because I am increasingly interested in how to make myself feel better. It started ten years ago. Sara and I got a trainer before we released Love You To Death. He said he was there to make sure we were “walking upright” in our 70s, not give us a “beach body.” Can we do both I wondered? Just kidding. Seriously though, I think about him, and that training a lot. It’s been nearly 10 years and I still wake up and think, stretch now, so you can walk later.

The last couple weeks we’ve had a lot of guests and people coming through, and my sleep scores have been pretty terrible. Lots of waking up in the middle of the night likely due to eating too late, eating too much, going to bed amped up. It’s not uncommon for me to wake up six or seven times and be awake anywhere from five minutes to half an hour, sometimes 45 minutes.

The last couple nights, though, I’ve slept amazingly well. My sleep score has been up in the 90s. Weirdly, I find that when I sleep really well, I actually feel a little more tired in the morning. I have no idea what that’s about. Anyway, all of this got me thinking about how terribly I sleep on tour.

On tour, you’re sleeping on the bus five or six nights out of seven, and I always try to explain to people that no matter how nice the bus looks, you are still sleeping in a moving vehicle. You can’t escape the reality of that no matter how cool a tour bus is.

Here’s what it sounds like inside the bunk.

I’m not even sure this recording really captures how loud it is. The bunks rattle. The bus rattles. The bunks above you rattle. And what the recording definitely can’t capture is what it feels like to be lying in this tiny enclosed space surrounded by other people, hurtling down the highway at 60 mph feeling the pulse and thrum and vibration of a giant vehicle moving down the highway with you inside (with no seat belt on!).

Every time the driver pulls off to get food, use the bathroom, or get gas, you wake up. When the bus stops, you wake up. When it starts moving again, you wake up. Sometimes you wake up because everyone else is waking up. It’s incredibly difficult to sleep through. The deterioration of your body and mind happens whether you like it or not. Sleeping pills help. Ear plugs too. But inevitably you feel exhausted. It’s just part of life on the road. (A part I honestly don’t miss)

But we will return to the road and touring. And I am actually kind of excited to have the Oura Ring the next time we tour, which we will do, I promise, just so I can finally see the data on exactly how badly I sleep on the road. Get ready for those Substack posts! LOL!

Today, though, I am home. And we are going to move our compost so I’ll be wielding a sledgehammer and handling worms. Sofia was in the city this week and picked up a box of worms from somebody she found on Facebook Marketplace. Apparently this woman just came out of her apartment building carrying them. Obviously, I’m now desperately curious about how she came to be in possession of a giant box of worms. Where does she keep them? I may never know. But we needed worms, and Sofia managed to find us some, so we’re moving our compost to a sunnier part of the property and going to pop those suckers in the ground today.

Yesterday neighbours left and tossed their Dahlia’s for the deer. Sofia salvaged them (it was very funny) and brought them home and now we have four bouquets on the go!

Tuesday, my friend Liz Feldman is coming on Dream Dump. Liz and I have known each other for nearly 20 years. She’s a good friend and also a ridiculously accomplished writer, producer, director and TV creator. She created Netflix’s Dead to Me, starring Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini, and more recently No Good Deed, starring Lisa Kudrow and Ray Romano. Before creating her own shows, she spent years writing comedy, including The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Hot in Cleveland and 2 Broke Girls. She’s won Emmys and a Writers Guild Award and has a brilliant podcast called Here to Make Friends with Jessi Klein that we talk about.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend, and we’ll see you here Tuesday with another episode of Dream Dump!

-Tegan

Faked you out last week by sending this episode early. WHOOPS!

I hope you didn’t have too difficult a week waiting for it. That being said, it’s worth the wait!

This week on Dream Dump, I sat down with Leisha Hailey for a conversation that starts with dreams and quickly wanders into just about everything else. We talk about recurring performance anxiety dreams, getting older as artists, finding community after life on tour, creativity, identity, and the stories we tell ourselves about aging. Along the way we unpack dream journals, gratitude practices, cult dreams, Aritzia dressing rooms, and somehow end up pitching a mushroom edition of Dream Dump.

I first met Leisha when Sara and I guest starred on The L Word in the season three episode Last Dance, where Dana Fairbanks takes LSD with Shane McCutcheon before heading to a Tegan and Sara concert. The funny thing is, I hadn’t actually watched much of The L Word when the show first aired in Vancouver. Then my mom gave me the DVD box set for Christmas, I binged the entire first season in a weekend, and became completely obsessed.

I’d already known Leisha from her band The Murmurs, which Sara and I absolutely loved in high school. But after devouring The L Word, I desperately wanted to be friends with Leisha and Kate. There was something about both their characters—and what little I knew about them as people—that made me think, these are my kind of people.

So when we showed up on set, I was incredibly nervous. Thankfully, they couldn’t have been kinder. They welcomed us immediately, and when season four rolled around I started hanging out with them IRL! When I moved to Los Angeles in 2008, they were some of the first people who helped me find my footing in a brand new city.

Then, eleven years ago, I started dating Sofia... and discovered she lived on Leisha’s property. It felt like the universe had decided our lives were just going to keep intersecting. Even now, although we all live in different places, our paths somehow keep crossing. Leisha has been in Vancouver shooting a new series, she’s still close with Sofia, and we’ve been lucky enough to spend quite a bit of time together lately. It’s been such a gift.

I was absolutely thrilled when she agreed to come on Dream Dump.

