Spike – The Bulgarian Music Showcase is scheduled to take place in the city of Plovdiv, Bulgaria between May 26-28, 2022. Bulgaria’s most historic town will welcome music business delegates from over twelve countries, including the USA and Canada. Their expertise will cover every part of the music industry, including artist booking and management; publishing, royalties, and sync licensing; digital technology workshops; and equality and diversity in the music industry. 

Formerly known as the Sofia International Music Conference (SIMC), Spike is Bulgaria’s first showcase and conference festival.  We manage to get a hold of founder Boyan Robert Pinter while he was visiting different venues for the festival.

“The festival’s primary goal is to create learning and networking opportunities for Bulgarian artists and professionals and to introduce international delegates to Bulgaria’s music scene. This will be done in a spirit of diversity and inclusivity. We also hope to be part of the big European showcase circuit and this will be an annual stop for people to visit and find new music ” Says Boyan.

A new band of multi-award-winning not-so-new blues players are set to make their musical mark: The Hogtown Allstars will release their debut album, Hog Wild, this May 6th, 2022 via Stony Plain Records.

stonyplainrecords.com/hogtownallstars/

Featuring eight new all-original songs, and two covers, Hog Wild was recorded throughout 2021 once the group nailed their first challenge: coordinating everyone’s schedule to hit the studio. It’s the first release for the undeniable supergroup that first started in 2013 as a collaborative, creative outlet for Toronto-based musicians dedicated to the genre.

As for ‘Allstars,’ they come by the moniker honestly; built with some of the most dynamic and experienced players on the global blues scene, the 7-piece adds up to Downchild Blues Band alum Chuck Jackson, Pat Carey, Gary Kendall, Jim Casson, and Tyler Yarema alongside Maple Blues Band alums Teddy Leonard and Howard Moore.

Check out the link here on YouTube:

Photo Credits: Peter Astedt and Future Echoes

It was the first full edition of Future Echoes in Norrköping, Sweden, 17 to 19 of February 2022. The Festival planning had begun in 2020 when participants from various showcase festivals in Sweden joined together to build a new International Showcase Festival in Norrköping, Sweden.

While the planning was discussed and the first actions were taken to start the Festival,

COVID hit the world, and everything was pushed. The first edition was first postponed from February 2021 to September and then from September to the original dates on February 17 to 19, 2022.

Then the variant Omicron hit and Sweden was put  in lockdown as of January  2022. The Festival then made a  decision to make it with the restrictions just to make it happen. Luckily the restrictions in Sweden were lifted on the 9th of February, just a week before the Festival.

“Sorry for bombarding you with demo emails.” This was the first line in an email I got in from an artist that kept on writing that he or she (the artist name really doesn’t give it away) had written fifteen songs in different styles, love songs, ballads, pop songs, and dance love pop songs. Strange styles to write songs in, but hey, who am I to judge?

Then it was a new link to a song on SoundCloud. The song sounds like you just bought a beat online somewhere and then you wrote a really bad poem to a dead mummy. Yes, the song is about a dead mummy, I shit you not. Clearly, the music wasn’t up to any standards. Nowadays it doesn’t need to be in any standards to be given out either. In one way if the Soundcloud link wasn’t private it had still been given out. That it was a bad song and not that interesting, it’s the rest of the letter. Directly after the link, they jump to this:
I wish to acquire a record deal. There are three types of deals that interest me:             

-          The 360 Deal     

-          The Single Deal Recording Contract; and         

-          The Major Label Deal        

Alongside today’s release of new single and video, “Solace,” multi-Platinum/Gold award-winning and internationally acclaimed producer, composer, and guitarist Jesse Cook announces newly updated Canadian dates for his highly-acclaimed “Tempest II” tour.

Check out “Solace” on YouTube here:

Originally marked for 2020 in celebration of the 25th anniversary of his acclaimed debut album, Tempest, the newly announced 18 homegrown shows will span from Quebec to B.C.; with 43+ cross-continent dates on the docket, Cook recently kicked off the tour in the U.S. alongside the release of his 11th studio album, Libre — to rave reviews.

Canadian singer/songwriter and composer Wendy Irvine urges humanity to reach out to each other and “Make Time” with the release of her newly unveiled single – check it out on YouTube here:

The first to land from the song’s namesake album, Make Time, set for release this Spring 2022, the title reflects two words that hold deeply personal and perspective-shifting meaning in the Toronto-based artist’s day-to-day outlook.

“‘Make Time’ has become a mantra in my life,” the Toronto-based artist reveals. “I cannot control other people and their actions but, in order to make a difference in the world, I believe it starts with me.

“I need to put forth more light,” she continues. “I need to reach out and show love to other people, and I need to plant the seeds of acceptance, balance, love, and communication each and every day.”

