Paul Myers | |
|---|---|
| Born | 11 November 1960 Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
| Genres | indie rock |
| Occupation(s) | Author, journalist, musician, songwriter |
Paul Myers (born 11 November 1960) [1] is a Canadian author, journalist, musician and songwriter. Until 2006, Myers worked as a musician and journalist in Toronto and Vancouver, where he became a television and radio personality. He is the older brother of actor and comedian Mike Myers.
In the 1990s, Myers was the front man and songwriter for the band The Gravelberrys, which had a Canadian alternative hit in the early 1990s with "Wonder Where You Are Tonight." [2] The group, which took its name from a reference in The Flintstones , [3] disbanded in 1995, after several complete lineup changes. [4]
Myers, in electronic music, is Flam!. [5] [6] [7]
In 1995, Myers began his journalism career, in Toronto. Since that time, he has written for a wide variety of periodicals and newspapers, including Canadian outlets The Globe and Mail , The Vancouver Sun , The Vancouver Province , and Canadian Musician , and American publications including Mix , Electronic Musician , Crawdaddy! , and the San Francisco Bay Guardian .
In 2001, Myers' first long form book, was the authorized biography of the Barenaked Ladies, Public Stunts, Private Stories , published in Canada by Madrigal Press and in the US by Simon & Schuster's Fireside Books imprint. [8] [9]
In 2001, to 2006, Myers was in Vancouver, British Columbia, holding a variety of positions during this time. Myers was the musician judge on the Canwest Global reality TV series, Popstars: The One , and blogged about his experience for the Vancouver Province .
Myers and Patrick Maliha were known to viewers of Shaw TV's Urban Rush as The Movie Guys, appearing in a popular weekly segment which ran from 2003 until 2006, when Myers left Vancouver for the San Francisco area. Myers was also briefly a regular cultural pundit on CTV's The Vicki Gabereau Show , a national daytime program which taped out of Vancouver.
In 2003, to 2004, Myers hosted a talk radio show on CHMJ (then branded as "MOJO Radio") in Vancouver. The show was first known as One, Two, Three with Paul Myers (after its 1:00 to 3:00 time slot), before being rechristened The Paul Myers Show. The show attained cult status, and Myers played host to diverse guests such as They Might Be Giants, Matthew Sweet, Seth MacFarlane, Errol Morris, Randy Bachman, and Rick Nielsen from Cheap Trick, as well as local musicians and touring authors. CHMJ, a Corus radio station, abandoned broader talk radio in 2004 in favour of an all-sports format. Myers joked that despite his acquisition of a Vancouver Canucks jersey, his culture- and music-based topics no longer fit on the sports channel.
In 2007, his second book, a biography of Long John Baldry called It Ain't Easy: Long John Baldry and the Birth of the British Blues, was published by Greystone Books in Fall 2007. [10]
While researching the Baldry book, Myers met Vancouver filmmaker Nick Orchard, who enlisted him to write the script and appear in his documentary Long John Baldry: In The Shadow Of The Blues. [11] The film has received repeated airing on both the Canadian Bravo network and BBC 4 in the UK. In 2008, Myers was personally nominated for a Gemini Award (the Canadian Emmy) for Best Writing in a Documentary Program or Series, for his work on Orchard's film.
In 2010, Jawbone Press published Myers' third book, A Wizard, a True Star: Todd Rundgren in the Studio, a detailed history of the record production career of the Philadelphia-born guitarist and producer. [12] The book featured interviews with Rundgren and many of his production clients, including Patti Smith, XTC, Meat Loaf, New York Dolls, Cheap Trick, Psychedelic Furs, Grand Funk, and Hall & Oates. The book was critically acclaimed and received four star reviews from the British magazines MOJO and Record Collector .
