After years of touring the world with an internationally-recognized and highly-respected band, Darryl James decided it was time to come home.
James, bass player for The Strumbellas, and wife Robyn are raising their three children in Lindsay, where he grew up.
After close to a decade touring with The Strumbellas, Lindsay-raised drummer Jeremy Drury is stepping out of his comfort zone and in front of the microphone to share his voice and stories.
A project years in the making, Drury shared the exclusive premier of his first single “Pour Another” with the Lindsay advocate in 2018. Since then, has found time during this world-wide downtime to finalize his debut solo album.
Raising money for charitable organizations is a tough job in the best of times. During a pandemic when finances are tight, it takes on a new level of difficulty for an organization like Big Brothers Big Sisters of Kawartha Lakes–Haliburton which does not receive any government funding at all.
Fortunately, creativity is never in short supply amongst groups that rely on donations for their survival, and Janice Balfour, executive director of that organization recently announced a unique fund-raising event.
When local recording artist, Caleb Frazier, describes music as a social media, it at first feels like he is minimizing the art form. After all, Instagram and Snapchat may be present at almost every human experience from weddings and funerals to wars and halftime shows, but they are documenting these experiences, not fuelling them.
The 19-year-old Virginia native has lived in Cameron the last three years. (His mother married a Canadian and moved north of the 49th parallel.)
Frazier points out that music remains a means of entertaining, teaching, and protesting, but it has been democratized.
If you’ve heard the sound of music – not the musical, but literally just music — in Lindsay there’s a good chance Van Halteren’s was connected in some way.
Now a long-time business fixture in town, it was 45 years ago that Van Halteren Music Centre was established on Nov. 18, 1974 by Jerry Van Halteren and his younger brother, Zeger. It was created at the suggestion of Jerry’s wife, Grace.
No one ever accused me of being the biggest fan of Christmas. Heck, the kids just picked me up a Sally-Ann gem: a T-shirt with Darth Vader in a Santa hat below the word ‘humbug!’ It’s the only Christmas thing I own that’s (in the words of Farley Mowat) worth the powder to blow it all to hell.
Back in the autumn of 2003, while in Grade 7 at Central Senior School, I decided to take on an extracurricular activity by signing up for the school band. Those of us who were interested attended a lunchtime meeting in the school’s music room, where instruments were assigned according to what aspiring band members wanted to play. When it came my turn to select a band instrument, I hesitated, not having completely made my mind up Keep Reading
It’s in between bursts of rain and sunshine when I meet with local tattoo-artist-by-day-musician-by night Cassie Noble at Lindsay’s Boiling Over’s Coffee Vault, a place familiar to the 28-year-old singer-songwriter.
Noble, who has toured with her band, The Do Good Badlies all across the country, is now putting considerable time and energy into the pursuit of a solo career. She was quick to express her gratitude for Boiling Over’s impact on local music, having played there herself with her band on numerous occasions, and noting the welcoming, all-ages feel of the coffee-shop. It’s a spot which serves as a starting point for many up-and coming local musical talents.
Dave has been our neighbour for close to 20 years. Neither Dave nor his wife, Karina, have aged perceptibly. It’s Luke and Spanky that remind me of the passage of time.
Luke, their son, was a toddler when they moved in. Now he’s Promotions Manager at Canadian Tire, and a few months ago found his own place. Their beagle, Spanky (named by Luke, a L’il Rascals fan as a kid) strained at the leash a dozen years ago. At the end of June she passed away. Over her last couple of years she moped along behind Dave, trailing her master by the full length of the extensible leash.
Part One
Where there is young people and vitality, you’re going to find punk rock. — Henry Rollins
One of Lindsay’s most famous bar brawls and the start of punk rock in the CKL happened on the same time at the same place on the same night. It was the late spring of 1980 and Lindsay’s first punk rock band, The Lindsay Huns, were playing at The Central Hotel on William Street — a long gone Lindsay landmark.
Musicologists will argue about the exact start of punk, and who started it, but punk rock had been around, and had been a growing musical and cultural movement since 1977, and probably earlier. The term itself — coined in the early 70s — was used by a few musical journalists to describe the style known as garage-rock.
