Gordon Lightfoot Book, Music and More!

Is Hawksley Workman too good to be true? At 26, the Canadian singer-songwriter has already drawn comparisons to figures like David Bowie and Tom Waits—for two self-produced albums on which he wrote all the songs and played virtually every instrument. London's influential Time Out magazine has called him "quite possibly the coolest thing to come out of Canada." His performances—daring theatricality mixed with shameless romanticism—have elicited the sort of reviews usually reserved for rock royalty. Then there's his wildly improbable name. Is it something he lifted out of Dickens, or from an old travelling medicine show? Until recently, Workman wasn't saying. He first popped up in 1999 with hi...

It's nearly impossible to imagine Margo Timmins as a bad-tempered diva. The angel-voiced singer of Canada's Cowboy Junkies has always been a point of calm in the stormy world of rock 'n' roll, a soothing balm amid so much angst, rage and excess. But three years ago, even the ever-gracious Timmins began to lose her cool. The Junkies had just released their eighth album, Miles from Our Home , and she and her bandmates felt it wasn't getting the marketing support it deserved from its U.S. label, Geffen Records. During a flight to Los Angeles, Timmins finally expressed her festering frustration to her brother Michael, the band's guitarist and songwriter. "I was ready to quit," Margo recalls. "De...

They are the sensitive boys of Canadian pop. Both are acclaimed singer-songwriters, and both are unabashedly emotional. One is gay, with an impeccable musical pedigree, while the other, a father of two, has some of rock's biggest stars singing his praises. And -- surprise, surprise -- both are closest to their mothers. They may not seem like groundbreakers, but Rufus Wainwright and Ron Sexsmith are creating a seismic shift in pop music, bringing tender songs from a male point of view back into the mainstream. Until recently, solo artists were almost all women. While record labels scrambled to find the next Fiona Apple or Joan Osborne, male singer-songwriters couldn't get a break. The reverse...