This episode runs just over an hour, and I honestly think it’s one of the funniest conversations I’ve had on Dream Dump so far. I’ve been laughing about it ever since we recorded it, repeatedly trying to retell my favourite moments to Sofia, who eventually said, “Can you please stop spoiling it? I’ll just listen when it comes out.”

Here’s one of my fave bits.

Thanks!

And sweet dreams!

Tegan

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I’m solo parenting Georgia for 10 days, and I’m really enjoying it. I thought maybe she’d sleep in bed with me all night since Sofia’s not around, but she eventually abandons me for the floor. She does, however, get back into bed in the morning for about an hour of cuddling and pets.

When Georgia was maybe a year old, she used to just stare at us and stare at us, and eventually we realized she was asking to be pet. So we taught her the command “more.” Now, in the morning, she comes up and paws at me. I say, “Pets?” She paws me again. I say, “More?” Her ears go back, and she gets pets. Then she paws me again, and we repeat this process until one of us has had enough. It’s never her.

I know you’re thinking, My God, why is she telling us this? Well, because like everybody I know with kids, my entire life revolves around the dog this week. THIS IS WHAT I HAVE TO SHARE!

Our routine has become very domestic. In the morning, Georgia likes to get her bathroom business out of the way and then generally lies on the front porch and goes back to sleep. Before lunch, we do a long walk, and lately I’ve been letting her swim. There’s a cove near us that usually doesn’t have any people around, so I grab pieces of wood and throw them into the water for her. She swims out to get them but absolutely refuses to bring them back, so every throw requires me to find another piece of wood. We’re both having fun! I swear!

We have a professional dog hair dryer we bought from Jess Rona, so after swimming I dry Georgia off, feed her lunch, and toss her in the crate for a couple hours of big-girl nap time. Late afternoon, we go on another big, epic walk before dinner. I’ve been trying to get over 10,000 steps every day. I tell myself it’s for her, but it’s actually for me. I have a few spots I like to take her because I can let her off leash and she gets her Zoomies out.

In the evenings, I’ve mostly been watching documentaries. A couple I liked:

Monsters of God — From director Eric Goode, who made Tiger King. It’s about the world of exotic animal smuggling and the global wildlife trade. Obviously pretty dark and upsetting at times, but I found it fascinating. Next episode drops Thursday. So…if you’re a binge in one sitting person…wait.

Bring Me the Beauties: A Model Cult — Directed by Chris Smith. Sara told me to watch this (I think?). WEIRD AF!!! I sort of vaguely recall this story. But…a wacky tale.

I’ve also been going to bed pretty early and finished a couple books this week.

Wilderness Mother by Deanna Barnhardt Kawatski — I found this fascinating. It’s about a woman who raised her two kids off-grid in Northern BC for 13 years.

Dog Days by Emily LaBarge — This one is harder to describe. It’s partly an account of the author and her family being held hostage over Christmas in 2009, but it’s also about trauma, memory and art, and the ways we tell stories about terrible things that have happened to us. It’s described as a “literary experiment.” Very strange, very interesting, and unlike anything I’ve read recently.

It’s a busy time of year where we are, which is adding some interesting flavours to my alone time with Georgia. I think she’s a little more defensive and protective of me when Sofia isn’t here—which probably just means she trusts Sofia more to take care of both of us. There have been a couple random dogs on our property that she’s chased off, and some growling at unfamiliar dogs we’ve passed on the paths near us. But overall, she’s been easy. I brush her every couple of days and am currently working up the courage to do her teeth so our trainer doesn’t yell at us the next time he takes care of her.

In an hour or two, I’m taking her for a playdate with a neighbour’s dog to get some of her excitement out before guests arrive for the weekend. This will be my first time solo parenting Georgia while hosting, and adding a whole other flavour to the experiment: the people coming have a kid. But I’m feeling pretty confident. Mostly. I may have made a visual guide for the guests that I may or may not send to them. Still deciding.

Very excited for next week’s Dream Dump on Tuesday. We’ll be dropping our episode with Leisha Hailey, which accidentally went out last week. Oops. If you were one of the people who got an accidental sneak peek, congratulations. I loved this episode and I love Leisha. I genuinely don’t think I’ve laughed as much or as hard recording Dream Dump as I did with her. I hope you enjoy it when it officially comes out Tuesday.

And a reminder. If you like this content, share it, subscribe, become a paid subscriber to encourage and support our independent art making!

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Okay, bye everybody. Back to parenting.

Hope whatever you’re doing this Saturday is fun, fulfilling, and exciting.

-Tegan

Hey, loners. Happy Dream Dump day!

I think you’re gonna love this episode. I speak with Cristal Ramirez of the band The Aces.

If you aren’t familiar with them, The Aces are a four-piece indie pop band from Utah made up of sisters Cristal and Alisa Ramirez, alongside Katie Henderson and McKenna Petty. They’ve been busy building one of the most devoted fanbases in indie pop with albums like When My Heart Felt Volcanic, Under My Influence, and I’ve Loved You for So Long. They write smart, ridiculously catchy pop songs. I love them!

It’s not that often that I meet someone who has as much in common with me as Cristal does. Not only is she queer and in a band, but she’s also in a band with her sibling. I’ve been pitching Cristal and Aly & AJ, on starting a sibling support group for at least six or seven years now. No joke!

