Thriving in the music industry, especially during the past few years, are much the same virtues needed in our day-to-day lives: purpose, knowledge, drive, ingenuity, adaptability… Leave it up to accomplished Canadian progressive rock quartet The Garrett Band to both encapsulate and demonstrate all of these, and more, in their powerful and moving new single, “One More Day”.

Check it out here on YouTube:

The second single release from the band’s fourth studio recording, Sound Evolution, the exceptionally talented Vancouver-based artists don’t shy away from shining the spotlight on some pretty tough subject matter across the five-track EP.

Artists are Cattle! I guess that is what Alfred Hitchcock would say around today's music industry. He once said that actors are cattle. Or what he really said was - Fundamentally, actors are a race apart. This group is divided into two sections: first, those who have talent and have never received any recognition for it, and, second, those who have received recognition without having any talent. Either way, they're cattle.

When asked if he ever said that actors are cattle he replied, I never said all actors are cattle; what I said was all actors should be treated like cattle.

The problem I have today is that the music industry is really treating the artist like cattle. No, I’m talking about the evil record labels, publishers, or agents whatever has been up to artists to call the players in the music industry. Whatever you have to say about the music industry in the past they still cared about artists. Not all of them and of course there were disputes. I’m talking about the new music industry that has emerged in the past ten years. The digital music industry.

In an all-embracing pleading towards peace, folk-rock singer/songwriter Elowynn gently affirms her powerfully poignant and increasingly timely new single, “Stop the Wheel” is very much a protest song.

Check out “Stop the Wheel” on YouTube here:

Drawing a colourful sign on the ‘island of peace’ she so loves, the track directly addresses the heartfelt need for mindfulness in a fractured world — and features moving chants from multi-award winning, Order of Canada members and multi-honourable doctorate recipients Indigenous Canadian artist and activist Buffy Sainte-Marie, and Inuit artist Tanya Tagaq.

It was a tape of an instrumental track that only cost $15 and took 45 minutes to complete.

Harry Wayne Casey and Rick Finch had been doing such demo tapes for acts like Jimmy Bo Horne and Betty Wright for TK Records in Hialiah, Florida in 1974. Casey felt he couldn't sing the vocals because it would take someone with a higher pitched voice. 

Before scrapping the tape, they took it to TK Records owner Henry Stone and Steve Alaimo, the label's A&R (Artists and Repertoire) man.  "Steve flipped over it," Casey told Superseventies.com, "and said not to change a thing.”

Casey and Finch figured Horne or another aspiring singer could do the vocal. When the latter--George McCrae--walked into the studio the next day, the decision was easy. It took only two takes for George to complete the vocals. "Rock Your Baby" would become a #1 hit and the forerunner of disco music…

The pandemic is still continuing to affect us all. We probably must live with it for several years and have more or less adapted to new rules and regulations. This of course has affected a lot of live establishments, festivals, and other things in the live industry. I guess it’s a bit early to start thinking of major tours and gigs again. That is not the phenomenon I would like to write about. I want to tell you how people value things wrong.

As an artist, you have a value, of course, but the value is also very subjective. You think you can get well paid for a show because you know how much time you have spent writing and rehearsing the show. The problem is that a person that runs a gig place or festival is mainly calculating your value by how many people that will buy a ticket or get into the place and consume food and drinks. It doesn’t matter if you have a great fan base in your home city and actually get some payment for a show. As soon as that fans base is not showing up your value is back again to zero. I meet too many people thinking that your value follows along with your name. It’s not, not even with big stars.

Can music and a mindfully-made playlist soothe and improve health and well-being? Multi-award winning Canadian music therapist Jennifer Buchanan knows it to be so, and shares both how (and why) in her new book, Wellness, Wellplayed: The Power of a Playlist.

“Just like our physical health, our mental health requires attention — perhaps now more than ever,” Buchanan says. “When you are in transition or feeling lost, music can be the lifeline you need to get you through to the next step. Even during the most challenging of times, it can reassure us that everything is going to be okay.”

