Transcript
Speaker: Hi it's Dan here for Dusty Dicks Radio and this is the podcast Liner Notes revealing chats with Canada's retro music makers. Today I'm very honored to have as my special guest singer songwriter guitar player Lisa Hart best known as the lead of the Lisa Hart band and also as a solo artist. We'll be talking about her many musical adventures and we'll get some insights into the Canadian music scene from someone who's been part of it for many decades. So thanks for joining me today Lisa how are you? I'm fantastic it's really great to be at
Speaker: with you today, Dan. I'm really honored that you asked. Absolutely. Well, it's, it's been great. You know, one of the nice things about doing this podcast is I get to revisit some catalogs and I get to talk to interesting people like you and, and it sort of jogs my memory and, and brings back some good feelings too. And I certainly had that experience researching the talk we're having today. So I appreciate that and I appreciate you. Oh, thank you very much. So you're, you're a Montreal girl and, uh,
Speaker: I grew up there and you speak both French and English? Oh, absolutely. I don't myself, but I'm sure that was flattering. That was, you know, good. I appreciate that. And you had lots of musical influence growing up. Did you ever sing and play in French as well? Oh, for sure. I mean, I was raised in French. I was just thinking about that the other day. French was my first language as a young child. I grew up in La Tuc, which is
Speaker: It was a little mining town. There was a mill there. And my dad was head of recreation and activities for all the mill workers. That was his gig, right? One of the first people to do that kind of work and bring activities and get the people to work together. So I was raised there and I went to French kindergarten. So I learned basically French from a very young age.
Speaker: And boy, that's a real blessing and an advantage in life too, right? When you learn as a kid, you just learn and you do, and then you have it for the rest of your life. Right. It's normal, right? So it makes it easier to negotiate in the world, I think, when you have another language. Absolutely.
Speaker: Yeah. No, I know. Cause it interesting. Like when I went to school in Ontario, we took French, but it was more like the, the rote sort of learning and learning, you know, verbs and all the parts of speech and stuff. I mean, who the heck cares about that when you're in kindergarten? Well, we had to do all of that too. And, um, but it was obviously, it was in the home as well. My dad spoke beautiful French. My mom was not a linguist at all. My dad was from Denmark.
Speaker: And I really regret that he never taught us Danish. Danish is not needed in the world much like Latin is not needed in the world because they all speak such beautiful English in the Scandinavian countries. But I really regret not having that. I'm trying to learn now Danish and Swedish. Nice.
Speaker: Well, yeah, because a friend of mine, he was a Hungarian, but his mom and grandparents always spoke Hungarian. So you basically had to learn it. You learned it by force, basically, because that was the language. You wanted to be able to be part of the family. Yeah. Oh, interesting. Well, I wanted to ask you about that. And then, of course, you had some formal training, I guess, right? In piano and guitar eventually, and then voice as well? Yes and no. I was quite rebellious. I had originally started in piano.
Speaker: And they told my parents I was tone deaf because I absolutely didn't practice what they wanted me to practice, which was classical. I love classical music today, but at the time I wanted to learn Birth of the Blues. How old was I? Seven or six or seven when I started, but I was already into the blues and into music. I had uncles and aunts who were tiny bit older than me and they had
Speaker: They were traveling and they would bring back these great records from all over the place. And I just, I was just, you know, floored by that kind of music. So I wasn't very liked by my piano teacher. So my grandfather, Leonard, he was a classical pianist. My grandmother was a violinist. And we used to go every Sunday after lunch and listen to them concertize. They would, those were the days where there was no television.
Speaker: Um, well, very, very little. I mean, very few people, I was 11 when we got our first TV. So right before that you were, it was music, it was radio. It was, um, yeah, it was more like the salon. Um, the, the kind of thing they add in, in Europe where you sit with the family and everybody plays and sings and yeah. Well, that that's where they, that's where the kitchen music came from. Right. The idea of, and of course my dad saying like,
Speaker: a bird and my mom loved to dance. So it was all full of that kind of creativity. But I was writing that I was turning 12 in 1962 and it was folk music was everywhere and activism. And my mom was very active in the civil rights movement in Montreal. And there was a chapter there and she was
Speaker: very progressive that way. So I got exposed to all this kind of music and it was all guitar music. So that my grandfather once said to me, okay, you've blown off the piano guy. He's not coming back. So what do you want to do? And I said, well, I want to play guitar. And he said, well, let's go see a concert and see how you feel about it. So my first concert ever at Last Days R, which was the big place, you know, to go for
Speaker: the major concerts was Andre Segovia. I was expecting Tom Paxton or like all the guys I was listening to. Oh no, he took me to like the top of the top. And what was so impressive to me then was not the music so much because it was very, very complicated, very serious. It was the control this guy had on stage, the power, the absolute
Speaker: absolute stillness of everybody, the concentration. I just thought that was amazing. And I said, if I can do that ever, like get people so feeling so together, because it just felt like we were all in one energy. It was just really amazing. That was, that was what really impressed me. And he showed up at my babysitting gig because I had a babysitting gig after school.
Speaker: with a Goya guitar, which Goya was made in Sweden at that time and was very popular classical guitar. And I started teaching myself. Okay. Well, so you make a good point. Like to me, the overriding point is like, you know, I studied classical too, but it just was very unfun, I guess, is the way I would describe it. I didn't hate it. It just wasn't fun. I wanted to have fun. Yeah. I wanted to go, like, I wanted to make the leap to performing right away because I've always been an entertainer.
Speaker: People kind of dissed me for that many times, but that's really my joy is getting out and making people smile and laugh and dance.
Speaker: I've become more serious as I get older. I should break out a little bit more again. But again, the overriding point is you have that feel of music in your soul and you want to explore that and then share it with the world. I mean, isn't that what music is about at the end of the day? It's not about your degree in music or how complicated it is. It's finding that musical sensibility and then sharing it with the world.
Speaker: Yeah, all the great all the great people that have come before us. I mean, I'm walking on their shoulders, whether they're studied or not. It's the it's the musicality and the creativity. And it's so subjective. Right. Every single person I know has a different way of coming at a song. We could be listening to like, for instance, the new Paul Simon seven songs. You could be listening to that together and then have a discussion later.
Speaker: And everyone, it has struck everybody differently. However, the same feeling of that same feeling I felt in that first concert of togetherness, of this energy that was bringing us together, you can have different opinions about the lyrics and the
Speaker: the production and all of that, but that's all conversation, right? Yeah. Well, that's right. And, and, you know, music is both art and science, but it's mostly an art. The science serves the art rather than the other way around is what I found. So, you know, when you look at, I regret not studying more. Well, I know I'm doing it.
