Records & Rockstars

There's something about the sound of the instrument, smallish in size, that adds something special to select rock songs. It's Italian. It has strings. It's part of the lute family and has a long neck and and rounded body. Most often played with a pick, it typically has four courses or sets of 2 strings, tuned in unison and making it an 8 string instrument, and when you put two strings close together like this, you get more volume because of the strings vibrating against one another.

The mandolin would be put to use in European classic music, and in American folk and bluegrass music. And then thanks to Led Zeppelin, in rock music too. Not just them, but a raft of bands in the seventies, eighties and nineties, each of which is revealed in this episode of so-called mando-music.

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Jeff prompts 15 rockstars to tell us what their favourite Beatles songs are and why? Featuring some incredibly honest and well thought answers from: Paul Rodgers, Joe Walsh, Colin James, Randy Bachman, Nick Gilder, Kim Mitchell, Moe Berg, Joe Perry, Jim Cuddy, Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi, Serena Ryder, Rick Jackett of Finger 11, Jeremy Taggart of Our Lady Peace, and BUBBLES from TRAILER PARK BOYS. Do you remember the band he, i.e. actor Mike Smith, was a part of? Find out in this 25 minute podcast version of Woods' weekly radio show.

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Jeff takes you back to the early months of 1973 and the music that was both new in record stores and on turntables and 8-tracks, and on the hipper radio stations. This is the first of a 4-parter of recurring episodes celebrating the best of '73. 

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Remember “World Album Premiere” radio specials? This is just like that, but only available as a podcast as Jeff welcomes the return of the uniquely voiced sweetheart of an artist who debuted on Records & Rockstars in Episode 56 (Oct 2020). Mattie Leon brings his acoustic guitar, and an elpees worth of tunes produced by Mark Howard (Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Willie Nelson, The Tragically Hip), and Mattie and Jeff dig into the songs with stories behind them, featuring four cuts directly off the album, and Mattie plays two more key cuts live at Jeff's Wild Woods Blue Studio. Hailing from Hamilton, Mattie is a craftsman on guitar and piano, with sensibilities informed by the songwriting of the sixties and seventies. His voice, whether soaring or soulful, is his own. At his side is Mike Leon, Mattie's drummer and longtime collaborator. Together, they've become a captivating example of the unique thing that happens when siblings share the studio or stage.

Mattie, Mike and longtime bassist, and multi-instrumentalist Nelson Sobral (Episode 72 March 2021) did things the old fashioned way; recording everything together in the same room. The result is ‘Backroad Medicine’, out March 2023 on Castlemore Records.

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Now the conclusion of this 5-parter that started in the decade in which rock and roll was born in the U.S.A. And then the 1950s gave way to the British invasion, and then the seventies and eighties, and then the broad term Classic Rock, would slowly let in another decade. We love the 90's, because much of it sounded rather unlike MOST of what had come before, and much of it was entirely inspired by what had been.  So, a review of the nineties and Jeff summarizes what happened to music, starting with Napster.

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This time a 2022 Juno nominee, and Maple Blues Female Vocalist of the Year, Emily Fennell, better known as Miss Emily, with more of her trademark “electrifying roof-rattling performances”, the “soul-blues dynamo” comes with guitar in hand and joins Jeff for conversation and performances live on record, live at Wild Woods Blue, and from the studio from her latest acclaimed album, “Defined by Love”.

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The fourth of five parts in Jeff's dive into the evolution of classic rock takes us back to the decade of incredible diversity in music -- the one in which video did NOT kill the radio star, but did see the reinvention of many. How do you sum up a decade in 20 minutes? Very carefully. Enjoy.

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Jeff's investigation into the Evolution of Classic Rock, that began with and predated the 1950's in part 1, and the 1960s in part 2 , now dives into the 1970s in part 3.  

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The fifties behind us, this time the evolution continues in the decade that introduced The Beatles, Stones, The Who, The Kinks, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, and so many more, as artists in England looked to America, picked up their guitars and played, and then got an a plane, to come over show us what they'd learned. The British Invasion this time.

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Truth be told, radio helped, through its too-tight playlists, all but ruin the format, turned genre, "Classic Rock". And that's where the former iteration of Records & Rockstars came in. It was 2001 we created "The Legends of Classic Rock", designed to go deeper musically, and tell the stories behind the music. 22 years later, the series continues, with records we came to love and the stories around the artists who made 'em. And so comes the first in this four-part series, condensing decade by decade, how rock would evolve, beginning in Part 1 with the birth of the baby born of the blues, called Rock 'N' Roll. We think you'll enjoy this 25 minute podcast version of the weekly radio show. I mean, who spends two days cooking up a 25 minute podcast? Woods does. Weirdo. In a good way. Here's how he sounds with a wicked head cold.

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