I do an open format radio show on Radio Regent online out of Regent Park in Toronto every Friday from 5 p.m. til 7,called CORBY's ORBIT playing everymusic, so far no Death Metal or light opera but who knows?http://www.radioregent.com/
Illustration by John Kricfalusi
Corby's Orbit
Listening in All the High Places illustration by John Kricfalusi
* Jean-Pierre Ferland feat. Tony Levin ~ Le Chat Du Cafe Des Artistes / God Is An American ~ Jaune (1970) Tony Levin @ The Mod Club tonight / John Walker's Quebec My Country Mon Pays screening Saturday, April 30 at 6:45 p.m. and Tuesday, May 3 at 12:30 p.m. at the TIFF Bell Lightbox as part of HOT DOCS
* The Bombadils ~ Hazeldeen ~ Grassy Roots & Wandering Feet ~ @ The Woods 28 July - 2 August
* Eve Goldberg (Director, The Woods Music & Dance Camp) ~ Interview
Bruce Molsky ~ Piney Woods ~ If It Ain't Here When I Get Back ~ The Woods 28 July - 2 August
* Sarah Jane Scouten ~ Change Of Heart Waltz ~ The Cape ~ @ The Tranzac for Little York Folk Festival May Day 2-12 p.m.
* Bentall Taylor Ulrich ~ It's The Little Things ~ Tightrope Walk NEW DISK~ Shari Ulrich @ Acoustic Harvest in St. Nicholas Church Saturday, 7 May
6:00 Ride & Go Speak
* Kristi Lane Sinclair ~ Woman / Interview ~ Dark Matter ~ @ Coalition Friday, 6 May with Red Ride Tour
* Laura Ortman ~ Take Me To The River / Rainbows Everyday ~ Red Ride Tour
* Nick Sherman ~ In The Ground ~ Red Ride Tour
* The Johnnys ~ The Wrong Damn side Of The Law ~ @ Coalition Friday, 6 May with Red Ride Tour
Kristi Lane Sinclair ~ Oh Boy ~ The Sea Alone (2013)
6:20 Enthusyisms
* The Strumbellas ~ The Night Will Save Us ~ Hope NEW DISK ~ @ Phoenix 4 May for Canadian Music Week
* Neil Young ~ Mr. Soul ~ Unplugged ~ Borrowed Songs ~ Music Of Neil Young @ Hugh's Room tonight and Saturday * The Wet Secrets ~ If I Was A Camera ~ I Can Live Forever EP NEW DISK~ @ The Mod Club Wednesday 4 May for Canadian Music Week * K.C. Roberts & The Live Revolution ~ Electric Lovers ~ @ Revival tonight * Chris Velan ~ Ever So Slightly ~ Glow NEW DISK
6:40 Epiphianos McCoy Tyner ~ Little Madimba ~ Time For Tyner / Toronto Music Listings * Avery Raquel ~ Swinging On A Star ~ Life Lessons NEW DISK ~ @ Hugh's Room Tuesday 3 May for Discoveries Kurt Elling / Fred Hersch ~ Now I Will Do Nothing But Listen ~ Leaves Of Grass
Eve Goldbergwill be my guest Friday at 5:20 to share the excitement of her participation in a summer arts camp that will be featuring the teaching skills of some of Canada's most exceptional music creators.
And at 6:00, frequently featured Orbital artist (Dark Matter, The Sea Alone),Kristi Lane Sinclair, the perpetrator and guiding light of this year's sixth annual Red Ride Tour will be joining us to talk about, and share, some of the powerful music that will be heard here in Toronto at Coalition on May 6th and elsewhere straight across the Canada throughout the coming month.
With the Hot Docs Festival approaching, certainly two features seem highly involving: How To Prepare For Prison follows the story of three people facing prison for the first time, directed and shot by MattGallagher.Screenings: Fri., Apr. 29, 6 p.m. at the Scotiabank Theatre, Cinema 3, Sat., Apr. 30, 10:15 a.m. and Sun., May 8,3:30 p.m. at the Isabel Bader Theatre
And John Walker's latest, Quebec My Country Mon Pays focuses on the Montreal-born filmmaker's complicated relationship with the province, where his roots go back 250 years. It's a film brimming with love and longing.