Speaker: Yeah, no, I agree with that. I do too. But by the same token, if you only focus on the science part of it, which is what a lot of music, especially a lot of the classical teachers did, study your scales, study your arpeggios, make sure you can play. And it's like, well, yeah, but I want to play stuff that's fun. Exactly. I want to get to the point.
Speaker: Well, I think too, and also when you look at shows like The Voice or American Idol or something, I don't watch those now, but you know, someone like Tom Petty, I guess, would get kicked off The Voice, right? I mean, he wouldn't do very well. Neil Young, how would Neil Young do on The Voice? Oh my goodness. All those great, iconic sounds. You know, the A &R guys, the real A &R guys with the labels, the ones that really had been musicians and were still continuing, like John Hammond,
Speaker: John Hammond was an A &R guy for Columbia, and he could recognize that creative, individual, unique sound that no one else had, like Dylan. He discovered Dylan. So you put the, when you were playing vinyl at that time, you put the needle on the record, and the moment that person sang, you knew who it was. And there was no homogeny.
Speaker: It was so, it was really unique. And I was taught that by people who I eventually studied with for performing, that it's the same thing with hand gestures and movement and how Elvis was, he was the whole package. He had the individual voice, he had the presence, he had the dance. He was like,
Speaker: He was just like a triple threat. Right. Yeah. Well, for sure. And, and the, the charisma obviously, but yeah, that's the X factors is what we're talking about. Right. The things that makes the, the make the magic happen. You know, you're not exactly sure what it is, but when you see it and feel it and hear it, you know, it, you know, you were talking about the voice in some of these programs. Um, my feeling is when I listen, like I do like the voice and in, I like the voice Australia, the best and UK.
Speaker: I'll tell you why. I just don't understand what happens to the people afterwards. I don't get that. And I think they're treated probably very marginally and not very well at all. And I've heard and read stories about it. But aside from all that, what's beautiful about the whole thing is that we're watching the real person singing before they turn around.
Speaker: I don't know how fixed it is. I don't know if it is fixed. I have no idea about that. But what's beautiful to me is that they're there in there. The people performing or just say it was me, I would be so nervous and so excited. But what would be so beautiful is I knew I wasn't being judged by anything but my music. And that's really incredible. That's the way we used to listen.
Speaker: to stuff. We didn't have videos playing in front of us. It wasn't a 30 second sound bite. It was like the whole deal, right? Yeah, that's right. And you, you're basically trying to capture people's emotions and their hearts with your voice. And it's, it's a real magical thing when you can do it and it's certain. So, but you, the interesting with, with you is that you started right away. Like you weren't, there was no grass growing under your feet, right? You got right into the scene and you were singing and performing in front of people at an early age.
Speaker: I was 10 when I first made my first money at it, which was thrilling, a $10 bill, a $2 check for singing on a jingle. And then from there, I know that's so crazy, isn't it? My belle familiar is a mealtime treat. Anyway, it was a big jingle. And I got this money and I went, wow, I can show this to mom and dad and I'll convince them that I just need to go from A to B. I don't need all this stuff in the middle.
Speaker: So I did convince them. I was very convincing. When it came to music, you could not stop me. So my dad used to drive me downtown in the middle of winter, down Montreal, because there were no buses that came out really late, you know, back into the door. I could get there by myself, but I had to get him to come down. He would come in with a big coat over his pajamas and sit at the end of the bar and have a little shot with the owner and wait for me to finish.
Speaker: and drive me home and then drive me to school the next day. So I was 11, 12, uh, singing downtown at the Cafe Andre and, um, the yellow door and all these great folk places, you know, it was amazing. That's so great. Cause I often ask people, you know, did you have a defining moment or was it just happenstance or whatever? And it sounds like for you, for similar to me in the sense, you don't really overthink it. You want to sing, you're just going to find places to sing and you're going to go and sing. That's it.
Speaker: And I would wait in line to sing, like there'd be lines of us. Oh yeah, like all the little, and then they would weed you out. And then after a while, there'd be just a select few that would come every week and have their particular spot. And I had my time and my spot and my fans. And it was, I mean, do I remember those days so well? Oh yes, I do, I do.
Speaker: Yeah. Those are your defining moments, I guess. And you were an oldest child, right? So you, did you have that strength of mind that the oldest child has to forge your own path? Yes, sir. Still do. Good for you. Oh, that's good. And then, so I was going to ask you too, did you, did you always play guitar? Did you just front sometimes? Cause I, I'm a guitar player singer, but I always felt uncomfortable with my guitar off. So I didn't really front that much, but you seem to be comfortable doing both.
Speaker: Oh, I am. I am totally. And it's certain music that requires me to to emote differently and dance music and stuff like that. I will like the latest single, the single I just released, The Night I Learned to Dance, which is a very old story about a 19 year old Lisa Hart. But it's it's a dance song. And I just get up there and I just want to dance with everyone else. So I just let go of the guitar. It was also written with
Speaker: keyboards. Um, my, I have a new writing partner from Sweden. So exciting to you. Yeah, I did see that. So I watched the video and, uh, it's about a time you were in Egypt. Is that correct? That's right. With an all girl big band. Wow. Crazy man. And white go -go boots. Wow. Ask me if we could leave the Sheridan. We could not. It was crazy, crazy times over there.
Speaker: Yeah, crazy. That's unbelievable. Again, another defining moment for me. Because working with this band, I was 19 years old, so I left Canada. I went to England by myself. Well, first I went to Germany and I joined a gypsy band. And I joined a gypsy band and that became kind of raucous. That became very dangerous. There was no one really looking after me and they were all pretty crazed. And there was a lot of drugs and alcohol and I
Speaker: I didn't understand or want to get into that. So I escaped from this guest house really using the sheets, you know, the sheets that you try together to get down to the ground out of the window. I did that. And I got out of there and I caught a lift with this young agent from the UK, Bill Thompson, his name was. And he gave me a lift. Of course, he had ulterior motives, but I managed to escape him too. And by the time I got to the UK,
Speaker: I had friends in London, so I phoned them up and went there right away and stayed with them. And then I had auditions with Tony, Tony, what was his name? Oh, it escapes me right now. But he wrote for Silla Black and Petula Clark.
Speaker: And I had been compared to Petula Clark for a long time as a young girl. So they were giving me material to sing and I was sort of recording at Pi Records and stuff like that in the very early days. And then I started this all -girl big band, the Christine Miset. And we just rampaged around Europe and the Middle East. It was crazy.
