Artists - Choir Nation

SERENA RYDER
Just for the record, you could easily be staring a Serena Ryder triple album in the face right now.

It might have taken four-and-a-half years for this celebrated Toronto singer/songwriter to gift us with a follow-up to 2012’s expectation-defying critical and commercial hit, Harmony, but a lack of new material was definitely not the hold-up. No, just as she did for the last record, the prolific Ryder amassed something like 65 or 70 songs during the run-up to her star-solidifying new platter, Utopia. The challenge wasn’t coming up with new material; the challenge was whittling it all down to fit an album-sized package. Ryder was so flush with good stuff heading into Utopia, in fact, that she briefly toyed with releasing her own equivalent of the Clash’s Sandinista! or George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass – a triple LP composed of songs that she envisioned divided amongst moods of “light,” “dark” and the “grey” area in between.

In the end, she chose to compress the full spectrum of emotions into a more manageable, but no less ambitious package that wouldn’t necessarily require booking a day off work to properly absorb in one sitting. But you’ve been warned: there is definitely more to come. “I still have all those songs and, to me, they’re all good and they’re all good for a record so I don’t know,” she laughs. “I might have three more records.”

Hey, why turn it off when it comes easily? Some people need plans and deadlines and discipline to get anything done, some people just do what they do naturally and effortlessly. Serena Ryder does what she does naturally and effortlessly, and has done what she does naturally and effortlessly since she was a young girl. This girl was performing by the age of eight, cut her first record at 16 and could boast of being a major-label artist with a gold-selling album, 2006’s If Your Memory Serves You Well and a gold-selling single, the lingeringly knee-weakening “Weak in the Knees,” all before she’d even turned 25. And yet it took a debilitating bout with depression and artistic self-doubt brought on by her premature pigeonholing as just another “sensitive Canadian folk chick with an acoustic guitar” for her to finally let it all come out truly naturally and effortlessly on Harmony, the album where Ryder found her voice and discovered that the best formula for her success is … no formula at all.

You can still hear the results of the “letting go” that allowed Harmony – a genre-oblivious sleeper hit that went on to notch platinum sales in Ryder’s native Canada – to happen living and breathing on the radio to this day, since that record’s signature single, “Stompa” (triple- platinum and counting north of the 49th parallel), and its anthemic follow-up, “What I Wouldn’t Do,” haven’t left the airwaves since.

Now you can hear the further results of Ryder’s ongoing liberation from what she described in 2012 as a burdensome “idea of who I thought I was” on Utopia, which extrapolates upon its predecessor’s “anything goes” template with even more confidence and joy.

Utopia’s sassy soul-pop romp and lead single “Got Your Number”, hatched spontaneously during an exploratory early writing session that found Ryder once again casting aside her guitar and “just goofing around on the drums, just kind of rapping and rhyming and singing weird jazzy stuff” in search of new musical avenues to explore, is but a tantalizing taste of the surprises Serena Ryder has to offer on her new record.

There’s low-slung, electro-groovy sexiness orbiting the sweet spot between Prince and Of Montreal on “Electric Love” and “Me and You”; Winehouse-esque R&B with a swaggering hiphop cadence on “Firewater” and “Killing Time”; smoulderingly futuristic downtempo balladry cooked up with Weeknd producer Doc McKinney on “Wild and Free”; a couple of pulsequickening attempts at epic, Arcade Fire-worthy arena fodder (“Because who wouldn’t want that, really?” shrugs Ryder) on “Hands” and “Ice Age”; and, for those who’ve been along for the ride since her folky 1999 indie debut Falling Out, a couple of stirring ballads in the classic, confessional Ryder mould in the form of “Sanctuary” and the sweet-natured love song “It’s No Mistake”. And then there’s that voice. Heard Serena Ryder sing lately? She should register that instrument as a weapon. It’s nuts.

There was no grand design to Utopia. A loose theme derived from the First Nations parable of the Two Wolves – which states that we have all have two wolves inside us, one light and one dark, that fight for dominance as they are fed in either direction – applied itself in hindsight, as Ryder saw those two sides of her own personality playing out in the song writing and wondered what would happen “if you fed both wolves instead of just one of them, so that neither of them are hungry?”

“I found in a lot of the songs there was that dynamic when I looked back,” she says. “So many people, when they put out a record, it’s all dark or it’s all light and happy. But on this record there’s a lot of juxtaposition of both those things – the light and the dark. I was wondering what if you married the two. I wanted to write an album that had some sense of balance. But I have no fucking idea if it happened.”

Find thematic threads where you will, then. Utopia is a collection of winning songs written on the fly in Los Angeles, London, Nashville, Los Angeles and Toronto with such friendly collaborators as Simon Wilcox, Thomas “Tawgs” Salter, John Grant, Todd Clark and Derek Furnham with one goal in mind- to enjoy the moments that make up the process of creating music.

“A lot of the songs on this record are basically just experimentation and me hanging out with friends and having a good time and just kind of writing in that way,” says Ryder, who still considers herself a student of her peers. “When I go into a writing session, I’m there with these awesome, talented people I just assume that everybody else knows 10 billion times more than I do. I just start ranting and raving and running around and making weird noises and eventually looking for a melody because I have no knowledge of any sort of theory – I don’t know the names of any of the chords that I play, I never learned any of that.