The film screens at Hot Docs 2016 on Saturday, April 30 at 6:45 p.m. and Tuesday, May 3 at 12:30 p.m. at the TIFF Bell Lightbox, with an encore presentation on Sunday, May 8 at 3:45 p.m. at Scotia 14.
“My entire adult life, I have continually asked myself 'Why did I leave Quebec?' It's a question that haunts me,” says John, now based in Halifax. “I feel so connected to the place, but never at home there, and I wanted to explore that in a very personal way.” We last heard from John on an edition of the Orbit that dealt with his revelatory 2010 documentary, A Drummer's Dream.
John Walker will be calling into the Orbit at the top of the show to parlez with us on topics filmique and Quebec-wise.
Groundbreaking guitarist and vocalist Lonnie Mack, known as one of rock’s first true guitar heroes, died on April 21, 2016 of natural causes at Centennial Medical Center near his home in Smithville, Tennessee. His early instrumental recordings – among them Wham! and Memphis -- influenced many of rock's greatest players, including Eric Clapton, Duane Allman, Keith Richards, Jimmy Page and especially Stevie Ray Vaughan. He was 74.
Rolling Stone called him “a pioneer in rock guitar soloing.” Guitar World said, “Mack attacked the strings with fast, aggressive single-string phrasing and a seamless rhythm style that significantly raised the guitar virtuoso bar and foreshadowed the arena-sized tones of guitar heroes to come.” The Chicago Tribune wrote, “With the wiggle of a whammy bar and a blinding run of notes up and down the neck of his classic Gibson Flying V, Lonnie Mack launched the modern guitar era.”
Drawing from influences as diverse as rhythm and blues, country, gospel and rockabilly, Mack’s guitar work continues to be revered by generation after generation of musicians. He recorded a number of singles and a total of 11 albums for labels including Fraternity, Elektra, Alligator, Epic and Capitol.
Mack was born Lonnie McIntosh on July 18, 1941 in Harrison, Indiana, twenty miles west of Cincinnati. Growing up in rural Indiana, Mack fell in love with music as a child. From family sing-alongs he developed a deep appreciation of country music, while he absorbed rhythm and blues from the late-night R&B radio stations and gospel from his local church. Starting off with a few chords that he learned from his mother, Lonnie gradually blended all the sounds he heard around him into his own individual style. He named Merle Travis and Robert Ward (of the Ohio Untouchables) as his main guitar influences, and George Jones and Bobby Bland as vocal inspirations.
He began playing professionally in his early teens (he quit school after a fight with his sixth-grade teacher), working clubs and roadhouses around the tri-state border area of Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio. In 1958, he bought the guitar he would become best known for, a Gibson Flying V, serial number 7, which he equipped with a Bigsby tremolo bar. (After the release of Wham!, the tremolo bar became known worldwide as a “whammy bar”.) In addition to his live gigs, Lonnie began playing sessions for the King and Fraternity labels in Cincinnati. He recorded with blues and R&B greats like Hank Ballard, Freddie King and James Brown.
In 1963, at the end of another artist's session, Lonnie cut an instrumental version of Chuck Berry's Memphis. He didn't even know that Fraternity had issued the single until he heard it on the radio, and within a few weeks Memphis had hit the national Top Five. Lonnie Mack went from being a talented regional roadhouse player to a national star virtually overnight.
Suddenly, he was booked for hundreds of gigs a year, crisscrossing the country in his Cadillac and rushing back to Cincinnati or Nashville to cut new singles. Wham!, Where There's A Will There's A Way, Chicken Pickin' and a dozen other records followed Memphis. None sold as well as his first hit (though Where There's A Will earned extensive black radio airplay before the DJs found out Lonnie was white), but there was enough reaction to keep him on the road for another five years of grueling one-nighters.
