Etheridge Stax Up the Soul at Bluesfest

 Ottawa Life’s Festival City Series is back! We'll provide a unique look at some of your favourite events. We’ll go beyond the music with artist interviews, volunteer profiles, concert reviews and spotlights on the tastes, sights and sounds of the festival season.  Your city! Your festivals and events! Like a good sunscreen,

Plans of His Own – The Gordon Lightfoot Interview – Part 2

 Listen to part two of our interview with Gordon Lightfoot above. Part one can be found here. Gordon Lightfoot walks in on a young Bob Dylan hunkered over a typewriter, the poetry of his renowned lyricism passing through his fingers and onto the keys to be imprinted in ink on paper.

Plans of His Own – The Gordon Lightfoot Interview – Part 1

 Listen to part one of our interview with Gordon Lightfoot above. The singer lay silenced, his synapses struggling for some light within the darkness of the coma that had muted his voice. An eye flutter here, a possible movement there but the man who’s music meant much to many, a

From the Church Choir to Ottawa’s Jezebel, Terry Steeves Lives for the Music

 Photos supplied by Terry Steeves. She is ten years old. Terry Steeves looks down at the little yellow and white record player her parents have just given her. Some gifts provide momentary elation, some collect dust in the attics and garages of the world, others change your life. Looking back,

Honey & Rust

 Photo by Toni van Eeden. Before she learned to talk Johanne Beattie was sharing songs. She’d sit in her bike-seat humming gibberish melodies as her mother rode through town. At seven she was reluctantly enrolled in piano lessons. As it was with her singing, her mother saw a natural gift in