Podcast
'Cross the Tracks
Hosted by Adrian V · EN
The songs and the stories behind the songs as told by the songwriter - track by track.
14episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Libby & Cal - The Hagstrom-Schmidt Affair
Nov 2401:13:41Tap to summarizeLibby & Cal where a Millennial autoharpist meets a Boomer 12-string player at a festival and all sorts of musical magic ensues. Acoustic duo Libby & Cal transcend boundaries and trip across genres while tackling subjects that are rarely voiced in song. A delightfully risqué, painfully honest and musically stimulating experience.Libby plays her DIY-modified autoharp. Cal plays the 12-string he swapped for a bicycle. Together, Libby & Cal perform eclectic but surprisingly catchy indie-folk music. The Ottawa-based duo have played at various venues in Ontario and Quebec, as well as the 2025 California Autoharp Gathering.Libby bought her autoharp in 2014 after many back-breaking years of lugging her electric piano to gigs. Under the name Elizabeth Bruce she released two albums of original music, As We Sadden Each Other to Sleep and The Silent I Know. She currently teaches music and runs a monthly women-centered open mic in Ottawa called, “Sad Girl Café”.Cal (AKA Doug Hendry) has been entertaining crowds with his musical talent since the age of four, singing in a choir in his native Scotland. As a teenager, he made his way playing street corners and folk clubs throughout Britain and Europe. Cal emigrated to Canada in 1991 and has played regularly in various bands, including – Odd One Out, Bruce Enloe & the Burning Sensations, Emmi Winter & the Heroic Mad Peasants, Fiddlehead Soup, Tripoly, the Grenville Troubadours.
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Amanda Rheaume - The Truth We Hold
Nov 2401:09:20Tap to summarizeAmanda Rheaume, a Citizen of the Métis Nation of Ontario, is an award winning singer-songwriter with a slightly gritty, deeply personal and instantly accessible Americana sound.In title and spirit, The Truth We Hold is a collection of songs of Métis people, places and stories across centuries. A Métis songbook for future generations, the new album maps events, place names and family history with a careful, loving hand, drawing untold and unacknowledged experiences into the light.Amanda Rheaume is the recipient of the 2024 Spirit of Folk Award, 2023 Canadian Fold Music Award for Indigenous Songwriter of the Year and the 2023 Capital Music Awards’ Album of the Year. Rheaume has released six full-length albums to date. Beyond recording and touring, Rheaume continues her ever-expanding role as an essential advocate of Indigenous music infrastructure and community. As a co-founder of Ishkode Records and International Indigenous Music Summit and founding board member of the Indigenous Music Office, a commitment to raising Indigenous sovereignty through the medicine of music motivates all of Rheaume’s work.
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Stan Louttit - NORTHBOUND51
Jan 10, 202500:55:59Tap to summarizeThe debut album from NORTHBOUND51 is about longing for home, the land, and the people of our small town. We sing about human relationships, love, and life’s journey that take us away from home. We sing about the train that eventually takes us back north through muskeg, across rivers, by lakes; eventually home to our parents, grandparents and friends.NORTHBOUND51 is Marilyn Gunner-Mcleod (vocals, acoustic guitar), Darrell Mcleod (electric guitars) and Stan Louttit (Bass guitar).
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James Gordon - Emergency Climate Musical
Dec 30, 202401:29:01Tap to summarizeJames Gordon’s Emergency Climate Musical – His one-man show is a ninety-minute theatrical investigation of what surely is THE issue in these uncertain times. Filled with compelling songs, videos, images, stories, rants, laughter, tears, audience participation, a creepy puppet and some concrete ways to face this crisis, James promises to entertain, inform, and leave you with homework.Follow along as he outlines his premise that we need a total political, societal and economic make-over to face the incredible challenge ahead.He’s got the cred for the job: James moonlit as a Guelph City Councilor for 8 years, where he introduced climate change motions, and he’s a member of the National Climate Leadership Caucus.Released February 1, 2020. Produced by Evan and James Gordon – with 9 tracks used by permission from Borealis Records, where the songs were first released.
