2018 ALGMS Winner to be Announced Amongst  Performances from Previous Recipients, Tuesday, September 25, 2018 @ Grossman’s Tavern, 379 Spadina Avenue in Toronto.

The Amy Louie / Grossman’s Music Scholarship continues to accept submissions ahead of its annual ALGMS Fundraiser at Grossman’s Tavern this September 25th. The submission window closes September 14th.

The ALGMS is an artist development bursary created in honour of the late Amy Louie, whose family has been a mainstay in the local music community and owned Grossman’s Tavern since 1975.

Since the scholarship’s inception in 2013, it has grown to a disbursement of $2,000. The prize is awarded annually to a group or individual artist from the Greater Toronto Area whose winning project proposal demonstrates how the bursary would advance their music career.

LABEL: REHN MUSIC GROUP

Last single “Slide” was added to Spotify New Music Friday lists in Germany, Switzerland,Norway, Denmark & Iceland as well as native Spotify-playlisting on lists as "Hangover Friendly" and "New Talent" Slide was also featured in various blogs as museek.de - altitude - dansendeberen - popmuzik.se and more.

Simon Alexander is announced for Sweden’s biggest Showcase Festival LIVE AT HEART in September 2018. http://liveatheart.se. Then in October, it is on to the Oxjam Camden Festival - London UK - German Tour spring 2019.

With a sound influenced by greats like Jeff Buckley and Neil Young to more modern songwriters like Hozier and Matt Corby, Simon Alexander is taking on the Singer/Songwriter - Folk/Indie scene bringing his profound lyrics and heartfelt melodies.

Simon Alexander was born and raised on the west coast of Sweden. From early years the interest for music was immense, and Simon spends the majority of his time as a drummer in various constellations while writing on his own material behind closed doors.

Some say this is pop music for your mind’s eye. With songs that play like home movies rich in imagery and characters, Colour Film is the stage name of Hamilton, ON's multitalented Matthew de Zoete. The moniker embodies his idea of songs as little films, where a combination of characters, stories, and emotions create a visual element in the listener's mind. His latest release Super 8 blends pop and folk to set six of these cinematic songs in an atmospheric soundscape conjured with producer Les Cooper (Jill Barber, Good Lovelies). Imagine Nick Drake cheering up a bit and meeting Beck.

Since 2006, de Zoete (pronounced "duh-ZOO-tuh") has released three previous albums under his own name and toured throughout North America and Europe. He has shared the stage with acts such as Serena Ryder, Great Lake Swimmers, and Whitehorse, and he's performed at festivals including North by Northeast, Canadian Music Week, JUNOfest, and Stukafest (Netherlands).

James Leblanc and The Winchesters are trying hard to reach their goal on Pledge Music but still need your help. James and The Winchesters are based in the Muscle Shoals area and are hard at work at The Nutthouse Recording Studio recording their album ‘The Devil Between My Ears’. Bandleader James Leblanc, “Thanks for this opportunity to keep getting the word out. The first thing I want y’all to know is I ’m grateful to be able to make records. We have a blast doing it and it’s so much fun. I am pumped for this album, it’s going to a little different from my solo CDs, a little more of a band feel and is gonna be a little more aggressive. We will be exploring some southern rock aspects of ourselves, a little more edge to it musically. Plus my lady, the super talented is gonna be steppin’ out and singin’ some leads, so I’m pumped. And I am happy to tell you that the new album is coming along. We still need your help with pre-orders through our PledgeMusic campaign.”

On August 6, 1988, thirty years ago Monday, August 6, 1988, thousands of "American Top 40" fans tuned in to hear Casey Kasem do what was believed to be his very last AT40 show. Shadoe Stevens would replace him at the mike the following week. Fans particularly wanted to hear how Casey would end the show, fully expecting him to say goodbye.

Only he didn't. After promoting his TV show, Casey said, "Til then, keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars."

