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FYI

BJ Cook – Ronnie Hawkins, David Foster, Skylark and Rock n’ Roll

During the mid-seventies, BJ Cook and partner David Foster walked into our Gothic Avenue home. It was the early days of Skylark and the two were looking for songs.

BJ Cook – Ronnie Hawkins, David Foster, Skylark and Rock n’ Roll

By Bill King

During the mid-seventies, BJ Cook and partner David Foster walked into our Gothic Avenue home. It was the early days of Skylark and the two were looking for songs. My mind was elsewhere but we did share a few laughs about our encounters with Ronnie Hawkins of which the two were coming off a wild ride with the entertaining rockabilly dynamo.


Cook and Foster were married on a road trip through Florida in 1972, and daughter Amy Skylark Foster was born the following year. The hits started coming. Songwriting is a family tradition. Cook herself co-wrote with established LA songwriters Michael McDonald, Brenda Russell, Foster, Bill Champlin and Donovan, and daughter Amy has written three of Michael Bublé’s hits.

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Cook’s life reads much like an open novel. Pregnant at 16, facing the hostility of small-town living, the hard times, coming rock n’ roll revolution and the long unwinding road.

In part one of this conversation, we talk of the early years, the contagious laughs with Ronnie Hawkins, scuffling with soon-to-be partner David Foster, Skylark and the devastating illness overtaking lead singer Donny Gerrard, who passed away last week.

Cook would later team up with the late Domenic Troiano and co-write the television theme hit Night Heat.

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Théodora
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Théodora

Concerts

Francos de Montréal 2025 Highlights: One Language, A Thousand Faces

From June 13 to 22, Montreal transformed into a vibrant capital of Francophone music. From French rapper Théodora to local rockers Corridor, this year’s acts showed that the French language, far from static, is an endless playground.

In Montréal, June rhymes with music, and Francos de Montréal are the perfect proof. Once again this year, the festival celebrated the full richness of the French language in its most lively, vibrant, and above all, varied forms. While French served as a common thread, every artist inhabited it in their own unique way – with their accent, life experience, expressions, imagery and struggles. Between urban poetry, edgy rock and hybrid Creole, Francos 2025 showed that French has never been so expansive – or popular.

What Francos 2025 proved is that the French language is no fixed monument. It’s alive, inventive, plural. It can be slammed by a poet from Saint-Denis, chanted by an afro-futurist rapper, whispered by an indie band, or hammered out in Montréal neighbourhood slang. From Congolese expressions to Québec regionalisms, from playful anglicisms to Creole nods, the French language danced in every form this year. It was « full bon »!

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