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Mudfoot Mike McDonald - Groovin' The Blues
Dec 8, 202401:13:43Tap to summarizeMudfoot Mike McDonald has traveled the road that calls itself home, the blues. Originally from Nova Scotia, Mudfoot Mike found himself a home in the Toronto music scene for a very long stretch, carving out a slice of Canadian blues history as the in-house music director at legendary Grossman’s Tavern, and often as performer and bandmate on guitar and vocals. It was there where the best of the best would find themselves on stage when they weren’t touring somewhere on the continent or abroad. Mike toured extensively then, less so now, but always then and now with a deep love for the music and a respect earned with on-the-job experience. And stories to tell.Mudfoot Mike took to songwriting and has penned several tunes over his career, but never officially releasing an album under his own name. The veteran musician and producer is on the road to possibly changing that.
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Tough Old Bird - Garden Dream
Dec 8, 202401:03:13Tap to summarizeTough Old Bird was formed by songwriting brothers Matthew and Nathan Corrigan in a rural corner of Western New York. Since releasing ‘Gambling Days’ in 2016, the duo has taken their singular style of modern folk music to coffee shops, listening rooms, music clubs, dive bars, campgrounds and front porches across the United States. The band’s newly expanded lineup features Ricky Bechard on drums and Brendan O’Shea on bass.GARDEN DREAM – The band’s fullest and most collaborative effort to date. Born out of years of songwriting, it was recorded over the course of several fruitful sessions helmed by Chris Ploss at Sunwood Studios in Trumansburg, NY. Garden Dream finds the band layering new sounds while mining childhood memories and grown-up heartbreak to explore themes of moving on and moving forward—as children, and as adults.
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Roddy Ellias - Moon Over Lake
Dec 8, 202401:08:57Tap to summarizeRoddy Ellias: Acoustic Jazz Beyond Borders“Moon Over Lake is a beautiful solo album full of emotions and colors. I love Roddy’s compositions and his warm and rich tone. I wanted to listen to one tune to start with but ended up listening to the whole album. What a beautiful Journey…” Lionel Loueke, guitarist (Herbie Hancock, Chris Potter, Gretchen Parlato)“I’m lucky to be friends with Roddy Ellias, who happens to be one of the finest guitarists on planet earth. This is so beautiful.” Joel Frahm (Betty Carter, Brad Mehldau, Kurt Elling)Canadian jazz guitarist and composer, Roddy Ellias brings five decades of unique and compelling music to the world. With an eclectic approach that defies simple classification , Roddy has developed an innovative guitar style that intricately melds classical, African and Brazillian musical ideas within a deep tradition of jazz. “A composer of extraordinary talent … His creativity is so obvious, that it is at once both startling and inspiring” Dr. Steve Kinigstein, Just Jazz Guitar His musical journey began at the age of five, when he started improvising on his grandmother’s piano. Decades later, he continues to explore new musical possibilities, developing his unusual composition and playing approach. From the early days at Uncle Charlie’s Chicken and Ribs Jazz Joint to performing for the Queen of England to creating a unique chamber jazz opera with puppets, Roddy has carved a musical space for himself unlike any other. Along the way, he’s also enjoyed performing with many of the greats, including Lee Konitz, David Liebman, Kenny Wheeler, Cleo Laine, Tom Harrell and Nat Adderley. “Pensive, folky beauty.” Brad Faberman, Downbeat Magazine“What keeps Roddy going is the sheer joy of reaching people through his recordings and performances, of making their experience as magical as he can, seeing audiences discover for themselves the joy, wonder and inner peace he felt sitting at his grandmother’s piano.“I’ve had this album on repeat for weeks and I am obsessed with it.” David Reed, Belleville Intelligencer (Moon Over Lake)
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Jupiter Marvelous - Isn't This Supposed To Be Fun
Dec 8, 202401:09:23Tap to summarizeJupiter Marvelous asks Isn't This Supposed To Be Fun on their first full length album, self produced and arranged. Songwriter and frontman, Anthony Marcello, expresses a wide palate of musical influences and blends them into sterling pop gems. "Jupiter Marvelous is a band which is hard to pigeonhole. We play surf/indie inspired rock music. Inspired by bands such as The Drums, Tame Impala, Dominic Fike, the Early Beatles and so many others, Jupiter Marvelous pulls from traditional pop music and music of the mid century to create a sound uniquely their own. Born and raised in Sault Ste Marie and we act like it."For anybody who feels like you’re too young for any of this but also feels like you’ll never be young again. One day we all grow up, hopefully we can stay young and beautiful on the inside.