In the wake of the pandemic’s ongoing disruption of the arts and events, the Wavelength Winter Festival is set to pivot online this March with a free weekly Speakers Series streamed live each Wednesday evening.

With a focus on ‘community care,’ Maylee Todd/Maloo, Casey Mecija, Radwan Ghazi Moumneh, and Beverly Glenn-Copeland will be featured in artist talks alongside an original film by Sook-Yin Lee and Dylan Gamble; Buffy Sainte-Marie will join March 23rd for a keynote event.

Covid-19 presented unique opportunities for arts organizations to get creative and try innovative new programming models — and the Wavelength Winter Festival is no different.

“While experiencing live arts can be difficult at this time, art is what breathes motivation, mobilization, and creative change,” Festival organizers share. “Join us in conversation with some of our most beloved creators as they share stories that inspire new corridors of possibility and, above all, hope.”

The Wavelength Winter Festival: Speaker Series 2022 will take place every Wednesday in March at 7:00pm EST. All events are free, all-ages, and stream live via YouTube.

Ground-breaking musical collective Toronto Tabla Ensemble (TTE) and legendary Indian-born Canadian artist Bif Naked mystify with cutting-edge sonics and sophisticated grooves on their latest jaw-dropping single, “Prayer for the Mother”.

Check out “Prayer for Mother” on YouTube here:

Celebrating their 30th anniversary, the song lands alongside Toronto Tabla Ensemble’s blistering new album, For the Love of Tabla — an 11-song LP that dazzles listeners start to finish with some of the best tabla playing in the world.

Echo Chamber - /ˈekō ˌCHāmbər / noun | An environment in which a person encounters only beliefs or opinions that coincide with their own, so that their existing views are reinforced, and alternative ideas are not considered.

We live in a time when finding ‘proof’ to support our ideas and beliefs is merely a scroll and a click away, and our social media news feeds provide a precision-tailored buffet hot and ready to serve our appetites for confirmation bias. With that, Canadian folk rock artist Kele Fleming is spotlighting social media’s divisiveness through the ‘thoughts’ of a futuristic AI character with her timely new single, “Echo Chamber” – watch and listen on YouTube here:

‘So long in an echo chamber, I’m getting into danger’

It seems like people left their brains at home after COVID. As all of the business starts to open up the crazy recordings are coming in like a full flood. Artists have been sitting and keeping recordings to release to be able to get live shows so right now you get a big bunch of them. I have written tips about it before how to send stuff. It’s time to do it again after having been through several emails that clearly show that the people behind them haven’t thought twice or done their homework.

The first one was from a band that hadn’t released their song yet. They had put it on Bandcamp on a secret link, put in the video that would have premiered three days later. The problem here is that I can listen to the song on Bandcamp only. Of course, the link to the video is not working yet and in three days I will certainly have forgotten this email. On Bandcamp, there is no download, just a listening button. My problem here is if I want to play the song on the radio station, I can’t really access it. Here comes the totally dumb part of this email. They write that if I want the song to use on the radio station, I can contact them so I can get downloadable files.

Stranger Than Kindness: The Nick Cave Exhibition opens Friday, April 8 at the Galerie de la Maison du Festival in Montreal. Tickets will go on sale on Friday, March 4 at 10 a.m. via evenko.ca

This is the North American premiere of the exhibition, which was previously presented at The Black Diamond, Copenhagen, Denmark. There are currently no plans for the exhibition to travel to the USA.

The exhibition was met with acclaim from press and visitors alike when it opened in Copenhagen in March 2020.

Soaring with sentiments of hope, love, longing, and loss, multi-Platinum selling, and JUNO award-winning artist Barney Bentall plots a sonic constellation of Americana to traditional Folk with the upcoming release of his new album, Cosmic Dreamer.

Set for release April 22, 2022 via True North Records, the album includes the title track, “Cosmic Dreamer” – check out an advance listen here:

With special guests Ruth Moody, Valentino Trapani, and Adrian Dolan joining on three songs, the 11-track LP features nine new all-originals from the prolific artist alongside two covers — Bob Dylan’s “You Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go” and Gordon Lightfoot’s “Shadows.”

I just read in a local newspaper about courage. The question they asked five random people in a midsize suburban city, what is the most courageous thing they have ever done. One younger kid said that making a parachute jump was the most courageous he had done. The rest answered that the most courageous thing they have done was move to another city.  And not one of these moves were claiming that it was courageous to move from the capital to this village that is just one and a half hours from the capital.

I was a little baffled. When I was younger than them, I just took a plane and went over from Sweden to NYC just to go on a date with a girl I had just met online. I had also moved around to several cities much further away. I don’t really feel that was courageous at all. Adventure, sure it was but it’s like making a parachute jump; it’s pretty safe. It’s actually much more dangerous driving on the highway to get to the airplane to make that jump.