Speaker: So your whole story, that early story is the parents' worst nightmare. I mean, you're somewhat naive, I'm assuming, right? You're just going out in the world, you want to sing, and then you find all the pitfalls and the dangers of the world too. We were driving to Greece. We had a gig in Greece and we drove through Yugoslavia in the early morning and it was dark and rainy and we were hungry.
Speaker: and we had no money at all, just all this money went on. And we stopped and we picked some grapes in the vineyards just before you get to the border of a priest. And out of the bushes come all these farmers with bayonets, with guns with bayonets. Oh my God. And so they put us in the little country jail there. And I didn't, you know, I mean, we're laughing now, but can you imagine? So I,
Speaker: I said, well, why don't we just sing our, I have no fear at all. Let's just sing our national anthems and we'll do that thing they do in the movies where you take the tin cup and you run it up and down the bars and we'll just scream for the consulate, which worked. It worked. Oh, wow. So somebody came and got us out and we carried on our way. We paid. We had to end up paying for the grapes.
Speaker: They wanted US dollars. It was crazy. Yes, of course. And then we got to Greece and there was a coup that we went to play the gig at the US base in Athens. And by the time we got back to the hotel, all our luggage that we had dumped off when we got there had been taken back to the airport. We were told it was the coup because it was in the 60s. It was that big coup. And it was, again, we had to like run for our lives. It was like bad on the run. Yeah.
Speaker: When they, when that song came out, I thought, Oh my God, this is my life. Wow. That's crazy. Yeah. Well, you know, it sounds like it parents worst nightmare. Now I'm so naive. I didn't even lie to them. I told them everything that was going on. I wrote copious letters, which my mother kept. My mother kept everything. So.
Speaker: I have an ability to write a book about this because she's got everything that I wrote, like in the top, in live, right? Well, you should write a book if you've got the primary source. I mean, that's right from the horse's mouth right at the time, right? Oh yeah, exactly. And I could, today I wouldn't be able to remember the details that the letters convey, but I was going through all of it the other night, just lying in bed. I had all the
Speaker: you know, that onion skin paper that we used to write on the airline paper. And it's got the, um, the pyramids of Giza and the camels and everything. And I'm thinking, Oh my God, yeah, I was there. This was happening. This was real. I was dancing in the desert with Japanese soldiers and Russian generals and all kinds of, all kinds of crazy things could have happened. And yet I felt very, very safe.
Speaker: Very safe. The Egyptian people are really lovely people, too. Yes. It's just all the political instability. And then, of course, you could be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Yes. That's right. So how did you make it back to Canada? You hung out there for a few years, I'm assuming, and then you made your way back to back to Toronto, I guess. At the time, well, I had a manager here that was very upset with me that I wouldn't come home.
Speaker: And he had a group called The Bells. Now, The Bells were very famous in Canada. They had songs out by Ken Tobias, who I had worked with, by the way. At that point, I had had a band with Ken called the Crystal Staircase in Montreal. So we knew each other really well. So my manager at the time, and his manager, was kind of upset with me that I wouldn't get out of these boots and come back and
Speaker: and record something for real because the bells were doing so well, I could sort of follow or open for them. You know how it is when you have like a little. I've had both Cliff and Ken on the podcast. Oh, cool. Very good. Yeah. So I'm very close to both of them and still close to Kenny and Cliff, not so much. He's a little bit more difficult to reach. He's working hard, but I don't.
Speaker: But Ken, I'm glad to hear that you're still connected with Ken. He's a first -class human being as far as I'm concerned. He's a beautiful guy and what an artist. Unbelievable. I was shocked at how good it was. Oh, it's really excellent.
Speaker: So you got back, you got to come back to Canada, but I mean, that must've been a real dose of sanity for you to work with good people and be back to a comfortable, more comfortable situation, I guess. Is that fair? Well, I want to tell you though, our band in the Middle East, this band leader, Christine Lee, Chrissy Lee, she calls herself, she is one of the best drummers I've ever worked with in my life, bar none.
Speaker: bar none yeah and her like our band was so tight I really missed when I got home I was concerned that I wouldn't be able to put together something that great yeah because it was all just laid out for me I just had to sing front I just had to be that North American singer that they needed you know with the balls and the soul and we were doing a lot of R &B and a lot of big bands stuff like red
Speaker: What was it called? Electric Flag and Blood, Sweat and Tears, Coliseum, all these big horn bands, right? Because we had horns. When I got home, there was an ad in the newspaper that the Vanelli family was looking for background singer. And I needed cash right away. I needed to make money. My parents were not going to support me forever, right? So I can have a little rest and get better and get rid of the dysentery.
Speaker: Yeah. And how old would you have been? But, um, they were going to hold it forever. So I figured I better get a job. And I wasn't really strong enough to go out and find people in front of them at that time, because it requires money to put together all that. Right. Yeah. And what, how old were you at this time? Uh, 19, 20, 20, 20. So you're like a year later, right? I'm back, I'm back home and I auditioned for, um, Benelli.
Speaker: And that was interesting, actually. Tell me more. You auditioned for the family at that time because he was very tight with his family. So mom and dad and Ross and Joe, they were all there at the audition, which is normal. But then you had to pass a integrity test, ethics test too, which was interesting.
Speaker: I mean, I just felt like I was on trial and after all my crazy adventures in Europe, I didn't feel I could tell them anything. I just said I was a girl from Dorval. You know, I wasn't about to talk about my own going out in the Jeep and the Ashish and I couldn't talk about any of that. That's funny. They were just very on the level. They were all about the music and they were working really hard. And my God,
Speaker: When I asked for a band, oh, Tino was such a great drummer and drummers and singers that work like that and eventually become front singers. Yeah, they're amazing. A friend of mine did sound for Gino just a few years ago and he said that their soundcheck was the whole set. They ran everything and he picked it apart and was just like intense about. Oh, totally, totally. He's just a very intense person. And then eventually,
Speaker: when Lisa Hartband and we parted ways after he got his, he got a chance to go to LA and do the demos with her, you know, for her, Valfort. And that was the beginning of that's history. That's when it all started, brother to brother. And so I was out of the picture at that point because he was working with California girls. And then I started to work. I mean, there's lots of years in between Dan too, where there's,
Speaker: There's bands that I was working, Georges, which was a club right across from the Playboy on Elmer Street. I was working with Cliff's brother who was eventually in, in Mashamacan. Right. That's right. And he did tell me. Yeah. Yeah. Brian Edwards, right? Yeah. Brian Edwards and Charlie Clark and Mike Way and all the players that had played with us before in the band with Kenny, the Crystal Staircase, they all came on.
