In the previous episode of The Creationists, I talked to celebrity chef Roger Mooking about his passion for music and cooking and how he was able to make a success of two careers. As the main cook in our household, I thought I would take advantage of having Roger on the line to ask for a few cooking tips. In this bonus episode, Roger shares some simple truths about spicing up your kitchen.

If you want to know more about Roger, his music, restaurants, television shows and cook books, visit rogermooking.com

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Not much in life beats the combination of music and food and both have been passions at the centre of Roger Mooking’s life. 

I first met Roger Mooking when he was a member of Bass is Bass and I worked at Warner Music Canada. Bass is Base was the hot independent hip hop group at the time and were being courted by all of the major labels. We didn’t sign the band but they did go on to enjoy a successful run of records before eventually splitting up with each member of the trio following alternative paths. I eventually worked on a solo music project with Roger but by then he had already become a star as a celebrity chef on the Food Network. The two of us sat down for a conversation about his career and the intersection of food and music in his life and we started at the beginning. 

If you want to know more about Roger, his music, restaurants, television shows and cook books, visit rogermooking.com

You can read a full transcript of the interview at imstevewaxman.com

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Imagine if you worked with a team for several years on creating a thing and then that thing couldn’t even be tested properly until almost a year after it was completed.  And now, imagine that you can’t even see if your creation works in real time because it’s on another freakin planet! Well, that is exactly the experience of my guest Taryn Bailey, a mechanical engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in California.  Taryn is a part of the team that built Ingenuity, the helicopter that proved that controlled flight on another planet is possible.

I’m a child of the sixties and joined the NASA junior space program as a kid.  I meticulously clipped and saved every newspaper story about the Gemini program and watched every second of Apollo. Do you realize that it only took nine months from the launch of Apollo 7 in October 1968 to the moon landing in July 1969.  That’s a crewed mission every two months to achieve what many thought was an impossible dream. To put things into proper perspective, it took 7 months to put the Perseverance rover on Mars. Ingenuity hitched a ride on the belly of the rover so when the team finally had their helicopter on the ground and ready for its first flight, they were definitely on pins and needles waiting for  the data to tell them whether 7 years and 85 million dollars of development had paid off.

For more information on the Mars mission, the Perseverance rover and the Ingenuity helicopter, visit https://www.nasa.gov/perseverance

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Up until now, I’ve interviewed a variety of guests about their creative process and the road they travelled to get to where they are.  As a change of pace, I thought that it would be interesting to explore our brain’s relationship to creativity.

In their book The Runaway Species, neuroscientist David Eagleman and composer Anthony Brandt explore what makes human creativity unique among the animals of earth and how our greatest creators always borrow from the past to move creation forward.

The Runaway Species was born out of an extended lunch at Rice University in Houston where Anthony is a professor of composition and David is an alumni. In my conversation with Anthony Brandt  we talk about a bunch of creativity concepts as well as the story behind how he and David came to co-author the book.

This episode of The Creationists was inspired by the Netflix documentary The Creative Brain. The film is narrated by David Eagleman and is based on the book The Runaway Species. I found both the film and the book incredibly inspiring and eye opening and I highly recommend that you dig into both.  If you'd like to read more about Anthony Brandt and the projects he's working on, please visit anthonybrandt.net

You can read a full transcript of this episode at imstevewaxman.com

I hope that you enjoyed this episode of The Creationists.  If you haven’t already, please take a moment to follow us on your favourite podcast platform and new episodes will be delivered to you as soon as they go live.  And, if you have any friends that might be interested in some of what we’re covering, please let them know that we exist.

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This is the final episode of Season Three of The Creationists and since this season featured a series of music related interviews, I thought it only appropriate to include an interview with Christian Swain who, along with his longtime friend Richard Evans created The Rock and Roll Archeology Project, a podcast that is an in-depth look at rock and roll as well as the culture and technology that influenced it from 1945 to 1995.

My conversation with Christian touches a bunch of different areas including the influence of black music on rock and roll, the creation of Pantheon, his podcast network of almost 70 music related shows as well as his views on the use of pre-recorded music in podcasts. But everything Christian and his partners have created starts with the first episode of The Rock and Roll Archeology Project which launched in 2015.

If you have even the slightest interest in the history of music, culture and technology and how they collided in the 20th century, I can't recommend the Rock and Roll Archaeology podcast enough but do yourself a favour and start at episode one. You can find this and all of the other Pantheon shows wherever you listen to podcasts or at pantheonpodcasts.com.

Read the full transcript at imstevewaxman.com

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In part two of my interview with Ira Robbins, we talk about the creation of his latest book, Marc Bolan Killed In Crash.

Good fiction is like an abstract painting. The story is born out of the imagination of the writer, and I'm always curious about the inspiration behind that story. Marc Bolan Killed In Crash is the coming of age story of teenager Laila Russell, and her discovery of rock and roll, as well as your introduction into London's glam rock scene. So to satisfy my curiosity about the story's origin. I asked Ira about the book's inspiration.