One of the things that makes me so excited about the future is how many amazing queer bands are doing so well right now, both in the mainstream and in all the new spaces that have opened up because of streaming. Sometimes I can be a real grump about streaming because I don’t think it pays artists fairly. But one of the undeniable upsides of the digital era is that artists no longer have to rely solely on radio or a handful of major publications to find an audience. Growing up, those were basically the only gates you could get through. Now there are incredible scenes flourishing all over the world, and people can build communities around the artists they genuinely love.

All that to say, the explosion of queer-fronted and queer-adjacent music over the last decade has been so exciting to watch, and The Aces are a big part of that.

This week on Dream Dump, we discussed why artists seem to have the same recurring performance anxiety dreams—and why our brains are so much crueler to us while we sleep than they ever are in real life. We also dive into Cristal's lifelong struggle with sleep, as well as dream journaling, lucid dreaming, astral projection, what it's like making music with your sibling, and the unique creative and emotional challenges that come with building a band with someone you’re related to.

It’s just $6 a month, and you get four Dream Dump episodes every month, plus essays, photos, playlists, and all the other weird little things we post along the way!

Enjoy, and….

Sweet Dreams.

Tegan

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This week was a mixed bag.

Sara, her partner, the kids, and my mom all came to visit Sofia and me, and we had a wonderfully summery week filled with crafts, beachcombing, barbecues, and, of course, sleeping in a tent.

In the end, Sid and Sara bailed on the tent, so it was just Sofia, Georgia, and me.

I’ve written about this on Substack before, but Georgia has a bedtime routine. She’ll lie with us while we read, then hop down onto the floor to sleep, only climbing back into bed when Sofia gets up in the morning so she can cuddle with me. For whatever reason, though, the tent changed everything. She refused to sleep on the ground and instead spent the entire night curled up on top of the two of us.

Every morning everyone acted as though Sofia and I had made some great sacrifice by sleeping outside, but honestly, I loved it. Sleeping under the stars with cool air on my face, curled up beside my favorite person and my favorite dog, might have been my favorite nights of the summer so far.

After everyone left, I insisted on keeping the tent up. Sofia thinks I’m completely crazy, but I genuinely think I’ll sleep in it again—even though we have three perfectly good empty bedrooms.

The only downside was waking up with a kink in my neck.

I don’t actually think it had anything to do with the tent. We planted a lavender garden with Sid and my mom, I spent about an hour swinging a sledgehammer without stretching afterward, and I think my shoulders were just incredibly tight. That’s the story I’m sticking with, anyway.

A couple of days of Robaxacet, some time soaking in the cedar hot tub, taking it easy, and one exceptional massage while we watched Furious, with Emmy Rossum, seems to have done the trick. I’m back to my old self.

We also harvested the potatoes Sofia had been growing in buckets on our deck, and our kale is sprouting!

We took our new inflatable kayak out with Sid, and he got to see seals up close and even a big buck standing on the beach. He was very brave. Georgia came along too, and the kayak seems like a much better fit for her than our paddleboards. She’s a total pack animal—a herder through and through—and she hates it when Sofia and I are on separate boards. A few summers ago she actually jumped off Sofia’s paddleboard to swim to me in the open ocean, which was absolutely terrifying. (Don’t worry—Georgia always wears a life jacket.) We even played FART BINGO! A real hit with the whole family.

Overall, it was an amazing visit!

This week’s Dream Dump features Cristal Ramirez from the band The Aces. We’ve known each other for years, and, like me, she’s in a band with her sister. We ended up talking a lot about what it’s like to make art with your family and how you balance creativity, relationships, and life in the spotlight. I think you’re really going to enjoy this conversation.

Thank you to everyone who’s been watching Dream Dump, and especially to our paid subscribers. It genuinely means a lot. I know for some people, five or ten minutes of an episode is enough, but if you’ve been thinking about watching the full interviews, we’ve got some incredible ones coming up.

One of my favorites is with Leisha Hailey—from The L Word, Bosch, and the band The Murmurs. We laughed so hard throughout that conversation, and we may—or may not—have joked about recording future episodes... on mushrooms. Want to see it? Gotta be a paid subscriber!

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Have a wonderful weekend, everyone.

Tegan

This week I have a very special guest: Lili Trifilio, the lead singer, songwriter, and creative force behind the Chicago indie band Beach Bunny. Some of you might remember that we collaborated with Beach Bunny back in 2021, when we sang on a new version of their smash hit “Cloud 9.”

Beach Bunny started as Lili’s solo project before growing into a full band, and over the last few years they’ve become one of indie rock’s biggest success stories. Their debut album Honeymoon was a critical hit, songs like “Prom Queen” and “Cloud 9” became massive viral favorites, and I’ve always loved Lili’s ability to write songs that are incredibly catchy while still feeling emotionally honest and vulnerable.

When “Cloud 9” took off, the band decided to release a version with gender-neutral and feminine pronouns and invited us to join the track. It was the first time we’d ever done something like that, and it was such a fun collaboration. Because it was during COVID, Sara and I recorded our vocals at home and filmed our parts of the video separately, so we never actually got to hang out with the band. That made it extra exciting to finally have Lili on Dream Dump.

She’s a total delight. We talk about Beach Bunny’s new music, creativity, sleep hygiene, a crazy dream she had about being pregnant, and I got to tell her about the Timothée Chalamet dream I had the night before. Wanna hear our dreams, and listen to our entire conversation? You gotta be a paid subscriber!

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Enjoy!

