Voice

John Hiatt: Walking The Streets Of Humanity

This feature appeared in the late, lamented on-line magazine MAGNET     JOHN HIATT: Walking The Streets Of Humanity   BY NICK KREWEN   At an age where some people stop cold in their tracks, take a deep breath and reassess their lives, John Hiatt is just coming into his prime. There’s not a drop of mid-life crisis in his veins. “I really like what I’m doing, ” announces the…


Shania: From Pain to Fame

    NEED TO KNOW: Shania Twain at the Canadian Country Music Awards, at Hamilton Place, 9 p.m. Tonight. Sold out. Tune into CTV at 9 p.m.   BY NICK KREWEN Special To The Spectator September 18, 1995   Don’t let her dazzling beauty fool you. Beneath the glamorous exterior of Shania Twain beats the heart of a survivor. The 29-year-old Windsor-born singing and songwriting sensation, who leads the pack…


Jewel bakes Alaska for Pieces Of You

NEED TO KNOW: Jewel at The Hideaway, Linwell Plaza, (Linwell Road at Grantham Avenue) St. Catharines, tonight. 8 p.m. Free.   NICK KREWEN Hamilton Spectator June 8, 1995   Jewel Kilcher is folk music’s newest diamond in the rough. Just 21, Kilcher — billed as Jewel — has been living the life of a traveling minstrel, enduring an endless series of one-nighters to promote her new Atlantic album Pieces Of…


Weird Al Yankovic – The Loneliest Guy in the Room

   NICK KREWEN The Hamilton Spectator March 30, 1995 Al Yankovic is a lonely guy. No wonder he’s turned Weird. Who’d expect an individual with an enviable collection of loud Hawaiian shirts and a pathetically sick sense of humor to be the musical equivalent of the Maytag repairman? Who’d figure that a guy who uses the accordion to provide such parodies of public pleasure as Jurassic Park — a claymation…


Ron Sexsmith reveals his Secret Heart

NICK KREWEN Hamilton Spectator Thursday, March 2, 1995       “Secret Heart What are you made of? What are you afraid of?”   — from “Secret Heart”, written by Ron Sexsmith, © 1995 Ronboy Rhymes Inc./Interscope Pearl Music/Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Corp., BMI.   French fries. When I first met Ron Sexsmith, his two favorite foods were French fries and Yorkshire pudding — mainly because they were British. At the time,…