Gordon Lightfoot Book, Music and More!

Tours can take their toll on the most experienced rock musician. But if you’re a suddenly hot young singer from England, and you find yourself catapulted into a seemingly endless series of concerts, interviews and promotional appearances across the North American continent, it can be downright dizzying. That was the state Lily Allen was in this past April. The pint-sized pop star was at her wit’s end on the tail end of a three-month tour that had seen her perform more than 60 shows, make dozens of TV appearances and conduct literally hundreds of interviews. The morning after a sold-out appearance at Toronto’s Phoenix Theatre spoke to Inside E, and the fatigue in her voice was palpable. Touri...

The Dusty Foot Philosopher has come a long way from the bullet-strafed streets of Mogadishu. The Somali-Canadian emcee is now an aspiring novelist and filmmaker whose life story, set in war-torn Somalia, will soon become a major motion picture. For his new hip-hop album, the genre-stretching Troubadour, K’naan traveled to Jamaica, recorded in Tuff Gong Studio and spent time chillin’ in Bob Marley’s Kingston home with his youngest son, Damian “Jr. Gong” Marley. The late reggae legend’s spirit was everywhere—even in the furniture. “I’d go into the living room, where there was this incredible sofa, and people said I should try lying on it,” recalls K’naan. “I’m a terrible insomniac. But lying d...

To open a recording studio and launch a record label in these days of economic uncertainty takes confidence. To release your own triple album at the same time requires something more like audacity. Yet Joel Plaskett, who clearly believes that good things come in threes, has done exactly that. The Nova Scotia musician, an indie-rock hero since his Thrush Hermit days in the 1990s, hatched the ambitious plan last year after finding a recording space in his hometown of Dartmouth and purchasing some old analog equipment. The studio, which he named Scotland Yard, enabled Plaskett to produce several local artists for release on his New Scotland Records label while allowing him to record a sprawling...