Tegan

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I cannot believe it’s already August. I was thinking about that this morning while sitting in the sun with an iced coffee. When we were kids, Sara and I mostly spent our summers at our grandparents’ house during the day. For a couple of years, my mom ran a community centre in our neighbourhood, so we went to the summer program there. Then, as soon as we were old enough to stay home on our own—I think we were 13—we had a whole different kind of summer. Friends would come over. We’d ride our bikes everywhere, watch movies in the basement, lie out in the sun, cool off in a little kiddie pool in the backyard, and read an absurd number of books.

Every summer we’d also pile into the car and drive from Calgary to the West Coast, through the Rocky Mountains, all the way to Vancouver before catching the ferry to Vancouver Island to visit my stepdad’s family in Nanaimo and Shawnigan Lake. Back home in Alberta we often went camping on the weekends. I loved going to bed in the tent, listening to the adults talk by the fire.

It’s funny because now I think of a vacation as a beach, a hotel, room service, and an entire day spent reading by the pool. Looking back, I don’t think I really had that kind of vacation until I was well into my twenties. Those childhood summers weren’t vacations. They were trips. I’m very clear on the distinction.

When I went to Italy, Greece, Belgium, and England a few years ago, that was a trip. Different hotels every few nights. New cities. The train. Thirty thousand steps a day. Museums, restaurants, landmarks. I would fall into bed exhausted, feeling like I’d truly done something.

A vacation—or a holiday—is different. That’s margaritas by the pool. Reading for hours. Staring into the sun. Being taken care of in a four- or five-star hotel. It’s rest disguised as luxury.

I’m doing neither of those things this summer.

I’ve been bouncing between my place in the city and my place off the coast. I’m eating lime popsicles, reading as much as I can, doing hill sprints, paddle boarding whenever I get the chance, and going to bed while there’s still a little light left in the sky so I can read as the stars come out. We’re playing Rummikube and watching old movies, riding our bikes and staying out all day with the dog.

Sofia set up a tent in the backyard because Sara and her kids are coming to visit. We are going to sleep outside with Georgia and I am SO LOOKING FORWARD TO IT!!! There’s a rumour that Sara might spend a night out there with Sid for his very first campout. But Sofia spotted a garter snake in the yard yesterday, so there’s an equally good chance she chickens out.

Dream Dump is back on Tuesday. This week I had the absolute pleasure of talking to Lili Trifilio from Beach Bunny. It was such a great conversation. If you’d like to watch the full episode, it’ll be available for subscribers.

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I hope you’re having a beautiful summer—or winter, depending on where you’re reading this from.

-Tegan

PS

I almost forgot the biggest news. We shot a music video this week. I genuinely can’t wait to tell you about the song, the collaborators, and when it’s all coming out! SOON!!!

This week on Dream Dump I had Grant Lawrence on the podcast.

Grant and I go way back—we’ve known each other for more than two decades. We cover our entire history together, including a very funny story about him skipping the line at a Vancouver Tegan and Sara show just to get a photo with us. (Here’s video evidence.)

Grant is the lead singer of The Smugglers. We talk about how he played music with David Carswell. David, alongside John Collins, produced and engineered If It Was You and So Jealous with Sara and me. John also plays in The Evaporators with Canadian legend Nardwuar. Most of them went to high school together! Grant talks about how Nardwuar encouraged him to start a band in high school, transforming Grant from nerd (his words) to the confident leading man he is today.

Grant is also married to the incredible Jill Barber, one of Canada’s most celebrated singer-songwriters. Jill’s music spans folk, pop, and jazz, and she’s built a remarkable career over the past two decades while earning multiple Juno nominations and awards.

Grant is also a beloved writer. He is currently hard at work on his next book, Whale Tale, which tells the true story of the Pedder Bay 5—a group of orcas captured off the coast of British Columbia during the controversial whale capture era, including the only white orca ever caught alive. Their capture became an international sensation and sparked a chain of events that helped change the course of marine conservation, while leaving behind a mystery that remains unsolved.

Grant and I are also friends! We reconnected a few years ago at the Junos and have since become regular lunch buddies. In fact, we recently went for sushi, where Grant confessed he’d never eaten raw fish before. SHOCKING! Here’s photographic evidence that he finally took the plunge. It’s this kind of risky, exciting, novel behaviour that adult friendships are built on.

I enjoyed this conversation immensely. Grant interviews people for a living and is a born frontman, so I did have to wrestle the mic away from him a few times. In fact, after we stopped filming, we talked for another 45 minutes. Eventually I just hung up on him because it became clear he was never going to stop talking.

That said, $6 is still $6, so if you decide not to subscribe, you’ll be in good company—Grant admitted he only watches the first ten minutes of all my Dream Dumps and is not a paid subscriber. So there you go. I still enjoy making them, even if you don’t think they’re worth watching all the way through. Seriously.

Enjoy this week’s episode. I have to say, there are some genuinely hilarious—and occasionally spicy—moments in this conversation.

Also, after I hung up on him, he kept texting me. And this one felt worth sharing. Get yourself a man friend who also loves the Taylor Sheridan universe!

Have a great week!

Tegan

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I hope whatever you’re doing, wherever you are, you look as relaxed and beautiful as Georgia. LOOK AT THIS MAJESTIC CREATURE!

I read How To Survive A Bear Attack this week. LOVED it. Harrowing, fascinating, and a thoroughly engrossing read.