Fraternity Records went bust, but Lonnie kept on gigging, and in 1968 a Rolling Stone article stimulated new interest in his music. He signed with Elektra Records and cut three albums. Elektra also reissued his original Fraternity LP, The Wham Of That Memphis Man!. He began playing all the major rock venues, from Fillmore East to Fillmore West. Lonnie also made a guest appearance on the Doors' Morrison Hotel album. You can hear Lonnie's guitar solo on Roadhouse Blues preceded by Jim Morrison's urgent 'Do it, Lonnie! Do it!' He even worked in Elektra's A&R department. When the label merged with giant Warner Brothers, Lonnie grew disgusted with the new bureaucracy and walked out of his job.
Mack headed back to rural Indiana, playing back-country bars, going fishing and laying low. After six years of relative obscurity, Lonnie signed with Capitol and cut two albums that featured his country influences. He played on the West Coast for a while and even flew to Japan for a “Save The Whales” benefit. Then he headed to New York to team up with an old friend named Ed Labunski. Labunski was a wealthy jingle writer that wrote "This Bud's For You" who was tired of commercials and wanted to write and play for pleasure. He and Lonnie built a studio in rural Pennsylvania and spent three years organizing and recording a country-rock band called South, which included Buffalo-based keyboardist Stan Szelest, who later played on Lonnie's Alligator debut. Ed and Lonnie had big plans for their partnership, including producing an album by a then-obscure Texas guitarist named Stevie Ray Vaughan. But the plans evaporated when Labunski died in an auto accident, and the South album was never commercially released. Lonnie next headed for Canada and joined the band of veteran rocker Ronnie Hawkins for a summer. After a brief stay in Florida, he returned to Indiana in 1982, playing clubs in Cincinnati and the surrounding area.
Mack began his re-emergence on the national scene in November of 1983. At Stevie Ray Vaughan's urging, he relocated from southern Indiana to Texas, where he settled in Spicewood. He began jamming with Stevie Ray (who proudly named Wham! as the first single he owned) in local clubs and flying to New York for gigs at the Lone Star and the Ritz. When Alligator Records approached Lonnie to do an album, Vaughan immediately volunteered to help him out. The result was 1985’s Strike Like Lightning, co-produced by Lonnie and Stevie Ray and featuring Stevie's guitar on several tracks.
Mack’s re-emergence was a major music industry event. Keith Richards, Ron Wood, Ry Cooder and Stevie Ray Vaughan all joined Lonnie on stage during his 1985 tour. The New York Times said, “Although Mr. Mack can play every finger-twisting blues guitar lick, he doesn't show off; he comes up with sustained melodies and uses fast licks only at an emotional peak. Mr. Mack is also a thoroughly convincing singer.” Other celebrities -- Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, Paul Simon, Eddie Van Halen, Dwight Yoakam and actor Matt Dillon -- attended shows during the Strike Like Lightning tour. The year was capped off with a stellar performance at New York's prestigious Carnegie Hall with Albert Collins and the late Roy Buchanan. That show was released commercially on DVD as Further On Down The Road.
Mack recorded two more albums for Alligator, 1986’s Second Sight and 1990’s Live! Attack Of the Killer V. In between he signed with Epic Records and released Roadhouses And Dancehalls in 1988. Mack continued to tour into the 2000s. He relocated to Smithville, Tennessee where he continued writing songs but ceased active touring. In 2001 he was inducted into the International Guitar Hall Of Fame and in 2005 into the Rockabilly Hall Of Fame.
