Way back in 1988, guitarist Rik Emmett stunned fans when he left the successful Canadian rock group Triumph to pursue a solo career. He left many questions on the table in the wake of his departure, most of which he answers in Chapter 5 of his autobiography Lay It On The Line. Now, when I call the book an autobiography I’m using air quotes because this is also a self-help book and an instructional guide to song writing and making your way through the music industry. Lay It In The Line is also mu...
Feb 28, 2024•1 hr 1 min
Jane Harbury has been a beloved figure in the Canadian music industry from her days washing dishes at Toronto's legendary Riverboat Folk Club to acting as publicist to some of the world's most revered musicians. A couple years ago I met Jane for coffee where she shared her origin story growing up in England. That afternoon has stuck with me all this time so recently she and I arranged to record our conversation so that we could share her story with the rest of you. In part one of our interview, ...
Feb 20, 2024•48 min•Ep. 51
Welcome to episode 50! When I started this podcast I had no idea whether anyone would listen or how far I’d be able to take it and yet, here we are. For this episode I reached to an old friend, Jeff Woods, to talk about his longtime love affair of writing and telling stories to turn people on to the things he loves. Many of you who are listening will instantly recognize Jeff’s voice from his days at rock radio and hosting his syndicated Legends of Classic Rock radio program. Most people might th...
Apr 19, 2023•38 min
We all tell stories in our daily lives. Some are just the mundane answers to the question "How was your day?" But others are the stories we use to try to entertain or convince people of something. Whether it's a sales person presenting a product or an artist doing an interview, there's a story to convey and the best way to tell it is with authenticity. But not everyone is comfortable sharing their story and, in some cases, they don't think they even know what the story is. Erin Rodgers is a stor...
Mar 13, 2023•31 min
Gordon Valiant is a bio-mechanics engineer and 30+ year veteran at Nike where he helped develop ground breaking athletic footwear. In this episode of The Creationists, Gordon talks about what goes into the research and development of new products and shares some of his experience as a part of the team that helped build the Nike Shox, a unique shock absorber first introduced in 2000. Please follow, rate and review The Creationists. You can also follow thecreationistspodcast on Facebook and Instag...
Nov 16, 2022•26 min
Tim Sommer has had a remarkable life in the music industry. He became a rock journalist at the age of 16 writing for Trouser Press and then as the New York correspondent for Sounds Magazine in the UK. He was the first American to interview U2 and Henry Rollins called him out in print for a negative review Tim once wrote. He hosted an influential hard core punk radio show on WNYU and then learned how to play bass and became a recording artist in the art rock band Hugo Largo, working with Michael ...
Jul 27, 2022•1 hr 14 min
There’s that old saying “Do what you love, love what you.” When Tim Pierce moved to LA from Arizona, he hoped to make a living as a professional musician not knowing the path that lay ahead. It took a decade of hard work but he eventually became one of the town’s most in demand session guitarists playing on records by a wide range of superstars including Michael Jackson, Phil Collins, Joe Cocker and Bob Dylan among countless others. Tim is now enjoying a much simpler life as a YouTube creator, s...
Jun 15, 2022•35 min
I think that it's probably fair to say that Bernie Finkelstein is one of the architects of the Canadian music industry. He's well known as the founder of True North Records and for managing people like Bruce Cockburn, Murray McLauchlan, and Dan Hill, among many others, but what's the lesser known story is how he started his career managing the Paupers with a $74 loan for his father. In this interview, Bernie and I only scratched the surface on some of his incredible experiences. I highly recomme...
Apr 05, 2022•1 hr
One of the reasons that I started The Creationists podcast was in hopes of inspiring listeners to explore their own creativity. Over the past two years, I think that we've all come across friends and acquaintances who have finally taken the plunge, to do things that they always wanted to do but always made the excuse to not pursue. One of the biggest obstacles to get over is time. If Julie Adam had used the excuse of lack of time, it would have been understandable after all Julie is the presiden...
Jan 25, 2022•41 min
I've worked in the music business for over half my life. One of the great privileges is to hear an amazing unknown artist and then have the opportunity to introduce them to the world. So I can only imagine what Jonathan Poneman was feeling the first time he heard Nirvana. Before Nirvana literally changed the fortune of Sub Pop Records, Jonathan and his partner, Bruce Pavitt, were rolling right along putting out records by Soundgarden, Mudhoney and Green River who featured future members of Pearl...