Speaker: and did these gigs. So I was moving from band to band like that, right? There were very few singers that had my experience at that point because of my age. And I just had this wealth of experience. At 19, I've already been singing like six years.
Speaker: Yeah. And also your genres. I mean, like when I look at your timeline, how quickly things moved, but I mean, you had the classical influence, you had the guitar, the rock jazz, even fusion stuff. And then of course the folk influence was everywhere. Yeah. So you had all of that all sort of wrapped up in one person, I think. That's right. And, and, and bringing all those influences into every song, right? So it gave us a unique sound. And I always said that the Lisa Hart band
Speaker: It took us 10 years to get the sound and bands, it takes a long time to really cook and create that recipe that's yours. And then unfortunately, you always seem to reach, I don't know if this is right,
Speaker: in your experience, but you get to this place where you're finally there and everybody starts to change their lives. Well, it's true. It's an arc. It's an arc. It's like, what's happening now? The band is dissipated. No, it's an arc, right? You're building, you're growing, you're hungry, you're trying to get to where you think you need to be, and then you get there and then the arc sort of takes its place. You plateau a little bit and then it starts to, people start to go their own way, I guess.
Speaker: But I have to ask you about your timeline because I was trying to figure this out. So you found your way. You had some kind of a record deal and you did the touch me and aftermath. You were a solo artist at first, right? You were recording. That was after Gino. After Gino. OK. And I was living with Ray Blake from Mash McCann, the guitar player. OK, I got you. And he had a group called Riverside. And somehow in there, I got this deal with Polydor and did touch me. OK. And the other side.
Speaker: Then I went on to do a solo album with a guy named Billy Meisner, who was part of a very famous vocal group here. So Laurie Bower Singers, they were called. And they were very famous here in doing all the recording, the backgrounds and everything. And Billy was part of the roster Friends with Bob Hahn. Bob Hahn was the original guy that hired me when I was 10.
Speaker: So he was a jingle master in Montreal, but he was also a producer. He had a label called rising records or Champlain Records First and then Rising Records. That was attached to CFCF, CTV. Yeah. And out of all of that, I eventually came to Toronto and did all of that. But we had a group called Oz before Lisa Hartband and then Oz morphed into Lisa Hartband.
Speaker: When you look back on all this, I mean, it must have, life must've been going at a hundred miles an hour. I mean, when you look at all the things you did in that short period of time, cause you're talking like, you know, I don't know, 10 pick a number 10 years. Yeah. I mean, it's crazy how much stuff you must've been just go, go, go. I never stopped. I never stopped moving because there was lots of stuff going on at home that I just couldn't be around for. Like a lot of it was driven by the fact that I wasn't comfortable. I needed to be on the road.
Speaker: where I was at least in charge of my life. And I'm not saying that there was anything weird going on at home, but you know, like when you've been on your own that long to come back and be part of that unit and fall into the old regular way of everybody and everybody counted on me, the older child,
Speaker: Yeah, so I just said no I gotta get out of here. So I that's basically I was self -driven, right? I really wanted to make it I was so intensely trying to get my sound out there and I didn't start writing Until touch me that was my first song ever. Yeah, and then I wrote a song for Rivas and called stony day and then and that was it for a while and then nobody wanted to
Speaker: until Lisa Hartband and then the guys were so amazing. So that's what struck me on that. So you got, you put an actual band together and I, and I'm, I'm really in favor of that because there's a magic that happens when you get the right players together. So you were signed as a group. Is that correct collective? Yeah. Okay. Which served you, I think served you well if, if, if I'm looking into it correctly, because you had some really good players that added a lot of significant things. We were a family.
Speaker: Yeah, okay. I argued right from the beginning that shouldn't be called Lisa Hartband. But there was a lot of resistance because they were pushing the chick singer thing. Right. Not they, I mean the business people. Yeah, no, that's right. Yeah. And you had a lot of arguments about that. I mean, the band almost broke up. I found, strangely enough, things come back to you, right? I found the two and a half pages of names.
Speaker: that we were arguing about the names of the band. I found them the other day written by Rayburn and Marty and everybody added their own stuff, right? So the names are amazing. I mean, and then finally in the corner, it's got Bob Hahn writes Lisa Hartband. And that's like the last one. And I'm thinking, man, we should never have listened to that.
Speaker: Well, I mean, you can see at the time that you had all the famous female singers, I guess, Anne -Marie and Maria Madera and Helen Reddy. I mean, you fit right in. You were certainly at the level of all of them. So the glamour aspect was pushed, right? And I was quite, I mean, I'm not embarrassed to say that. I mean, I was quite gorgeous at the time. I think we're all beautiful at that age, no matter who we are. And the energy and
Speaker: but it just was that period of stepping into, we were on the brink of the glam rock too, and then distal was coming in, and that was what killed us.
Speaker: disco killed the radio and the Lisa Hart band. Well, I suppose, I mean, you had old time movies, a great song. I mean, I love that. I always love that song and the production. So the thing I noticed about that too is really, really good production. Your voice is beautiful on there, but the production is really good. And then, of course, that got lots of radio play. I heard it lots of times.
Speaker: Yeah, especially in Out West, we had our most success Out West with that song. Oh really? Cause I, yeah, I lived here in the seventies. I mean, people, a lot of young people don't realize how important AM radio was, but we listened to AM radio all the time. Right. That was the center of our musical universe for a good decade, probably. Well, we had two producers on Star Watcher, the album, which to me, it still stands up today when I listened to it, especially when I watched them live.
Speaker: on Peter Zalsky show. I don't know if you've ever seen. I did watch that. I listened to the whole album again. I am so impressed with us live. That was not, there was no.
Speaker: There was no, it was live off the floor. There was no, no, no filters. Nothing happened. Well, I watched really close and I could see the drummers playing exactly does the symbol chokes and everything. I mean, there's no way you can fake that stuff if you, so he does. And it looks like it was totally right off. We were so tight. And I just remember feeling so happy that they got it right. You know, cause sometimes it just doesn't,
Speaker: Come across as you but those two little pieces just stand out for me in terms of video We weren't we were in that place where we we hadn't started to make videos yet, you know, right? That's right. It was all of this in between Years of 75 76 and yeah, I didn't quite come out yet
Speaker: Yeah. Well, but you had like the bass player is excellent. Great harmonies. Yeah. And the keyboards. Do you remember the poppers? I do remember the poppers. Yeah. Yeah. He was so good. Sorry. Yeah. No, I was going to say the harmonies, of course, I love. And then the keyboard player is excellent. He's got the, he's got the synth there. So he's playing, I think a Rhodes, a Fender Rhodes and a synth. Yeah. It was called the ARP.
