The FYI News Bulletin: April 28, 2022
Next year marks the 40th anniversary of Ian Tyson’s trailblazing Old Corrals and Sagebrush
By David Farrell
Next year marks the 40th anniversary of Ian Tyson’s trailblazing Old Corrals and Sagebrush album containing gems such as Alberta’s Child, Old Alberta Moon, Diamond Joe, and Tom Russell’s classic rooster song, Gallo Del Cielo. That album marked the start of Tyson’s cowboyography series and longstanding friend Neil MacGonigill has plans to reissue it (Ian owns the master rights) along with a live-off-the-floor board recording made near Tyson’s Alberta ranch, at the East Longview Hall, in October 2000. The working title for the additional recording is Payphone in Paradise.
An extensively researched feature on the original album is set to appear in The Western Horseman in the May edition, which is just starting to hit the newsstands now.
- Michael Bublé opened a 6-night engagement at Resorts World Theatre in Vegas last night that runs through May 7 with ducats scaled between US$111 and $310 (excluding on-stage VIP packages). In August, a 27-show American tour opens in Duluth, GA. Between, he opens a continental tour in Madrid and spends most of July performing upscale castles and cricket clubs across the UK.
In case you missed it, the singer is pitching his latest album, entitled Higher. Here’s the teaser video for the collection…
- John Brunton, CEO of Toronto’s Insight Productions, has partnered with former producers of the blockbuster Eurovision Song Contest to adapt the live televised music event for Canada. Playback Daily’s Victoria Ahern has the details.
– UMC and The Core Entertainment have announced the signing of Nashville-based, Ontario-born singer-songwriter Josh Ross. In February, Ross released First Taste of Gone which is fast-climbing on Canadian Country radio charts. Last month, he was selected as one of SiriusXM’s Top of the Country Top 8 finalists.
–SRG/ILS Group and Virgin Music Label and Artist Services/CMG have announced a three-year extension of their worldwide distribution agreement. The SRG/ILS Group is comprised of R&B Label the SoNo Recording Group and label services company ILS and has been at the forefront of the reemergence of Traditional and Contemporary R&B and Gospel with releases from Keith Sweat, After 7, Kenny Lattimore, and Brian McKnight as well as Canadian artists including Tom Jackson.
SRG/ILS Executive VP Dominique Zgarka, as per the announcement, states: “Thanks to Claude Villani and the SoNo Records team the merger of ILS and SRG has produced great rewards and benefits for all our artist and label partners as well as our shareholders. I would like to personally thank the Virgin Music Label and Artist Services/CMG’s management and international teams for their wonderful support.”
– Canadian music industry veteran Paul Eastwood has joined Orderinbox, the social NFT (non-fungible token) marketplace for the metaverse, as Vice President, Sports, and Entertainment. Eastwood is best known for his tenure at UMC where he served as Vice President of Marketing & Promotion. Read more here.
– Bruce Cockburn manager and former Canadian Air Force brat Bernie Finkelstein is well into the final pre-shooting stage of a doc he has researched and planned that tells the story of Canada’s involvement in providing the uranium that went into the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Specifically, Canada’s delivery of fission materials used in the Manhattan Project via the Montreal Laboratory, which later became the Chalk River Laboratory.
– Bat Out of Hell is back out on the road in the UK through Oct. of this year, giving legs to an old warhorse many had thought had lost its spark. The musical version of the classic pop-operatic album, one that has sold over 2M copies in Canada since it was released in October of 1977, is a co-venture between Canadian event producer Michael Cohl's Iconic Entertainment Studios, co-producer Randy Lennox for Bell Media, and composer Jim Steinman.
– New Brunswick’s Youth Orchestra took umbrage with a recent Nissan Infinity commercial (see below) and recorded a response at the Imperial Theatre in St. John, NB. Acknowledgement to Minnesota Public Radio for this, and to Mary Ann Farrell for bringing it to our attention.
– For those of us with long memories, Charlie Minor’s blazing energy and oversized charisma live on long after his senseless murder in 1995. Lenny Beer at Hits Daily Double captures the story of one of America’s greatest promo men in a recent memorial that can be found here.
