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...

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...

Senegal’s Youssou N’Dour is a global superstar, a singer with a stunning, ululating voice so rich and emotive that it transcends language. At home, he’s a national hero so revered that his popularity overshadows that of star soccer players and the country’s charismatic president. So imagine the devastation N’Dour felt when Egypt, his deeply spiritual 2004 album, was denounced by Senegalese religious leaders and rejected by Senegalese fans and retailers. He had recorded the album, collaborating with an Egyptian orchestra, to reveal a more tolerant face of Islam in the wake of 9/11. “I was really frustrated at the perceptions of people at home,” admitted N’Dour recently, “because I was praisin...

It’s easy to be cynical about the latest soul sensation from the British Isles to land on these shores. After all, there’s been a steady flow of divas from Ol’ Blighty in recent years, from Joss Stone and Corinne Bailey Rae to Lily Allen and Amy Winehouse. But Duffy is different. The Welsh-born singer’s sound, although steeped in ’60s soul, packs an emotional wallop that gives the newcomer a distinct advantage over her soul sisters. It’s as if the 23-year-old blonde songstress has arrived fully formed—with a lifetime’s worth of longing and heartache in her voice. One listen to Duffy’s debut album, Rockferry, instantly brings to mind the blue-eyed soul of Dusty Springfield—with a little Ronni...

Feist is sitting in a Latin American café in Toronto’s west end, sipping mint tea and talking enthusiastically about ocean waves. She’s just returned from a rare week off in Mexico, where she holidayed with buddies Erlend Øye and Eirik Glambek Bøe, of Norwegian folk-pop duo Kings of Convenience. “My friends were telling me to watch out for the riptide, because it’ll pull you out,” Feist recalls. “But all you have to do is just go with it and it’ll pull you back to shore. You just have to go the full cycle. People don’t have faith in that. They don’t realize it’s all about flow and cycles and currents.” She adds: “I’ve been thinking a lot about that stuff lately, about movement and the natura...