Speaker: Yeah. Oh my God. He could play that thing. So good. Like, and that was, as we went on, you know, we got tighter and tighter and we experimented more and more. And unfortunately we never got all that stuff, um, recorded really unfortunate. Did you play acoustic on some of those songs? Is that you? Yes, that's me. Okay. Cause a lot of times you get a studio cat or somebody else does it, right? I wanted to ask. We played everything.
Speaker: We did have beautiful producers Phil Ramone did two two of the cuts he did all over the world and star watcher and three sorry and What else was it easy come easy go and Ralph Murphy from Nashville did old -time movie and Dream me away. Yeah, those are two of my favorite. Well, yeah, I mean they're they're excellent I mean even yeah, we did the rest and
Speaker: Um, they weren't going to put the album out at one point. We had fights over it. Huh? Yeah. Wow. So, so you produced, so you had one person produce a few like Ralph Murphy and then, uh, Peter Ramone, and then you did the other producing. Fill Ramone, rest at Springfield sound. So we did the instrumental that Marty wrote. Yeah. Um, we did, uh, sweet serenade.
Speaker: We did Dance of Death and One More, One More. So we did Four and they did, yeah. Cool. And was that all the same studio? Springfield Sound, yeah. Okay. And then the other ones were done at Listen Audio in Montreal. And then I went to A &R Studios to do voiceovers. Like, I mean, Phil loved huge production, huge vocal production. So I just went down to
Speaker: New York to add more background vocals, more, more choral stuff, right? And you got some strings on there too. You must've brought in a string section, right? No, that's all. Is it synth? Is it synth? Yeah. Well, it sounds really good because he's still playing. He plays with all the top Asian artists, Richard. Oh, wow. That was very cool. He lives in Kelowna. Oh, in Kelowna BC here. Yeah.
Speaker: I'm up there all the time. I'm doing a theater show there in a couple of months. Richard Yuen, look for him. He's fabulous. He's everywhere in the Chinese community. He's brilliant. He did all the Bruce Lee movies. He went back home after we broke up and did a lot of the movie music. Oh, isn't that cool? He stayed very, very close to his community, done extremely well.
Speaker: Nice. So you must've thought, I mean, at that time, and I want to talk about what you're doing now too, but I mean, at that time you were nominated for a Juno, you had a record deal, you had songs on the radio. I mean, you must've thought, okay, I'm here. Like I've made it. Yeah, I did think that until everybody decided to go their own ways. And it was really like a beetle breakup, right? Very sad. Very, very sad, very hard. And everybody was lost for a long time.
Speaker: Was there animosity or was it just people had different directions and aspirations? We couldn't replace them. Denny, I don't want to talk ill with Denny, but Denny had a problem of substance abuse and couldn't stop. And we could not find, and Marty was fed up. He wanted to really play more out there music. Marty, the drummer, he wanted to, his hero was Jacques de Jeanette.
Speaker: And he really wanted to go more of the Billy Cobham, that style, right? Yeah. Jazzy fusion kind of intense. Yeah, he didn't really want to do pop or whatever you would call our stuff. I think it's indie.
Speaker: Whatever you want. It was more mainstream. You're trying to get radio play. You're trying to sell records. I mean, you know, and they were pushing us more and more to that because disco disco took away our livelihood. We couldn't play live anymore. Nobody was hiring bands like ours because we weren't dance bands. You had to listen a lot, you know, right. And so we ended up doing a lot of, of course, university concerts, which I love doing because they're wonderful people to play for.
Speaker: but yeah, it was just sad and I started to get offers from television and I was kind of torn because I wanted to be more original But at the same time I had to make a living. Yeah, so I took I went to LA to To ostensibly be groomed to be the next Rod Stewart email You know, I don't know they have all these ideas. I ended up playing
Speaker: in the valleys and in the mountains and at people's houses and everybody's out of their minds and you're just playing your songs for them and you're hoping somebody's listening. I would come back to my little apartment in West Hollywood and sit there and think, what am I doing? I'm away from all the people that I love. I don't get this community at all because I didn't have a car. So I couldn't really go
Speaker: to all the really in places where I knew I'd find like -minded people and writers and things. I ended up meeting most of the comedians from the comedy club because I would go there every single night and we'd have these riotous parties and then I'd invite everybody home and I'd feed them on the money that the record company was giving me.
Speaker: So what year would this have been? What years? That was 1978. Okay. So you're in LA. I mean, you must've been at the, that's the heart of the center of the universe at that point, pretty much. It was. It was. And I really, I got to meet and go to David Foster's house. And again, timing is everything. He was not really interested in me. He was working with Holland Oates and he was going through a divorce. So when I
Speaker: ended up at his place, they were having a screaming match. What are you going to do about that? So you know, you're in the middle of somebody's personal life and you don't mean to be, you don't want to be there. Um, but you're there to work. Yeah. Well, fair enough. So let me backtrack two years though. I wanted to ask you about, um, you got into this production of Rockabai Hamlet.
Speaker: Oh yeah. That was just handed to me. How did that fit into the timeline though? Cause it was the same timing as you were in the band, right? You had the album out, you were. Well, that was it. The band was ending and we were searching for a rhythm section because Denny was out. He just couldn't play anymore. Marty was making noises and we were looking for a bass player. So we did finally find somebody, his name was Gordon hands, Gordon Ray hands from he's a California guy and he played with us.
Speaker: some of the gigs that we had already signed contracts for, he stayed and did some of that. Like we did the CNE, you know, the CNE and we did the chin picnic and all these regular things that you have going on when you're a top band, you've got to honor these contracts, right? Yes. So we ended up doing that. And at the same time, I got this offer to go with Cal Dodd to New York to work
Speaker: on the soundtrack. So sometimes they have the... Rockabye Hamlet was the first Canadian Broadway show. It didn't last too long, but it was brilliant, brilliant music. So I ended up singing four tracks on the cast album. Right.
