Gordon Lightfoot Book, Music and More!

The concert began and ended badly. Minutes before the members of Blue Rodeo were due onstage at the student lounge of Erindale College in suburban Toronto, the band’s manager, John Caton, had been refused admittance. A student security guard with a penchant for protocol insisted that because Caton had no photo identification proving he was old enough to drink, the manager—who is 39—could not go in. Undeterred, Blue Rodeo gave a spirited two-hour performance. Yet some people in the audience of 300 failed to give the show their full attention: it had been exam week, and several students were more interested in consuming large quantities of beer than in listening to the band’s thoughtful brand ...

Zal Yanovsky may be the unlikeliest candidate for success ever to emerge from Toronto’s music scene. Before he joined Denny Doherty in the Halifax Three and headed south to serious Sixties fame in the Lovin’ Spoonful, Yanovsky was broke and scuffling around Yorkville and the Annex, learning to play guitar and stealing milk off front porches so he could collect the deposit from the bottles. Unable to afford rent anywhere, Yanovsky took to sleeping in a laundry dryer at 163 Dupont, right next door to the Gate of Cleve, where he perhaps dreamed he might one day perform.  In a poster designed by future realist painter Ken Danby, the Gate of Cleve coffeehouse advertised “folksongs and folk m...

They were a short-lived band that released just one single before breaking up. But the legend of the Rising Sons has continued to rise. Small wonder: the group served as the launching pad for a pair of young musicians who grew up to become two of the world’s most adventurous and celebrated musical explorers. The Rising Sons were formed in Los Angeles in 1965 by 17-year-olds Ryland Cooder and Henry Saint Clair Fredericks, better known as Taj Mahal, along with guitarist Jesse Lee Kincaid, drummer Ed Cassidy and bassist Gary Marker. Cassidy left soon after (he went on to become a founding member of the band Spirit) and was replaced by Kevin Kelley. Cooder sang and played six- and 12-string...