Gordon Lightfoot Book, Music and More!

From her birth as a daughter of Black settlers in the early 20th century to recognition as Vancouver’s first lady of jazz, Eleanor Collins was a trailblazer in music and African-Canadian history. Her role in breaking new ground for women and Black performers earned her membership in the Order of Canada in 2014. Then, in 2022, Canada Post featured Ms. Collins on a stamp, honouring her as the first Black Canadian entertainer – and first female Canadian singer – to star in her own nationally broadcast TV series, The Eleanor Show. Acknowledging the honour, Ms. Collins said she had no sense of her pioneering role back then. “We each did what we felt we were called to do – live in the present...

The legacy of Gordon Lightfoot's music is in good hands, thanks to his longtime backing group of Rick Haynes, Barry Keane, Mike Heffernan and Carter Lancaster. Those veteran musicians are committed to keeping the master's songs alive. Last Saturday (Jan. 27), the Lightfoot Band made its debut at Toronto's El Mocambo with its newest member Andy Mauck on vocals and rhythm guitar. Anyone worried about how the American-born singer might sound delivering those classic songs can rest assured: Mauck, vocally, is a dead ringer for 1970s and '80s-era Lightfoot. Plus, he's humble as hell, repeatedly saying what an honour it was to be asked to join the band and sing the songs of his hero. "Gord was a s...

Once again, I look back on a year of music. For me, 2023 was rich in some phenomenal sounds. But much of what I consumed was through live performances, less through studio recordings. The Polaris Music Prize offered plenty of new discoveries, including Debby Friday and her winning Good Luck debut, Aysanabee's Watin and Begonia's Powder Blue. For compilations of the past year, nothing for me can top Written in Their Soul: The Stax Songwriter Demos, a stunning seven-CD set compiled by Cheryl Pawelski of stripped down gems by unsung heroes who wrote the classic songs of Otis Redding, Carla Thomas, Sam & Dave and the Staple Singers. Jason Wilson's Ashara album, ...

The Trans-Canada Highwaymen is a supergroup made up of members of Barenaked Ladies (Steven Page), The Odds (Craig Northey), Sloan (Chris Murphy) and The Pursuit of Happiness (Moe Berg), singing classic Canadian songs by the likes of Pagliaro, Lighthouse, Andy Kim, April Wine and The Guess Who. They’ve already released Explosive Hits Vol. 1, their recordings of 14 of those chart-toppers. But the beauty of the TCH concept when performed live is that it adds a whole other dimension of Canadiana with the biggest hits by the members’ own bands.  So, last night at Toronto’s venerable Horseshoe Tavern, the four horsemen of the K-Tel generation, treated the sold-out crowd to note-perfect c...

A two-hour documentary that aired on television in 2009 and was released on DVD  that same year. Looks at the digital age of Canadian music in the 1980s, a visual era of big hair and shoulder pads, when music videos helped homegrown artists to take off internationally.The documentary is split into nine segments: - Video Rock - Reggae / New Wave - Quebec Pop - Art, Pop & Politics - Alt-Country - Heartland Rock - Roots / Hip Hop - Blues Rock - Divas & Icons Songs featured in concert footage and videos (in alphabetical order): "A Criminal Mind" – Gowan "Ain't No Room For Cheatin' – Handsome Ned "Black Velvet"&nbs...

A two-hour documentary that aired on television in 2009 and was released on DVD  that same year. This Beat Goes On tells the story of Canadian music in the 1970s, a ground-breaking era of great sounds, from glam and progressive rock to punk and reggae.  Mixing archival footage with candid interviews, the documentary features proven hitmakers as well as a wealth of new folksingers, blues artists and mullet-rockers. Solo artists and progressive rockers still rule, but it’s also a time of shaved heads and skinny ties, as punk and new wave artists push their way into the spotlight. By the end of the decade, the Can-rock revolution has arrived. This Beat Goes On presents ...

 A two-hour documentary that initially aired on Canadian TV in January, 2006 and was released on DVD on December 11, 2007. The documentary captures the sounds of the 1960s in Canada, from the folk music of Ian and Sylvia, and the rhythm 'n blues of Ronnie Hawkins, to the many other legendary stars like Joni Mitchell, The Guess Who, Neil Young, Anne Murray, The Band, cult heroes like David Wiffen, The Collectors and Mashmakhan, and some of Canada's brightest younger stars including Blue Rodeo, Barenaked Ladies and Sarah Harmer. Full of candid interviews with more than 60 iconic figures.         Here is a list of all the songs featured, taken from concert footage and T...

Gordon Lightfoot, who passed away May 1, would have turned 85 today. His legacy includes songs that will live on for decades to come. Success didn’t come easy for him. In the beginning, Lightfoot worked hard at learning everything there was to know about music. Long before his first hit records, Lightfoot tried choir singing, barbershopping, pop crooning, jazz drumming and square dancing. While in a folk duo called the Two Tones, he even jumped on the Belafonte craze and belted out a calypso. When he was 19 and studying jazz composition and orchestration at the Westlake College of Music in Hollywood, Lightfoot and three fellow students moonlighted as the Four Winds, recor...

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...