Speaker: So that was, that was an amazing experience. So that was just a one, that was a one day turnaround, right? Okay. You sing in the studio and then you fly back. Oh wow. Okay. I thought it was a production. I thought you were part of the production. No, no, I ended up staying at Bob Hahn, not Bob Hahn, Don Hahn, very famous engineer with A &R. Um, I ended up staying at his house and meeting his family and stuff. And I could have gone back to do more work
Speaker: I wasn't comfortable. Everything was upside down and I was feeling like my family was getting divorced. It felt like everybody was just all over the place. Yeah, fair enough. But then you ended up in LA and that sounds like that was a bit topsy turvy as well. Because I was already
Speaker: I don't know how much reading you did about me, but I was already in the throes of my own substance abuse. Yes, I did. Right. And so I wasn't making very informed decisions. I really wasn't. It was all based on fun and frolic and I wasn't this intense
Speaker: working person that I am today. I was really like out for a good time. Well, you're living the party life, right? I had worked so hard from the time I was young and I had missed my whole childhood. And I just was like, okay, I'm in LA. I'm going to party. So I was going to all the parties. I was invited to them all. There was a really nice Canadian expat community there of
Speaker: people from Toronto and that were all musicians and writers. And it was so lovely to be embraced by them, but they couldn't get me any work. Well, I've read a number of things about you and I know you've been quite open about your alcoholism and you've been sober for 40 years, I think now almost, right? Since the 80s? 41. 41, good for you.
Speaker: And that's served you well, I'm sure. And of course, I guess you make mistakes when you're in the midst of your, in the throes of the addiction, but if you're able to overcome it, that's, that's the victory is overcoming. Well, that's the whole thing. It's all a learning curve, you know, it's all about growing into yourself. I mean, there was such a stigma and there still is in many, in many parts of the world, but there was such a stigma. And now we're suddenly understanding that these things are part
Speaker: Partly family, partly genetic, partly disease of just not being comfortable in the world. I had been so protected in my little world, in my little bubble with my band for so many years and so happy there and just to have it all fall apart.
Speaker: It was all new to me. You're a young person, you're partying it up and it's a carnival in your mind, I guess, and you have one drink and it feels good and you have 10 and it feels great. But what I say to my friends, of course, having been a professional full -time musician for over 40 years now,
Speaker: have seen guys train wreck their lives. And I just try to talk to them and say, you know, you're not living your best life doing this. I haven't drank myself for decades because it just wasn't interesting. I didn't have a problem with it. It just wasn't interesting to me after a time. And I was never a drug guy. We smoked a bit of pot, but I never got into the other crap. And I've helped numerous people sort of live their best life is the way I put it. No judgment, just live your best life.
Speaker: Oh, fantastic. That's wonderful. That's paying it forward, right? I think so. Yeah, that's really great. Well, I was very quiet about it for many years. I had to get off the road at a certain point because I had these three bands in a row when I finally came back from LA because I just couldn't get anywhere doing what I was doing. And I was afraid to spend too much money down there. I felt that I would owe a fortune.
Speaker: And I'd never get it back. So, um, I asked the man manager at the time to get me some work in Canada. But when you were in LA, were you on a retainer or were you getting upfront money? So upfront, well, he would just pay me money to be there every week. Okay. I see. What, what am I, I'm supposed to do something for this. I was not used to this way of thinking. Yeah. Like you do a gig, you get paid. Um,
Speaker: auditioning for people in their homes when they're clearly not listening to you and qualified to me as working. If I had been writing or been coming up with songs, I was introduced to so many people and they were all just doing their own thing and you have to be a certain kind of aggressive
Speaker: uh, person to handle Los Angeles. It's a, it's a different element for me. I guess, but if you're on retainer, obviously you're like a stable, right? Like the record companies used to have their, their farm team and their stable of people that they were kind of okay. If the money's there, but here's the deal. It was Natalie Cole's money. Okay. And Natalie was going through her own problems.
Speaker: So things were falling apart anyway. So what happened was I eventually asked for, could you please get me some work at home or in Europe or something and that way I can pay the office back and I'll feel better about myself. I want to work. I want to sit around here and go to the beach every day and
Speaker: hobnob with whoever I am. That's not who I am. Yeah, fair enough. So he got me a show called Listen to the Music, which was with a guy named Ted Yardestat. Before that, I'm sorry, I got a backtrack. Before that, he got me a show with Anne -Marie called Ladies Night. And it was a super special for CBC, you know, those ones that used to come on. I didn't see that.
Speaker: gorgeous show with all the wonderful female singers. And we got to hang for three weeks and film that show. It was wonderful. So that really gave me some feeling of, oh, goodness, I'm working again. It's great. And I was still missing the band. I didn't know what I was going to do without my guys. But I thought, OK, this is better. This is this is working for me. And then I got another show called Listen to the Music.
Speaker: which was a Swedish -Canadian co -production. And that's where we come almost full circle 40 years later to where I'm now playing in Sweden. And it's all because of the show. Listen to the music. Oh, isn't that cool? It's very, very, very cool. People remember the guy that I did the hosting with. His name was Ted Jardestad. He's unfortunately dead.
Speaker: He's an icon. He's like on their money. He's like as big as Abba and he was Abba's protege anyway. So I didn't know any of this at the time. I just thought he was a lovely guy and we got on well. But this created a whole impetus for people to invite me to Sweden last year. And now I'm putting back this year. Oh, isn't that awesome? I love it. It is. It's fabulous.
Speaker: Well, and now it's life is different now. I mean, you did a lot of touring. It sounds like you got sort of beat up by the road a little bit too, right? Just that endless touring. I always say that touring, I did it in the eighties, but it just was, it's an alternate reality when you're out on the road and I just didn't like it myself.
Speaker: No, it's very difficult. At the same time, we used to practice every single day. So we would go down when the club was closed and rehearse and that's how we wrote our stuff. We've done lots of that. You get really good as a band, but you pay the price in terms of your life because you can't do anything else, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, most of them have been through numerous relationships and have a strange kids and several kids from several people. I mean, I've got lots of, uh, I was always on my own or with, with one guy in the bed. Yeah. So there you go. So you're better off that way. Yeah. So did you, did you reach the level of success that you wanted in your career? No. Um, let's put it this way. When I finally crashed and burned.
Speaker: physically in 83. I had to come back from LA and with all these great promises and the two television shows, but I was now 30 over 30. Yeah. And going into my going into like by 83, what would I be?
Speaker: Well, 47, you were born. So I'd be 36, 35, 49, 49, 49. Okay. So you'd be 30. I'm already in my thirties. And at that time that wasn't too bad, but I mean, it was already hard to sell me as a young girl. Right. I, it was difficult and, um, I couldn't really think clearly and I was not well. And I just wanted to get, I had three bands in a row.
Speaker: that I wrote completely different music for. I had Lisa Hart in the Times, which was New Wave, Lisa Hart in the Muscles of Expression, which was funk and jazz and R &B, and then another solo gig, and then a duo, and all over the place. And I was just exhausted, exhausted from trying to,
Speaker: What's going to work? So looking back on that, what would you have done differently if you could go and sort of replay it with a little bit more experience? What would you do different? I would have gotten off the road a lot sooner and gotten help a lot sooner if I'd known what was happening. But you only recognize it when the penny really drops. We have a moment of clarity.