“Most of the time, I really feel like I have no idea what I’m doing. I’ve been doing this since I was straight out of high school – touring, writing, performing – and I still feel like I’m brandspankin’ new. I don’t know what kind of songs I’m going to write or what kind of record I’m going to put out. I don’t have a set-in-stone identity when it comes to being a musician. It’s a mystery, even to me; a good one. It’s nice to be able to live within that mystery.”

Utopia to be released Spring 2017.

Awards:

2014 JUNO Awards for Songwriter of The Year and Artist of The Year
2014 MuchMusic Video Award for Rock/Alternative Video of The Year (“Stompa”)
2014 Canadian Film Award for Original Song (“It’s No Mistake”) featured in the film, Right Kind Of Wrong
2013 Adult Alternative Album of The Year
2010 Video of The Year (“Little Bit of Red”
2009 Adult Alternative Album of The Year (Is It O.K.)
2008 New Artist of The Year

Certifications:

Single “Stompa” – 3x Platinum
Single “What I Wouldn’t Do”- Platinum
Single “Weak In The Knees”- Gold
Single “Got Your Number” – Gold
Album Is it O.K. (2009) – Gold
Album If Your Memory Serves You Well (2007) – Gold
Album Harmony (2012) – 2x Platinum

Highlights:

Shared the Pan Am stage with Kanye West and Pitbull
Late Night TV performance on Jay Leno
Original song “Sing Sing” was the soundtrack for Music Monday, special event to highlight music education in Canada which saw nearly two million Canadian schoolchildren singing the song in class
Performed the Canadian National Anthem at the 2014 NBA All-Star Game
“Stompa” was featured on an episode of Grey’s Anatomy
Performed on CBC TV’s “Quietest Concert Ever” on the Ocean Floor which took place during low tide at Fundy National Park in New Brunswick Canada

ALAN FREW
Alan Frew has always had a passion for reinvention; a passion that’s defined his 30-plus year career in the entertainment business, including more recently his work as a public speaker and best-selling author. Now that passion for reinvention has been applied unreservedly to his new record, 80290 Rewind, Scheduled for release on Nov 6th 2015 on Black Box Recordings, 80290 Rewind finds Frew taking on beloved 80’s tracks – a set of songs from the decade during which his Juno Award-winning, Grammy-nominated band, Glass Tiger, became one of the most popular bands in the world – including Tears For Fears’ Hold Me Now, Simple Minds ‘Don’t You Forget About Me’, John Waite’s ‘Missing You’ and Glass Tiger’s ‘Someday’.

“They’re amazing songs,” Frew says, “Songs that I loved as a fan and now love even more of as a vocalist. Due to the production of the time, so many songs of the 80’s weren’t quite appreciated for just how beautiful and well crafted they are. So, in the studio, we let the voice lead the way and went with ‘less is more’ when it came to the band.” The intent was to completely reinvent the songs by adopting a stripped down approach in an effort to ensure their melodies, lyrics and core sentiments shone through as never before. “And the end result is exactly what we envisioned, pure and simple,” Frew says.

Although the album draws on material as diverse as ‘Nothing Compares To You’ and ‘Owner of a Lonely Heart’, Frew, producers Jason Murray and Sean Andrews, and a high-powered band including Matchbox Twenty guitarist, Kyle Cook, treated the songs as a unit, creating a record that hangs together, both sonically and lyrically, and on which the melody and lyrics of these classic songs have never stood out so profoundly.

“The eighties were an era where so much of the music was defined by positive emotions and ideas,” Frew adds.

As if the vocal challenge of 80290 Rewind wasn’t enough, Frew experienced a major setback when after the final recording of his vocals at his home studio in Ontario in late summer 2015, he suffered a stroke in his sleep, which left him with temporary paralysis on his right side. “I was thinking of my family and friends first and foremost, but the album, my voice and whether I’d be able to sing again weren’t far behind,” he says, “particularly having just captured what I felt were the best vocals of my life.”

Frew has taken a similar approach with his recovery to the one he’s taken throughout all his life; taking action and having non-conforming, unrelenting belief. Alan remains positive and completely focused while throwing himself into physical therapy with the utmost determination to get back his full mobility and is now looking towards starting rehearsals – which he sees as an extension of the rehabilitation he’s undertaken so far – for an early 2016 tour.

80290 Rewind presents a truly fresh reimagining truly classic songs. You’ll know every one, but you’ve never heard them like this. On this album, Alan Frew succeeds in makes these tracks his very own; deftly capturing the original spirit of the time they were created in, as well as the timelessness of the sentiments they express. As his manager puts it, “covers have never sounded so original”.

ABOUT ALAN FREW: Alan Frew is a multi-platinum selling songwriter, public speaker and author of the best-selling book ‘The Action Sandwich-A Six Step Recipe to Success by Doing What You’re Already Doing’.

His work with Glass Tiger has garnered him five Juno Awards, a Grammy nomination and five Canadian Classic Awards in recognition of songs that have been played in excess of 100,000 times on Canadian Radio. Additionally, Frew co-wrote ‘I Believe’ (the theme song for CTV’s coverage of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games) with Stephan Moccio, ‘Fire It Up’ (the title track for Johnny Reid’s Juno-nominated 2013 album) with Johnny Reid and Joe Cocker).

