I recently saw an interview with the Swedish megastar Zara Larsson. It was some famous magazine that was getting the grand tour of her apartment. Then she was in various Swedish media coverage saying that she had been smoking a lot of weed lately but has now stopped doing that.  Strange thing is I first noticed that we haven’t heard from Zara for long while. I looked in both interviews but none said anything about new music.

Then just days later I saw an ad for her new album “Postergirl”. Of course Zara Larsson has great, smart teams working around her to get her exposure. The two interview looks like they are just taken out of the blue, that she just one day felt like showing off her apartment for a magazine or doing a “dark” confession. The truth is that in today’s media world the fact that you release new music is not good enough news.

When you’ve been making music for as long as folk music icon Judy Collins, songs become more than just familiar melodies, they’re treasured memories connecting you to people and places of your past. For her newest collection of recent recordings, White Bird - Anthology Of Favorites, Collins has hand-selected a number of songs that remain dear to her heart so much so that she can still remember exactly where she was the first time she heard them. Take for instance, this story Collins shares about one of her best-known, most beloved songs, “It was 1967 when I received a phone call at three in the morning from Al Cooper, the founder of Blood Sweat & Tears. He said he followed this girl home from a bar where she had told him she was a songwriter. She played him some of her songs and after she played him one particular song, he picked up the phone and called me. He put the girl on the phone and Joni Mitchell sang me her great song ‘Both Sides Now.’”

This week we highlight ICNA Relief Food Bank 6120 Montevideo Rd. Unit #4
Mississauga, Tel: 905-858-1067
Email: mississaugafb@icnareliefcanada.ca Because of CoVid, please contact before going.

Support your local food bank. The need is real.

Spring has sprung

And this new death is still among Us. 

Please, mask up, keep your distance. The light is in sight but we’re still in the tunnel.

Stepping in with a soulful talent comes with a side of brash, Toronto musician Taylor Abrahamse has just released new single, “I Don't Care Anymore", a sunny ballad with a Seventies lyrical sweet spot between James Taylor and Randy Newman, on a bed of beautiful melodic instrumentation. "I Don't Care Anymore" dropped Monday, March 22nd.

Check the heart tugging falsetto of ‘I Don’t Care Anymore’ live

Hell no. This Toronto foursome reaches way, way back to the Golden Era of rockabilly bad-asses like The Big Bopper, Link Wray, Gene Vincent, Carl Perkins and Sonny Burgess as inspiration for their surly and unruly brand of rockabilly.

Here’s how they see it. “Shook Boys are a wild rockabilly band. They don’t play music to fall in love to, they play nasty stuff that boils primitive urges to the surface - like when you’re feeling right but doin’ wrong.”

“ Distilled from the Toronto’s rockin’ scene and forming in the summer of 2019 they got Murry up front; making people scream before he opens his mouth, Paddy on drums just banging and yellin’, Steve beating out notes on the double bass, and Big Mark with the amplified guitar - not thinking,  just keepin’ the chords live. Always impeccably dressed, when the band hits the floor during their electrifying live shows, vintage clothing enthusiasts get squirrely at the sight of filthy stage grime being ground into gabardine… and they don’t treat their instruments any better.”

Check out Shook Boys Live here:

Okay in Sweden the booking scene is kind of strange. It’s not working as the rest of the world since the agencies are often the promoters and also the bookers. Still, I can easily see what happens here might eventually happen to the rest of the world.

Of course, the COVID situation has left most of these companies in a tailspin. We don’t know how many they really laid off. And like the rest of the world,  some have jumped off and started new secret companies not yet to be seen in the light. What has been very evident is that the artist has been changing companies like crazy. The agencies have been more or less competing to get newsletters out with their latest signings. Still, it’s the same old artist-changing agency that probably won’t survive anyway when the whole system and network changes in a couple of months.

This week we salute ICNA Relief Food Bank 6120 Montevideo Rd. Unit #4
Mississauga, Tel: 905-858-1067
Email: mississaugafb@icnareliefcanada.ca
Because of COVID, please contact before going.

Support your local food bank. The need is real.

Stepping in with action from Alabama Shakes drivin’ wheel Brittany Howard. The high flying singer/guitarist shares a cover of Jackie Wilson’s "(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher" available on Amazon Music as part of the service’s programming for Women’s History Month.

Listen to Brittany Howard’s "(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher"
amzn.to/BrittanyHoward

Back in the days before the internet when the music industry sold plastic discs at high prices, you could get away with just a slick production. To produce a good album in the 70/80 and 90’s there was a different set of rules. First of all, it was very few releases. Mainly because it was expensive to get the music out. It was pressing, mastering, recording, photographs, or, and much more. In the end, an album could have the same budget as a small independent movie. Of course with that risk, you also needed to be very sure what to pick. You had to choose carefully with songs that should be on there and if they were good.

Back in the days these were called demos. A quick, dirty recording of just how the song really sounded. Mainly it showed if the song was a good song. You always knew there would be a producer that would change the sound and the final recording. I remember in the studio when I was hanging and learning about my first recording session, there was a sign on it that said “You can’t make gold out of cowshit”. Closest I guess would be “You can’t polish a turd”.

