Gordon Lightfoot Book, Music and More!

Toronto’s Cowboy Junkies have carved out an impressive career with their narcotic brand of roots rock. Reveling in downtempo numbers, they’ve often been accused of making sad music. On the Junkies’ latest album, One Soul Now, songwriter Michael Timmins addresses the issue on the song “Notes Falling Slow.” “Partly,” says Timmins, “it comes from a lot of people saying to us that our music is depressing, when actually, it’s just slow.” Nice try, Mike, but the music actually is melancholic. Timmins’ sister, singer Margo, confirms as much when she explains that the new album’s songs deal with “death, divorce, financial worries, age, sickness and just general fatigue.” Not typically...

Hailing from the U.S. Midwest, The BoDeans first made their mark with a sound that drew on stirring harmonies and ringing guitars. Along with bands like Los Lobos and Lone Justice, they led the roots-rock revolution of the mid-1980s. Although they haven’t issued an album since 1996’s Blend, due to contractual disputes, The BoDeans are back with their signature sound. You’d never know there’d been problems. Passionate songs like the chiming “If It Makes U,” the Springsteen-inspired “617” and the dreamy ballad “Slipping into You” feature the patented vocals of Sam Llanas and Kurt Neumann. And “(We Can) Live” and “Wild World” are buoyant, feel-good rockers, while “Two Souls” boasts a fine,...

The crowded riders’ restlessness enunciates that the Guess Who suck, the Jets were lousy anyway…our Golden Business Boy will watch the North End die, and sing “I love this town,” then let his arcing wrecking ball proclaim, “I hate Winnipeg.”  “One Great City!”Lyrics by John K. SamsonMusic by the Weakerthans An alienation ballad? A protest song about duplicitous urban redevelopment? A poison-pen letter to Winnipeg’s tourism office? The Weakerthans’ “One Great City!” is all that and more. Taken from the Winnipeg band’s third album, Reconstruction Site, the folky number—with its references to gray, bitterly cold winter days and stalled cars in turning lanes—is set in the gro...