Having forsaken the leafy lanes of Riverdale for the gritty and noisy ambience of downtown, my days start early. It’s barely noon and I’ve already seen on the busy sidewalk out front, a pair of drug deals go down, one involving a period of testy give and take and a panhandling skirmish, all casually ignored by the folks rushing by and around them. A taste of Lou Reed’s paean to the black angel seemed apropos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xcwt9mSbYE

The hardest working band in Australia, King Gizzard &The Lizard Wizard have released their fifteenth studio album -- the thrash metal-worshipping Infest The Rats' Nest via ATO Records. Earlier this week, the septet released a video game revealing their latest single Mars ForThe Rich

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UELbVHComM4

How does an act from Sweden take a chance and go to a Live at Heart Festival on a Peninsula named Burin in Canada’s Newfoundland, write a song and end up on the Swedish Independent Music Chart 10 weeks in a row in a # 1 position, thanks to the fans (who are now friends) that they met there?

This is what Bara Jonson and Free did. “We rented a car, drove through torrential rain, landed in the middle of nowhere at the Marystown Hotel and suddenly you feel like you came ‘home’? There is no explaining it, but that is what happened to us.”

So they went back to Sweden and immediately wrote “Hello Newfoundland” and their newly found friends embraced it. The release of the video included all of the amazing people who forged the road to these lifetime memories and also featured Tale The Rapper.

From there lifelong friendships were forged with the lovely people of Newfoundland and in addition the global delegates who attended became friends and fans, leading to being part of a sanctioned Showcase in Cannes, France at MIDEM 2019, attending Canadian Music Week in 2019,a return to Live at Heart Newfoundland 2019 and Cashbox Canada Showcase at CMW 2020.

There was a kind of interesting article in a newspaper in Sweden how Swedish festivals have changed over the past 10 years. Before many of the festivals were held in some small town in a muddy field. Camping festivals they have named them. Many of them have now been replaced by a large city festival inside parks in a big city.

I don't know if this is just a Swedish phenomenon or if it is a change all over the world? I guess it’s a worldwide phenomenon.

I was recently at Summerfest the world’s largest festival with a million visitors in Milwaukee in USA. It's not a camping festival but held in a park area in the city with permanent structures. What struck me was the vendors. A part of being on the festival back in the days was that you could buy things around your favourite artists or records like they had on Medimex in Italy where I was at the beginning of the month. Also, a festival in the middle of the city.

Glen Foster takes his fun seriously. Especially these days.

"Right now I'm into creating a positive message," explains the veteran singer-songwriter and accomplished guitar slinger. "I want to be encouraging and not just concentrate on all the negative things in the world. As a musician, an entertainer, I want to be uplifting, put a smile on somebody's face and maybe make them laugh a little bit. I don't want to be on a platform or be a preacher. I just want to make great music that people like."

The new EP contains four songs, the title track ‘Party Out There Tonight’, ‘Feel Alright’, ‘Somewhere Over the River’ and the really great offering ‘Rockabilly Fever’.

Watch the cool video here:
Rockabilly Fever
https://youtu.be/aP-Aol6mbog

“The songs were not meant to be funny…” says Danny Blueberry (aka Danny Fonfeder) of his most recent release, Isolation — available now.

“I was writing about deep, personal pain,” he continues, “and yet the audience broke out in laughter.”

For some artists, a dramatic 180-degree pivot from their creative intention — especially one that involves such intimate, vulnerable feelings — would be devastating. But for Danny, it was another lesson in life. “This is what happens when you grow up in total isolation,” he reflects. “You write with the tools that you have without a frame of reference as to how the real world will react.”

The name of the release is quite literal; Fonfeder very much did grow up in total isolation as part of a strict, religious family. “I had little access to the secular world, but plenty of access to music in the forms of praise choirs and prayer psalms.”

Fifteen-year-old, Priyana, launches her first original EP, Out of Place, to share her vision for children and teens to feel heard, validated, and understood through her music. Her mission is to make sure kids have a safe place to seek the support they need through Kids Help Phone by providing a digital download of her EP when anyone donates to her fundraiser.

Just after turning 13, Priyana started regularly hearing stories about kids hurting themselves and committing suicide. Saddened and very concerned, she needed to express her feelings and figure out how she could help. Within a few days she wrote her first song and continues to regularly write songs focusing on mental health. To date she has written over 20 songs.