I saw The Odyssey in theater and LOVED IT. Fantastic film! So worth seeing in theater. I also saw The Invite, and also loved it. What a funny, brilliant, enjoyable experience.

Anyone else missing the World Cup? I am. :(

Last night I had terrible anxiety dreams about music. Probably because we are shooting a music video on Wednesday. I have to be up at 4am to start shooting at 6am! THE THINGS I DO FOR THIS JOB!! (just kidding, I’m stoked)! Good to be back to work! Can’t wait to tell you everything about our new song. We’ll be giving BTS about it and it’s release, so SUBSCRIBE not to miss it.

Dream Dump is back this Tuesday, and this week I'm joined by my friend Grant Lawrence. Grant is a longtime CBC broadcaster, lead singer of The Smugglers, and a bestselling author whose books celebrate the people, places, and stories of the West Coast. We had such a great conversation, and I can't wait for you to hear it. He’s a total weirdo, and a delight to talk with. A very funny episode! Some pretty big surprises at the end. Become a paid subscriber to watch/listen to the whole thing!

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Wishing you no Sunday scaries.

See you Tuesday!

Tegan

Hey Loners!

It’s Tuesday, my favorite day of the week!

This week I had the absolute pleasure of talking with Phoebe Robinson. Phoebe is a stand-up comedian, writer, producer, and actress. She co-created and co-starred in the podcast-turned-HBO series 2 Dope Queens, hosted the critically acclaimed podcasts So Many White Guys and Black Frasier, has published three books, and now has her own imprint, Tiny Reparations Books. You might also know her from films like Ibiza and What Men Want. Her latest stand-up special, I Don’t Wanna Work Anymore, absolutely killed me, and she’s heading out on her Feral and Fired Up tour this fall. If you haven’t read her books yet, I’d start with You Can’t Touch My Hair and Other Things I Still Have to Explain.

I was such a fan of 2 Dope Queens. It really informed an entire year of my life. When I first met Sofia, we bonded immediately over how much we loved the podcast. In fact, I think 2 Dope Queens is what made me love podcasts in the first place.

Phoebe and Jessica were at a couple of the same festivals we played over the years, so we met in person a handful of times, including at Bonnaroo, where we invited them onstage to sing “Closer” with us. In 2017 we ran into Phoebe at Boston Calling and snapped this cute shot.

And in 2019, Phoebe was the moderator for one of our High School Book events.

SHE IS LITERALLY THE BEST.

Over the years we’ve stayed in touch. Phoebe gave me incredible advice when Sara and I were in New York pitching High School to publishers. Since she’d already written an amazing book and we shared the same literary agent, she was my first call when things started getting serious.

Most recently, she came out to support me in New York for the premiere of Fanatical. Get yourself a friend who shows up for your scary, sad documentary about being stalked and impersonated online.

I loved having Phoebe on Dream Dump to talk about dreams, sleep, creativity, and life. Like so many great comedians, writers, and actors, she has incredible depth. She can be outrageously funny one minute and deeply thoughtful the next. Her love of U2, however, may be the most serious thing about her.

A reminder that to watch/listen to the whole thing you need to part with $6 and become a paid subscriber. Even if you don’t have $6/month to give, become a subscriber anyway to ensure you don’t miss any posts!

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Enjoy the episode!

Tegan

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It’s been a busy week over here.

As I’ve been teasing for the last few months, Sara and I are releasing a new song in September—just in time for our birthday. Shhh. Don’t tell anyone. Only you know that right now.

We’re making a music video this month, and it’s the first time we’ve done something like that in years. Our last album came out in 2021. Remember Crybaby? Holy shit, that feels like forever ago. I guess it kind of was.

It feels both really exciting and incredibly nerve-wracking to put something new out into the world. We’re working on a new Tegan and Sara album, but we had this song that we kept coming back to that’s sort of an ode to the West Coast, and Vancouver, and the struggles people feel living here, but also the undeniable draw of this place. I’ll tell you a lot more about the song in the coming weeks, but for now, this is just a post about music videos.

Ever since our first music video, I’ve kind of always had a knot in my stomach about making them. It sounds strange to say because I’m the front person of a band, but I don’t really love being on camera. Like most people on this planet, I don’t love looking at myself in photos or on video. Which I guess isn’t entirely true. I do, often when I’m the one filming or picking the photos. But a lot of times with music videos, you get what you get.

There’s also just something ridiculously humiliating to me about lip-syncing. I have to kind of suspend myself—or maybe dissociate—to avoid feeling silly on set, singing in front of a lot of strangers, trying to act, be emotional, and sell a song.

Inevitably, at least half the time, directors struggle with trying to get more energy out of us. They want us to dance and flail around, to ham it up for the cameras, to really perform the way rock stars do. But I’ve just never felt like that person, honestly.

Every time we come up with a new video concept, I convince myself this one won’t make me feel that way on set. But I have no doubt that, just like every other music video, I’ll eventually hit that moment of, Oh God, why are we doing this?, when we make our next music video in a few weeks.

But we’ll be surrounded by friends in our new video. More on that soon. Our collaborators are so excited. More on that soon too. And so I’m sure it’ll be a lot of fun.

Every time we put out something new, I try to turn over a new leaf. “Don’t be so stressed out,” I tell myself. “Don’t dread doing the work around it.” Making things is so fun, can marketing them and putting them out into the world be fun too? I guess that’s the question I’m hoping to answer this time around.

