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MusiCounts Is The Recipient Of The 2015 Slaight Music Humanitarian Award

Music

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Aug 12, 2015

MusiCounts Is The Recipient Of The 2015 Slaight Music Humanitarian Award

The Canadian Country Music Association Board of Directors announced today that MusiCounts, Canada’s music education charity, will receive the 2015 Slaight Music Humanitarian Award.

In the past, this CCMA Award of Achievement has recognized those who have made an outstanding contribution in the support of humanitarian causes in Canada. The CCMA Board of Directors selected MusiCounts to receive this honour in 2015 to recognize the success of their endeavours to recognize and support music education coast to coast, impacting not only future country music artists and musicians, but all youth that benefit from such programs.

“The foundational pillars of the CCMA are to educate, elevate and celebrate Canadian country music. The mission of MusiCounts aligns significantly with the members of the CCMA, especially those that are artists, and so the association is proud to support a charity that champions music education across Canada,” said Brian Hetherman, Chair of the CCMA Board of Directors.

MusiCounts, which is associated with The Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (CARAS), is helping to keep music alive in schools across Canada. The mission of MusiCounts is to ensure that children in Canada, regardless of socio-economic circumstances or cultural background, have access to a music program through their schools and communities.

Since the establishment of MusiCounts in 1997, nearly $8,000,000 has been awarded to help support music education in Canada. These funds have impacted over 700 schools and communities from coast to coast, supported over 320 post-secondary music program graduates and honoured ten extraordinary music teachers through the MusiCounts Teacher of the Year Award.

In 2012, the CCMA announced that MusiCounts would be one of the association’s official charities of choice, and aligned itself to support MusiCounts programs and initiatives through various fundraising and awareness activities. In recent years, a portion of each ticket sold to the annual CCMA Awards Show has been donated directly to MusiCounts. A number of CCMA members, including Gord Bamford, Dean Brody, Doc Walker, Kira Isabella, Brett Kissel, Jimmy Rankin, Johnny Reid and Shania Twain, among others, have enthusiastically taken up this cause by directly being involved in donating and/or being part of the many annual MusiCounts celebration presentations.

“We are extremely honoured to receive this award and would like to thank the Slaight family, who continue to be one of MusiCounts best supporters, for making this award possible,” said Allan Reid, President and CEO, CARAS/The JUNO Awards & MusiCounts. “The Canadian country music community has embraced MusiCounts passionately and has helped us to continue to grow and positively impact the lives thousands of children across Canada through the joy of making music.”

This award is currently named the Slaight Music Humanitarian Award in recognition of a generous donation by the Slaight Music Foundation.

“I am very pleased to hear that MusiCounts is the recipient of the 2015 Slaight Music Humanitarian Award. Our family has been proud supporters of MusiCounts from early on,” said Gary Slaight, President and CEO of Slaight Communications. “We understand the importance of music education in young peoples’ lives and congratulate the MusiCounts team in all their efforts to ensure schools are providing the best instruments to their students.”

The 2015 Slaight Music Humanitarian Award will be presented to MusiCounts during a private industry event held during Country Music Week, which takes place September 10 – 13 in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Visit ccma.org for event information. For further details on the Slaight Music Humanitarian Award, and other CCMA Awards of Achievement, click here.

The Canadian Music Café Announces Artist Lineup For 2015

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Aug 12, 2015

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The Canadian Music Café Announces Artist Lineup For 2015

The Canadian Music Café is excited to announce the lineup for its seventh annual edition, taking place September 14-15, 2015 at the famed Gladstone Hotel (1214 Queen West) in downtown Toronto! Canadian musicians participating at this year’s

two-day event during the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF®) will have the opportunity to showcase their synch-friendly music to selected, international music supervisors and filmed media decision makers. The Canadian Music Café is a springboard for up-and-coming Canadian talent to show off their diverse catalogues and is open to industry professionals to facilitate song placements in TV, film, advertising and video games.

With alumni such as City & Colour, Dear Rouge, Martha Wainwright, Chantal Kreviazuk, USS, Buck 65, Arkells and many more, the Canadian Music Café once again brings fresh Canadian talent to the attention of filmed media professionals. Café alumni songs have been discovered at previous showcases and placed in dozens of Canadian, American and international film and TV productions and commercials. This year, the Café has invited 11 top-notch music supervisors from the UK and USA (to be announced at a later date) to join filmed media professionals at the event.

“The CMPA is once again thrilled to be a presenter of the Canadian Music Café in 2015. We are very excited to showcase the diverse lineup of talented Canadian artists to our international and Canadian music supervisor guests and the filmed media communities that gather in Toronto during TIFF,” says Jodie Ferneyhough, president of CMPA.

“Following another hugely successful edition of the Café in 2014, CIMA is pleased to continue the annual tradition, which we hope will become a cornerstone for industry during TIFF,” says CIMA President, Stuart Johnston. “Facilitating the relationship between recorded music and filmed media is so important to developing our emerging Canadian talent.”