Diving deep to transform absent-minded playlist-making into an artful form of self-care, Buchanan is a lighthouse in the endless sea of songs across Spotify, SoundCloud, and the like. Cover to cover, the Calgary-based author, entrepreneur, and keynote speaker wastes no time harnessing her leading expertise as a Certified Music Therapist (MTA) to guide readers through building their own thoughtfully compiled playlists — and why they should.

It was not an easy task to list the Top 50 songs that came into the Cashbox office in 2021, and I am sure we missed some of the ones that deserve to be on this list.

Our list is compiled by content; songs that were relevant and moving about our current times with the pandemic, racism, the sad discovery of unmarked graves of Residential School Indigenous children, love and hope and great songs both lyrically and musically.

It was also based on statistic numbers of requests on Cashbox Radio and social media posts about these songs and artists.

The Top 50 Pick Hits is not a chart and the positions are based on alphabetical listings.

Please visit online at https://www.cashboxradio.ca/request-a-song-on-cashbox-radio/ to request your favourite songs.

Tune in Friday January 7 @ 9PM EST to hear all these artists on a special feature show.

Cashbox Canada Top 50 Picks for 2021

(in alphabetical order)

This is my last column for 2021. Another year that was mostly spent on COVID, but also there was a light at the end of the tunnel. We got back a bit to live shows in the Autumn and it’s getting better. We still have to cope with COVID and that will keep on going, so we just have to deal with the uncertainty.

This year doesn’t really have that much happening. It blurs together with 2020 like just another year. Now though at the end of the year, it seems like things are starting to get ready. People start to get ready for the new world. The changes we have talked about are now occuring and I just feel strongly that in January everything will kick into gear.

Can the burst of fresh energy and the promise of possibility a new year brings be embodied in a song? Canada’s JUNO-nominated Toronto Tabla Ensemble have their fingers on the right rhythm to get you up on your feet and dancing into 2022 with their new single and video, “Encore 21” – watch and listen here:

Featuring high velocity tabla and other percussion, along with rapid fire recitation of tabla bols (language) by TTE founder and composer Ritesh Das, “Encore 21” has the power to propel anyone into a joyous state of reverie. However, playing this composition requires a sobering amount of skill and practice.

“I originally wrote this piece for the Youth Ensemble,” explains Das. “A fast-paced and high energy composition to keep their chops up as we slowly emerge from the pandemic and prepare for in person shows again.”

Music’s finest moments are often in those unassuming blips of life where you’re in unassuming places, taking care of the mundane, and a song sends your heart soaring to the depths of nostalgia, forcing you to rewind to a memory…  Light Organ Records has captured that very sentiment in a 14-song strong compilation album that seeks to recreate what you used to know and bring it back to the forefront of your consciousness.

The release is the reimagining of CanCon radio hits of the 70s — each delicately restructured and performed by new-age Light Organ recording artists, and their varieties of styles and ecclesticisms. The first five tracks of Light Organ Records Presents Push Button Radio: CanCon AM Radio Hits From the 70's as Covered by Light Organ Artists, featuring Hotel Mira, The Shilohs, Mounties, Tara Holloway, and The Fugitives are available now.

Check out the Spotify link here: open.spotify.com/album/37z3Lwar8RUoVKoS2x4ADi?si=6m-_WoF3Soqy67w4-qmYbA&nd=1

Ebbing and flowing like an ocean’s waves, healing is a notoriously nonlinear process that is as unpredictable as an insect’s flight from one blossom to the next. Within such, Canadian composer Margaret Maria is guiding audiences on a journey through aspects of the arc with the release of her new album and single, Where Words Fail - Music Through Healing and “Blessing of Awakening”.

Experience “Blessing of Awakening” here: open.spotify.com/track/7rEYQ2WPh1ThJwAGjkInJO?si=d6fa82903a894f58&nd=1

As the release’s opening song, “Blessing of Awakening” gives sound to a languid awakening, followed by the mounting busyness of getting to whatever it is that calls for attention; slow and meandering at the start, like rolling over with the first light shining through the window, the pace picks up, driving and percussive — rounding up the kids, spilling your coffee, looking for your keys.