No farewell from Casey...but that was because it really WASN'T "farewell" for him. He would be back. The ABC network would actually PAY Casey to NOT count 'em down for the rest of 1988 and the first two weekends of 1989. But that's when Casey's contract with ABC expired. On the weekend of January 21, 1989, Casey sounded like he'd never been away when he debuted with "Casey's Top 40" on the Westwood One radio network. He was just starting a then-unheard-of radio contract for a disc jockey....five years, $15 million.

Musician, Producer, Arranger, Publisher, Studio Owner, best-selling Author; Norbert Putnam has had a lot of awards and accolades thrust upon him in his long illustrious career and is about to have another to add to his collection. On August 13th, 2018, three days after his birthday and three days prior to the anniversary of the death of one of Norbert’s favorite artists to have played on sessions with his true, close friend, Elvis Presley, he will be honored in Memphis Tennessee with a Brass Note on Beale Street. Known as the Beale Street Brass Note Walk of Fame it was started to offer a tangible embodiment of the many talented people who had put Memphis music and Beale Street on the world map and includes musicians, composers, disc jockeys, promoters and music supporters with celebrating them on the concrete sidewalks along Beale Street.

Just about the time, David Byrne was stagger dancing around a grey stage to "Blind", bulldozers were leveling the Beijing studio of dissident artist Ai Wei Wei, as arts programs across North America were getting the shiv in the ribs and Riot Pussy are again doing time. Once again, subversive art is under attack everywhere. So layered with the joyous and uplifting, especially as in bodies out of seats. David was a laying out a to-do list for the resistance. Ah, but we were there for the music and that never flagged nor disappointed. The set covered material from Talking Heads, Byrne solo albums from all periods, some collabs, a Love The Giant and some from the newbie, most given redos to fit a fun and funky vibe.

Listening to Honyock feels like walking through a post-war home that hasn’t been redecorated since 1975. Here, smoke-stained curtains obscure a hazy sun and a floral couch faces a stern stone fireplace. And, here, a dusty electric organ rests against a wood-paneled wall where, in any other house, a flat screen might sit. But while sitting at the Formica table beside a rattling, honey-colored Frigidaire, this home feels familiar, comfortable. This transportive power of Honyock’s music, though, is no serendipitous accident. Indeed, their first full-length El Castillo, produced by David Vandervelde (Father John Misty, Jay Bennett), seems like the outcome of some cosmic strategy—of fate, or something similar.

Like the best bands that take cues from the past—Wilco and Dr. Dog, Whitney and Kevin Morby, The Sacramento four piece combines the aesthetic of this era with songwriting that’s as distinctive as it is memorable. “Patron” features a dusty, retro aesthetic—a sun-faded roadside hotel, a cactus’s long shadow. It’s hard not to hear Elvis Costello or Roy Orbison in this opening track.

Elvis Costello and The Imposters – Steve Nieve (keyboards), Davey Faragher (bass), Pete Thomas (drums) – have made a sensational new album that ranks alongside the best work this singularly great artist has ever produced.

Recorded in Hollywood, New York City and Vancouver, British Columbia, Look Now is beautiful in its simplicity, reflective in its lyrical vision, surrounded by melodies and orchestrations that are nothing short of heavenly. It’s the first album Costello has made with The Imposters since the 2008 release of Momofuku and his first new album since the acclaimed 2013 Roots collaboration, Wise Up Ghost.

Anyone anywhere in the world who has seen Elvis Costello and The Imposters live can testify to their unmitigated swagger. Costello’s suspicion that it was time to return to the studio was confirmed while on the Imperial Bedroom & Other Chambers tour of the USA, last summer and he realized the power and sheer musicality of The Imposters had never really been fully captured on one record.

Alternative pop duo Lightning Echoes is taking listeners on a spherical journey of sound with their newest release, “In Circles”, available now from the usual suspects.

