Live at the Checkerboard Lounge, Chicago 1981 is a concert video and live album by Muddy Waters and members of the Rolling Stones. It was recorded on 22 November 1981 by David Hewitt on the Record Plant Black Truck, mixed by Bob Clearmountain, and released on 10 July 2012.
The Checkerboard Lounge was a blues club in Bronzeville, on the South Side of Chicago, which was established in 1972 by Buddy Guy and L.C. Thurman.
In the clip below , Ringo Starr demonstrates on Dave Stewart’s show his technique on “Ticket to Ride,” “Come Together,” and his highest-charting solo single “Back Off Boogaloo.”
Toronto Tabla Ensemble continue to entice ears and eyes with this, their new video for “Maryem’s Here” — available now.
Fresh from their most recent release, Unexpected Guests, the track and video bring diverse musical traditions together — from Indian classical dance, to Japanese drumming, to Arabic singing, and Western classical instrumentation.
The goal is simple: create compelling music and showcase it with visual flair.
“This album is a simple one,” says Ritesh Das, the 62-year-old tabla virtuoso, composer and educator who leads and founded the JUNO Award-nominated Toronto Tabla Ensemble. “Most of the tracks are in very straightforward 4/4 grooves. On our other albums, you had tracks with different time signatures that made it really intellectual and complicated. But I wanted this one to be something that anyone can sit back and listen to.”
‘Simple’ here doesn’t imply any sacrifice in musicianship; “Maryem’s Here” dazzles with virtuosity in its performance, interpreted with an emotional heart that connects with listeners.
The tabla forms the basis for TTE’s signature sound. In “Maryem’s Here,” the violin (played by Raaginder Singh Momi) and Japanese taiko drums (by noted ensemble Nagata Shachu) join the traditional Indian percussion, while Maryem Hassan Tollar — the Cairo-born, Toronto-based vocalist who has carved a unique career as an Arabic-style artist with a reputation for genre-bending collaborations — brings a mastery of technique and tone to the table.
The blend of musical traditions and instruments, vocals, and dance is seamless, building to emotional highs and, while the time signature may be simpler than usual for TTE, the layers of rhythm and musicianship are palpably anything but. As for the video, a bejewelled Indian classical dancer captivates the eye while Tollar’s haunting vocals add a mesmerizing melody.
Other tracks on the album bring in the talents of bagpiper Craig Downie (Enter The Haggis), multi-instrumentalist George Koller, and flautist Alysha Addetia, among others.
“Over the years, I’ve done everything from jazz to rock ’n’ roll,” Das explains. “I don’t do traditional Indian music; what I do is take the essence of it — the songs and sounds of North Indian classical music — and I blend it with other styles.
“To me, there’s no such thing as world music,” he adds. “Music is music.”
The Toronto Tabla Ensemble have released six albums and were nominated for a JUNO Award for their 2000 album, Firedance. Their 2018 album, Bhumika, won an Independent Music Award, and garnered two Canadian Folk Music Award nominations. TTE also includes a youth ensemble, represented with a track on the new album, and a film/video division.
At over 130,000+ streams, Canadian producer Mellow Fields is back to haunt your dreams with this, his new single, “Gemini Rising” — available now.
The track starts with electronic beats rising to a swell before making way for sweet, ethereal vocals from featured artist, Jenny Palacios, that light up the song’s compelling poetry. Mellow Fields — aka Michael David’s — rhythms are irresistible and, together with Palacios’ lead and harmony vocals in a mesmerizing stream of lyrics, her singing floats above them like a butterfly.
It’s a track that goes from soft to insistent, kinetic to moody, still to emotional, and back.
Like any true Gemini, the lyrics blend diverse elements — sweet sensuality and a hint of danger, with a trippy sensibility that puts you in a dream world. Mellow Fields weaves it all into a rich sonic texture, and “Gemini Rising” wraps with an ecstatic high of music and emotion.
From a sleepy suburb in the Greater Toronto Area to the airwaves, Mellow Fields is an indie Progressive House/Electro producer working from home during the pandemic. He’s adept at switching moods over the 4:31 minute track, developing the rhythms and sounds with a judicious ear and without a hint of self-indulgence. He’s always got a new surprise up his sleeve, and a new direction to keep things interesting and add replay appeal.
He counts the greats of EDM among the influences in his work, and in “Gemini Rising” audiences hear the same focus on persistent beats plus a play on rising and falling tension. It’s trance music with a nod to synthwave, a song that’s sonically intriguing but also accessible — and danceable, too.
