Hazel Grey
“Hazel Grey” is a duo consisting of Pete and Josanna Justine. They have written more than 50 songs together and recorded five albums of songs. “Was There Music in the Air?” is from their 2010 album by the same name as the band, Hazel Grey. It captures the first moments of God’s creation before there…
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The Power of a Family
I witnessed a powerful act of family on the weekend. Most families are made up of a diverse collection of genetic and non-genetic relationships and our Westwood/Smith family reunion on the weekend was a great example of this. The glue that holds this family together is the patriarch Albert Edward Westwood who was my grandmother’s…
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Dead Ringer
Marc Martel has just released a new album and is presently on tour with music from the album entitled, wait for it, Impersonator. Yes, the former Freddie Mercury impersonator has something to say and he says it well. Using just his surname for this new band, he has given us twelve songs about being an…
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April Wine is one of those under-rated bands of 70s rock.1 The Canadian band were regularly heard on Canadian pop stations in the 70s and a few American stations caught-on to their sound. They toured with such bands as Nazareth, Rush, and the Rolling Stones. They had a following of their own and at their peak sold…
Continue readingWhat Is It That Makes Music Good?
My friend, Malcolm McMillan, who is also a worship pastor at our church, sent me this message on Facebook. Hey everyone, I am giving a guest lecture to a Bible College class in February about art and the nature of beauty, and I could use your help. My talk is supposed to focus on music…
Continue readingChicken Soup Too!
In February of 2011 I posted the lyrics of a song by Alan Root. I could not find the lyrics that our daughters and I used to listen to on the cassette we borrowed from the library. Alan Root has since re-written the song and made it more academic and less fun, and those rewritten lyrics were…
Continue readingSpectacle or Substance
It is fascinating to observe the cultural shifts taking place in North America. The entertainment industry is a great place to watch it happen. Changes in the way music is bought and sold and how people make money in the business are moving rapidly. We live in the era of spectacle rather than substance. We…
Continue readingValdy MM-MM-MM-MM
Paul Valdemar Horsdal, known professionally as Valdy, is a Canadian folk musician who has been writing songs and performing for more than forty years. I remember discovering his “Country Man” album in the seventies and the couple of times I saw him in concert I was amazed with how this one man and his guitar…
Continue readingGod’s Providence
I like this description of city and garden and Fall and Redemption in Making the Best of It.1 We must be careful, however, to see the Fall also in its context as just one part of the story. Some Christians instead have interpreted our current existence as if we are in a world utterly fallen,…
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The words of the song “Handmade” by Jimmy Rankin say, “Everywhere I go everything’s plastic.” I understand these words. It is all too easy to find pretense and masque all around us. Authenticity is something for which we long. We long for it in the music industry, in business, in spirituality, and in our relationships…
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