In 2014, Myers continued to write, record and play sporadic shows, appearing since 2014 as The Paul & John, a San Francisco-based duo formed by Myers and John Moremen, performing with drummers that have included D. J. Bonebrake and Dawn Richardson. [13] [14] [15] The Paul & John have released one album, Inner Sunset (2014). [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] Kickstarter was used to fund upfront costs of a vinyl pressing.[ citation needed ]
In 2018, On 23 October 2018, House of Anansi Press published Myers' 4th book, "Kids In the Hall: One Dumb Guy." [22] The book's release was preceded and followed by a promotional speaking tour discussing the history of the comedy troupe, Kids in the Hall, featuring some members of the cast. On 21 September 2018, Myers was joined at the Crows Nest Theatre in Toronto by Bruce McCulloch and Scott Thompson as part of the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival. [23] In January 2019, Myers was joined in conversation about the book by 4 of the 5 Kids in the Hall: Dave Foley, Kevin McDonald, Mark McKinney and Scott Thompson at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco as part of Sketchfest 2019. [24]
Fast Company notes he resided in Berkeley, California in 2014. [14]
Todd Harry Rundgren is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer who has performed a diverse range of styles as a solo artist and as a member of the bands The Nazz and Utopia. He is known for his sophisticated and often unorthodox music, his occasionally lavish stage shows, and his later experiments with interactive art. He also produced music videos and was an early adopter and promoter of various computer technologies, such as using the Internet as a means of music distribution in the late 1990s.
Gordon is the debut studio album by Canadian band Barenaked Ladies. It was released through Sire Records on July 28, 1992.
John William "Long John" Baldry was an English musician and actor. In the 1960s, he was one of the first British vocalists to sing the blues in clubs and shared the stage with many British musicians including the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. Before achieving stardom, Rod Stewart and Elton John were members of bands led by Baldry. He enjoyed pop success in 1967 when "Let the Heartaches Begin" reached No. 1 in the UK, and in Australia where his duet with Kathi McDonald "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" reached No. 2 in 1980.
Cyril Davies was an English blues musician, and one of the first blues harmonica players in England.
A Wizard, a True Star is the fourth studio album by American musician Todd Rundgren, released on March 2, 1973, by Bearsville Records. It marked a departure from his previous album, Something/Anything? (1972), with its lesser reliance on straightforward pop songs, a development he attributed to his experimentation with psychedelic drugs and his realization of "what music and sound were like in my internal environment, and how different that was from the music I had been making."
Todd is the fifth album and second double album by American musician Todd Rundgren, released in February 1974 on Bearsville Records. It is the follow-up to the previous year's A Wizard, a True Star and features a comparatively heavier reliance on guitar playing and synthesizers. About half of the tracks were performed by Rundgren alone, with the other half recorded with varying configurations of musicians. In the US, the album peaked at number 54, while lead single "A Dream Goes On Forever" reached number 69.
Hermit of Mink Hollow is the eighth album by American musician Todd Rundgren, released May 1978 on Bearsville Records. All of the instruments and vocals were performed by Rundgren. He intended the songs on the album to be performed on piano with minimal arrangements, apart from the bass, drums and voices, and for the material to showcase his newly refined singing ability.
Dennis Beynon Lee is a Canadian poet, teacher, editor, and critic born in Toronto, Ontario. He is also a children's writer, well known for his book of children's rhymes, Alligator Pie.
It Ain't Easy is a 1971 album by Long John Baldry. It marked his return to the edgier blues sound that he performed in the mid-60s. It was Baldry's fifth solo album.
Barbra Amesbury is a Canadian philanthropist, singer-songwriter, composer and filmmaker, who had several Top 40 hits in Canada in the 1970s. Amesbury was the long-time partner of Canadian philanthropist Joan Chalmers until her death in 2016.
Shinin' On is the eighth studio album by American rock band Grand Funk Railroad. The album was released in March 1974, by Capitol Records. Although not as successful as its predecessor, We're an American Band (1973), it peaked at #5 in the US and was certified gold, and its first single, a cover of "The Loco-Motion" topped the U.S. charts. The original cover was done in bi-visual 3-D and included the required blue and red lensed glasses to view it. A Quadraphonic mix of the album was available in the Quadraphonic 8-Track cartridge format. The title song was featured in The Simpsons' 7th season episode "Homerpalooza" on May 19, 1996.