Marc Bolan Killed In Crash is available now and can be ordered through Amazon. It's been called a shrewd and witty novel about the business of pop and lauded for period perfect jargon and keen details about the way the music business manipulates fantasy and reality. Whether you're a fan of glam rock or not, you'll find this book endlessly entertaining.

Read full interview transcript at imstevewaxman.com

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I’ve been a music fan for most of my life but I didn’t really get into rock music until the mid seventies and the seventies were a great time to be a rock fan.  You not only had your favourite bands but you also had your favourite magazine and there were so many to choose from. There was Circus and Creem and Hit Parader and Rock Scene and Rolling Stone, of course. And, if you were a little more intellectual, you might read Crawdaddy or find an article in Mother Jones or even spend a little extra money on something from the UK like the NME. And, as you read each article, you got to know and become a fan of writers like Sylvie Simmons, David Fricke, Lisa Robinson and, of course, the late, great Lester Bangs.  These were the names of the people that turned us onto the music that became indelible in our lives.

Add to that list the name Ira Robbins who, in 1974, along with friends Dave Schulps and Karen Rose created Trouser Press as a fanzine that they sold by hand outside of concerts in New York City.  Trouser Press eventually found its way onto magazine racks and, finally, in 1978 into my hands when I saw Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick on the cover. What I found fascinating about Trouser Press was that reading the magazine always felt like the kinds of conversations me and my friends had on the weekends as we played our new favourite records for one another.

All 96 of the original issues of Trouser Press are available to reach online at trouserpress.com. The site has a great search function so that you can actually follow the life of your favourite band as well as the birth of punk, new wave and underground music. It’s as if you were there. In addition to continuing  his life as a music journalist, Ira has written album notes for a number of artists as well as two novels.  His latest book, Marc Bolan Killed In Crash is the subject of Part two of our interview.

Read the full interview transcript at imstevewaxman.com

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Honey Jam began its life as a concert to celebrate the launch of a magazine issue. Now, 25 years later, Honey Jam provides opportunities for female artists to get invaluable access to mentors and performance coaches, as well as the chance to showcase their talents for industry insiders. In the beginning, though, there was no way that Ebonnie Rowe could have dreamed that Honey Jam would still be around a quarter of a century later.

Long before starting Honey Jam, Ebonnie was studying at the University of Toronto when a tragic event led her to reassessing her life, which then put her on a path to help affect others in a positive way.

If you'd like to find out more about Honey Jam and its history, please visit honeyjam.com. If you or someone you know would like to get involved in the good work that Ebonnie does, please email her at [email protected].

Read the full transcript at imstevewaxman.com

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Wide Mouth Mason singer and guitarist Shaun Verreault has long been recognized as one of Canada’s finest blues rock guitarists. His long spidery fingers allow him to play incredible fiery riffs with casual ease.  The exploration of the guitar’s possibilities has been his lifelong pursuit but even his closest friends weren’t prepared for Shaun putting aside everything he knew about playing guitar and covering his fingers with metal tubes.

Hailing from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Wide Mouth Mason was born in 1995 with Shaun being joined by friends Safwan Javed on drums and Earl Pereira on bass. Within two years the band had a gold-certified major label debut, played the Montreux Jazz Festival and were touring the world with the likes of AC/DC, ZZ Top and the Rolling Stones. Around the time of the band’s second album, Shaun began to incorporate bottleneck slide guitar into his sound and eventually fell down a creative rabbit hole that has led to the tri-slide guitar he can be seen playing on Facebook and Instagram and featured on the groups latest album, I Wanna Go With You. So, naturally the place to start is with the most obvious question “Shaun, how did you end up with three slides on your fingers?”

I highly encourage you to check out all of Wide Mouth Mason’s music including their latest album, I Wanna Go With You, on any music service you have access to.  If you want to find out more about the band, please visit widemouthmason.com.  You can follow Shaun on Facebook or at sv_trislide on Instagram and watch some incredible tri-slide guitar playing. And finally, you can watch the entire jam session with Shaun and Robert Randolph HERE.

Read the full transcript at imstevewaxman.com

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When Steve Jordan first introduced the concept of the Polaris Prize to the Canadian music industry, the idea was generally welcomed, though the artistic community was still a little sceptical going into the first show in 2006. Despite the scepticism, the Polaris Music Prize has flourished into and internationally recognized award.

Steve Jordan is what they call a music man.  He started his career working at a Top 40 radio station in Kingston Ontario before moving to Toronto to multitask at the independent label Kinetic Records doing radio promotion, publicity and A&R and then taking his A&R shingle to Warner Music and then True North Records.  Steve is now the senior director of CBC music.  In the early 2000s though, Steve had an idea for a different way to shine a light on the Canadian music scene.

In early 2020, it was announced that Steve Jordan was stepping down from the Polaris Prize to become the Senior Director of CBC Music. The position of Executive Director of the Polaris Prize is now being held by Claire Degenais. You can find out more information about the Polaris Prize at Polarismusicprize.ca. On the site you will find information about past winners as well as short and long list nominees. In addition to shining a light on new recordings, Polaris has instituted the Heritage Prize sponsored by The Slaight Family to honour albums released prior to 2006 - a sort of hall of fame, if you will.

Read the full transcript at imstevewaxman.com

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