Jan 12, 2022•51 min
Over the course of his 45 year career, Doug McClement has established himself and his company, LiveWire, as the go to for capturing live audio on location for broadcast or recordings. He’s had a number of dream gigs over the years but in 2010 when the Winter Olympics were awarded to Vancouver, he thought that his ultimate dream of working the games was about to come true. In Canada, when you want to capture live sound you don’t say “call LiveWire” you say “call Doug McClement”. Doug is one of th...
Nov 24, 2021•44 min
Toronto’s Massey Hall joins Carnegie Hall, Royal Albert Hall and Boston’s Symphony Hall as one of the world's classic concert venues. But as author David McPherson discovered while researching the history of Massey, the hall has hosted plenty of events over the years in addition to iconic concerts it has been associated with. In 2018, Massey Hall closed its doors for a long overdue massive restoration which promises to bring the hall into the 21st century and at the same time retain its charm an...
Oct 20, 2021•40 min
In the early 2000's, Geoff Tait was running his fashion forward golf apparel company Quagmire. The business was flying and Geoff was hanging out at the Masters with golf icons Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus and partying with Kanye, Jay Z and John Legend. And then it all came crashing down. Like any good entrepreneur, Geoff picked himself up, dusted off the disappointment and found a new venture to dive into. This interview is about that journey. Anyone who knows me knows that I’m an avid golfer...
Sep 29, 2021•30 min
In the late 1980s and early 90s, Kurt Swinghammer’s artwork became synonymous with the city Toronto as well as the Canadian hip hop scene. Art critics dubbed it neo-primitive and his abstract work could be found on radio station logos, business signs and in music videos. His bold improvised artwork eventually became ubiquitous and a go to stile in the advertising world. Kurt Swinghammer has had an extraordinary creative career that has encompassed both the visual arts and music. The artwork he f...
Sep 14, 2021•48 min
As a member of the Canadian rock trio Triumph, Rik Emmett has sold millions of records and toured the world performing for millions more. Since leaving Triumph in 1988, Rik has enjoyed a successful solo recording career and, until recently, spent two decades as a faculty member at Humber College in his hometown of Toronto where he taught Songwriting, Music Business, Creative Development and Directed Studies. Writing has always been a part of Rik's life whether as a songwriter or as a regular con...
Sep 01, 2021•41 min
How did his music get to one billion streams? Why is he not interested in signing with a record label? Why won't he show his face in photographs? People are motivated to create for many different reasons. For some, it’s merely self-satisfaction and an escape from the rest of the world. Some people use creativity as a way to find new solutions. As a teenager, Florida based rapper and producer Josh A turned to creativity as an outlet to escape the harsh realities of a troubled home life. With it, ...
Aug 24, 2021•34 min
Marci Segal was the first Canadian graduate of the International Center for Studies in Creativity program at the state university in Buffalo. She has the distinction of being the first creativity specialist hired on staff at an international advertising agency as well as being a creativity consultant at NASA, Bosch, Ricoh and CIBC among many others. She has been featured in Fast Company, Best Health and Strategy magazines and, in 2001, Marci and some colleagues established a day to acknowledge t...
Jul 13, 2021•35 min
Anyone who knows Vince Ditrich probably knows him as the merry mirthmaking drummer of Canada’s wildly popular Celtic rock band Spirit of The West. With the days of long haul touring behind him, Vince has settled into a much quieter life on the West Coast. As you’ll see in our interview, Vince has always had an interest in writing and has kept up the practise with his blog Random Note Generator. But it was the encouragement from some friends that led to Vince creating wannabe rocker Tony Vicar wh...
Jul 06, 2021•37 min
If you been listening to The Creationists for a while, you know that I like to ask my guests about the inspiration for their creations. Sometimes it's a lightning bolt of imagination that gets a creation started, but sometimes it comes out of the tedium of a slow work day. Indie filmmaker Justin McAleece and his friends began developing the mockumentary Brick Madness while they worked as hired techs on another film. Brick Madness takes place during a scandalous LEGO competition, but we can’t say...
Jun 29, 2021•34 min
Though I’ve known Eric Samuels for several years, I never really knew the many roads he’s travelled to get to where he is today. When I first met Eric he was one of Canada’s leading radio programmers. I thought he was a little buttoned up the way he was always quoting market research as the reason not to play a record I was promoting at the time. As a result, finding out that he had tried his hand at being a stand up comedian shocked me. Of course, I knew he loved music but I had no idea that he...
