higher, a remarkable statement given the legacy of Cohen, Mitchell,
Young, Lightfoot, Adams, Twain, Rush, and so many others; and
yet, the success of Drake, The Weeknd, Bieber, Mendes, Jepsen, and
Arcade Fire has been unprecedented.
At the same time, it’s hard to find a regular Canadian musician
who isn’t singing the blues. Everyone has had to adjust to the new
realities, whether it’s touring constantly, spending hours promoting
themselves on social media, or trying to decide whether vinyl or
t-shirts will be more profitable. Skeptics and cynics are happy to
pronounce the music industry dead, the product now worth frac-
tions of pennies to the producers or simply taken by consumers
for free.
Even the Canada 150 celebrations seem somewhat flat, at
least to those people with long memories who recall the excite-
ment of the1967 centennial. But to sing a song like Bobby Gimby’s
“Ca-na-da” would be terribly naive at a time when Indigenous
people are reminding everyone that their country dates back well
beyond 1867. And if you’re going to sing a song, how about some-
thing by one of Canada’s Indigenous communities, which comprise
more than 1.4 million people in the country, yet remain woefully
underrepresented in the music industry despite singing all the early
hits in these parts?
So are things getting better? Worse? Almost everyone in music
these days seems to be using the same word: reinvention. That’s
Tara MacLean
what Tara MacLean said.
“About two years ago, I started missing music, but nothing re-
sembled what I knew before about how to make records,” MacLean
shares. “I didn’t even bother to ask a label if they wanted to sign me.
I just had this idea that if I needed to start from scratch, the only
place to do that was from home.”
Home for MacLean is Prince Edward Island, and her mother,
grandmother, sister, and of course, those incredible summers. She
wanted to take her whole family there, and realized she could re-
invent the whole concept of touring for herself. With its constant
turnover of tourists, MacLean would have a new audience arriving
each week, so she developed a show called Atlantic Blue. It features
her tributes to the great East Coast songwriters who inspired her
as she started her career, from Ron Hynes to Gene MacLellan to
Stan Rogers to Sarah McLachlan. The show features the songs and
stories of the writers, told by MacLean using filmed elements, and
performed with an all-East Coast band.
There’s a new album too – songs from the show that she has
released on her own via Pledge Music. She found lots of her old
fans ready to support her, some even planning summer vacations
on P.E.I. to see the show. It makes her question the old music world
she left.
“Did I really make a good living at it before? It cost so much
money to tour at that level. And the amount of money that went
into promotion and making the albums and the videos, at the end
of the day, I’m still recouping my Capitol release, I’m still recouping
my Nettwerk releases,” she says. “This is going to be the first album
that will be recouped within months of its release. The hard part
is doing everything myself and the learning curve that came with
that.”
Everyone that’s still here is learning such new tricks. That goes
all the way to the top of the chain. Major record labels, once the
swaggering kings of the music industry, have merged and down-
sized, diversified and penny-pinched in order to survive. And yes,
the talk is all about reinvention.
First, though, Warner Music Canada president Steve Kane
wants to dispel that “music industry is dead” talk.
“For the Canadian business right now, it’s not only very
healthy, there’s a sense of optimism, and a sense of an open market
that we now have access to,” he begins. For Kane, the big revelation
has been that being successful doesn’t have to mean having U.S. hits.
“Canadians spent so many years beating their heads against
the wall at the American border, and too often all they end up with
is a bloody forehead,” he says. “When the golden ring is a 45-minute
drive away, you’re still so tempted to concentrate all your efforts
there. What we’re discovering and what we’re encouraging young
artists to look at is that more so than ever, a hit record can come
from anywhere. A career can begin anywhere.”
C A N A D I A N M U S I C I A N • 39