Speaker: And that doesn't happen for everybody. I mean, I'm very blessed that I didn't lose more than I lost. You know, I seriously, Dan, like it was life and death for me. I was told I had three months to live by the time I saw a doctor. Yeah. There you go. So, um, I really was very grateful and very grateful. That's good. Well, it sounds like you're, you're happy and you're living your best. You know what happens? A reinvention. And I've always been a smart girl. Like I always love to study.
Speaker: And one of the things I really regretted was not having a university degree, not going to university. So I went to university. I took sound. Sound was my major. I took communication arts at Concordia in Montreal in my late thirties. I got married. I had a baby at 40. I took a four year full time degree because I had to finish all the stuff that I hadn't finished when I was younger.
Speaker: I took women in jazz and I sang jazz and I was just in heaven. Like if I could have just stayed in academia, honestly. You're warming my heart. I love to hear these, these are the stories I like to hear because it's, it's forging your path in a positive way. Just, I don't care what you do, just do something positive and just go and do it. Absolutely. So then out of that, I had so many ideas of what I could do. So I took a degree in sound.
Speaker: as a sound practitioner and I've learned to do healing arts and I've learned as a Reiki master and I also use my voice and I go into palliative care. I took a hospice course. Beautiful. Yeah. I'm like so excited to be alive and making music. And then I'm writing again. I'm writing again so much more beautifully and so much more intensely.
Speaker: Well, it's cool. Like, so I listened to Don't Tell Me How I Feel and the things I noticed about that excellent production. I don't know where he recorded it, but wherever it is, it's beautiful. Okay. Do you know about Chris Burkett? Which one? Chris Burkett. No, Chris Burkett. No, I don't. He's my producer. Okay. I work with him extensively now. He produced and engineered. No one compares to you. Oh, wow. Okay. Brilliant. He's living in Toronto.
Speaker: He's just a great guy, generous guy, conscious guy, open -hearted. And I phoned him up one day, I'd have no idea what you cost, but I love your music. I went and listened to everything that he'd done himself. He was using world instruments and all kinds of stuff. And I said, look, I've got some music that I wrote.
Speaker: to as a gift to myself. I want to do a four song EP. That is a gift to me in my 40th year of sobriety. He said, really? Oh, I'm so interested. I'd be so interested to hear this song. So he was just positive from the get go. We had a Zoom call. I sent him the songs. We worked at a price and the first song. Don't tell me how I feel.
Speaker: is a song about my brother who died unfortunately of causes related to mental illness. His story, I'm telling his story.
Speaker: We started with that and he just got me right away. I mean, we worked virtually. We couldn't even see each other cause we were locked down. Well, yeah, I have to say that production is beautiful. It's warm and deep and clear. And then you're, um, you captured the emotion too. And then reflecting on life and the video, you've got the family pictures in there and pictures of you when you were younger, like it's very empowering. It's the emotion is there. Your voice is great. Yeah. There's so much going on. Um,
Speaker: So he did the whole EP with me and we launched it in March of this, I'm sorry, February. And then I did, I met this Swedish guy when I was in Sweden. I met him on stage. We just greeted each other. We clicked right away. And he, when I got home from Sweden, he wrote me and said, how would you like to be my Bernie Toppin? And I said,
Speaker: Love to and then jumped on that right away and I'd never done this before just written the lyrics, right? Yeah, so I said let me let me get started right away with and I just thought oh this you know, whatever whatever is gonna come of this I really love Jonas. I love his voice. I love his keys Yeah, so I sent it to him and the next thing I know he sent me back the night I learned to dance and I went oh My god, this is it so Chris and I got together again
Speaker: And we hammered it out, got into my key, and that's the result. That's the first, we've got a whole album source now that we've written. Oh, great. Oh, we're looking forward to it. Yeah. And the night I learned to dance, that's great too. I watched the video. There's a little clip. It's not the whole video, but I watched part of it. Oh, you didn't see the whole thing? It's fabulous. Well, you got the belly dancer, right? Right. Yeah.
Speaker: So, but one thing I noticed about you is that like a lot of times when people get older, they develop what I call old man voice, you know, and like, like Gordon Lightfoot, for example, bless his soul. He's my favorite guy ever. He was so shaky and old when he finished. He just couldn't sing anymore. And you have no sense of that. Like your voice is clear and beautiful still, which is fabulous. That's all the, uh, the good stuff that I've been doing for all these years.
Speaker: I hope so. I think so because you don't have what I call old man voice at all. It's beautiful. I'm very conscious of that. And I mean, it can happen at any time to any of us. When you hear the ladies in the choir, you know, where the, yeah, the vibrato, but sometimes the, the two chords that bump together, you know, your, your vocal cords they're, they're just muscles. So.
Speaker: Everything's got to be used.
Speaker: lifestyle is also very important. 100%. And I look at being an entertainer, like being an athlete. It's the same thing to me. I work out a lot. I'm very healthy. I live very healthy life just to keep that up. Cause I don't want to develop that. And unfortunately I think Gordon Lightfoot, someone hate to use him as an example, cause he's such an icon and my favorite guy ever, but he had abused himself for so many years. By the time he stopped, I don't think he had enough time to recover. And then he just got frail.
Speaker: but he still wanted to play. Exactly. That's when I said I felt blessed by the time because when that doctor told me that, I mean, okay, I have a choice, live or die. And I was just very grateful that the legacy of the abuse was more around other
Speaker: parts of my body and not my voice. Yeah. Yeah. Because I smoked too for 47 years. There you go. Yeah. A lot of people back. I smoked for 20, but oh my eyes, I smoked for 20 as a kid. Oh yeah. Well, good for you though. I'm, I'm, again, I'm very happy to hear that's heartwarming to me because you want to live the best life you can, quality of life as long as you can as well. And you got to give yourself the best shot and that's going to be exercise and mental strength. I think the mental part of it is, is the most important part, but
Speaker: everything flows from that. I struggle with the doing it all right. I'm still working full -time in a corporate job, too. There you go. To pay for my vice of music. Well, that's okay. Nothing wrong with that. Seriously, when have you ever seen a time in history except for the minstrels? I feel like we've gone back to the times
Speaker: where the great composers had to go live in the palace and write only for the king because we have to pay to play. It's hilarious. I mean, it's sad, but I've never
Speaker: I've never experienced anything like this in my life. Well, in the original music, that's true. I mean, for me, being in a show band and doing acoustic gigs and doing tribute shows and stuff, the market is vibrant. And last year is the best year I've ever had in my whole life. And that's 44 years of being a full -time. tribute bands are amazing right now, aren't they?