Anyway, here’s a link to our YouTube. Go watch some of our old music videos. It’s kind of shocking, actually, how many music videos we have. Thirty-two! I think? The First, I Hear Noises, Monday Monday Monday, Living Room, Walking with a Ghost, Speak Slow, Back in Your Head, The Con, Call It Off, Hell, Alligator, On Directing, Northshore, Closer, I Was a Fool, Goodbye, Goodbye, Boyfriend, U-turn, 100x, BWU, Faint of Heart, Hang On to the Night, White Knuckles, Stop Desire, Dying to Know, That Girl, I’ll Be Back Someday, Yellow, Faded Like a Feeling, I Can’t Grow Up, Smoking Weed Alone, and Fucking Up What Matters.

Did I forget any? Tell me your favorite Tegan and Sara music video in the comments.

-Tegan

WE ARE BAAAACCCCCKKKKK.

It’s Tuesday, which means a new episode of Dream Dump is dumping right now.

This week I had on my friend and fellow artist, Shura.

We first connected in 2016, right around the time Sara and I released Love You to Death. Shura had just put out her incredible debut album, Nothing’s Real, and we asked her to come out on tour with us. She’s a bit younger than us and I remember her telling a very sweet story about attending a London show of ours years earlier to get a photo and her CD signed—or something equally adorable.

Spending a substantial stretch of 2016 together as we crossed North America, we got to know each other really well. I think I can speak for both Sara and me when I say we were completely blown away by Shura—not just by her stage presence, which is magnetic, but by the way she carried herself as an artist. I loved how she thought about music, creativity, and building a career, and I’ve only become a bigger fan over the last decade.

Watching her navigate the impossible years of COVID, and everything that’s come after as touring has become more difficult and releasing music more complicated, has been inspiring. She’s continued to make thoughtful, beautiful records while cultivating an incredibly loyal community around her work. She also started lifting weights, taking martial arts, and became a gamer. Talk about diversifying!

Shura has a new album out called I Got Too Sad for My Friends, and I can’t recommend it enough. A few of my favorite songs are “America,” “Recognize,” and “I Wanna Be Loved By You.”

And if you’re brand new to Shura, I have to point you back to Nothing’s Real. Start with “Touch.” It’s still one of my all-time favorites.

During the pandemic, we put out a remix album, and we were lucky enough to convince Shura to remix our song “I Know I’m Not the Only One.” Check that out too!

On this episode we talk about the new music we’re making, monogamy, our relationships, touring, writing, our bedtime routines, and our dreams (of course). We even read from our dream journals to each other. Shura gave a live reading of this dream she had years ago which had me in stitches. WHAT a joy.

Enjoy the episode!

Tegan

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Hope everyone’s been well the last couple of weeks.

I’ve been catching up on gardening and landscaping, getting our place cleaned up for the summer. Last year we became a little obsessed with clearing underbrush and doing as much fire prevention work around the property as we could. So we had a giant dumpster delivered, and I’ve spent the last week hauling fallen branches, cedar and fir limbs, random logs scattered around the property, piles of dead grass, and weeds, overgrown brush, and all the Shasta daisies that collapsed after the rain.

When we bought this place, it was from the original owners, who built the house in the early ‘70s. Back then there wasn’t garbage service on the island, and apparently a lot of people would burn their trash on the beach—which is terrible. The glass, though, often just got broken and buried. The first crew who worked on our property, helping us build fences, warned us about it. Sure enough, every time I’m gardening or clearing brush, I uncover more of their crap: vintage bottles, and rusty cans mostly.

I’ve also done a ton of reading over the last couple of weeks. I’ve been trying to shift into a slightly slower mode as summer settles in. I am going to have a very, very busy fall, so I’ve been giving myself a bit of a mental and physical break from work.

I read The Au Pair by Teddy Wayne, The Tell by Amy Griffin, Kissing Girls on Shabbat by Sara Glass, and The Danger of Being Seen by Rosa Montero. I enjoyed all of them.

I watched a ton of World Cup soccer. I was sad to see Canada get knocked out, but it was really fun to see them get so far. Sofia is Brazilian, so we obviously were also watching all the Brazil games. It was a sad day when they went out. I’m going to keep watching. Like everyone else I’ve become obsessed with Erling Haaland. Don’t tell Sofia (Norway knocked Brazil out).

I’ve also been watching Love Island USA. I spent quite a bit of time in therapy this week talking about it, which either means I’ve hit the bottom of the barrel in terms of topics to cover... or it really is as interesting as I keep insisting it is.

It honestly feels like a sociological experiment. Somehow that makes me feel better about watching it. Yes, it’s a way to turn off my brain at the end of the day, but it’s also fascinating to watch a group of people spend nearly every waking hour navigating attraction, rejection, conflict, jealousy, friendship, and vulnerability in real time.

I completely missed the Big Brother, Survivor, and The Amazing Race phenomenon in the late ‘90s and 2000s, so maybe this is my moment. This article from last year about Love Island is interesting and sums up some of my interest for sure.

I’m also excited to announce that Dream Dump is back with new episodes starting this Tuesday! I moved the show over to Riverside, which a lot of podcasters use to record remotely, and I think the audio and video quality are noticeably better. Hopefully you agree.

I had on Shura! I am confident most if not all of you know who Shura is. But if you don’t, it’s time to get familiar! Shura is an English singer, songwriter, and producer. Since breaking through with her debut album Nothing's Real, she's built a devoted following. She's one of my favourite artists working today, and I was so excited to finally have her on the podcast.

