Canada

Canada, Dance, Experimental, Hip-Hop, Novelty, Pop, Songwriter, Toronto, United States, Video, Voice January 27, 2021

Rising Toronto rapper scores big name help – Idris Elba and Courteney Cox – for new video

Nick Krewen Special To The Star Toronto’s Connor Price may have an unlikely source to thank for his entertaining new hip-hop video featuring a couple of Hollywood A-Listers: COVID-19. While the Markham-born Price’s novel song “Courteney Cox,”  – which he describes as “an homage” to the Friends and Scream actress as he labels her “a cougar ” – the catalyst to getting the tune recorded is none other than fellow actor…

British Columbia, Canada, Country, Dean Brody, Grammy, Guitar, Piano, Songwriter, Texas, Toronto, United States, Voice January 21, 2021

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…

Arranger, Bruce Cockburn, Canada, Composer, Indiana, Jazz, Linda Ronstadt, Piano, Producer, Toronto, United States December 25, 2020

This Toronto musician’s carefree wandering through the ’60s saw him working with Janis Joplin and Linda Ronstadt – and that’s only part of his story

Nick Krewen Special to the Star You may know him as the artistic director of the currently paused Beaches International Jazz Festival or hear him on one of the three radio programs he either hosts or co-hosts in the city. But did you know that Toronto’s Bill King, a three-time Juno Award nominee, also served as music director for blues-rock singer Janis Joplin, the stylistically versatile Linda Ronstadt, The Pointer…

Canada, CD reviews, Guitar, JUNO, Pop, Shawn Mendes, Songwriter, Toronto December 4, 2020

Shawn Mendes swings for the fences with Wonder

Nick Krewen Special To The Star SHAWN MENDES  Wonder  Island Records Wonder, the fourth studio album from Pickering pop sensation Shawn Mendes, is a game changer for the lad.  In a process that began with his self-titled album from 2018, Mendes has largely left the folkish, boyish strains of acoustic guitar behind and settled more for a piano- and-electronic-keyboard sound that sonically bounces between intimate tenderness and epic explosiveness. Mendes…

Alberta, Arranger, Art Rock, Canada, Canadian Music Hall Of Fame, Experimental, Folk, Fusion, Grammy, Guitar, Herbie Hancock, Jazz, Joni Mitchell, JUNO, Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, Pop, Producer, Rock, Rock 'N Roll Hall Of Fame, Songwriter, Taylor Swift, Voice October 18, 2020

Before she went to New York and became famous, Joni Mitchell played the Half Beat in Yorkville

     Nick Krewen Special to the Star John McHugh remembers the time he accidentally became Joni Mitchell’s matchmaker. McHugh, who owned the Yorkville-era clubs The Penny Farthing and The Half Beat back in the ‘60s, recalls meeting “Joanna Anderson” when she came around to one of his venues around 1963-64. “It was at the Penny Farthing that (singer) Cathy Young brought this young lady in with her,” McHugh recalled recently…