Speaker: It's been really good. So I mean, you, you find where the audience is and go and play, but if it's original stuff, and that's what I was going to ask you about the business stuff too. I didn't ask you about that. Did you ever get mistreated or have bad record deals or get taken advantage of financially? No, no, I was really fortunate. I, I had really good people and I didn't have that many people in my business life that was always the same people for, for the whole time that I've been
Speaker: making music and don't forget I stopped being a commercial product for almost 20 years so I was still making music but I wasn't, you couldn't see me I was sort of under the radar. Yeah okay and then I often ask my guests too you know how do you see the music scene now like how much of what you did in the past was a function of the time that you lived in? Well that's an interesting question.
Speaker: I love a lot of the new music. I have a radio show on Cashbox Radio. I work with Sandy Graham and we have a company called EMG Collective. So we have a lot of great people. And we're trying to, we work with young artists too, because that's something I've always wanted to be able to use my expertise to advise people and be on panels, do a lot of mental health panels and age, ages and panels, diversity panels.
Speaker: To be able to encourage young people and how to go and how to do that so that requires me to study which I love and that requires me to learn and I think for musically I hear a lot of wonderful stuff It's just that there's so much of it that to find the gems I have to do a lot of listening, but I honestly the young people that I've met
Speaker: for the most part, and I'm talking about undiscovered, unrecorded people.
Speaker: are just brilliant and they have their heads on straight and they do love what they do. Yeah okay well no I appreciate you saying that because obviously the buzz around music and the centrality of radio is is gone by the by now that will never happen again and then like the other point that you made about the saturation point like there's so much now it's like a shotgun blast of everything and all of it a lot of it's quite good so you have to really sort
Speaker: Exactly. And it's, it's to do with the story, the background, how the media manners, there's so much that's missing in the, um, that I was privy to because I was part of a stable of artists that was coming up as a young person. I was able to walk on their shoulders a bit and see what was going and look over them and see the overview of what was happening. I had a good manager when, when I was a kid that showed me how to stand on stage and stuff. There's all of that.
Speaker: They can get from Google, right? And YouTube and wherever they get it from, but it's still not actually doing it. So you have to be ready to do it. Well, and, and again, salivating for the new album to come out and stuff, you know, we used to really be anticipatory about that. Yeah. Absolutely. Power them page after page. And so, I mean, that's how the stones man imagine.
Speaker: If they hadn't been sitting on that bus together, Mick hadn't looked over and seen what he was holding there. If Keith hadn't looked over and seen what Mick was holding under his arm, which was this coveted record, this blues record, they would never have chatted.
Speaker: That was all. And what did they do? They got off the bus. They went to the next house. They sat there and listened to the whole thing probably 20 times and read the liner notes and then decided to make a band of songs. Yeah, there you go. So I guess it's different now. I mean, you still got the talent, the enthusiasm, the artistic expression, but it's manifested somewhat differently or marketed, I guess. You'd have to market it differently. You have to try.
Speaker: You have to find a tribe and you have to work your audience. Right. There's a couple of bands that I follow that are really, really after one of them is called Appalachia rising. There are two girls sisters and I just love their music. I love a lot of duet duos. I love, I love also the Swedish. There's a Swedish twins called the Mona Lisa twins. Oh wow. They're amazing. See, I listened globally to, to music from everywhere.
Speaker: I love a lot of French music and I'm really loving the Arabic twist now on rap and stuff like that. I've never been a rap person, but I'm starting to fall in love with the beats. Listen, Dan, I'm just getting started.
Speaker: Well, good for you. You know what I must say, like talking to you is a real inspiration. You sound like you're happy and healthy and have a positive mindset moving forward. Well, you're exciting me. Like I'm getting ideas as we speak, right? Oh, I haven't looked at that for a while. What's happening over here? Because I'm exploring all the time. So I had a tragedy in my life. Um, just recently in 2022, my husband of 36 years died.
Speaker: And I'm just, we were partners in music. We wrote a lot together and recorded and we never were able to put the album out, but I'm slowly getting it mastered. And I probably redo some of the songs and oh my gosh, I miss that. I miss him so much. He was my partner in, in AA and, um, in life and my father of our son and
Speaker: That's really hard. I'm really sorry to hear that and I've often reflected on that when you're when you're married to someone for a long time and your life is Invested in that person for a long time. It hurts, you know, like like the dance and I'm like, it just feels wrong. Like why is this happening? Because it happened in December of 22. So it's almost like a year and a half. Yeah to almost two years, but I I'm yeah, I've got it.
Speaker: So the music is so healing on so many levels, right? Yeah. And then I guess you, you must've come to a point where you thought, okay, I'm, I'm still here regardless of, you know, this, this tragedy happened and I can't change that, but I'm still here. So what am I going to do while I'm here? Exactly. And he was so supportive of what I was doing with Chris. Um, and was, we were looking forward to doing some of his music too. So I go down to this.
Speaker: place called the Alive Poetry Group and then I read poems and I put music to it and it's like being with the beat poets of the 50s and oh it's so great. So I bring Michael's work with me and I read his stuff because he was a wonderful poet and he's an artist so I'm surrounded by great art and it'll never
Speaker: anticipate that way. Yeah. No, good. Good for you. And I wish you the best in that. I can't say I know how that feels, but having been in a long -term, you know, it's hard to imagine your life without that person. But then another person said wisely one time, don't die with those who have passed on. No, right. And it is easy to think that way. Yes. It's very difficult to
Speaker: rise up and do it. I mean, I've had to force myself to just get up and go to work many, many times, but it's getting easier. And yeah, the more, the more I put myself out there, I'm, I'm just happy to be making music again. How many people my age can, can just say, wow, I just came off the stage in Sweden and these young guys, this hockey hockey team, 17 year olds, they all adopted me.
Speaker: That was so great. Who am I kidding? It was a treat. It was fabulous. I love it. No, that's a good story. And I appreciate you taking the time to share your story with me and just, I don't know, just be so heartfelt and so transparent about everything. I do appreciate that.
Speaker: Many thanks to my guests, Lisa Hart, for being part of the Line of Notes podcast and sharing some insights from her many musical adventures and accomplishments. More information is available at lisahartmusic .com. Excellent website, lots of stuff on there. And we hope you enjoyed the podcast. We invite you to subscribe to it and share it on social media so others can enjoy it as well. And we also invite you to listen to Dusty Discs Radio Tuesdays and Thursdays to hear music from the Canadian artists you're hearing on this show. So until next time, I'm Dan here.
