Throughout history, tragedy, heartbreak, and unfathomable loss are experiences that have inspired artists to write songs. While they start from a personal place, when combined with the zeitgeist when they were written, these songs can resonate with generations long after the songwriter is gone – because of the shared feelings evoked by the words and the music.https://www.youtube.com/embed/il7DWoLySW8 […]
A vital cog of the alternative and indie scene on Vancouver Island, this past October Logan’s Pub closed its doors for good. Another live music venue casualty due to the pandemic. For more than three decades, Victoria’s arts community found a home here. Live music rained from its rickety rafters six nights a week. From […]
A little boogie-woogie, buckets of blues, and heaps of rock ‘n’ roll. That’s Crowbar. Frank Davies, owner of Daffodil Records, the label that released three LPs by these musical miscreants from Hamilton in the early 1970s, knows this cast of characters better than most. He introduces us to the band behind Bad Manors, Crowbar’s debut, which […]
Rough Trade were innovators. Equal parts new wave, punk, and pop, this Toronto-based band led by Carole Pope and Kevan Staples marched to their own beat. Art, music, and theatre collided in their compositions. The band was a vehicle to have fun—and poke fun—at the world’s shortcomings through lyrics laced with social, sexual, and political […]
Music and art are natural friends. Many musicians don’t just paint pictures with words and melodies; they also pour these creative thoughts onto canvases. Tom Wilson, Kurt Swinghammer, and Joni Mitchell are a few examples of multi-talented Canadian artists who express their creativity and imagination across disciplines. In the fall of 1995, The National Gallery […]
“Strikes across the frontier and strikes for higher wage/ Planet lurches to the right as ideologies engage/ Suddenly it’s repression, moratorium on rights/ What did they think the politics of panic would invite?/ Person in the street shrugs ‘Security comes first’/ But the trouble with normal is it always gets worse/ The trouble with normal […]
Got a gypsy soul, I’m a rebel and rogueAnd I’m always on the runWith a fire inside I ain’t ever gonna dieI’m a locked and loaded gun – “Outlaws & Outsiders” After a country-rock song you wrote surpasses 25 million cumulative streams worldwide, a move to Music City, where the heart of the industry […]
“And the seasons change/ Everything gets rearranged/ But tonight I’m stuck in a yesterday haze.” “Stay Out” One thing the pandemic of 2020 has taught us is this: change is inevitable. No matter our job, or our financial situation, nothing is as it seems. We must adapt often. We must not fear change. We’ve been […]