Also, in 2010, Frew’s ‘Free To Be’ became the Toronto Maple Leafs’ theme song. He also co-wrote the title track from Johnny Reid’s Juno-Nominated album “Fire it Up”,which was coincidentally also recording by the legendary Joe Cocker.

Frew has toured with artists including Rod Stewart, Tina Turner and Fleetwood Mac, and performed for the Canadian Armed Forces and their allies in Bosnia, Israel, Egypt and Afghanistan. In light of his recent health scare, Alan is actively speaking out on the dangers of high cholesterol and hypertension in an effort to increase public knowledge and raise awareness of proper health practices in stroke prevention.

ROYAL WOOD
Sometimes in order to really ﬁnd yourself, you have to lose yourself. Just ask Royal Wood, whose latest record, the breathtakingly poignant The Burning Bright, captures his truest, most conﬁdent musical voice even as it chronicles an extraordinary year of tumult, travel and personal discovery.

The Burning Bright registers a number of ﬁrsts for Wood, whose chart-topping 2012 release, the JUNO-nominated We Were Born to Glory, ﬁrmly established him as one of Canada’s most accomplished alt-pop singer/songwriters, producers, arrangers and multi-instrumentalists.

For one thing, The Burning Bright is the product of multiple worlds – a culmination of ﬁve weeks spent writing in Wood’s ancestral home of Ireland, recording at home and, for the ﬁrst time, in Los Angeles with Bill Leﬂer, himself a producing/arranging/multi-instrumentalist dynamo (see Dashboard Confessional, Gym Class Heroes, Fall Out Boy’s Patrick Stump).

The record also found Wood collaborating in new ways: with Leﬂer and fellow Canuck singer/songwriter Simon Wilcox – with whom he wrote the sticky and wickedly buoyant ﬁrst single “Forever and Ever” – with long-time guitarist/co-producer Dean Drouillard, and with the spectral voices in the hills of County Meath, where Wood withdrew in spring 2013 in the aftermath of his collapsed marriage.

The Burning Bright may scan as a breakup record; witness lyrics like “Well I once believed in a fairy-tale, now I’m holding a coﬃn nail,” exhaled regretfully in the song “Promises” and pretty much the whole of the achingly tender “I Wish You Well.” But it’s actually a compass pointing forward, spinning on the honest, from-the-gut creativity that propelled Wood into music in the ﬁrst place.Yet ask Wood if the stakes felt higher for The Burning Bright given its emotional heft and arrival on the heels of a bona ﬁde hit and he says, “No.”
“To be honest, the stakes felt higher on the last album. This time, I ﬁnally made the decision to simply make art again for the sake of making art. It is its own reward and what happens next is just a part of the journey in making it.”

And what an enlightening – if winding – journey it has been so far.

As Wood explains, The Burning Bright unfolded more or less in four distinct phases. Phase One: a pre-Ireland visit to L.A. where he met Leﬂer through Wilcox as part of a quest to write something for ﬁlm or TV. The magic was immediate; so much so that, having conjured “Forever and Ever” without breaking a sweat, Wood did two more songs with Leﬂer and Wilcox just in case the single was dumb luck.

“At that point, Bill and I said, ‘We have to make a record together.’ Then I went oﬀ to Ireland to write” – this would be Phase Two – “and when I came back, I felt I had two… not opposing but diﬀerent directions I could go in making this record. I felt like I wanted to have both of those voices heard.”

It’s no surprise that Wood was thinking on a grand scale, given that he crafted something like 40 songs during his ascetic Irish hideaway where being “plugged in” meant being wise to the local gossip down at the pub.

“I took long walks, visited old graveyards. It became a search through my past as well as my future. A lot of songs, like ‘City Lights’ and ‘The Light of Dawn’ came from just thinking about family. Ireland let me go home without having to go home, if you know what I mean.”

As the month of May dissolved into June, what would eventually become The Burning Bright entered Phase Three.

“I got together with Dean and I sat him down and asked him to produce these ideas I had. I sketched out the parameters. I said I wanted Rose Cousins to sing on it, plus Carleigh Aikins and Felicity Williams. I didn’t want to do any backing vocals myself, just the lead and the main instruments – the guitar, the piano, a little bit of banjo and ukulele.

“I also wanted horns and strings and I wanted it to all be about the song. Not tons of layers, just the song. I said, ‘That’s the record I want you to make. Now I am going to go to Los Angeles to make a totally diﬀerent record with Bill,’” he chuckles, referencing what became Phase Four.

Wood continues: “For the L.A. record, I was playing the majority of instruments. Bill was playing drums but the rest is just me jumping around from bass to piano to guitar. Although I realized I was making a diﬀerent record in L.A. than I was making with Dean, there was this through-line in the lyrics and the delivery, despite the diﬀerent producers and diﬀerent studios.

“We put it all together to make The Burning Bright and it’s… the perfect record. It all works together – the lyrics, the instrumentation, the sound. Everything. I don’t know if that’s the ideal way to make a record,” Wood laughs, “but it feels like it is now.”

Even a cursory listen conﬁrms the record’s astonishing candor of lyrics, and virtuosity of the music, as heard in the already released, and outrageously hooky single, “Forever and Ever.”