The track is a mild departure from Mellow Fields’ previous work, including the song “Wage of Destruction” — the first track from his 2017 self-titled debut EP that was licenced for use in a Nissan commercial, and received widespread airplay across playlist and gaming channels.
That said, it’s “the most authentic music” he’s written since starting as a producer, he shares.
Canadian rockers Cigar Club are storming the scene with this brooding, bone-chilling, goosebump-inducing new single, “Like White Flats in Winter” — available now.
The song lands ahead of the Toronto-based band’s forthcoming and highly-anticipated debut album, Day, Now, and serves as yet another pitch-perfect introduction to the crew, offering you a little bit of everything and more.
“Like White Flats in Winter” is the third and latest single from the upcoming record, and quite possibly the band’s most unique to date. It kicks off with a simple, yet catchy, chord progression, which is accompanied by the longing vocal phrases of frontman Trev Coughlin — which instills a powerful feeling of sadness and doom within the listener.
Coughlin’s voice, no matter how buttery, carries so much weight and emotion in this song, it begs the question: ‘Who hurt this man?’
“I feel like we really got it right with this song,” Coughlin says. “It’s like that first line: ‘Walking off pavement into stars’… I hear that like walking off the edge and then gradually falling, while getting louder and louder.”
Lead guitarist Dan Amato adds that it’s an “emotionally” powerful song for them. “It feels really good to really love the music you had a part in creating … I suppose that’s why we do this.”
“We were initially going to save this song for our next album,” Coughlin reveals of the song, “but COVID-19 hit and pushed everything back, and we were too excited to wait with it.”
“This song was influenced by the new Ontario rock scene on the rise, and the energy associated with it,” drummer Tyler Booth says of the track’s sound. “It’s my favourite to play by far.”
Booth’s performance on this number, in particular, is much different from a typical Cigar Club song as it incorporates a number of different percussion styles — including double bass drumming and clavés, and was influenced heavily by Latin dance music.
In agreement with his bandmates, bassist Jeff LeFort muses that “Like White Flats in Winter” came out of nowhere, at first. “It started out just as this simple instrumental chord progression, and turned into one of our favourite originals.”
Cigar Club kicked off their career in 2016 after bonding over their mutual love for John Mayer’s music. Though soft rock and blues (with a hint of soul) was once their game — and will forever be a part of their playing styles — it wasn’t until Booth joined that they mastered their iconic and alternative, punk rock sound heard today.
After the release of their first-ever EP, Cigar Club — and a year of consistent touring across Ontario, pre-COVID-19 pandemic, of course — the four-piece began garnering a mass of positive attention and developed a gigantic local fanbase, along with the fierce demand for more original music.
Along with “Like White Flats in Winter’, Cigar Club’s two previous singles, “Swimmin’ in Gold” and “…Aliens” single are now available through all major streaming platforms.
Join renowned Canadian songwriter, artist, and much-loved TV personality Christopher Ward for a live and interactive YouTube take-over event with Long & McQuade Musical Instruments.
Tune in Thursday, April 29 at 7pm EDT for Through the Creative Lens: A Songwriter’s Masterclass with Christopher Ward! Watch the livestream on YouTube here: youtu.be/ivyXy1hx1RM.
In his acclaimed debut as a filmmaker, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson presents a powerful and transporting documentary—part music film, part historical record created around an epic event that celebrated Black history, culture and fashion. Over the course of six weeks in the summer of 1969, just one hundred miles south of Woodstock, The Harlem Cultural Festival was filmed in Mount Morris Park (now Marcus Garvey Park). The footage was never seen and largely forgotten-until now. SUMMER OF SOUL shines a light on the importance of history to our spiritual well-being and stands as a testament to the healing power of music during times of unrest, both past and present. The feature includes never-before-seen concert performances by Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Sly & the Family Stone, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Ray Baretto, Abbey Lincoln & Max Roach and more.
Watch the brand-new teaser trailer for Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story, in theatres this December. It’s been 60 years since the original and was nominated for eleven Academy Awards and won ten, including George Chakiris for Supporting Actor, Rita Moreno for Supporting Actress, and Best Picture.
Twenty years ago, Frances McDormand starred in Almost Famous as Elaine Miller, a college professor who frequently told her budding music journalist son that rock & roll was about “drugs and promiscuous sex.” In this deleted scene from Cameron Crowe’s film, she is asked to endure all eight minutes and two seconds of Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.” Cameron Crowe has said that if he knew this scene would not have been in the movie, he wouldn’t have made it. They couldn’t secure the rights to the song and so it was cut.