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John Hewitt - Going Down The Only Road
Dec 8, 202400:53:48Tap to summarizeJohn Hewitt is a force not seen since the end of the 70’s. There are bands, artists and songwriters that mimic and imitate but John Hewitt absorbs and reimagines. From folk clubs to house concerts, festivals to halls John is a master of storytelling, arranging, producing and a painter of poems scarcely seen in today’s musical climate. Since his early teens taking in the powerful sounds of the Beatles, Tom Petty, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison and the Grateful Dead he has been wandering, searching and yielding a crop of new ideas from the old world. A multi-instrumentalist from Sault Ste. Marie Ontario and being Alberta bound since 2018 John’s mark on the Western music scene is impossible to go unnoticed. Performing over 150 shows per year (From Alberta and British Columbia to Montana, Colorado, California and beyond), covering 20,000 miles per annum and releasing upwards of 3 albums in that same timeframe there is no comparison to the work ethic, the attitude and the drive that John has as an artist. Fronting the New Americans and touring solo most of the year his output impresses the young and the old, the folk and the rock, the country and the town and the only thing left at the end of the night is a feeling you won’t get anywhere else.John Hewitt is a master, a choreographer of sound, a man of many hats all worn with style with a dream bigger than the world around him.
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Sagen Pearse of Hollowsage & The Three Mile Islanders - Aftermath
Dec 8, 202401:13:02Tap to summarizeSagen Pearse, also known as Hollowsage, balances his life as a funeral director by day and a musician whenever the muse strikes. Drawing from a well of life lessons, stories from past lives, and journeys through alternate dimensions, Sagen crafts each song with a depth that invites listeners to ponder their own mortality and the mysteries of existence. His unique perspective on life, love, dying, and the dead infuses his music with a haunting beauty that resonates on a deeply personal level.Together with his band, The Three Mile Islanders—longtime friends Geoff Holt, Justin Dillon, Matt Gunn, and Joshua Veens—Hollowsage builds immense crescendos and weaves beautiful melodies, all while keeping the spotlight on the evocative lyrics that drive their songs. Hollowsage & The Three Mile Islanders' debut album, "Nuclear Home", won Album of the Year in 2020 and earned them the title of Emerging Artist of the Year at the OMAs.Aftermath, an 11-song odyssey that represents a bold new chapter in the thought-provoking, emotionally charged oeuvre of Pearse and his Three Mile Islanders (Geoff Holt, Justin Dillon, Matt Gunn and Joshua Veens).When a song begins with the line “There has been a rip in the fabric/ Of the spacetime continuum,” you know the artist has a little something weightier on their mind than wanting to dance with somebody who loves them. But neither is “Supernova Spacetime Continuum,” the new single from Ontario psychedelic folk-rockers Hollowsage & the Three Mile Islanders, a metaphorically apocalyptic rumination on life, death and the nature of eternity—with a scope that reaches all the way across the universe and back.Declaring his own inability to protect humanity from “a black hole engulfing the sun,” Hollowsage—a.k.a. Sault Ste. Marie-born, Uxbridge-based singer/songwriter Sagen Pearse—comes to terms with the looming End of Everything by musing that imminent heat death may always have been the personal destiny of every one of us. If we’re lucky, that is:Recording Engineer, Mixing, Electric Guitar, Synth, & back up vocals: Kevin KerSongwriter & Acoustic Guitar: Sagen PearseDrums: Justin DillonBass: Quincy BullenSupernova Spacetime Continuum piano & backing vocals: Mark Berube & Kristina KoropeckiMastered by: Stephen Pitkin
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