The Vancouver-based pairing is equal parts singer/songwriter Kaitlin Deavy and producer Alejandro Zarazúa. Having teamed up in February 2018 amidst their respective studies on music and production, the multi-instrumentalists were driven by their shared vision of music and human connection. On “In Circles” you’ll hear seemingly simple melodies swirling among complex layers of indie, folk, and what the two call “smart pop” elements.

The Guess Who are responsible for countless rock classics, which still retain a major presence on rock radio - “American Woman,” “No Time,” “These Eyes,” etc. The band is set to return on September 14^th with their latest album, ‘The Future IS What It Used To Be’, released via Cleopatra Records (available in CD, Vinyl, and Digital formats).

The band is Garry Peterson (Drums, Vocals), D# (Lead Vocals, Guitar, Piano), Will E. (Guitar, Harp, Vocals), Leonard Shaw (Keyboards, Flute, Sax, Vocals), and Rudy Sarzo (Bass, Vocals). The album’s first single,‘Playin’ on the Radio’, will be released on July 17^th. It can be heard on Spotify, Apple Music and other streaming services. Also featured on the album are several special guests including, Tommy Shaw (Styx) on vocals, Brent Fitz (Slash, Gene Simmons) percussion, Jim Kale (Guess Who founding member) and Michael Devin (Whitesnake) on bass guitar.

They’re back! Sylvia Tyson and Scarlet Rivera will once again light up Hugh’s Room stage on August 7th.  They last appeared there together in 2016 where they put on a show for the ages and there’s no reason to believe that this upcoming night won’t be just as epic Canada’s living legend and a huge part of the fabric of Canadiana and our roots, Sylvia Tyson is a joy to watch and I’m pretty sure  she will  perform some staples from the Ian and Sylvia days including “Someday Soon” and “Four Strong Winds” And her big hit as a songwriter that she performed two years ago where she said “the first song I ever wrote in 1962,” which  was “You Were On My Mind” a big hit for We Five”. Sylvia said tongue in cheek, “My accountant asked me if I could write another one of these.”

Violin legend Scarlet Rivera is the perfect compliment to Sylvia spellbinding presentation. Scarlet is a legend in her own right having performed with Bob Dylan in The Rolling Thunder Review among a host of others greats.

Alt-country/Americana artist Rayland Baxter has offered a new song from the Butch Walker-produced project, Wide Awake.. "79 Shiny Revolvers" was the first song Rayland wrote during his three-month-long isolation quest at Franklin, Kentucky's secluded Thunder Sound Studios. He composed fifty songs there, ten of which eventually became Wide Awake.

"79 Shiny Revolvers" is, in Rayland's own estimation, one of the most important songs he's ever written. Its lyrics burst with irony and cutting humour to interrogate our nation's fixation on guns: "You really wanna save the world, man / well, I wanna save it too / we can blow em away / the American way."

“This was the hardest song for me to sing on the album,” says Amos Lee of Hang On, Hang On – the cathartic and soulful ballad at the center of his upcoming My New Moon (August 31 / Dualtone Records). While the record is largely focused on Amos finding strength in the courage of others – from relationships he built through Musicians on Call and the Wounded Warrior Project to inspiration he took from the Parkland survivors - Hang On, Hang On sees Amos use these experiences to work through profound loss in his own life. Written after Amos lost his grandmother, the song is set around the last night he spent with her: “I would’ve stayed forever,” he sings, “but it didn’t work out that way.”

Listen to Hang On, Hang On, here.

True that storytelling through song has never been a weak point for JUNO Award-winning Barney Bentall. He continues to prove this with a rare excursion into single land on “Don’t Wait For Me Marie” and its cinematic, century-swapping video, available on YouTube now!

Between frames of fire and wild horses comes the tale of languished lust and Western greed, woven in a way only Bentall can deliver.

The song, of note, is one of many on The Drifter & The Preacher that Bentall says “ultimately wrote itself.

