Musician moms: a salute for Mother’s Day
Photo: Kristine St-Pierre on the road with her kids. It’s the perennial question women have faced for years: “Is motherhood incompatible with a fulfilling career?” Many women walk a fine line, wanting children, but also wanting a creative life, whether ...
Québec trad outfit Orchestre Pic-Bois readies a debut
Fans of Québecois folklore are in for a treat around the beginning of June. Jean Desrochers’ new band, l’Orchestre Pic-Bois is coming out with their first album. Check out one of the tracks here: Jean Desrochers sure gets around. Multi-instrumentalist, ...
Safe as Houses – Lucky Lucky (full album)
Folks, a couple of weeks ago, we premiered Safe as Houses’ new video “Alive” here on Roots Music Canada, and holy smokes did you ever seem to like it! In fact, you liked it so much that they’re letting us ...
A new album revives the songs of Soviet Jews persecuted ...
It was the early 2000s. University of Toronto Yiddish Studies professor Anna Shternshis was in Kiev doing research for a book on Yiddish culture during the Second World War. She was searching through libraries for archival documents to supplement ...
Successful Strategies For Booking House Concerts (Part 1)
For many folk and roots artists, house concerts now make up a large part of their tour schedules, but booking an independent house concert (and making it a success) can be harder than it appears. We at O’Hara House Concerts, ...
Canadian Music Week: What’s in it for roots artists?
Canadian Music Week kicks off today, and with it, showcases featuring more than 800 artists from across Canada and around the world. (We’ve highlighted a few of the roots acts here.) CMW bills itself as “one of the premier entertainment ...
The Hugh’s Room Live birthday bash: a night in ...
When the beloved Toronto folk and roots venue Hugh’s Room closed down abruptly in January of last year, a devoted committee of music lovers raised more than $100,000 to bring it back. It reopened just four months later, and last ...
Jon Brooks – “Todos Caminamos Por Este Caminito”
“No One Travels Alone is a contrite apology to my 138 super fans the world over for 2014’s murder ballads album, The Smiling & Beautiful Countryside,” Jon Brooks told me in an email this week. I had to smile. Countryside ...
The Young Novelists – In City & Country
From the outside, the new record by The Young Novelists, In City & Country, is a lyrical investigation of small town Ontario life and its (in)compatibility with the big city escape hatch. On a deeper level, it’s about not being ...
Canadian Music Week: a cross-Canada road-trip in 10 roots ...
You’ve found yourself with a pass to Canadian Music Week. Now all you have to do is find some great Canadian roots music to go see – not an easy task when the line-up features more than 800 showcasing artists representing ...