Wood allows “the single doesn’t quite ﬁt the mood of the album, but it’s an honest song celebrating true and real love, which I am a ﬁrm believer in.”

All of which means our man is destined to revisit these highly personal songs – pardon the pun – forever and ever. Any trepidation?

“I have never dealt with life without music in it, so if I wasn’t writing a song that forced me to feel something genuine, I’d be listening to something that did,” Wood says, citing Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young and Van Morrison as tireless inspirations.

“I always want to perform honest music that I connect with and am touched by. And if that means I have to go out there emotionally, then I will go there emotionally. That’s why I am not on some psychiatrist’s couch,” he smiles, “because I get to do this.”

BRENDAN CANNING (Broken Social Scene)
Brendan Canning is well recognized for his role as co-founder of Broken Social Scene, one that has afforded him the opportunity to work in a multitude of creative mediums and collaborate with artists on a global level. The sound he and BSS originated has been performed around the world, has been the topic of study at the University of Toronto, has been recorded numerous times on late night television and won the group several Canadian Juno Awards. They are named as the seminal band that influenced an entire movement in independent music in Canada and the US and have been covered widely by the New York Times, Rolling Stone, Spin and Interview Magazine. Their seminal album You Forgot it in People is a mainstay on many greatest albums of all times lists annually. Canning has led hundreds of interviews on behalf of the group and continues to receive extensive coverage for his solo albums and other work by many publications. In 2009 Canning was nominated for a Canadian Screen Award for his score for the film Trigger. With his band mates and on his own he has scored and contributed original music to numerous films including Half-Nelson, Wicker Park, It’s Kind of a Funny Story, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, The Time Traveller’s Wife, Wet Bum, This Movie is Broken, The Canyons and The Tracey Fragments.

In 2013 he established an imprint and film company, Draper Street Records and Films.

This past summer Draper Street Films produced and provided music for the critically acclaimed feature film Diamond Tongues, which premiered at Slamdance and is distributed by Mongrel Media in Canada and in the US and world wide by the Brooklyn based, art house Factory 25. Diamond Tongues was the number one Canadian film its opening week in Canada. Draper Street Films continues to develop feature film projects while Draper Street Records will release Canning’s third solo effort Home Wrecking Years summer of 2016.

Canning recently returned from The Banff Centre where he performs the role as faculty visiting lecturer to the Indie Music Residency, a course of study in which he works with and mentors musicians during an intensive semester. He has also functioned several times in the mentor role at the Canadian Film Centre vetting applicants for the songwriting and film-scoring program and has served on the jury for the Canadian Screen Awards. He continues to sustain close ties to the CFC and most recently worked with the Centre on their David Cronenberg interactive film that premiered during his retrospective at TIFF Lightbox. Canning sits on the board of directors of the Songwriters Association of Canada.

In 2010, he and legendary producer Hal Wilner, working with the Olympic Committee, curated a Neil Young tribute concert at Vancouver’s Orpheum Theatre during the Vancouver Olympics. A program that included Elvis Costello and Lou Reed.

His essays have been published in Time and National Geographic and he is also credited with writing the pivotal Globe & Mail book review for the novel US Conductors by Sean Michaels that won the prestigious Giller Prize.

Brendan has made contributions to the art work of the self-titled Broken Social Scene album as well as collaborating with Juno award winning artist Robyn Kotick on the album design for his last solo album You Gots 2 Chill. His photographs appeared as part of a group show at Akasha Gallery in 2013 and drawings have been exhibited in galleries in Toronto.

An avid collector of rare vinyl records has been dj’ing in the Toronto scene since the late 90’s, a passion that has led him on musical and cultural journeys all over the globe.

Living on Toronto’s historic Draper Street for more than two decades Brendan has immersed himself in the arts community since 1992. Whether it be music, theatre, film, painting, architecture, illustration, writing or dance, Canning has loved seeing Toronto grow into a world-class city and is proud to be part of the arts community en masse. He is asked on a regular basis to collaborate on artistic projects that have always kept him at the center of a wide array of artistic disciplines. Canning is an observant listener and inspiring project manager.

LORI CULLEN
It’s her singing that always draws attention, and partly for the things that it doesn’t have. No vibrato, no trendy affectations, no unnecessary melodic ornamentation, just a pure and unique voice.

It started happening in the late 90’s at the Free Times Café – an important singer/songwriter incubator for Toronto’s resilient acoustic scene. With a natural flair for performing, she honed her skills by hosting the weekly open mic night and cultivated an early fan base of peers in the local music community.

The first Lori Cullen album came out at the start of a new century. Garden Path reflected a young sensibility informed by her heroes Joni Mitchell and Jane Siberry. Two years later she shifted gears to jazz standards for the well received So Much. Her third release Uneven Hill focused on original writing and dramatically broadened the scope of her sonic world. Calling For Rain in 2006 brought together all the previous elements to create a hybrid of jazz and pop which became her lasting artistic identity. Largely a collection of carefully curated covers, it was nominated for a Best Vocal Jazz Juno. One of her original tunes on the album won the Colleen Peterson Songwriting Award from the Ontario Council Of Folk Festivals.

