Country

Steven Lee Olsen’s Miraculous Trek To the Grand Ole Opry

The songwriter behind Keith Urban’s hit ‘Blue Ain’t Your Color’ was working at an Audi dealership in Newmarket when he got his first big break. By Nick Krewen Special to the Star This Sunday night, Scarborough-born country singer and songwriter Steven Lee Olsen will realize another lifelong dream. Olsen, 37 — and currently on Canadian country radio airwaves with his Top 10 hit “Outta Yours,” — will be making his…


Why Whitehorse’s new album turns up the twang: the pandemic was so apocalyptic, ‘only country music seemed appropriate’

New release I’m Not Crying, You’re Crying sees Toronto duo exploring a part of their musical tastes that Luke Doucet and Melissa McClelland say has always been a part of what they do. By Nick Krewen Special to the Star Well, this is an interesting turn. For the newest Whitehorse effort, the Toronto-based husband-wife duo of Luke Doucet and Melissa McClelland has switched gears from the hip volcanic mélange of…


Blue Rodeo on the making of new album Many A Mile: ‘Everybody was willing to let go of how everything was before and it was really great’

By Nick Krewen Special to the Star Sometimes fate intervenes in mysterious ways. For example, take Blue Rodeo: the creation of the Toronto collective’s new album Many A Mile, released Friday, was as much a surprise to the band’s co-founding songwriters Jim Cuddy and Greg Keelor as anyone. Even though it’s been five years since their last studio effort, 1000 Arms, it seemed it would be another little while before…


Gordon Lightfoot, 82, thrilled to be reopening Toronto’s Massey Hall

The 13-time Juno Award winner who has entertained more than 165 audiences at the venue says he would have been in the building for the reopening regardless of whether he was performing. By Nick Krewen Special to the Star Well, we almost had a Massey Hall reopening without a Gordon Lightfoot concert. Reached at home by phone on Monday, Lightfoot admits that  even though his Nov 25-27 dates to welcome patrons…


Canadian women are crushing it in Nashville

Nick Krewen Special to the Star She may be from Texas, but don’t be surprised if country singer and songwriter Mickey Guyton ends up hanging a flag bearing the Maple Leaf outside her house: Canadians have been a paramount factor in her ground-breaking success. “I looooovvvve Canadians – yes I do!” gushes Guyton, whose racially insightful anthem “Black Like Me” earned her pioneering stature as the first Black female to receive…