Finally, let me know in the comments what kind of Saturday posts you’d like to see. More book recommendations? Random life updates? Gardening? Teasers about what’s coming this fall? More about the new Tegan and Sara music? Georgia content?

I’d love to hear what you’re interested in reading.

Tegan

It slipped my mind to prepare something for today—this week was so busy—so I’m writing this from bed. I’m drinking coffee, letting a fresh breeze in, staring out at the blue sky, listening to the birds chirp. I use the Merlin Bird app to identify birds by their songs. I’m hoping that one day I’ll be able to tell all the different bird calls apart. This morning it’s been Dark-eyed Juncos, Brown Creepers, Northern Flickers, and Robins. Earlier, there were two Bald Eagles screaming at each other.

It’s been cold this week, so I went through my iPhoto library to see what I was doing on this day over the last ten years. Below is a collection of photos from June 27 (though two are from the 25th and one is from the 28th—I wanted to see if it was cold then too). I thought they made for an interesting little look back. I’ve added captions below each one.

It was a busy week of work. My book, Merry Christmess, is out September 1, and you can preorder it here. Sara and I are preparing a new Tegan and Sara song to release by the end of the summer! Video, and new photos to come! We also have two Christmas songs we just finished mixing that will be coming later this year. We wrote the songs with Kate Cooper of An Horse and Cooper. She produced. They are SO GOOD! And, as if all that isn’t exciting enough, I just got the first batch of new Sara songs. We’re planning to head into the studio at the end of this year or the beginning of next to make our new album.

Cause to celebrate? I think so!

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A reminder that Dream Dump is off for the next two weeks, but we’ll be posting other things in the meantime. If you’ve been meaning to catch up on old episodes, now’s the time!

Have a nice Saturday,

Tegan

Hotel room Lighting. I’m all “made up” so I was probably doing press? I wish I still had this jacket. I give everything away. I have such a difficult time holding onto things. I am the opposite of a hoarder. I did however go to storage this week and pull out my “summer clothes” which made me happy. Then it was too cold to wear any of them.

I loved serving on the board of Love Loud Foundation for five years. This photo was from when we performed at the festival. Raising funds for LGBTQ+ youth gives me such purpose. The dual work of Tegan and Sara Foundation and Love Loud really coloured my late 30s and early 40s with so much meaning and passion.

Saskatoon airport I believe? We had just played a festival there the night before. Outdoors. Saskatoon is so beautiful in the summer. Lotta grasshoppers. I have photos of me and Sara with our great aunt Helene (who is now 96 and lives in Vancouver) from this day. We met her that morning for breakfast. She still lived downtown, on her own. She wore her keys around her wrist. Such a proper badass. I don’t know where we were flying to but… we had so much stuffffff. When people ask why it’s so expensive to tour…this is just a quarter of what we usually have….maybe less. Tour managers and production managers are saints. How do they do it!?

I get eczema in the summers on my hands. :( Along with my chronic hives, rashes, and joint swelling it’s clear I have an autoimmune condition. The only way to really combat it is lower my stress, improve my immune system, and more recently I have started a few different medications to help. It’s getting better! I AM GETTING BETTER!!!

This was a few days after Sid was born (He just turned four! Time flies). Sofia and I had started to let Georgia sleep in bed with us in the mornings. I’d go down at first light and let her out of the crate and she’d race upstairs and jump in bed with me. She turned six yesterday. She had just turned two the day before this photo was taken. We are both in the fetal position. :(

Georgia had just turned one the day before this photo was taken. We used to take her with us everywhere. We hated leaving her in the crate at home. Sofia and I were at the Tegan and Sara storage unit organizing with Sara when this picture was taken.

This was from the first Covid summer. We found a Brazilian restaurant in Vancouver on the east side, and went to have one of our first meals “out” after the lockdown lifted. Sofia was so excited. The food was excellent.

This is from last summer. I feel lucky every single day to live somewhere so beautiful. I think Georgia feels lucky too.

2024? Belated birthday girl. Chicken foot. :(

Taken at the end of the Heartthrob era. Some hotel, somewhere. Nearly three years of shows. I was tired at the end. I might still be a little tired from that era. I miss my short hair though. And my skinny jeans. Fuck this wide leg, baggy pant, “mom jean” era.

A special midweek email just for you because if you've been thinking about pre-ordering Merry Christmess, my first solo book, now is the time. From June 23–26, Barnes & Noble is offering 25% off all pre-orders, including ebooks and audiobooks.

I wrote Merry Christmess last year. A few years ago, Sara and I dreamed up Stevie and Jordan, 11-year-old twins, together. With her blessing, she let me run with the ball—or in this case, run with the Christmas tree—and write a story about them all on my own. The result is Merry Christmess, my very first foray into fiction chapter books!

Stevie and Jordan live in a fictional small town in central Saskatchewan, called Etheridge, with their mom, who runs a community centre. Their dad is a successful musician who tours the world with major artists, which means they don’t get to see him very often. The story takes place over Christmas break and is, in some ways, a modern take on The Parent Trap. The twist is that Stevie and Jordan know they are twins, and aren’t trying to get their parents back together. In fact, their parents were never really together. What they want is something much simpler: one Christmas spent together as a family. So actually it’s nothing like The Parent Trap. But who doesn’t love Lindsay Lohan references?