JUNO Award-winning Canadian songwriter, artist, author and MuchMusic original VJ Christopher Ward has recorded a new take on his most recognizable song, the Billboard #1 hit “Black Velvet” — available now.
The writers who have achieved a #1 single number in the hundreds. This songwriter’s take on the classic comes 31 years after this achievement. It is worthy of your attention.
As far as resumes go, Ward’s is among the nation’s most prolific: To leap by decades, he was a recording artist throughout the 70s, a television icon and founding VJ through the 80s, and a hit songwriter in the 90s. He’s written songs for many — including Diana Ross, Amanda Marshall, Colin James, and the Backstreet Boys — as well as for CTV’s Instant Star, the Degrassi franchise, Cirque du Soleil, and more. His songs have been performed on Idol shows around the world, and he’s won a JUNO Award for Songwriter of the Year. Ward has also authored three novels, Is This Live?, and co-hosts a podcast, Famous Lost Words.
Now, Ward’s take on “Black Velvet” is one of many; the song precedes his forthcoming album, Same River Twice — set for release on May 28, 2021.
Produced by Ward, Arun Chaturvedi, and Luke McMaster, the album signals a homecoming, or a return, if you will. After a career of writing songs for others, Same River Twice tells his own tale as an artist and writer. “It’s a testimony, of sorts, from someone who’s been ‘working life out’ on a guitar and in a notebook for half a century — and counting, and as times change, and we all age, we still have new stories to tell.
“The ground I cover in Same River Twice is personal, and the telling is honest and hopeful. These are songs that say it was all worth it, that our choices matter, and that we need dreams to live for.”
A deep faith in the creative process led to the making of Same River Twice this past summer. “A group of brilliant players and singers gathered in the legendary Orange Lounge studio,” Ward recalls. “We recorded in a way that harkened back to the classic Motown and Muscle Shoals style of working; I’d play the song on acoustic guitar for the band, then they’d run it down a few times, making notes and talking about the shape of the song.
“We’d press record,” he continues, “and once everyone was happy, on to the next!
“It was my belief that capturing a performance of the song, live off the floor and while the players were still discovering it themselves, would lead to the ‘loose and live’ feeling that’s so elusive in recording sessions.”
And capture it, they did. The result is a 13-track LP, along with Ward’s reinvention of “Black Velvet,” that will “take you to the places where the song was born.”
“The creation of Same River Twice was a process of rediscovery, like falling in love again,” Ward explains. “I started to write songs that reflect my own life experiences, which I hadn’t done in decades and it led me to value what I have and what life’s about a whole lot more. I wanted to share that to empower people to listen to their own inner voices, as I came to terms with mine.”
Ward talks about the process of making Same River Twice, “How to get those songs recorded was going to be a challenge, but together, my collaborators and I found a way to work safely and still explore the intimacy of playing as a group, bouncing ideas back and forth as we went along. For the players, who had been working exclusively at home for a while, it was like coming out of hibernation, and for me there’s nothing like the joy of playing together and seeing a song evolve before your eyes.”
With inspiration drawn from the greatest songwriters of all time including Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Joni Mitchell, Willie Dixon, Laura Nyro and Hank Williams, Ward embraces the possibilities of limitless artistic self-expression and a continued and ongoing drive to create. A lover of the process of collaboration, he believes it ultimately makes for a better song — like travelling down a river to discover something new as the ultimate reward.
“I’m happy with the work I’ve done, but will always want to write another song,” Ward explains, when asked about who else he would like to write for, or with, next. “I can’t imagine retiring, it’s a terrifying prospect for me. I’m a storyteller with a restless imagination, and with this new album, I want to connect with the listener by trying to make the most out of who I am, how I’ve evolved, and by sharing the process of rediscovery. If I write something true, that touches someone, that’s where the real gratification is.
“I found something meaningful during the process of making Same River Twice, that I thought I had lost. I believe I’ve just made the best music of my life,” he adds. “And I’m not done yet.”
“Black Velvet” is available now. Same River Twice is available May 28, 2021.
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Eric Alper is a 6-time nominee for Publicist of the Year during Canadian Music Week and has overseen the publicity campaigns for over 183 JUNO Award-nominated albums (and 16 in 2025), 45 Grammy-nominated albums, including 47 JUNO Award, 58 Canadian Folk Music Award, 126 Maple Blues Award-winning albums and is also truly honoured to work with some of the biggest and most important artists of our time.
Contact me: eric@thatericalper.com
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