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“I have wandered far and wide,” Daniel Lanois sings on the title track to his latest album, “all the way from Paris to Mexico.” The nomadic movements of Canada’s most acclaimed producer are the stuff of legend. After leaving Hamilton, Ont. in the early 1980s to work with U2 in a Dublin castle, Lanois has made a habit out of recording in unusual and far-flung settings: from a dairy barn in Somerset, England to a former porn theatre in southern California. For 10 years, he conducted much of his production work in an ancient, sprawling mansion in New Orleans. Even then, he championed the idea of portable studios and often took equipment with him on the road. Now, Lanois has returned from a year...

When Jack Long opened his first musical instrument store in Toronto in 1956, he was a skilled jazz trumpeter without a clue about business. “I didn’t even know what an invoice was,” he often said. Mr. Long learned the hard way. When sales were slow, he and a drummer friend, Jack McQuade, started giving lessons in the store’s back rooms. When they discovered colleagues often wanted to borrow instruments, Mr. Long invented modest rental fees: “three dollars if it was small, four dollars if it was bigger.” Together as partners, the two Jacks grew the company until 1965, when Mr. McQuade decided to pursue drumming full-time and sold his portion of the firm to Mr. Long. Today, the family-owned Lo...

Stepping off a Greyhound bus from Toronto in 1961, a 17-year-old boy found himself in West Helena, Ark., by the banks of the Mississippi River, unable to believe his senses. “It smelled different and moved different,” Robbie Robertson recently recalled. “The people talked and dressed different. And the air was filled with thick and funky music.” The experience left an indelible impression on the budding guitarist and songwriter. Years later, Robertson drew on it to write some of rock’s most evocative songs—including “Up on Cripple Creek” and “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” And he performed them with his group, The Band, which critic Greil Marcus has called “the best rock ’n’ roll band...

A man and his guitar. Canada’s iconic rocker has been proving the power of that simple combination for half a century. Young’s latest is a testament to just how much feeling, meaning and, yes, noise he can draw from his instrument. Recorded without percussion, keyboards or strings (but with plenty of sonic effects from producer and fellow Canadian Daniel Lanois), the album’s standout tracks range from the raw “Walk with Me” and the ornery “Angry World” to the gorgeous, Spanish-tinged confessional “Love and War.”

Not many contemporary artists have written and recorded memorable songs about the First World War, the horrific 1914-1918 conflict that killed nine million soldiers and 13 million civilians. One of the best is Australian folksinger Eric Bogle’s ballad “And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda,” as covered by the Pogues on their 1984 album Red Roses for Me. Toronto’s Tony Quarrington has recorded an entire album of original WW1 songs called For King and Country: Canada in the Great War and many are well worth hearing. It takes listeners through the experiences of Canadians during the war, in the trenches and on the home front. There are songs about Winnipeg flying ace Alan McLeod (...