I had so much fun writing this book. It was an enormous leap for me creatively to write a work of fiction entirely on my own, and I feel incredibly proud of what came out of that challenge. Like all of our middle-grade books, there’s plenty here for adults, too. While this is a chapter book rather than a graphic novel, all of my earliest readers were grown-ups and they loved it. Whether you’re eight or eighty, if you enjoy funny, heartfelt holiday stories, I think there’s something here for you. The most exciting part? I’m already working on the sequel. Whether you’re planning to read it yourself or gift it to a kid in your life, I hope you’ll consider pre-ordering today or picking up a copy when it arrives on September 1.

I’ll be doing events throughout the fall and holiday season, and I’ll tease this now: some of those events will include Sara, a couple of new Christmas songs we’ve written together that will be released later this year, and maybe even a screening or two of some of our favourite Christmas movies.

Thanks, as always, for supporting my work. It means more than you know.

Have a good week!
Tegan

Welcome to Dream Dump, my favourite day of the week!

This weeks guest. Sara of Tegan and Sara!

I was very excited to have Sara on the show. Perhaps too excited. We taped a really funny episode, and then when I went to grab the recording afterward... it wasn’t there. After about 45 minutes of panicked searching, frantic Googling, and asking the internet for help, I realized it was a lost cause. I felt devastated. Sara’s time is precious right now, and it was incredibly generous of her to give me 45 minutes to tape an episode. I felt so stupid that somehow it hadn’t saved. When I texted her to explain what had happened, she just wrote back, “Oh God. Well, we can do it again.”

And we did! The very next day. And the episode was even better.

THANK YOU SARA!

We talk about my dream, I share an actual recording of me remembering my dream at 4am, Sara talks about her new songs, we talk about the new album were writing (and when we’ll start recording it), inspiration, art, kids, life, etc.

To watch/listen to the whole thing, you have to be a paid subscriber! Support our art making by smashing that button!

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One more thing! This is my mid-season finale. I’m going to take a couple of weeks off from taping Dream Dump. But we’ll still be posting here on Substack regularly!

I just want to reiterate how much I’ve enjoyed doing Dream Dump. My goal was simple: I wanted to create something that would engage me on Substack again. Something that would get me interacting with all of you, making things, having creative conversations, and reconnecting with my artist self. It’s been such a delight. Thank you to everyone who has subscribed, and especially to our paid subscribers. It means a lot to me.

I had such a tortured relationship with social media and it’s been so good for me to be off the internet. But I do love making things, connecting with all of you, and feeding our community. So I want to extend a huge thank you for finding this space, and participating in making it a positive experience for each other and me!

I’ll be back with Dream Dump in a few weeks with some very exciting guests. Until then, Sweet Dreams!

Tegan

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Hope you’re having a good one, wherever you are and whatever you’re doing. Sofia and I are celebrating Georgia’s birthday this week. Extra treats, lots of pets, as many hikes as she wants. She turns six in a few days. Hard to believe.

A lot of my friends with kids talk about how becoming a parent changes your relationship with time. You suddenly have this focal point in your life that’s aging, constantly reminding you how much time is passing. In a way, that’s Georgia for me. Every year I look at her and think, how has another year gone by already?

I only ever had cats growing up, and to be honest, I don’t know that it’s fair to compare those relationships to the one I have with Georgia. I was young. They weren’t focused on me, and I certainly wasn’t focused on them in the way that a German Shepherd–Border Collie with anxiety is focused on her people. Every year she changes. Her developmental stages are obvious, unavoidable. Even people who don’t know her well can see it. She’s calmer now. More confident. But she’s still our nervous girl. She doesn’t love extended eye contact or outstretched hands. She doesn’t like it when people crouch down toward her. She still gets worked up when people approach us on walks. Even people she’s known forever often get a few barks and circles before she settles in. Some things won’t ever change.

She sleeps in bed with us for a little while before moving to the floor or her own bed. The sound of her nails on the hardwood still wakes me up. Her middle-of-the-night trips to the water bowl still startle me awake. But when Sofia gets up in the morning and Georgia immediately jumps into bed and spoons me, I feel nothing but gratitude.

I’ll never be a parent, which I’m completely okay with. It was a choice I made. But this is probably the closest I’ll come to that experience of unconditional love. So many people in my life who became parents talked about chambers in their hearts opening up, love they didn’t know was possible flooding their systems. I would roll my eyes, try not to judge them too harshly, and feel relieved that I wasn’t the sort of person who spoke in grand metaphors. And yet, here I am.

I can’t imagine life without Georgia, and I try very hard not to.

She brings so much value to our lives. She distracts us when we’re sad. She keeps me company when I’m alone. She gets us outside, moving our bodies far more than we would otherwise. She’s funny and silly and protective. And her anxiety—which used to give me anxiety—now mostly feels like evidence of how deeply she cares. It’s hardwired into her. A fierce devotion to her pack (us). Just like she opened a chamber in our hearts, I hope we’ve opened one in hers.

Happy Birthday Georgia!

Tell me about your pet in the comments!

Tegan

PS

Tuesday’s Dream Dump is with Sara of Tegan and Sara. That’s right, Sara agreed to listen to me talk about my dreams! Remember to watch/listen to the whole thing you need to be a paid subscriber. You can do that here.

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Sara and I covered dreams—she has strong opinions about them which probably won’t surprise any of you to hear. We talk about the new Tegan and Sara record, her new studio, and so much more! See you Tuesday!