The late Chris Dedrick, revered leader of 60’s chamber pop faves The Free Design, heard Lori on the radio and came to her next gig with an open invite to collaborate. His signature ornate brass and vocal arrangements adorn Buttercup Bugle. Its release in 2007 was celebrated with a live show featuring a 12-piece band and broadcast nationally on CBC Radio. This album also initiated a licensing deal with a label in Japan. Around this time Polaris Prize winner and Arcade Fire member Owen Pallet asked Lori to contribute her distinctive vocals to the second Final Fantasy album.

2011’s That Certain Chartreuse presented an eclectic selection of covers by artists as diverse as Gordon Lightfoot and King Crimson along side some of her favourite local writers, all creatively arranged by herself and her band of stellar Toronto musicians. The music prompted jazz vocal giant Kurt Elling to acknowledge in an interview that Cullen was one of his favourite new singers. Shortly after the album was released she put her career on hold and in 2013 Lori and composer/visual artist Kurt Swinghammer became proud parents.

When the child turned 2, Ron Sexsmith, who has been a huge fan of Lori’s for years, suggested to Kurt that they co-write an album of material specifically for Lori to sing. The album was released on Oct 29th 2016 on True North Records to critical acclaim and Lori supported a 5 week tour across the world opening up shows for Sexsmith and winning over audiences.

IN FLIGHT-SAFETY
Halifax, Nova Scotia is a coastal city – a Canadian indie music hub since the 1990’s, nestled among ragged shorelines of the Atlantic Ocean. From this home base, In-Flight Safety has been crafting thoughtful, melodic indie rock that’s made its way across North America and Europe.

There’s been a lot of praise and accolades over the years, from television placements to awards, but the band still had growing to do. From The Coast is Clear (2006) to We Are an Empire, My Dear (2009), In-Flight Safety was building a solid fan-base in North America, the UK and Germany. Whether it was a performance on BBC Radio in London or a SXSW showcase, the band was outwardly focused during those years, playing copious shows and making new music for their fans.

Pre-2011 In-Flight Safety was by all accounts an extrovert. In 2011, the gears shifted. John Mullane (Vocals/guitars) spent time scoring films and Glen Nicholson (Drums) went to school to study architecture. At a glance the band had a record’s worth of new material ready to go. “At the end of 2011, I listened all our demos but all I saw was trees. No forest. I called Glen and was totally honest. To me, that’s when we started working on the album – during that conversation,” says Mullane.

From this introspection, confidence and maturity, Mullane and Nicholson came together to construct Conversationalist. It was built, literally and figuratively, on the backs of thousands of conversations between Mullane and Nicholson. Inspired by contemporary bands like Wild Nothing, The Walkmen and DIIV, In-Flight Safety created an album that is true to their history, but their most adventurous and honest. “There’s a celebratory feeling in the new songs. If we have a playful side, it’s on this album,” says Mullane.

The ten tracks on Conversationalist balance the light and the dark that is In-Flight Safety. You’ve got guitar hooks that will get stuck in your head and make you want to dance all night, but the imagery is more mysterious. It can be raw and haunting, but always uplifting with rich, thoughtful production that’s anything but indie. Mixed by Gus van Go (The Stills, Hollerado) in Brooklyn NY, Conversationalist is crafted with meticulous attention to detail. There’s beauty in opposites and this record is both pragmatic and ethereal, it builds and burns, leaving you wanting more. It’s a love letter and a breakup in one album.

But even introverts need to get out. Conversationalist will be released late summer 2014 (tour dates to follow) and In-Flight Safety will head out on the road, crossing oceans and continents, welcoming you to the conversation

MIKE FORD
Mike is a Juno-nominated Franco-Ontarian solo artist, has released 4 acclaimed albums of Canadian history -inspired songs, been described as being “rabble-rousing and Pythonesque” and “essential listening” by the Globe & Mail, created his own one-hour national CBC Radio Labour Day special (with Age of Persuasion’s Mike Tennant), toured as a swing member of The Arrogant Worms, sung at The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Ottawa for The Vigil Project, performed and MC’d at festivals coast-to-coast, created an ever-growing repertoire for his Canada Needs You School tours, and sailed across the Great Lakes on a working Lake Boat with David Francey, from which the two wrote and recorded their album SEAWAY. Mike’s latest albums feature song-cycles about the War of 1812, and en français, the life of Étienne Brûlé. In 2012, Mike was awarded The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal for his on-going musical explorations of Canadian history.

Mike is known to many for his former life in the folk/rock/vaudeville Moxy Früvous, with whom he headlined festival stages all across North America and Europe, sold over ¼ million albums, and once crashed through a stained-glass window at a Buffalo in-store performance.

Mike is grateful to the Ontario Arts Council for their assistance in the completion of Canada Needs You volume two. He is also the recipient of an Ontario Arts Council Artist In Education Grant, enabling him to work with Toronto students in the creation of their own songs about the environment, community and identity. Mike would also like to thank The Toronto Arts Council and The Canada Council for the Arts for their support of his new work “Le retour d’Étienne Brûle”, and The Department of Canadian Heritage for their support of his 1812 Song Project. As well as his club and festival appearances, Mike performs in French and English across Ontario in Middle and High Schools, presented by Prologue to the Performing Arts.

