It seems like every country has its own showcase festival now. They are popping up like mushrooms and today you can visit a showcase every week somewhere around the world. The problem right now is many of the new ones might not have the quality to is sufficient to spend your money on them. It’s getting harder and harder to be relevant and the competition is high.

SPIKE is Bulgaria’s first showcase and had its premiere 26 to 29 of May in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. A reason why showcase festivals haven’t been present in Bulgaria before is the lack of an export office and a production company. This edition has been brought up by the private companies PanHarmony and Blue Hills Events that wanted to invest in the Bulgarian scene and take Bulgarian music out of Bulgaria.

I was in a meeting with a new artist in one of the showcase festivals I recently visited. Yes, the ones that follow me on social media had seen that I generally do a showcase festival a week, traveling around the globe to just restart my network that is lighting up again after the pandemic.

So here I was again, having a meeting with an artist. The artist had done their homework and presented their career and what they wanted to do, so far so good. They had pretty good plans and did understand the problem they would face doing different things to get their career going. I gave some of my tips of what I thought would be good things to do. I didn’t have a chance to listen to their music before the meeting, but afterwards they sent me links to their new unreleased stuff to listen to it.

Here starts the problem. The music they sent was really not good. If it was just the production you maybe just could have told them to re-record the stuff, but here it was down to the level that the song was not even well written.

For many artists, revisiting their archives can unearth a creative gem initially overlooked or forgotten about altogether. Montréal singer-songwriter, guitarist, and storyteller Danny Blueberry discovered such treasure by traveling back to his imaginative beginnings to bring forth a raucous, cautionary tale for his new single and video, “Space Guppies” – check it out YouTube here:

A trippy, rockin’ dive into the deep waters of Blueberry’s fervent imagination, “Space Guppies” has the perfect sing-along-able chorus that conjures up images of packed clubs of pogo-sticking fans shouting “Ahhhhhh - space! Ahhhhh- guppies!” while Blueberry and his band rock it out on stage.

“This is one of the first songs I wrote,” says Blueberry. “I was about 17 years old and I had a small aquarium in my room.”

“My older sister used to tuck me in as a kid by playing Bob Dylan,” multi-Platinum-selling and JUNO Award winner Barney Bentall shares on the topic of his newly released single and video, “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go” – check it out on YouTube here:

Available now, and fresh from the -based artist’s new album, Cosmic Dreamer, the family’s choice of a lullaby library “left an indelible impression that continues to this day.”

So much so that the -based artist would include his own take on the Dylan piece on the release of his most recent album, Cosmic Dreamer — out now via True North Records.

In it, Bentall collaborates with long-time friend Valentino Trapani — a pal he met just over a decade ago “on a beautiful road in Tuscany,” he recalls.

Right now, there is a kind of chaos in the industry. After COVID now is the time to restart artist projects and at the same time, new artist projects can start. I guess now I can talk about the two things that really kill an artist's career.

Let's start with the first one. You see them quite often since you feel for them. A bunch of new artists that are promoting themselves very intensive. They do everything right by showing up at every conference. They set meetings, and have a business plan. Their social media is on point, and the look and even grants are in place. They just forgot one thing; you need good songs. You can do everything right, but in the end, the songs have to be good. That is the only thing you really can’t paint over or just fake.

There is of course a solution to this, and that is to buy the songs from a songwriter. The feeling I have gotten over the years is that these people that do everything themselves and do it well, also want to control and write the songs, so it usually never goes well when you start to propose that you might want to buy some good songs.

With the world’s climate emergency only getting worse, it’s fitting that Vancouver, BC-born, Victoria, BC-based alt-folk artist Kele Fleming has dialed up the intensity of her call-to-action pop ballad “Vanishing of Bees” with a dark, soaring Synthwave remix and accompanying video – check it out here:

The song, which Fleming and her band released last year with a new live video in honor of the same day, sits at the crossroads of a child’s wonder at discovery and an adult’s grief over what’s been lost. 

“In the song, I call upon the memories of my childhood self — my wonder and love for the natural world,” Fleming shares. “This is contrasted with the adult voice in the song — a voice that expresses grief for what has been lost...

“Youth and the natural world threatened.”

Fresh from a forthcoming genre-bending album brimming with catchy, yet profound, songs, award-nominated songwriter and producer John Tomaino ushers audiences between the stills with a hypnotic new single, “Freeze Frame” – check it out on YouTube here:

Tomaino’s core musical DNA is on full display throughout the track, allowing “Freeze Frame” to serve as a prime preview for the Australian artist’s new album, People Will Talk — due out this Summer 2022 via Epictronic Records.

This is Tomaino’s debut album release, and it showcases not only his genre-bending productions that span EDM, electronic, pop, rock, indie, folk, hip hop, adult contemporary, and more, but also his multiple talents as the release’s writer, arranger, and producer. Despite the astonishing diversity of tunes, however, this is not a compilation album — but rather a cohesive body of work with a strong identity.

