101 FASCINATING CANADIAN MUSIC FACTS

fortunate to combine my passion for music with writing. I’ve spent a quarter of a decade immersing myself in Canadian music by researching, listening, learning — and discovering — the rich history that exists. This journey started when I was a student at Western University. As a volunteer reporter for the university paper’s arts section and later the entertainment editor, I discovered many Canadian artists and bands and watched as their careers took flight from playing the campus bar to packing stadiums across North America. Since then, I’ve been fortunate to share their stories with wider audiences of music lovers in a variety of North American publications and in a pair of books.

I am pleased that you now have a turn at discovering these fascinating facts for yourself. The stories are in no particular order. Feel free to read them at random and share them with others. I hope you enjoy reading this book as much as I enjoyed gathering these fascinating facts.

Lucky Luthier1 L ucky L uthier

Flash back to 1976. Canadian guitar-maker Linda Manzer is 26 years old and heading to San Francisco with a friend. A pit stop in Marin County, in the Bay Area, proves lucky in unexpected ways.

Carlos Santana’s drummer Graham Lear (an Englishborn Canadian) and his first wife, Sandra, (both friends of Manzer) lived in a guest house on the 10-time Grammy winner’s property. Manzer met the legendary guitarist and spent a couple of nights with him before returning to Canada. Two months later, while continuing her tutelage on flattop guitar construction with master luthier Jean Larrivée in Victoria, British Columbia, a letter arrived from the Lears asking her to build a guitar for Santana as a Christmas gift.

Manzer accepted. She researched everything she could