The way back to God, or to one’s religion, is often found first by finding a way to be true to oneself. With that, Canadian Christian pop artist Danah-Lee pulls back the curtain on such a journey in her cello-studded, piano-infused new single, “Home To Myself” – check it out on YouTube here:

Arriving ahead of the artist’s forthcoming new album, Made In The Image — coming this Spring — ”Home To Myself”s chorus is simple but powerful and heartfelt: “I’m coming home to myself.”

And the process of coming home is one the Ottawa Valley, ON-based artist knows personally, having struggled with her sexuality in the context of her faith.

Here we have it, the year that everybody will forever remember as the year of change, 2022. I just completed the first showcase festival in Europe, Future Echoes, post-COVID restriction, with a full live schedule. Not an easy task, even after the restrictions are gone the effect of them is still there. This morning I woke up to that Putin had attacked Ukraine Suddenly we now have a full-scale war in Europe. And if this wasn’t enough, you have the most important climate crisis we have ever seen and needs to be addressed with expediency.

It's not looking good right now. At the same time changes are happening with a chain reaction and all these events will form a new world. Of course, this is happening right now, as we have been in lockdown for over two years and forces have been created in many sectors just sitting and waiting for the pandemic to calm down or come to an end.

Ronnie Earl, a four-time Blues Music Award winner as “Guitar Player of the Year,” follows up the critical and commercial success of his last album, Rise Up, with Mercy Me, a new set of wondrous music with his long-time band, The Broadcasters, on  April 15 via Stony Plain Records. Mercy Me will also be released later this summer on vinyl LP.

The multi award-winning guitarist and his band’s recording will be released on both cd and vinyl lp formats.

In November of 1962, at an outdoor coffee shop in the Los Angeles area, disc jockey Gary Owens introduced Salvatore Phillip Bono to Cherilyn Sarkisian.

It was the start of a marriage that would come to a head on the pop chart three years later…

Salvadore Phillip "Sonny" Bono was born 87 years ago Wednesday. He wrote or co-wrote seven of the duo Sonny and Cher's 10 hits, including the #1 "I Got You, Babe." That song enabled Sonny to become the only member of Congress to have a #1 hit. Plus, he was Mayor of Palm Springs for four years (1988-1992). 

Sonny and Cher had their own TV variety show from 1971 to 1974. They rank as the third most successful married couple on the pop chart. It's hard to say who's actually #1-2, however.  Les Paul and Mary Ford had seven top 10's and two #1's....but so did the Captain and Tennille.

The music industry will be in a really bad place fairly soon. I just got another email from a computer analyst company suggesting that I should try to find new artists on Soundcloud since it’s a platform used by artists that don’t want to sign up for distribution.

To be honest, if you as an A&R are only looking for numbers on Soundcloud,  you are not really an A&R, you are just a person that wants to cut percentages into artist money. Today it’s not hard to get distribution, and it’s not expensive either. An artist that releases music and doesn’t want to get it through a distributor to get it onto normal listening devices is probably not even worth pursuing. They are definitely not taking their career for seriously. Soundcloud is a great tool for sharing music if you just want to share the music that you are making. In regards to a career it’s mainly just a promotional tool.

All humans know it: there’s nothing quite like feeling that exquisite mind and body rush and intrinsic connection when you’re in the presence of the one you love. Ottawa-based pianist and composer Huguette Lavigne has captured that complex and thrilling set of emotions in her latest contemporary instrumental single, “I’ll Make You Happy” – check it out on YouTube here:

Lavigne’s joyous piece, with its ascending and descending progressions, excitement building crescendos, and a touch of nostalgia, takes you on a very similar ride to the one your heart takes when falling in love.

“A blush radiating from the core. A twinkle in the eye and your heart tells you what to do,” describes the Ottawa-based piano innovator. “When there is no need to say anything. When anything can happen.

“So, you see? Flirting can open the door to a nice conversation.”

(online edition)

Organizers of the Third Annual SPEAK MUSIC Be Kind Festival – taking place on one night only, Saturday, February 12, 2022, as a free, virtual event – are thrilled to announce another impressive lineup. The 2022 edition - which includes artists Beny Esguerra, Kunle,  Ian Lake, Sophie Lukacs, Moonfruits,  Grainne Ryan, Tannis Slimmon, Julian Taylor, and Caroline Wiles – will be presented in pre-recorded video performances, via our festival website, linking to our SPEAK Music Be Kind YouTube channel and Facebook. Donations this year go to the Anishnawbe Health Foundation. For more information on the festival and for updates, please visit our website | Facebook page.