This year’s talent lineup is as follows:

Monday, September 14:
1:00 PM JEEN (ON)
1:50 pm DONOVAN WOODS (ON)
2:40 pm MICHAEL BERNARD FITZGERALD (AB)
3:30 pm ATTICA RIOTS (MB)
4:20 pm TERRA LIGHTFOOT (ON)

Tuesday, September 15:
1:00 pm KEN YATES (ON)
1:50 pm AHI (ON)
2:40 pm KAYLEIGH O’CONNOR (NS)
3:30 pm NUELA CHARLES (AB)
4:20 pm SCOTT HELMAN (ON)

The Canadian Music Café is a joint initiative produced by the Canadian Music Publishers Association (CMPA) and Canadian Independent Music Association (CIMA) whose mandates are to support, exploit and advocate for the Canadian publishers and Canadian independent music community, respectively. The CMPA and CIMA gratefully acknowledge that the 2015 Canadian Music Café is made possible with the support of the Ontario Media Development Corporation and the generous support from the Federal Government via the Canada Music Fund. To learn more please visit www.canadianmusiccafe.com.

Winona Ryder: The Beetlejuice Sequel Is Happening!

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Aug 12, 2015

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Winona Ryder: The Beetlejuice Sequel Is Happening!

While making an appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers, Winona Ryder confirms the second installment of Beetlejuice.

Patti Smith’s ‘Just Kids’ Memoir Set To Be A Series On Showtime

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Aug 12, 2015

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Patti Smith’s ‘Just Kids’ Memoir Set To Be A Series On Showtime

Patti Smith’s much sought after memoir, Just Kids, has landed at Showtime. Co-written and produced by Patti Smith and three-time Academy Award nominee John Logan, the memoir will be developed into a Showtime limited series, to be produced with Logan’s Desert Wolf Productions.

“Just Kids is one of my favorite memoirs of all time,” said David Nevins, President of Showtime Networks Inc. “Not only is it a fascinating portrait of artists coming of age, but it’s also an inspiring story of friendship, love and endurance. I’m so thrilled that Patti Smith will bring her unique voice to writing the scripts along with the gifted John Logan, who has been doing such a phenomenal job with Penny Dreadful for us.”

“A limited series on Showtime will allow us to explore the characters more deeply, enabling us to develop stories beyond the book and allow a measure of unorthodox presentation,” says Smith. “The medium of a television limited series offers narrative freedom and a chance to expand upon the themes of the book.”

Infographic: How to Get More Likes on Facebook

Music

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Aug 12, 2015

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Infographic: How to Get More Likes on Facebook

Jason Isbell on Twitter: “There’s just a lot of things rattling around in my head”

Music

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Aug 12, 2015

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Jason Isbell on Twitter: “There’s just a lot of things rattling around in my head”

On another writing front, you have a pretty active Twitter presence.

I like it because we have a lot of time on the road and there’s a lot of waiting around, and that particular platform allows me to participate in that conversation as much or as little as I want to.

It reminds me of a huge table at a family Thanksgiving meal. Sort of the way I was when I was a teenager, I would not say much, I would keep my mouth shut until I thought of something that was really, really hilarious. I would speak up, and then I would go back to being quiet the rest of the meal. It’s good for that because there’s just a lot of things rattling around in my head. I have a lot of reactions to the outside world that I don’t feel like would be appropriate for songs, things I’m not interested in writing about, things I don’t want to think about any longer than 15 or 20 seconds. It’s nice to be able to get those things out.

Via Los Angeles Times

Parking Garage Door Does Perfect Impression of Miles Davis’ ‘Bitches Brew’ Album

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Aug 12, 2015

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Parking Garage Door Does Perfect Impression of Miles Davis’ ‘Bitches Brew’ Album

An ingenious door in a Chicago parking garage will not “die with his music inside of him”.

Alice Cooper gets it right on artists getting good

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Aug 11, 2015

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Alice Cooper gets it right on artists getting good

“Bands don’t seem to decide, ‘We’re not stopping until we either make it or don’t make it.’ They seem to stay together for a little bit of time and then just kind of go, ‘OK, that’s enough’ and move on. They don’t give themselves time to get good. It’s one album and out, and you go, ‘Guys, you’ve got to make five albums before you really click in with something’. There was a different work ethic between the Bowies and the Alice Coopers to now.

“Back then it was all about, how good are the songs? How good is the show? That was it. You made a record and then you toured, and then you made a record, and then you toured. You didn’t play at it — it was really your life. There were just bands that were lifers. Like Mick Jagger and The Stones, all the guys still out there like the Jimmy Pages and Jeff Becks. All they want to do all their life is play that music. I was one of those guys.”

– Alice Cooper, in Digital Spy

Buffy Sainte-Marie, Don Henley, Los Lobos to Receive Lifetime Achievement Awards at Americana Music Association

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Aug 11, 2015

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Buffy Sainte-Marie, Don Henley, Los Lobos to Receive Lifetime Achievement Awards at Americana Music Association

The Americana Music Association announces the selection of Buffy Sainte-Marie, Don Henley, Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, Ricky Skaggs and Los Lobos as Lifetime Achievement Award winners to be presented at its 14th Annual Honors & Awards ceremony, presented by Nissan, on Wednesday, Sept. 16 at the historic Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. Each of these artists will perform and the show will be taped for air on PBS later in the year.