Mike and his wife Therese live in Toronto. He has worked in or visited every region of this incredible country and is dedicated to sharing his enthusiasm for Canada’s land and history with people of all ages.

PETER KATZ
“If you want to make something that’s like nothing you’ve made before, then you have to shake yourself up, go beyond what’s comfortable and known and let yourself feel disoriented, overwhelmed, even intimidated. Those moments, when you lose your bearings, when you’re forced to sink or swim, are the moments when you have an opportunity to rise to the occasion, to surprise yourself, to do the things you didn’t know you could do. That’s what making this album was for me, I’m so proud of the process, and I’m so proud of the result.”

The result is ‘We Are The Reckoning’, a striking new collection of 11 original songs from JUNO-nominated singer-songwriter and recently crowned Best Male Vocalist in the popular NOW Magazine Best-Of-Toronto 2014 reader’s poll (readership of ½ million) Peter Katz. After 3 successful national and international tours in support of his 2012 release ‘Still Mind Still’, Peter spent the better part of the past 2 years writing well-over 50 new songs while collaborating on some of them with an impressive list of co-writers in Los Angeles, London, and at home in Toronto (a new approach for Peter who had always typically written alone). He managed the mental intensity of the writing and recording sessions by taking up a robust regimen of running (which also put him in the best shape of his life). “It was the only thing I could do to feel like I had control over something. Every morning in LA I would wake up early and run up the Hollywood Hills. I was the only guy actually running all the way to the top. It was incredibly challenging, but it gave me this little secret confidence to draw on when I needed it.” His hard work paid off when he attracted the attention of co-producers Royal Wood (multiple Juno-Award Nominee) and Bill Lefler (Ingrid Michaelson, Cary Brothers), who signed on to help him turn those songs into Peter’s most sonically-rich album to date.

The 3 of them holed up in studio with Juno-award winning engineer Tim Abraham of The Hive, and, taking turns on different instruments, built up the musical-landscape that would become ‘We Are The Reckoning’. He also attracted an impressive list of guests to join him on the album, including rising Scottish star Rachel Sermanni, legendary lapsteel player Ben Peeler (Fleet Foxes, Jimmy Cliff, Wallflowers) and Felicity Williams (Bahamas) to name a few.

Over the past decade, Peter has seen his albums debut at #1 on the iTunes singer-songwriter charts; he’s shared the stage and studio with the likes of Academy Award Winner Glen Hansard (Once, The Swell Season), Juno Award-Winners The Good Lovelies, Polaris-Prize nominated Melissa McCelland (Whitehorse) and the Legendary Garth Hudson from The Band. He’s toured all over the world, regularly playing to capacity crowds, and has managed to build an impressive fan-base of loyal listeners, selling over 25,000 copies of his discs mostly from the stage, one show at a time. Never content to sit still for long, Peter Katz has his eyes firmly set on the future. “I’m in a different place than I was when I started 10 years ago. I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into and I maybe didn’t always put my focus in the right place. Now I know what this thing is, I know the relentlessness that’s required, I know it’s not a race, and I know that the music has to come first. I feel like I finally did that with this record. I took my time. I shook myself up, threw myself into unfamiliar territory and took some big risks. Now that I’m on the other side of it, I can see why it was the right thing to do, and I’m more excited than ever to share what we made.”

‘We Are The Reckoning’ is slated for release in 2015 through Maple Music/Fontana North with worldwide touring to follow. Many of the tour dates will be full-band, another new step in Peter Katz’s career.

www.peterkatz.com

twitter: @peterkatzmusic

facebook.com/peterkatzmusic

KEN TIZZARD
Very few Canadian musicians have had as fascinatingly diverse career as Ken Tizzard. In over two decades as a professional musician, he has gone from plying his trade as the charismatic bassist in top Canadian rock bands The Watchmen and Thornley (he is featured on six gold and platinum records received numerous Juno nominations and MuchMusic Awards, and licensed songs to such TV shows as CSI and Fashion Television) to then emerging as an eloquent roots-based singer/songwriter and guitarist with a prolific solo career.

Wearing his rock ‘n roll hat, Ken has toured internationally, appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and played such major venues as The Air Canada Centre. When he puts on his cowboy hat, Tizzard can be spotted performing his original material, solo or with a band, for a loyal and growing audience in pubs, clubs and concert halls across Canada.

His new album, No Dark No Light, is Tizzard’s fifth solo studio record since his 2006 debut, Quiet Storey House…an Introduction. A work of real emotional and musical resonance, No Dark No Light is emerging as his strongest work to date. It continues Ken’s pattern of never repeating himself stylistically, as its acoustic country meets folk ambience is in sharp contrast to his previous album, 2012’s The Goodness of Bad Intent.

“In the past, I’ve battled a lot with trying to find a character or niche with my music,” Tizzard explains. “Now I realize that maybe I’m a guy who doesn’t do the same thing twice. Every record I’ve done has moved me in a different direction and onto a different career path. That’s fine and it’s fun!” He views No Dark No Light as “the most cohesive record I’ve made. It almost feels like a concept record to me, and in the early stages I had songs sequenced in order that told a complete story.” That approach was modified, but a thematic coherence remains.

There is a soul-baring lyrical honesty to the material on No Dark No Light. The majority of the songs are focused upon his own emotions and experiences or those of close friends, but, in true folk music tradition, he also creates characters and stories. He takes those songs just as seriously, striving to imbue them with real authenticity. “I see those songs as research pieces,” says Ken. “Rather like a method actor working on a role, I really immerse myself in those themes, searching to find the real story.”

Tizzard has now moved out of the dark and into the light, and his luminous music is ready to shine.

JUSTIN RUTLEDGE
At the mouth of the open sea, there are three ships on the horizon one of them is on fire. Black plumes of smoke rise from its charring masts like a mountain’s shadow across the dawn. Perhaps those on board are tossing their lean prayers to the wind like holy matchsticks before thrusting their bodies overboard into the furiously silent ocean. Perhaps several hundred miles away a girl brushes a lock of hair from her eyes as she regards the indolent waters. Perhaps she turns, slowly making her way back to a house where the windows are always broken, away from a blackening horizon, towards the hurt of a dawn through a curtain. These are The Early Widows.

Justin Rutledge returns with The Early Widows, a stoic collection of songs that rehabilitate the heart and illuminate the dark. Produced with intense fragility by Hawksley Workman, Rutledge’s fourth album is an arrestingly moving and lyrically meticulous piece of art penned by one of the most progressive songwriters at work today. Shouldering an electric guitar instead of his trademark acoustic, Rutledge infuses the new material with a newfound conviction and drive. The Early Widows also includes songs co-written with literary giant Michael Ondaatje, and award-winning songwriter Darrell Scott from Nashville.

Each song is like an undisturbed room in which a wounded echo reclines. “Be A Man” is a mantra sung by a mirthless poet at an AA meeting; the rallying drum cry which begins “The Heart of A River” calls for metropolitan migration; the weathered, blustery scrub of “Snowmen” responds with a longing for spiritual hibernation, with a refrain that escapes the shadows of condo towers. Like the birth of a dawn through a curtain, The Early Widows is a study in light and shadow, with words that move like a pilgrimage towards one¹s ear. The Early Widows was recorded live utilizing two drummers, Gary Craig and Blake Manning, with Bazil Donovan (Blue Rodeo) on bass, Burke Carroll on pedal steel, David Baxter on electric guitar, and Jesse Zubot on violins. In addition to this stunning ensemble of musicians, the album features the soaring and explosive voices of gospel choir, The Faith Choral.

Signed to Six Shooter Records, Justin Rutledge’s albums garner impressive amounts of critical acclaim. Between his debut, No Never Alone (2005), his sophomore release, The Devil On A Bench In Stanley Park (2006) and third album, Man Descending (2008), Rutledge has earned a Juno nomination, a Galaxy Rising Star award, countless year-end critics’ picks, the title of Toronto’s Best Local Songwriter (NOW Magazine), a spot on the 2008 Polaris Prize Long List and a Canadian Folk Music Award nomination. Justin has shared the stage with artists such as Blue Rodeo, Dolly Parton, Martha Wainwright and Great Lake Swimmers.

SAM CASH
Sam Cash’s new album Tongue-In-Cheek Vows perfectly captures that moment when a young artist and his cohorts find their collective voice and suddenly realize that there are no limits to what they can accomplish together. The explosive opening track “Cast Away” serves notice that this isn’t just another singer/songwriter-fronted band. With Cash’s unflinching poetry riding atop The Romantic Dogs taut exuberance, Tongue-In-Cheek Vows is a gimmick-free, melodic masterpiece—tipping its hat to an era when conviction was measured by the amount of sweat and blood exuded on stage, and in the studio.

Set for release on March 25 via Cameron House Records, Tongue-In-Cheek Vows is Cash’s third album and the second with the Romantic Dogs. It follows the group’s acclaimed 2013 debut, Stand Together, Fall Together, an album that earned more attention than even Cash was hoping for, given how spontaneously it was made. While the rambunctiousness that drew fans and critics to that album is on full display, Cash chose to take more time to develop Tongue-In-Cheek Vows. Working in tandem with producer and bona fide Canadian alt-rock legend Ian Blurton (Change Of Heart, C’Mon, Public Animal), Cash and the Dogs have served up 11 tracks brimming with lyrics as razor-sharp as the performances driving them. Those who have followed Cash’s development to this point are sure to be stunned by the self-awareness and insight into the human condition embedded in songs like the album’s first focus track “Tossing & Turning” as well as “That Was The Summer” and “Carmen,” from which the album’s title was drawn.

“I really wanted this record to be a statement, and I gathered all the best material I had on hand for it, including some songs I purposely didn’t want to put on the last album,” Cash says. “It felt good to be able to involve the band more on this one too, considering we’d made Stand Together, Fall Together in basically two days. Everyone worked really hard and there was a great exchange of ideas.”

Cash views Tongue-In-Cheek Vows not just as a mere coming-of-age document, but a symbol of how he has embraced the craft of songwriting itself. “These songs were written during a three or four year period starting when I was 19, which is a pretty exciting time for anyone,” he says. “But what I love most about songs are those moments when you hear something and it hits you in a very specific way, and you’re not even thinking about what the writer’s intentions are. That’s the ultimate effect I would like my music to have on people, when they can make their own connection, which is just as real and meaningful as what was in my head when I wrote the song.”