Jun 22, 2021•57 min
In the previous episode of The Creationists, I talked to celebrity chef Roger Mooking about his passion for music and cooking and how he was able to make a success of two careers. As the main cook in our household, I thought I would take advantage of having Roger on the line to ask for a few cooking tips. In this bonus episode, Roger shares some simple truths about spicing up your kitchen. If you want to know more about Roger, his music, restaurants, television shows and cook books, visit rogerm...
Jun 15, 2021•17 min
Not much in life beats the combination of music and food and both have been passions at the centre of Roger Mooking’s life. I first met Roger Mooking when he was a member of Bass is Bass and I worked at Warner Music Canada. Bass is Base was the hot independent hip hop group at the time and were being courted by all of the major labels. We didn’t sign the band but they did go on to enjoy a successful run of records before eventually splitting up with each member of the trio following alternative ...
Jun 08, 2021•36 min
Imagine if you worked with a team for several years on creating a thing and then that thing couldn’t even be tested properly until almost a year after it was completed. And now, imagine that you can’t even see if your creation works in real time because it’s on another freakin planet! Well, that is exactly the experience of my guest Taryn Bailey, a mechanical engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in California. Taryn is a part of the team that built Ingenuity, the helicopter that proved that con...
Jun 01, 2021•28 min
Up until now, I’ve interviewed a variety of guests about their creative process and the road they travelled to get to where they are. As a change of pace, I thought that it would be interesting to explore our brain’s relationship to creativity. In their book The Runaway Species, neuroscientist David Eagleman and composer Anthony Brandt explore what makes human creativity unique among the animals of earth and how our greatest creators always borrow from the past to move creation forward. The Runa...
May 25, 2021•37 min
This is the final episode of Season Three of The Creationists and since this season featured a series of music related interviews, I thought it only appropriate to include an interview with Christian Swain who, along with his longtime friend Richard Evans created The Rock and Roll Archeology Project, a podcast that is an in-depth look at rock and roll as well as the culture and technology that influenced it from 1945 to 1995. My conversation with Christian touches a bunch of different areas incl...
Feb 17, 2021•41 min
In part two of my interview with Ira Robbins, we talk about the creation of his latest book, Marc Bolan Killed In Crash. Good fiction is like an abstract painting. The story is born out of the imagination of the writer, and I'm always curious about the inspiration behind that story. Marc Bolan Killed In Crash is the coming of age story of teenager Laila Russell, and her discovery of rock and roll, as well as your introduction into London's glam rock scene. So to satisfy my curiosity about the st...
Feb 10, 2021•22 min
I’ve been a music fan for most of my life but I didn’t really get into rock music until the mid seventies and the seventies were a great time to be a rock fan. You not only had your favourite bands but you also had your favourite magazine and there were so many to choose from. There was Circus and Creem and Hit Parader and Rock Scene and Rolling Stone, of course. And, if you were a little more intellectual, you might read Crawdaddy or find an article in Mother Jones or even spend a little extra ...
Feb 10, 2021•38 min
Honey Jam began its life as a concert to celebrate the launch of a magazine issue. Now, 25 years later, Honey Jam provides opportunities for female artists to get invaluable access to mentors and performance coaches, as well as the chance to showcase their talents for industry insiders. In the beginning, though, there was no way that Ebonnie Rowe could have dreamed that Honey Jam would still be around a quarter of a century later. Long before starting Honey Jam, Ebonnie was studying at the Unive...
Feb 03, 2021•29 min
Wide Mouth Mason singer and guitarist Shaun Verreault has long been recognized as one of Canada’s finest blues rock guitarists. His long spidery fingers allow him to play incredible fiery riffs with casual ease. The exploration of the guitar’s possibilities has been his lifelong pursuit but even his closest friends weren’t prepared for Shaun putting aside everything he knew about playing guitar and covering his fingers with metal tubes. Hailing from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Wide Mouth Mason was ...
Jan 27, 2021•34 min
When Steve Jordan first introduced the concept of the Polaris Prize to the Canadian music industry, the idea was generally welcomed, though the artistic community was still a little sceptical going into the first show in 2006. Despite the scepticism, the Polaris Music Prize has flourished into and internationally recognized award. Steve Jordan is what they call a music man. He started his career working at a Top 40 radio station in Kingston Ontario before moving to Toronto to multitask at the in...
Jan 20, 2021•35 min