Buffy Sainte-Marie will receive the Spirit of Americana Award, Free Speech in Music co-presented with the First Amendment Center.
Since the 1960s, Buffy Sainte-Marie has been arguably the world’s most visible and vocal Native North American folk singer and social activist, but she’s been so much more, including a visual artist with a PhD in fine art, an educator and a philanthropist. She is a Cree Indian from Saskatchewan who was raised as an adopted daughter in Massachusetts. She became a prominent artist on the folk music circuit, appearing on Pete Seeger’s Rainbow Quest, The Johnny Cash Show and even Soul Train. Her songs wrestle honestly with politics, war and identity. At her most effective, she’s blended personal conscience with philosophical perspective, as with the remarkable song “Universal Soldier.” Sainte-Marie remains outspoken and energetic to this day; she’s back on tour with the new album Power In The Blood, her first studio project in seven years.

Don Henley will be presented with the Lifetime Achievement Trailblazer Award.
With a career that helped take the Eagles to the stratosphere and a string of scintillating, hit-producing solo albums, Don Henley is an icon of California-tinged country/rock and thus Americana music itself. Henley was raised in northeast Texas — a fact celebrated on his rootsy new 2015 collection Cass County. Arriving in Los Angeles after college, he joined Glenn Frey in Linda Ronstadt’s band, forging the core of The Eagles, which launched its epic career in 1971. Henley collaborated with Frey, JD Souther, Jackson Browne and others on hits such as “Desperado,” “Take It To The Limit,” and “Tequila Sunrise.” During the Eagles’ long hiatus in the 80s and 90s, he was the most successful solo artist to emerge from the band, and while his sound leaned harder on modern rock, he also continued to work with country artists including Ronnie Dunn, Trisha Yearwood and Alison Krauss. Henley took on environmental issues in the 1990s, founding the Walden Woods Project and the Caddo Lake Institute for ecological education and research. He’s been a prominent voice for artists’ rights in the recording industry as well.

The Lifetime Achievement Award for Songwriting goes to Gillian Welch & David Rawlings.
When the duo’s first album, Revival, appeared in 1996, it was a shock wave on the American music landscape. With songs like “Orphan Girl,” folk and bluegrass suddenly had exemplars and stars who were young and worldly, traditional and innovative, and who foreshadowed a new generation with interest in and respect for roots music and its many offshoots. Since then, their songwriting has graced seminal albums of the last two decades including O Brother, Where Art Thou? (“Didn’t Leave Nobody But The Baby”) and their own, Time (The Revelator). Their songs exemplify the breadth of Americana music and have been recorded by Alison Krauss, Emmylou Harris, Solomon Burke, Jimmy Buffet, Z.Z. Top, Joan Baez, and The Punch Brothers. Their timeless tunes have also found their way to campfires and parking lot pickers everywhere. Now, six records and two decades into their career, the songwriting team of Welch & Rawlings has created a catalog that we will cherish and sing for generations.

Ricky Skaggs will be honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award as an Instrumentalist.
The 1990s revival of bluegrass music depended on a number of indispensible things happening almost at once, and one of those was Ricky Skaggs assertively returning to his Kentucky roots. His wide ranging musicianship and deep feeling for mountain music had been on display from his appearance at age six on the Flatt & Scruggs TV show, and it carried on through career stages with Ralph Stanley and Keith Whitley and then to country radio, where he helped fuel a timely neo-traditionalist movement. Skaggs’ country records and his road bands were charged with top flight picking, including his own on mandolin, an instrument he studied at the feet of Bill Monroe himself. In the years since his era-shaping Bluegrass Rulesalbum came out, he’s promoted the art of the bluegrass instrumental and collaborated with unexpected instrumentalists, such as Bruce Hornsby, with unexcelled evangelism and craft.

In the category of Lifetime Achievement in Performance, the honor goes to Los Lobos.
Far more than “just another band from East L.A.” as an early album title promised, Los Lobos changed the look, sound and language of roots music, making it more inclusive and reflective of the American story. The founding four members, Cesar Rojas, David Hidalgo, Louie Pérez and Conrad Lozano, plus early addition Steve Berlin, have made music of consistent searching fusion since the mid-1970s. The band’s career was bolstered, but by no means defined, by their chart-topping 1987 cover of “La Bamba” for a movie soundtrack. By negotiating a space between traditional Mexican song, L.A. rock and classic soul, Los Lobos nurtured an identity that’s been adventuresome and unifying.

“These artists have not only influenced the Americana community, but the musical landscape on the whole,” said Jed Hilly, Executive Director of the Americana Music Association, “they all have been an inspiration to our community and we are humbled they will honor us in song at the Ryman this fall.”

Video: Famous Comedians Dealing With Hecklers

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Aug 11, 2015

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Video: Famous Comedians Dealing With Hecklers

Don’t be that guy who ruins a show. And while we’re giving out etiquette lessons, stop talking in movies, flailing around your iPad at concerts and generally ruining other people’s good time.

Not safe for work, as you can already imagine.