In 2018, Massey Hall closed its doors for a long overdue massive restoration which promises to bring the hall into the 21st century and at the same time retain its charm and restore some of its hidden beauty. Around the same time, David McPherson and his publisher Dundurn Press met with Massey Hall’s management team to propose a comprehensive book chronicling its 125 year history.
Read MoreWhen I first met Geoff Tait he was running his fashion forward golf apparel company Quagmire. The business was flying and Geoff was hanging out at the Masters with golf icons Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus and partying with Kanye, Jay Z and John Legend. And then it all came crashing down.
Read MoreThe option is an opportunity to learn. Embrace the opportunity.
Read MoreIn the late 1980s and early 90s, Kurt Swinghammer’s artwork became synonymous with the city Toronto as well as the Canadian hip hop scene. Art critics dubbed it neo-primitive and his abstract work could be found on radio station logos, business signs and in music videos. His bold improvised artwork eventually became ubiquitous and a go to stile in the advertising world.
Read MoreAs a member of the Canadian rock trio Triumph, Rik Emmett has sold millions of records and toured the world performing for millions more. Since leaving Triumph in 1988, Rik has enjoyed a successful solo recording career and, until recently, spent two decades as a faculty member at Humber College in his hometown of Toronto where he taught Songwriting, Music Business, Creative Development and Directed Studies. Writing has always been a part of Rik’s life whether as a songwriter or as a regular contributor to Guitar Player Magazine. In 2001 he self published Bric-A-Brac, a book of short stories, poems and unreleased lyrics but now he has taken a unique approach to writing a memoir as a book of poetry called Reinvention.
Read MoreHow did his music get to one billion streams?
Why is he not interested in signing with a record company?
Why won’t he show his face in photographs?
Read MoreAnyone who knows Vince Ditrich probably knows him as the merry mirthmaking drummer of Canada’s wildly popular Celtic rock band Spirit of The West. With the days of long haul touring behind him, Vince has settled into a much quieter life on the West Coast. As you’ll see in our interview, Vince has always had an interest in writing and has kept up the practise with his blog Random Note Generator. But it was the encouragement from some friends that led to Vince creating wannabe rocker Tony Vicar who lived an ordinary life in the imaginary BC town of Tyee Lagoon until something magical happened that turned his life and his world upside down.
Read MoreIndie filmmaker Justin McAleece and his friends began developing the mockumentary Brick Madness while they worked as hired techs on another film. Brick Madness takes place during a scandalous LEGO competition, but we can’t say LEGO, so forget I said that. What started as a joke concept to distract them from a slow day of filming, turned into a 10 year passion project. In this interview Justin shares the odyssey that Brick Madness took from its birth during downtime on a film set to its premiere in his hometown of Fresno, California.
Read MoreThis showed up in my social feed the other day and I found it extremely inspirational. I hope that you do too…
Read MoreThough I’ve known Eric Samuels for several years, I never really knew the many roads he’s travelled to get to where he is today. When I first met Eric he was one of Canada’s leading radio programmers. I thought he was a little buttoned up the way he was always quoting market research as the reason not to play a record I was promoting at the time. As a result, finding out that he had tried his hand at being a stand up comedian shocked me.
Read MoreNot much in life beats the combination of music and food and both have been passions at the centre of Roger Mooking’s life.
Read MoreImagine if you worked with a team for several years on creating a thing and then that thing couldn’t even be tested properly until almost a year after it was completed. And now, imagine that you can’t even see if your creation works in real time because it’s on another freakin planet! Well, that is exactly the experience of my guest Taryn Bailey, a mechanical engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in California. Taryn is a part of the team that built Ingenuity, the helicopter that proved that controlled flight on another planet is possible.
Read MoreUp until now, I’ve interviewed a variety of guests about their creative process and the road they travelled to get to where they are. As a change of pace, I thought that it would be interesting to explore our brain’s relationship to creativity.
Read MoreLast week, I was on a call with a band and we got to talking about the varied background of each of the members and the different influences each member brought to the table. Reflecting on that conversation the next day it occurred to me that bands (and by extension solo artists) are like a soup.
Read MoreYou've put yourself out there into the world. You've released some music or played a great show. Your friends, family and fans tell you how great it is. You go to sleep feeling terrific about yourself. And then, you wake up the next morning and you realize that it all happened yesterday. Are you prepared for today? Are you prepared to follow up and keep the momentum going?
Read MoreI've always loved that quote. It cuts out all of the bull and gets right to the heart of it.
Read MoreIf you want someone to call you, put your phone number in the body of the email. Don't direct them to the email chain or to your signature. Don't allow them the excuse of "I couldn't find your number."
Read MoreBack in the day, you know, we're talking way back, like the early 2010's, social media gave birth to a new profession, "The Influencer." The idea was, by hook or by crook, to build a massive social following on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook and then leverage that following by charging companies a fee to showcase their products in some way on your social network.
Read MoreThis past January I began subscribing to the AVC blog written by Fred Wilson. On February 11, Fred posted this about Digital Art. That was the first I had heard of "NFT."
Read MoreThere are opportunities. You just need to take advantage of them and do a little work. I understand how difficult it has been these past 12 months not being able to play live gigs but there is still a way to produce an income by performing. You can perform on one of several livestream platforms that allow you to charge a fee for your audience.
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