David William Kelly is a British blues singer, guitarist and composer, who has been active on the British blues music scene since the 1960s. He has performed with the John Dummer Blues Band, Tramp, The Blues Band, and his own Dave Kelly Band.
Gene Hardy is a Canadian multi-instrumentalist and vocalist. He performs on saxophone, violin, musical saw and theremin.
Duffy Power was an English blues and rock and roll singer, who achieved some success in the 1960s and continued to perform and record intermittently later.
"Let the Heartaches Begin" is a song performed by British singer Long John Baldry. The single was a number one hit in the UK Singles Chart on 22 November 1967 where it stayed for two weeks. It was the second of two consecutive UK number one hits for the writing partnership of Tony Macaulay and John Macleod. The title of the B-side song is "Annabella ".
Andrew Nikiforuk is a Canadian journalist and author. His writing has appeared in many outlets, including Saturday Night, Maclean's, Alberta Views, Alternatives Journal, and national newspapers. He has won multiple National Magazine Awards for his work. In 1990, the Toronto Star awarded him an Atkinson Fellowship in Public Policy to study AIDS and the failure of public health policy. He has also published numerous books, including Saboteurs: Wiebo Ludwig's War Against Oil, which won the Governor General's Award in 2002 and Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent, which won the Rachel Carson Environment Book Award for 2008-09 from the Society of Environmental Journalists.
Kathryn Marie "Kathi" McDonald was an American blues and rock singer and songwriter. As a teenager she sang with different bands around the Pacific Northwest before she was discovered by Ike Turner. She sang as an Ikette with Ike & Tina Turner and eventually replaced Janis Joplin as the front woman of Big Brother and Holding Company. McDonald became a background vocalist for various artists, including Leon Russell, Joe Cocker, The Rolling Stones, Freddie King, and Long John Baldry. She also recorded as a solo artist and fronted her own band Kathi McDonald & Friends.
Geoffrey Frank Bradford was an English guitarist who played alongside British blues musicians in the 1950s and 1960s, such as Long John Baldry and Alexis Korner.
"I'm an Adult Now" is a song by Canadian band The Pursuit of Happiness (TPOH). It was written in 1985, and produced independently and first released in 1986 as a 12-inch single. Later that year, the band released a self-produced music video. As a result of the video viewership, all copies of the 12-inch single the band had pressed sold out. The band became an "independent success story" because of the song and video, and owing to this popularity was signed by Chrysalis Records in 1988. In 1988 a rerecorded version of the song was released.
Disco Jets is a tongue in cheek project organized and recorded by Todd Rundgren and Utopia shortly after recording Rundgren's Faithful LP and including most of the musicians from those sessions. It's an instrumental recording humorously parodying 1976's US Bicentennial celebrations, disco music, science fiction films and the CB radio fads. It was released in 2001, 25 years after its recording, as part of the Todd Archive Series Vol. 4 – "Todd Rundgren Demos and Lost Albums" 2-CD set on Rhino Entertainment/Crown Japan. It was reissued in 2012 as a standalone CD import on Esoteric Recordings and in 2015 on Cherry Red. It was also released as a limited edition vinyl that was manufactured exclusively by Cherry Red for Record Store Day, only appearing in record shops from Saturday 16 April.
Paul Myers Is A Toronto, Canada-Born, Berkeley, California-Based Journalist, Musician And Songwriter, And The Author Of Three Music Biographies Including A Wizard A True Star: Todd Rundgren In The Studio (Jawbone Press, 2010). He Is Also One-Half Of San Francisco Music Duo, The Paul & John.
Paul Myers and John Moremen are both veterans of the genre, Myers with his early '90s outfit The Gravelberrys and Moremen with the Neighbors, the Orange Peels and solo. The duo co-wrote all the tunes here (with Myers handling all the lyrics) and they're all absolutely wonderful from start to finish.
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