Canadian singer/songwriter Joseph Brooks Organ is anything but bereft as he celebrates the release of his freshly pressed album offering, Lovelorn.

From start to finish, lush arrangements reinforce Organ’s lyrical storytelling, field guiding listeners along a narrative path through all the stages — for better or worse — of a love ultimately lost.

There’s hand wringing, there’s reflection, and even a dark comedic underbelly; in other words, it’s Joseph Brooks Organ’s signature song-based storytelling in prime form.

Mixed, mastered and featuring Damian Dobrowolski (Re:Verse, Tribe Called Red), the release also showcases the sonic stylings of Zach Bines (Weaves, Tim Baker, Sarah Harmer), Michael Tobin (L’Dor V’Dor, I Lost My Mind), Anh Phung (Hairbrain, Tullstars), Daniel Pencer (Andy Shauf), Taylor McGee (Musica Reflecta), Andrea Stewart (Collectif 9), and Spencer Cole (Weaves).

It’s a remix for the JUNO Award-nominated and chart-topping Canadian all-girl supergroup Girl Pow-R in more ways than one… The Toronto-based teen popsters have divvied up their mega-talents into three mini-groups, and released two hi-hat trap remixes for “Fun All Day” and “Friends Click”.

“Friends Click (Remix)” is the premiere offering from the newly minted Girl Pow-R branch, The Squad — featuring Arielle, Cindy, Emma, and Ida-Maria. Listen to “Friends Click (Remix)” here on YouTube:

“This song is all about that magic chemistry that happens between you and your good friends — like the girls in Girl Pow-R,” says The Squad. “You don’t need 100 friends, just one. And when you find that one, and you click, the rest is history!”

I have been spending a lot of time on online conferences again. Last year I did over 30 of them and now they are becoming frequent again. But online conferences will never replace the real meetings at an “in-person" conference. One thing has really stood out though during these times. The online world is a much harder place for the artist to connect and get anything done.

Too many of the people I meet at these conferences are doing two serious mistakes. Mistakes I personally also do, so it’s a human thing. Either they contact everyone they just see at the conference, more or less just asking the person if they have an opportunity for them. A hard question since I haven’t checked you out or know what you are doing. The other mistake is just hanging around and really not presenting yourself to anybody. You feel that you don’t have anything to offer  so you mainly just sit there and wait for the persons that contact everybody to show up. In the end, the match between these two is non-existent.

Upbeat, futuristic, and slightly surreal: It’s electro art-pop project David Poole’s world, and by the sounds of his new EP, DPEP, and single “I’m a Snake,” we’re lucky to be spinning in it.

Check out the video on YouTube of “I’m a Snake”:

After more than 25 years apart, London, ON’s hard rock influencers, Blu Bones, have reunited to bring fans a colourful and rockin’ new single, “She’s Got a Way with Love”. Watch the Video on YouTube here

This week we spotlight:
Thornhill Food Bank 1 Leaside Park Dr Unit 5B, Toronto, East York Office phone  647-428-9755
Email thorncliffefb@icnareliefcanada.ca

COVID19 -- Food bank open by appointment only, call and leave message at any time but please do not call Mon or Thurs * counselling service by phone -- call for appointment or visit website to register

Stepping in with this pumped up Motown flavoured number that doesn’t need to wave its politics in your face, but such is the nature of the times that being about the music just isn’t enough anymore.

This week we spotlight Second Harvest Central Food Bank
1450 Lodestar Road Unit 18 Toronto.
Tel: 416-408-2594 email@secondharvest.ca

Member agencies have been coping with the new realities of providing emergency food relief during COVID, whether it’s changing their community dining programs to take away meals or offering prepared hampers instead of food bank access. Many agencies have closed their doors, which has put further strain on the food resources of agencies that have remained open. Support your local food bank. The need is dire.

One of the bands I work with once said, “Better to do something than do nothing at all”. Another quote is the circus owner Phineas T. Barnum that said, “There's no such thing as bad publicity”. Of course, in the worst situations, there is bad publicity and doing things totally wrong. In most cases, it’s not. And I feel many withhold themselves just by being afraid making a mistake.

Doing nothing is really safe, I can admit that. Progression wise though it’s pure stupidity. Without taking chances you are not going further. My biggest successes have been through mistakes. Also, a lot of knowledge comes from making mistakes. There is a difference between making mistakes and making mistakes.

I sent out a newsletter today. It was very fast because I had just two hours between two different quite important panels and today was the last day we could get the letter out before we got new numbers to send to in our mailing system. Of course, I had to put things together in no time. No chance to double-check. Not even the links and spelling were just through the spelling program.

Multi-GRAMMY and JUNO Award-winning artist Chin Injeti releases a rallying cry of self-love and reliance in this, his new single “For The Love Of Life”.

Check out the YouTube video of “For The Love Of Life” here:

And it wasn’t completed without some of Injeti’s tenured collaborative magic; he called upon fellow Vancouverite Teon Gibbs to feature on the track.

With a burgeoning catalog at 255,000+ streams across Spotify alone, “For The Love Of Life” is Injeti’s first of the year, and follows 2020 offerings of “Let Go,” “Serious,” and “Falling” — the latter of which featured Esthero on accompanying vox and Delhi 2 Dublin’s Tarun Nayer on tabla.