A mother’s love for her child is pure, enduring, and unbreakable, and we celebrate that inviolable bond between mothers and their children every Mother’s Day. Acclaimed Canadian soprano Tonia Evans Cianciulli marks this lifelong bond as she releases two songs she created with her daughter and son when they were both children — “Always Her Home” and “Hold His Heart”. Check them out on YouTube here:
“Always Her Home”:

“Hold His Heart”:

I was writing a column not long ago about how you should network right now. I had a thing in the back of my mind when I wrote that on a trend that is starting to develop. The conferences and showcase festivals have made it really easy to access people. In reality, though you are accessing valuable time. Most people even speakers don’t really get paid to be at conferences or showcases. If you are at the top, you get your flights and hotels covered and at best your food paid. You do this to further build your network  and you need it so you really don’t do this to make money. In most cases, you lose money to be on them if you just count costs. The payment is that you get greater contacts and can make money out of that, but that is a far way down the road.

Since you are at these conferences probably paying in some way or another you need to get your bang for the buck. You need to get meetings with people that can take your company forward and you need more of it now than ever as we open up again for the comeback of the live industry after the pandemic. You want meetings with people who are at the same level as you  and that can take you forward.

Movies and television shows would lack so much dimension and emotional heft without being accompanied by music so, why shouldn’t a book have a soundtrack too? That’s a question author and composer Patrick Kimmell was likely asking himself before composing the downloadable soundtrack to his novel Two Lives to a Destiny.

Kimmell and his musical partner and arranger Andrei Panasevich, also known as Mel & Harmon, have created 11 original compositions to musically illustrate the chapters of Kimmell’s novel Two Lives to a Destiny. Designed to be listened to while reading the novel, the soundtrack is a first-of-its-kind endeavor, adding musical context to the book’s narrative and an enhanced dimension to reader’s emotional experience.

Originally published on September 29, 2020, Two Lives to a Destiny is a romantic and suspenseful novel that tells the story of Patrick and Fatima, two lovers engulfed in adventures that separate them from each other. Still, they are willing to live the impossible in order to meet again. Both will need a surmountable amount of strength and faith, to make their love eternal.

There’s a repeated lyric throughout Canadian country rocker Marshall Potts’ new single “Let It All Go” that reflects a heart-over-head life philosophy… That lyric is ‘climb aboard my heart’ and it’s fitting because Potts takes us on a journey of heart-centered discovery — both in terms of self and in terms of the human condition.

Check it out “Let It All Go” on YouTube here:

A multi-layered mix of violin, banjo, and acoustic and electric guitar, “Let It All Go” – off Potts’ brand-new album The Storm, both available now – is a heady mix of country jangle and big, full-bodied pop production. Full of uplifting crescendos and fist-pumping choruses, it’s the kind of song that makes you want to roll down the windows and let the breeze blow through your hair. And once you get out of the car, you might even feel a catharsis.

Canadian 3x JUNO Award-nominees and 4x Canadian Folk Music Award-winners Sultans of String release their latest single, “Hurricane”; featuring Turkish pop superstar Suat Suna recording English vocals for the first time.

Watch and listen to “Hurricane” on YouTube here:

The NY Times and BILLBOARD charting world music supergroup collaborated with Suat Suna for the new song fresh from their eighth and most recent album, Sanctuary: The Refugee Project.

Suat Suna has released 12 studio albums selling millions of copies in his native Turkey. Born in Istanbul to a master violin father, he started learning the violin at the age of four. Suat graduated from Istanbul University Conservatory and started winning many awards, leading to becoming a giant of Turkish pop music, touring endlessly across the country.

I remember the board meeting the first year I was getting my network together. This is over fifteen years ago, so the concept was new to go around and attend different events to build up a strong network to get your music out into the world. Before this, you mainly just built networks yearly at Midem in Cannes, France and that was it. As well,  there was a hierarchy that was sometimes very hard to break through.

Heading into the 40^th Anniversary of Canadian Music Week, Singer/Songwriter Michelle Titian is excited to be performing at an official showcase, opening for the Rasta Phil & Friends show at The Revival Bar in Toronto on June 9^th, 2022.

A natural talent with a powerful story, Michelle Titian is a world-class Canadian singer-songwriter who brings raw emotion and real substance to a yearning music industry. With poignant lyrics and emotive performances, Michelle’s upcoming album is a true testament to the strength that can manifest through vulnerability and the beautiful connections that can be built through an honest soul.

Michelle’s intrinsic musical talent allows her to effortlessly arrange melodies and harmonies that tap into human emotions and share artful lyrics that speak to the human soul. Her songs are an open and unashamed exposure of her battle with alcohol and depression, her journey to recovery and the love she feels for her life now.

When we reached the end of 2020, it could certainly be said that “never has there ever been a year like this.” Then, 2021 came along and upped the ante with more chaotic uncertainty. Now, with just one-third of another year behind us, British-Canadian singer-songwriter, composer, and multi-award-winning producer Chris Birkett is musically posing the question that’s on everyone’s minds: ‘What about you, 20-2-2? in this, his new single “2022” – check it out on YouTube here:

New Year’s Eve makes most of us reflective of the year that was and anticipatory of what’s to come but, for Chris Birkett, it also generated a creative spark.