Priyana wants to write music that helps kids feel understood and know they’re not alone. She also wants to make sure they have access to the help they need. So, she decided to create a fundraising EP to support youth mental health through Kids Help Phone, which provides free professional counselling online or by phone for young people.

How do you describe this new offering from Izael Nzas? From harpsichord-like tone to the simplest music notes to vibe in a delightfully unique experience. Some interesting percussion and piano choices. Ambling rhythms, plucky string and keyboard taps meld into one big conglomerate of sound.

Izael is such an eclectic artist rangng from Afro, Latin, Classic and Jazz all fused together to great his sound. A World of Music – Un mundo de musica!

“In this project, I overpassed my expectation I started without even knowing that a few months later I was going to discover I am a composer. I started with the instrumental “Inner Peace” and when I finished I said, you should spend some quality time trying to understand this music composition thing.”

I recently saw a post in a web forum from a manager that was asking for connections to a couple of big publications. His artist had been added to two bigger “editorial” playlists on Spotify and was doing some 100,000 streams.

He was certain that these playlists would get him interest from bigger publications but none of them replied to his emails. And several comments were just that being on playlists you need over 20 million streams on Spotify before things happen.

I did a panel this Spring with the top four bloggers and big publications on a Showcase Festival. One of the quotes was “If you start your mail to us by describing how many Spotify streams you have, that is a good reason right way for us to throw it in the trash.”

Myer Clarity, 27, is a Toronto based multi-genre producer, songwriter and hip hop artist with 3 self-produced albums under his belt. His unique blend of hip hop, punk and jazz combined with his honest story-telling has gained him a dedicated fan base both at home and overseas. 

Born and raised in Montreal to a French-Canadian mother and a Jewish father, Myer expressed an interest in music early, at age 11. His neighbour Sagi, a member of local rap group NL5, brought Myer to his first recording studio at age 12, where he learned about audio production first hand. 

At 13, he studied piano and music theory under jazz legend Ernie Nelson. Sadly, Ernie passed away shortly after from natural causes, prompting Myer to compose a heartfelt piece to his teacher which he performed in honour of him at Concordia’s Music Hall. He went on to study jazz theory and piano for 4 more years with one of Ernie’s students.

Todd Taylor is an American five string banjo player. He held the Guinness Book of World Records title for "world's fastest banjo".

He has played and toured with other notable bluegrass players including Bill Monroe, Carl Story, Jim & Jesse. Taylor became the first banjo player to take the Banjo to the Rock-n-Roll worldwide Top-40 countdown, with his remake of the classic rock tune "Free Bird". Taylor is a four-time Grammy Award nominee.

It’s a dream come true for the six-time Grammy Award nominee, who first became interested in playing the banjo when he was 6 years old. He travels to Nashville on Monday to get ready for his performance at the iconic venue where many country legends have played.

Some species of butterfly spend their entire existences in migration, journeying to the ends of the Earth on nothing more than sheer determination and undeniable instinct. 

Sean Murray can identify. The veteran Ontario musician has also devoted a vast portion of his life to the all-consuming pursuit of a distant, seemingly unreachable goal: The completion of his magnum opus Butterfly Tongue Revisited, a long-gestating labour of love whose arrival also heralds the birth of his new alternative indie-rock project Reay (pronounced Ray, after his grandmother's maiden name). 

You always get that the artist is the genius around the whole song.  Still, in most cases, they would have been nothing if it wasn't for that perfect PR team. It’s like saying that the success in Formula 1 is the driver. Actually, in Formula 1 they enter as a team.

I hear it all the time; artists coming up to me saying they have done the best song ever and it's produced by some dude you have never heard of in your life. Okay, it could be a really good song. But I know so many good songs, even brilliant songs that never reach a big audience. Many of the best albums I know never get anywhere. To build that perfect storm that a good song needs to become a classical song, that is up to your PR team and a bit of luck. What I can definitely say is that a perfect song cannot be a hit just by being perfect. As little as the driver in Formula 1 being the whole team - it’s impossible.

True North Records announces a September 20 world-wide release date for Crowing Ignites, the new all-instrumental CD from legendary Canadian singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn. Cockburn also announced his North American tour (dates below) with more shows to be confirmed.