He is survived by five children and multitudes of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Omar ~ Best By Far ~ @ Capitol Event Theater Saturday
The Heptones ~ Gunmen Coming to Town ~ First Release by The Heptones 1965
Leroy Sibbles ~ You Got To Beware ~ (Micron 1980) ~ @ Lula Lounge Sunday
Buddy Guy ~ Love Me Girl ~ Sweet Tea ~ @ Massey Hall tonight
* Tough Age ~ New Orleans Square ~ I Get The Feeling Central ~ @ Monarch Tavern Saturday for Wavelength Music Series
5:30 The Past Is Not Even Past
Los Lobos ~ Peace ~ Rare On Air ~ @ Koerner Hall Saturday
The Who ~ The Ether ~ Endless Wire ~ @ ACC Wednesday 27 April for 50th Anniversary Tour
Roy Orbison ~ The Crowd ~ Hits Vol.2 ~ Dark Angel @ Hugh's Room tonight
Levon Helm ~ Little Birds ~ Dirt Farmer ~ Tribute To Levon Helm @ Hugh's Room Saturday
Lucinda Williams ~ Which Will ~ Rare On Air (KCRW)
* Whitehorse ~ Wang Dang Doodle ~ The Northern South EP Vol. 1 NEW DISK
* Blood Meridian ~ Oh Oh Oh ~ New Music Uncut
6:00 Amanda On Demand * Amanda Rheaume ~ Interview / Wolf Of Time ~ Holding Patterns NEW DISK~ @ The Dakota Tavern Friday 6 May for CMW 6:15 Immediate Miranda
* Miranda Sage ~ Don't Fight The Future / I Remember You / Interview with Miranda, Don Thompson and Edward Franko / All Or Nothing At All ~ On This Day NEW DISK ~ CD Release@ West Hall Theater Bayview & 401 Saturday 7:30 p.m. Miles Davis ~ Lonely Fire ~ Finding Forrester Sdtrk. ~ Miles Ahead New Film in wide release today
* Fawn Fritzen feat. George Koller ~ A Little Dance ~ Pairings ~ NEW DISK @ The Jazz Bistro 8 May Noiseshaper ~ The Only Redeemer ~ Quango Dub Selector / Toronto music Listings Prince ~ Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic
Kim Edwards & Spirit Level ~ True Change ~ Home Cookin' (Ubiquity) dedicated to Bernie Sanders
5:20 Rambunctuary
Keziah Jones ~ Kpafuca ~ Osunlade Presents The Yoruba Soul Mixes
* Whitehorse ~ My Babe ~ The Northern South Vol. 1 EP NEW DISK
Royden Foster ~ Dancing With My Baby ~ Massive Reggae Hits
* Ron Hawkins & The Do Good Assassins ~ Peace And Quiet ~ Garden Songs ~ @ The Rivoli Saturday
5:40 Imaginational Anthems
* Duane Andrews ~ Bell Island ~ Raindrops ~ @ Gallery 345 Thursday with The Conception Bay String Quartet
The Tao Of Groove ~ Mulatica Mia ~ Radio Latino ~ (Putamayo)
The Resophonics ~ Full Pull ~ Last Long Winter
* Bill Heffernan ~ Hey Mr. Dylan ~ The Horses Are Loose NEW DISK ~ CD Release @ Lula Lounge Sunday
* Dave Gunning ~ They Don't Do That No More ~ Lift NEW DISK ~ @ Hugh's Room Thursday, 21 April
6:00 Too Luminous To Mention * Tara Kannangara ~ Sound The Alarm ~ Some Version Of The Truth ~ @ Beaches Presbyterian Saturday Lizz Wright ~ Dreaming Wide Awake ~ Dreaming Wide Awake ~ @ Koerner Hall Friday 22 April NEeMA ~ Circles And Lines / Interview / Papaloko / Angel Undercover ~ Painting My Wall Gold NEW DISK~ @ Hugh's Room Thursday 19 May
6:30 Turn Up The Throb Curtis Mayfield ~ Tripping Out ~ Chillout Lounge Meat Beat Manifesto ~ Radio Babylon ~ The Future Sound Of The United Kingdom Dean Fraser ~ It's Me Again Jah / Luciano (2 Shanti Remix) ~ It's Me Again Jah * The Harpoonist & The Axe Murderer ~ Feel Me Now ~ A Real Fine Mess ~ @ Massey Hall With Randy Bachman Thursday 21 April Billy Hart Quartet ~ Irah / Lullaby For Imke / Toronto Music Listings * Emm Gryner ~ Pioneer ~ Torrential ~ @ Hugh's Room Wednesday 29 April
* Laura Ortman ~ Take Me To The River / Rainbows Everyday ~ Red Ride Tour
6:20 Enthusyisms
6:40 Epiphianos
