The FYI News Bulletin

By David Farrell

Kim Mitchell teases his next album, his first for the El Mocambo imprint, with a Facebook Live acoustic session today that includes Wishes, the first of several singles from The Big Fantasize–his first new release in 13 years that’s scheduled for a Fall release. Bill King interviews Mitchell in Monday’s edition. In it, he spills more about the new record and how he is making do without an audience to play in front of these days.

   Separately, his former longstanding songwriting companion, Pye Dubois, remains, as ever, a man of mystery. Set to be inducted, with Mitchell, in the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame (whenever that comes to be), Dubois is seemingly unreachable and has been for a long time. Royalty cheques sent to an address in his name are not being returned, but umpteen calls and emails to him go unanswered. If he’s reading this, we’d love to interview him–but we’re not holding our breath.

– From June 27 to 30, the Montreal Jazz Festival is presenting a live digital concert series recorded at L’Astral. Performers include The Barr Brothers, Elisapie, Charlotte Cardin and Jean-Michel Blais. The concerts take place from 6 p.m. - 11 p.m. and will be broadcast live on the Festival's Facebook page and available on-demand on all the Jazz fest digital platforms after the live broadcast each night. For the full line-up, click here. TD Bank Group, Rio Tinto, the Government of Canada, the Government of Québec and the city of Montreal are funding the endeavour, with added support from media partners: Radio-Canada, La Presse & 98.5.

—  The World Economic Forum has a well-researched feature about how the pandemic has affected the music biz. Included, how $10B in sponsorships has evaporated, the looming shrinkage in artist royalties as a result of decreased ad spends in online and terrestrial media, and how the major label revenues have remained unscathed during the pandemic.

— You never really know who your friends are: New Abacus Data suggests one out of every five Americans supports building a wall between Canada and the U.S., while another 27 percent would support U.S. troops being positioned along the border and 23 percent of Trump voters think the U.S. should invade Canada to take advantage of our resources.

– Pollstar has started publishing a Top 50 Live Stream chart every Monday. The publication is working on augmenting its data with pay-per-view livestream concerts and quantifying drive-in and social distancing concerts as they begin to happen with increased frequency. You can view the June 1 chart here.

— Toronto’s camp alt-rock ensemble Pterodactyl Problems has released the first of several cover projects as the quartet works on ground-breaking new material under the Bandwagon mentorship program with Leon Harrison of the Lazys. Below, the unit’s stupefyingly perfect medley of Black Sabbath’s Iron Man, War Pigs, Paranoid, and N.I.B. This is glam rock captured in a dizzying performance video that needs to be seen (and heard).

– How is French’s Ketchup celebrating Canada Day? By creating a unique rendition of the O Canada anthem performed by Walk off the Earth a mess of ketchup bottles and a couple of ukuleles.