Gordon Lightfoot Book, Music and More!

Roberto Occhipinti is diversity personified. He’s won awards and acclaim as a musician, composer and record producer. Throughout his career, the Toronto-born bassist has performed in classical orchestras, jazz ensembles, Latin groups, rhythm & blues outfits and rock bands. He has worked in theatre and opera, written for radio and television, played on film soundtracks and done more recording session jobs than he can remember. To call the hard-working musician versatile would be the height of understatement. “I’ve always had very catholic tastes about my musical endeavors,” admits Occhipinti. “I don’t wait for the phone to ring. I’d rather make a call than hang around. I get involved with...

It may be the perfect partnership. As husband and wife, Chantal Kreviazuk and Raine Maida are celebrating their 10th anniversary this year, while raising three happy, rambunctious young sons. But Kreviazuk and Maida are also successfully married in songwriting, an alliance that has benefited their respective careers and made them Canada’s go-to power couple for American stars like Gwen Stefani, Kelly Clarkson and Pink and such Canadian artists as Avril Lavigne, Rex Goudie and Eva Avila. It all began in 1996 when Winnipeg-born Kreviazuk, who had just released her debut album, Under These Rocks and Stones, met Maida, frontman of Juno Award winning rockers Our Lady Peace, backstage at a Pearl J...

A long-haired figure sat alone onstage in a plaid shirt, blue jeans and construction boots. With just an acoustic guitar and, occasionally, a piano, he sang 18 songs—many of them brand new—to an adoring, sold-out audience. There was magic in the air. When Neil Young played Massey Hall on January 19, 1971, it was a triumphant homecoming for the Toronto-born troubadour, who’d left five years earlier to find fame in California. The concert proved to be a watershed event, forever sealing Young’s reputation as a formidable artist and a national icon. Last year, Luminato celebrated Canada’s best songsmiths, including Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen and Gordon Lightfoot. This year, the arts festival i...

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...

It was like an IQ test question asking which was the apple among the oranges. In the summer, Canada's Barenaked Ladies had been booked to play Chicago's Rockfest at the city's motor speedway. But the fun-loving popsters found themselves sharing top billing with heavy-metal road warriors Metallica and white-trash rapper Kid Rock. As soon as the Ladies hit the stage, rap-metal fans in the audience realized that this group didn't share their "Rage Against Anything" credo. First there was booing, followed by dozens of middle fingers being thrust angrily in the air. Things turned uglier as the rabble started hurling beer bottles and homophobic insults towards the stage. Drummer Tyler Stewart...

With his straggly, shoulder-length hair, torn blue jeans and red sneakers, Greig Nori doesn’t look like the sort of man to be wined and dined in elegant restaurants by smooth-talking business executives. But Nori, who is in his late 20s, is a singer-guitarist in a band called treble charger, one of the hottest new acts in Canada. And several major record companies have been vigorously courting the group for the past year with a series of lucrative contract offers. Although flattered by the attention, treble charger shocked many in the record industry last month by turning down all the big-league offers. It chose instead to continue releasing albums on its own Smokin’ Worm Records, the company the band created in 1993 for its acclaimed debut, NC17. Distribution will be handled by another tiny label, Hamilton’s Sonic Unyon. "Sure, a record deal may be every kid’s dream," says Nori, who is originally from Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. "But we felt confident enough that we’re better off on our own."

One of Brooklyn’s hottest exports is Santi White, the dynamic punk-electro-dub artist who performs as Santogold. Although she was born in Philadelphia, Brooklyn has been her base since launching her solo music career. According to White, the borough is the Big Apple’s funkiest asset. “It’s go the energy that is uniquely New York,” she says, “but it feels a little less jaded than Manhattan. Like there’s still a raw energy of something untapped and exciting.” The same could be said of White’s music. Her debut album, Santogold, offers some of the most dynamic sounds around, from the pulsing beats and razor-sharp guitars of “L.E.S. Artistes” to the shrill vocals and swooping synthetic bass of “C...

She walks into the room with bleary eyes. It’s the first interview of the day and Canada’s k.d. lang isn’t yet fully awake, so she throws open the hotel-suite window before settling into a couch. The bracing December air somehow seems to kick start the interview about her superb new album, Watershed, into gear. Following her duets of Louis Armstrong covers with Tony Bennett, A Wonderful World, and her collection of Canadian classics, Hymns of the 49th Parallel, it’s her first album of new original material in eight years. Asked why it took so long, lang is quick with the reasons: 9/11, Buddhism and writer’s block. “Basically, my world was turned upside down,” she adds, “and it took me that l...