TORONTO – When a new singer is obscured by not one but two pseudonyms — as is the case with buzzy Canadian upstart Cold Specks — it first seems as though she’s intentionally cultivating mystery, an increasingly popular publicity strategy in music. But the rapidly rising Etobicoke, Ont., chanteuse — who uses the second alias Al Spx when introducing herself in friendly conversation — insists that all the secrecy has nothing to do with trying to court curiosity. “I’d rather not have my name attached to (my music) for several reasons,” Spx says over lunch recently at a crowded Toronto chain restaurant. “My family, for one, they’re religious and they wouldn’t be too pleased with the content of the album. So I’d rather — for ... Continue reading →

TORONTO - At 66 years old, Bruce Cockburn says he's pleased to get a second shot at fatherhood.The Ottawa folkie and his longtime girlfriend M.J. Hannett welcomed daughter Iona in November. She's Cockburn's second daughter — born more than 35 years after his first, Jenny.But Cockburn says time has granted him new insights into fatherhood."It's interesting to go at it a second time after all these years," Cockburn said down the line from his California home this week."It's amazing to have a new baby and kind of see it all with the perspective that you get with age. It's quite different. It has its intense moments and its fraught moments, but I'm a lot more able to tune in to the baby."That was certainly the ... Continue reading →

TORONTO - Earlier this month, a gob-smacked Leslie Feist rose to accept her third Juno Award, the lofty artist of the year honour. Only a few minutes prior, a similarly stunned Dan Mangan walked across the stage to collect his second Juno trophy, for new artist of the year.Mangan and Feist are label-mates on the Toronto indie Arts & Crafts, and their five wins that night represented a bountiful haul for an imprint that had lost its supposed meal ticket roughly six months prior.That was when the ground-breaking collective Broken Social Scene announced via Twitter that its Nov. 8 show in Rio de Janeiro would be its last, with an indefinite hiatus to immediately follow.Once upon a time, a broken Broken could have spelled the ... Continue reading →

TORONTO - It was just a few years ago that John Paul White — now one-half of the gritty Americana duo the Civil Wars — was ready to surrender his music career.White had released his debut solo record to little fanfare in 2008 and toiled for years prior as a songwriting hired gun in Nashville who had made few contacts and fewer industry inroads. So he decided to head back to college for a second degree, with an eye toward possibly becoming a teacher."I knew I didn't really want to do the solo artist thing anymore, and I had no other thoughts of any other kind of way of staying in the business," White recalled during an interview this week in Toronto."I thought, I had ... Continue reading →

TORONTO - Some TV viewers who tuned in for CHCH's morning news broadcast got more than they bargained for on Friday.The Hamilton-based broadcaster has issued an apology after its "News Now" show was briefly overrun by a graphic sex scene. But the station, which is owned by Toronto-based media group Channel Zero, stressed that the error was not its own.The station blamed the mixup on a switching error at one of the cable companies that picks up its signal.CHCH's vice-president of news Mike Katrycz said he believes the station ultimately aired around a minute of "hardcore pornography.""But as I say, it seemed like an eternity," he said in a telephone interview Friday.Katrycz said he noticed the issue right away and frantically called the network's master ... Continue reading →