Gordon Lightfoot Book, Music and More!

Last night at Toronto’s historic Cameron House, Doug Paisley hosted his popular but all too occasional Golden Country Classics show, giving the packed front room a cozy respite from a nasty pre-winter storm. The acclaimed singer-songwriter delivered resonant renditions of well-worn weepers by Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash and George Jones, backed by Blue Rodeo’s sturdy rhythm section of Bazil Donovan and Glenn Milchem, ace fiddler Kendel Carson and master ivories tickler John Sheard. A superb composer himself, Paisley also sang his fine “Starter Home” before delivering warm, lovingly burnished covers of Ron Hynes and Bob Dylan. Paisley’s Toronto appearances are all too infrequent these days, so...

A master of reinvention, Bob Dylan is never content to play a song the same way twice. Last night at Massey Hall, the self declared song-and-dance man entertained with interpretations of numbers drawn from his own back pages (with the exception of a Grateful Dead cover and an American Songbook standard) that rendered them virtually unrecognizable. Sometimes this was a thrilling novelty, with a hatted Dylan standing behind a grand piano and belting out a bluesy, saloon-style rendition of “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” like an less frenzied Jerry Lee Lewis. At other times, it was a frustrating mystery. Trying to identify a song by lyric wasn’t always possible because of Dylan’s chronic case of mu...

In July 2005, I spoke with Sinéad O'Connor about her reggae album, Throw Down Your Arms, that she’d recorded in Jamaica with Sly and Robbie. There was a lot going on in the world at the time. Live 8, the series of anti-poverty benefit concerts organized by Bob Geldof on the 20th anniversary of Live Aid, had just taken place. The news cycle was filled with horrific stories about the suicide attacks by Islamic terrorists that killed 56 early-morning commuters on the London Tube. We talked about those events, as well as ganga, God and her decision never to revisit her pop past again.  But Sinéad was musically motivated—Throw Down Your Arms was her first recording since her t...