Let’s go down to if it’s really worth it to make a Xmas song. If you make a mega-hit like Mariah Carey's “All I Want For Christmas Is You” and then the world plays the shit out of the song every December each year, yes you probably will laugh when you go to the bank. The problem I see is how many songs that never get any recognition.

I was driving in my car today. Last year one of my favorite stations decided to just play X-mas music the whole of December. It was awful so I turned that station off and forgot about the station until March when I released that they had stopped the X-mas music. Maybe they understood the problem with their decision because this year, they are just playing X-Mas songs here and there. There are people that just love X-mas and want to have X-mas music, and the glitter and the decorations and just love it so much that they can have it all year round, but I am guessing they are pretty few and far between. It’s probably the same people that eat hard bread with ketchup, there are people doing that, but luckily, they are few and far between as well.

If there’s one thing award-winning Canadian electronic artist, producer and events/label Vibe Raiders co-founder Jay Slay is certain of this holiday season (and beyond), it’s that it’s going to be A Very Vibin’ Christmas all-around.

Landing as the first in an inventive annual series reimagining holiday classics by way of electro, dance, and EDM flavours, so goes the title of the multi-talented DJ and classically trained pianist’s newly minted seasonal offering.

The six-track A Very Vibin’ Christmas includes modern takes on the likes of “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” “The First Noel,” “Silent Night,” and more, and welcomes guests such as Los Angeles-based Nevve, one of the world’s top electronic vocal crews with over 1+ Billion streams, and NYC-based American Idol finalist Robbie Rosen to the featured roster alongside Victoria, BC-based Scarlett Darling and Edmonton, AB-based Kelly Alaina.

Check out this cool Christmas offering on Spotify here: open.spotify.com/album/20BbNJCmSojKljlrtyFQU7?si=T8jIrGQ5TpiTSlCbFuVC1g&nd=1

With the holidays in full swing, radio is on high rotation of the usual Christmas hits and the nostalgic classics, but in keeping with our beliefs in giving Indies and Legendary artists to be played on the same shows we are doing a special Pick Hit list for the Holidays.

At Cashbox Canada and Cashbox Radio, we have been receiving some great new Christmas tunes and I would like to share the second round of Top Cashbox Radio Christmas Pick Hits that are now being played on Cashbox Radio.

We would really love if you give these songs a boost by listening to Cashbox Radio, and heading to our Request link here:
https://www.cashboxradio.ca/request-a-song-on-cashbox-radio/

Who knows? Maybe that future classic is right here on the Top Pick Hits – more to come next week!

Because at Cashbox Radio we believe someone has to play that future hit for the first time – and we want it to be us!

There are lots of songs about Santa, but very few pay adequate tribute to just what a diligent, hardworkin’ guy he is. Multi-award nominated Canadian country crooner Lisa Richard is on a merry mission to do just that with the release of her fun, energetic new single, “Jolly Ol’ Saint Nick” — available now.

“I wanted to create a song that felt like a down-home country Christmas singalong, and have people feel like a kid again,” Richard says. “Something to put a smile on your face, tap your toes, and share with family and friends.”

The song starts out with the scratchy rotation of an old record, followed by Christmas bells, and then the guitar and the banjo chime in. That’s when we immediately figure out that Lisa Richard and her band are about to give us a proper country Christmas song. The pace picks up, and that’s when you realize it’s the kind that makes you want to grab your family and friends for a little line dance across the living room. You might even want to shout the lyrics along with the chorus.

Our global pandemic storm isn’t over quite yet but, the end of 2021 certainly feels more like we’re all coming together again rather than drifting further apart, doesn’t it? Right on time, Canadian Celtic folk rocker Séan McCann brings us a rollicking new song that celebrates the power of love’s connection even from “10,000 Miles Away”.

The second single landing from the Newfoundland born-and-bred troubadour’s critically acclaimed and isolation inspired folk opus, SHANTYMAN, “10,000 Miles Away” could very well be the happiest song ever written and recorded about long distance love. It’s irresistible to tap or clap along with the hand jive rhythm and join McCann on the rousing “Sing blow ye winds high-o” chorus.

Check out “10,000 Miles Away” here: