Gordon Lightfoot Book, Music and More!

It is a particularly eerie case of life imitating art. In Paul Quarrington’s novel Whale Music, rock musician Desmond Howell writes a song called “Claire” that unexpectedly becomes a hit single. Recently, the Rheostatics, a Canadian rock band with no previous hit singles to its credit, recorded a sound track for the film adaptation, including their own version of “Claire.” The song, a dreamy slice of melodic pop, is now getting airplay on commercial radio stations across Canada, exposing the critically acclaimed group to its largest audience to date. “Normally, we just follow our instincts on our albums,” admits guitarist Dave Bidini. “Here, we got a chance to pretend to be someone else...

He sang songs steeped in melancholy with a voice that could hit the sweetest heights. As a member of the first generation of rock-and-rollers, he was a loner, a shy teetotaller who, despite his tough-looking, dark attire and ever-present sunglasses, preferred wrenching ballads to the rugged side of rock. And when he died last week from a heart attack at 52, Roy Orbison touched off a new wave of emotion from a diverse range of musicians and fans. At the peak of his career in the 1960s, Orbison had 27 consecutive records on the charts, including “Only the Lonely” and “Oh Pretty Woman.” Recently, he returned to the charts by collaborating with Bob Dylan, George Harrison and Tom Petty in the gro...

It is a long climb up two flights of stairs, past a wall of hanging hats, into Jane Siberry’s private world. In many ways, her third-floor apartment in Toronto’s west end is a typical artist’s garret: small, bright and sparsely furnished. And like her songs, which offer unexpected views of daily life, Siberry’s living quarters reveal an assortment of striking snapshot images: a sundrenched guitar leaning against a wall, an unused painting easel standing in a corner, a solitary oak table sitting in the front room. With a piano squeezed in next to the kitchen sink, it is an unusually modest dwelling for one of Canada’s most celebrated singer-songwriters. Yet, for the past year, Siberry, who wa...

Sarah Harmer is no technical whiz. Sure, like any musician, she knows her way around a recording studio. She has a cellphone and an email-equipped laptop computer, which she tries to use to correspond with family and friends. Her record distributor even gave her a digital voice recorder for Christmas, which Harmer took on a Mexican vacation in the hope of capturing song ideas. Unfortunately, she left it switched on and the batteries were dead before she could figure out how to use it. Then, when Harmer returned to Canada, her old Ford Econoline van, which she’d left parked at her parents’ farm outside of Burlington, Ont., wouldn’t start. Alone in the farmyard, she was more than a little frus...

Dressed in white lace stockings and a silky smoking jacket, she fluttered tentatively around the stage. With her frail figure and whispery voice, she seemed fragile under the spotlight’s glare. But as her pulsing, ethereal music gathered momentum, Jane Siberry spun a web around her audience in Detroit two weeks ago. At 29, Siberry has been hailed in Rolling Stone magazine as a “fascinating” new artist, and many critics feel she is the finest Canadian songwriter to appear in a decade. Once considered too eccentric for popular tastes, the Toronto singer is emerging into pop’s mainstream: her North American tour of 50 cities is currently under way, and last week 30,000 copies of her t...

Elvis Costello is rock’s renaissance man. Along with writing and recording his own songs — some of the wittiest and most acerbic in the pop catalogue, Costello has produced a number of Britain’s best bands, including the Pogues, the Specials and Squeeze. The husband of Diana Krall has also become something of a pop commentator, penning liner notes for CD reissues and acting as a contributor to Vanity Fair. A future Rock and Roll Hall of Famer himself, Costello has collaborated with some of pop’s biggest heavyweights, including Paul McCartney and Burt Bacharach. His latest partner is Allen Toussaint, the legendary New Orleans artist, best known for writing numerous R&B hits and produ...

The doldrums of contemporary popular music have led many artists to other cultures in search of inspiration. Increasingly, bands such as Talking Heads and the Police are incorporating African or West Indian rhythms into their sound. Just how rich and varied that mix can be is evident on Music and Rhythm, a double-record set featuring musicians from more than 15 countries. The “benefit” album was intended to offset the debts of the World of Music Arts and Dance (WOMAD), a large multicultural festival held in England last summer. The collection places rock musicians, from former Genesis singer and festival promoter Peter Gabriel to the Who’s Peter Townshend, alongside the primeval sounds ...

After exhausting the musical possibilities of rhythm and blues over the past 30 years, pop music is searching for ways to rejuvenate itself. The Police found success with their own brand of Jamaican reggae, and such bands as Talking Heads, the English Beat and Culture Club have eagerly borrowed ingredients from other Third World sources. Now musicians— including the Police—are turning to Africa for inspiration. Of all the sounds to come out of that continent recently the most influential—and exotic—is the juju music of Nigeria’s King Sunny Adé. Last week Adé played two triumphant concerts in Montreal and Toronto to coincide with Synchro System, his first album to be released in Canada. ...

It begins with one of the most recognizable riffs in Canadian music: a simple piano intro that goes “dum, da-da-dadum, da-dum, da-da-da-dum.” Written by CanRock legends Randy Bachman and Burton Cummings, it’s the introduction to “These Eyes,” the Guess Who’s massive international hit of 1969. But then a sliding guitar cuts in, followed by some thumping bass and drums. By the time a voice starts rapping about being “in this game a long, long time,” the song has been transformed into something entirely different. “It’s Stick to Your Vision,” the new hit by Maestro, the Canadian artist formerly known as Maestro Fresh Wes. “I’ve seen a lot of valleys, I’ve seen a lot of peaks,” he reminisces in ...

The setting was a public-housing unit in the Toronto suburb of Willowdale. But the two young men were basking in an unmistakably Caribbean atmosphere. The townhouse was filled with the pungent smell of a West Indian fish fry, and a video of a Jamaican reggae dance was playing on the TV. It seemed an unlikely base for two of the fastest-rising stars in rap music, a musical style more associated with U.S. ghettos than Canadian suburbs. But Caribbean-born King Lou (Louis Robinson) and Capital Q (Frank Allert) have made a name for themselves, as the Dream Warriors, by revolutionizing rap music. Said Q: “Everyone’s accustomed to rap with guys swearing and bragging about themselves and violence. W...