“There are times I look back and think, ‘well, that’s not where I thought this one was going to go,’” says Bentall. “With ‘Don’t Wait For Me Marie’ I thought, ‘I’m going to write a song about a guy leaving the Fraser Valley near Vancouver in the 1800s to look for gold in the Cariboo.’ I wanted it to be an uptempo bluegrass song because we were starting The High Bar Gang… I was very immersed in that style of music.

Six-time Blues Music Award nominee Trudy Lynn will release her new CD, Blues Keep Knockin’ from Connor Ray Music on July 27. Backing Trudy’s vocals on the new disc are musicians Steve Krase – harmonica; David Carter – guitar; Terry Dry – bass; Matt Johnson – drums; Jim Brady – trumpet; and Dan Carpenter – sax; with special guests Bob Lanza and Carolyn Wonderland on guitar.

Trudy was recently honored with three nominations for the Living Blues Magazine Awards, with voting currently underway at the magazine’s website: www.livingblues.com.

“I want to thank all my blues fans new and old, or should I say ‘mature,’ for being with me through my journey with the blues, both near and far,” Trudy says in the album liner notes. “My name is Trudy Lynn and I sing the blues for you, some old some new and some borrowed too. I love singing the blues! The blues knocks on my door, on my window and my heart. I must sing and I sing only what I feel and I sing to make you feel exactly what I feel!”

What do you get when you cross 3 amazing saxophonists dressed in wacky clothes, a crazy dancing drummer and a killer upright bass player and have them sing songs about Buses, Roaches and Hockey that spend 1/2 their time playing in the audience? The Shuffle Demons, that’s what!!!

The Shuffle Demons are a high-energy Canadian band that blends virtuosic jazz and funk playing with eye-catching costumes and over the top stage antics to produce a kinetic show. A hit at festivals all over the world, the Shuffle Demons are a crowd-pleasing, full-on musical group that backs up wild stage antics with phenomenal playing by some of Canada’s most talented musicians. Therefore, in the teeth of the summer's heat, the contrarian Demons are checking into Hugh's Room Live to go mano a mano with the club's AC system Fri. Jul. 6, showtime 8.30 pm.

The oft enigmatic Wax Mannequin (aka Hamilton, Ontario's Christopher Adeney) dropped his seventh album, Have A New Name, on June 22 through Coax Records/Outside Music The album was launched with Wax Mannequin's June 23 show at This Ain't Hollywood in Hamilton, followed by a full Canadian tour that kicks off July 14 at The Rivoli in Toronto.

As Wax Mannequin, Adeney has established himself as a profound lyricist and songsmith, as well as a self-effacing showman. His music also reveals him to be a student of the human psyche, constantly finding fresh and interesting ways to frame the people we are and the things we encounter. All of that is gloriously displayed on Have A New Name, the result of Adeney reuniting with producer Edwin Burnett, with whom he made some of the first Wax Mannequin recordings in the early 2000s.

World music fusion artist Cari Burdett is bringing her exotic fusion of jazz, art song, folk and opera eastward this June, including dates at the Winnipeg Jazz Festival, Toronto's Burdock Music Hall, and Montreal's Upstairs Jazz B. She'll be accompanied by members of her 4Tet who are also featured in the new video for "De Cara a la Pared," written and originally performed by the late great Lhasa de Sela. The video premiered exclusively at Roots Music Canada.

Juno Award-winning and definitely on a Spring roll, Good Lovelies' are on a tour which began with a buzzworthy show at Massey Hall on Friday, May 11th as special guests of headliner Royal Wood and carries on into June. The set showcases current album, Shapeshifters.

"We are so excited to announce our upcoming Canadian tour," shares the band. "This spring we will bring our new album, Shapeshifters, from Ontario to British Columbia. This tour is the culmination of years of writing and recording our latest album, and we hope you will join us as we, and our friends Mark Mariash (drums) and Steve Zsirai (Bass), bring these new songs to life."