Those who have been around long enough will undoubtedly hear echoes of Cash’s father Andrew Cash, part of Toronto’s original punk rock community and later one of Canada’s most respected singer-songwriters. Yet, from the time Sam launched his own music career in his late teens, he’s forged his own uncompromising path toward establishing a name within the Toronto underground rock scene, and building his band into one of the most formidable live outfits in the city. To see it for yourself, catch Sam Cash & The Romantic Dogs on tour across Canada with Lee Harvey Osmond and Electric Six beginning on February 13. Full tour dates can be found below with more dates to be added shortly.

AMANDA MARTINEZ

Amanda Martinez is a singer-songwriter whose music exultingly blends her Mexican father and South African mother’s roots with Latin soul and folklore. Her sultry, bright vocals and upbeat sound get entire audiences on their feet around the world.

Her third and latest CD “Mañana” was helmed by GRAMMY-winning producer Javier Limón. Limón hails Martinez as “one of the greatest voices in the world.”

Her songs have appeared on three Putumayo world music collections: Bossanova Around the World, Latin Dreamland and most recently, Cafe Latino.

Martinez has headlined at the legendary Blue Note jazz club in New York, at Toronto’s Koerner Hall and Winter Garden Theatre, at the Festival Centro Historico de Mexico and at the 2010 FIFA World Cup Festivities in South Africa. She also performed a series of concerts during the 2015 Toronto Pan Am Games, as well as hosting several events. During the games, she also served as a torchbearer and as the honourary co-chair of the Ignite program.

In the media, Martinez hosted PANAMANIA– a TV series she produced with CBC Sports that highlights Toronto’s cultural scene. Martinez has worked as a radio host (launching Canada’s JAZZFM91 Latin Jazz program), TV personality (BRAVO Arts & Minds, Star TV!) and actress (Regnesis and Disney’s Life with Derek). She also hosts and co-produces Ingredients for a Good Life to promote Mexico to Canadians.

As a honourary ambassador for SOS Children’s Villages, she recently traveled to Namibia where she spent just over a week caring for a family of eight orphaned and abandoned children. A mother of three young children, Amanda calls the SOS mission “a cause close to my heart.” As a result of that experience, she wrote and recorded the song “Under African Skies”– now on iTunes.

In late 2014, she was chosen as one of the Top 10 Most Influential Hispanic Canadians by the Hispanic Business Alliance and the Canadian Hispanic Congress.

Amanda is currently working on her fourth album, due out in 2017.

SUZIE UNGERLEIDER
Suzie Ungerleider began performing as Oh Susanna in the mid-1990s, crafting a persona that matched the timeless qualities of her music, sounds that drew from the deep well of early 20th Century folk, country and blues, yet rooted in her finely-honed storytelling skills. This Canadian songstress has a voice that can pierce a heart of stone. Her superbly crafted songs often tell stories of troubled souls who rebel against their circumstances to attain a quiet dignity. These are tales of longing and love, of small town joys and pains, of our simple feelings and strong passions. These are tales that look into our beautifully flawed human hearts.

Born in Massachusetts and raised in Vancouver, Suzie first recorded a cassette of seven songs for a couple hundred bucks, making 50 copies and catching the attention of the music industry before Alt-Country even had a name. The positive reaction she received inspired Suzie to quit her day job as a library clerk and take her chances in Toronto. Soon after, she recorded her internationally acclaimed debut album Johnstown with assistance from Bazil Donovan (Blue Rodeo), Peter Moore (Cowboy Junkies) and Bob Egan (Wilco/Blue Rodeo).

The follow-up, Sleepy Little Sailor, firmly established her reputation within what was then known as Alt-Country circles, and her third, eponymously titled album from 2003 found Suzie expanding her sound in an exciting roots rock direction. After pausing to start a family, she returned in 2007 with the stunning collection, Short Stories, bolstered by a top-notch band anchored by a rhythm section comprised of her husband Cam Giroux (Weeping Tile) and Bazil Donovan (Blue Rodeo), along with a crew of string-bending virtuosos including Luke Doucet, Kevin Fox, Joey Wright and Burke Carroll. This group reconvened for 2011’s Soon The Birds,which brilliantly blended the stark beauty of her early work with fleshed-out ensemble arrangements.

Looking back at how her career developed, Suzie says that she definitely had a narrow focus at the beginning, drawing on American influences such as Hank Williams, Bill Monroe, Tom Waits, and field recordings of traditional balladry which she maintains was necessary for her to find her voice. However, Suzie now says, “In order to grow and feel inspired, I have to open up my field of vision. The drawback is that people still want to define you somehow. At the same time, whatever music I make will always have similar themes of people at the crossroads, trying to cope with the situations they’re in.”

In that respect, Namedropper is vintage Oh Susanna, in spite of the songs coming from other sources. Interpreting those words with her unique combination of grit and subtlety has made them her own, while also providing ample proof that Canada’s songwriting tradition is in safe hands with this generation of artists. Being a member of that community has even moved Suzie to pursue her Canadian citizenship, and now that she’s healthy, she fully expects to have new material ready to record in the not too distant future.

www.ohsusanna.com
www.myspace.com/ohsusannamusic
www.facebook.com/ohsusannamusic
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Emerging Artists