Crowing Ignites was produced, recorded and mixed by Colin Linden, and recorded at the Firehouse in San Francisco. It showcases 11 all-original compositions by Cockburn, who plays acoustic guitar throughout, backed by a stellar cast of sympathetic musicians. Cockburn will support the new disc’s release with a summer/fall tour schedule throughout the United States and Canada.  

In 2005, Bruce Cockburn released Speechless, a collection of instrumental tracks that shone the spotlight on the singer-songwriter’s exceptional acoustic guitar playing. The album earned Cockburn a Canadian Folk Music Award for Best Instrumentalist and underscored his stature as one of the world’s premier pickers. 

Malian musical duo and Grammy Award nominees Amadou & Mariam are teaming up with five-time Grammy Award-winning gospel group Blind Boys of Alabama for the new singles, “Bamako To Birmingham” and “Two Cultures, One Beat,” out today via Because Music. Listen to/share both tracks at https://tinyurl.com/yxs3aho7.

The cross-genre collaboration came about after conversations between the groups on opposite sides of the Atlantic. The Blind Boys kicked off the recording process by laying down two tracks in the U.S. featuring their distinctive vocals, with Amadou & Mariam adding their contributions from the studio in Mali.

The two groups are currently on a joint tour together in Europe, with upcoming performances set for Cork, Ireland; Cambridge, England; Edinburgh, Scotland; and Västra Götalands län, Sweden. See below for a list of tour dates.

West Coast Soul/R&B artist Katherine Penfold is set to release her Justin Time/Nettwerk Records album debut with the Neo-Soul tinged "Sweetest Thing" featuring her take on Roberta Flack's timeless "Feel Like Makin' Love", a blissed-out collaboration with Moonchild's Amber Navran ("Far & Away"), and "Better" co-written and mixed by Grammy award-winning producer Chin Injeti (Drake, Eminem).

Soul resides just beneath the exterior. Upon meeting Katherine Penfold, you might initially notice the prominent tattoos along her shoulder and arms before the conversation veers to her lifelong affinity for motorcycles, skateboarding, or woodworking - let alone music. Listening to her sound elicits a different impression altogether - as a  sultry, smooth, and sweet delivery belies the rustic badassery she exudes with ease. This gorgeous contrast illuminates the artist’s 2019 full-length debut, Sweetest Thing, available October 4th (via Justin Time/Nettwerk).

Recently I attended a festival where I met a friend who is doing management in the same style as me. I have helped him in some cases with a specific artist so of course, I asked how it was going around that?

“I dropped that artist he explained. I was busting my ass off to get them opportunities and get things going. Still, it felt like they very just in for the ride, and when we got eight on the chart and they didn't even post something around it on social media I just dropped them.”

This is very common. In most cases when I start talking to managers I have known for a while I ask if they are still working with that specific artist.  In many cases, they just grew tired of all the work they did for them and then they are treated like shit.

A few weeks ago, Spotify announced that they are deleting the program where artists could upload themselves straight to Spotify. No explanation was given or how they would deal with their partnership with Distrokid.

This was just the most stupid thing from the beginning, so no surprise that it was closed before it even survived a year. I guess they wanted to be able to pick out some good artist straight from a new artist that would upload. The reality is that most artists who have something going is already going through a label, most labels wouldn't use a distribution that is open for everyone since they always have the worst percentage and the worst service.

Grammy-nominated country, rock and roll singer/songwriter, Hayes Carll, will be strumming his way onto Canadian soil this August and September, playing seven shows across our Western provinces. The tour kicks off at Vancouver’s Biltmore Cabaret, on August 31 with following shows in Nelson, Calgary, Lethbridge, Edmonton and Winnipeg. Full tour details are listed below and tickets can be purchased here.

Hailing from Houston, TX Carll’s year started off with a bang when he released his sixth highly anticipated album, What It Is, mid-February. Featuring the hit single, Times Like These, What It Is, has received praise from many media outlets including Rolling Stone, Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, NPR Music, MOJO, American Songwriter and No Depression. Carll has recently performed on multiple television programs like The Tonight Show, Austin City Limits and Later with Jools Holland and has had his songs recorded by artists including Lee Ann Womack, Kenny Chesney, Kelly Willis and Hard Working Americans.