Gordon Lightfoot Book, Music and More!

Yesterday, a 22-storey high mural depicting the music history of Toronto’s Yonge Street was announced at a media event on the site of the mural. Two of the legends featured in the wall painting, Ronnie Hawkins and Gordon Lightfoot, were in attendance. Commissioned by the Downtown Yonge Business Improvement Association, the work by artist Adrian Hayles also includes images of Oscar Peterson, Glenn Gould, Jackie Shane, Shirley Matthews, Dianne Brooks and bluesmen B.B. King and Muddy Waters. The mural covers the side of a building on Yonge just south of College. I was a consultant on the project, which will be completed in December 2016, and spoke at the event: As a music journalist and histori...

Now 70, Dolly is unstoppable. The country music icon, currently on a 60-date tour, is celebrating her 50th year in show business as well as her 50th wedding anniversary. She’s in the midst of a four-movie deal with NBC, working on a sequel to the acclaimed Dolly-inspired Coat of Many Colors TV movie. Dolly’s 43rd studio album is a testament to her marriage to retired businessman Carl Thomas Dean. “All the songs I’ve written [for it] are love songs because I’m celebrating 50 years with my husband this year,” says Dolly. “So I thought it would be a good time to do an album of love songs.” The album lives up to its name, with stripped-down acoustic accompaniment to Dolly’s crisp, heartfelt lyri...

The auditorium was a sea of cowboy hats in a variety of styles—High Sierra, Ridgetop and Cattleman. The ranchers, cowhands and wives were assembled last month in a convention centre in northern Nevada for a tribute to the 19th-century American western artist Charles Russell. But the first performer to step onstage was not an American--it was Canada’s Ian Tyson. With his white cowboy hat tipped at a rakish angle and a white kerchief tied flamboyantly around his neck, Tyson fit right in. Carrying an acoustic guitar and accompanied by his band, the Chinook Arch Riders, the Albertan told the audience, It’s great to be back in Elko--feels just like home.” And he meant it. It was the fourth year t...