CM’s Kristian Partington explores the ideas of breaking down genre barriers with Three Days Grace’s Neil Sanderson and rising country star Tim Hicks.

A pretty wide variety of music can ring through the speakers in the grocery store in my one-stoplight town. Rural communities, I suppose, can be like that. On any given day you’re as likely to hear Emerson Drive while perusing the five aisles as you are AC/DC or a Top 40 boy band from another era.

I went there the other day to get a sandwich from the deli, just ahead of a wave of high school kids on their lunch break, and I smiled when Tim Hicks’ “Get By” came on. I’d just spoken with Hicks on the phone about his rise up the Canadian country charts with his debut single, and as the song played, I noticed the kids in front of the deli counter singing along. I pictured them cruising the back roads on a Friday night in a beat-up truck headed for a raging bonfire in the middle of nowhere.

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It came to me, full bodied, at a young age. Like a clue to a mystery I didn’t quite understand, it stole my conscious wonder. Tremulous curiosity filled my mind, and euphoric excitement washed over my body.

In the basement of my parents house, in 2000 it began. I was eight years old, and my parents were out when I “borrowed” my big sister’s copy of Blink 182’s Enema of the State. I had been keen on doing this for upwards of two weeks, but was hesitant, because of the rules my parents had implicated about restricting music with profanity – and having porn star Janine Lindemulder on the album’s cover didn’t help my case.
It was two weeks prior that I saw the music video for the album’s first single All the Small Things on Much Music. I thought the song was the coolest, edgiest thing ever – thinking back on that, All the Small Things is near as poppy as rock music can get, but I was eight and it was “the best thing ever!”

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This pen releases ink, this ink releases me.

My name is Travis Miles, and I am a  new correspondent for Canadian Musician magazine

Ever since I was in the second grade I have had a profound infatuation with music. From the lyrics and melodies, to the song arrangement and production, I am fascinated by each ounce of effort that is put into making a solid record, and supporting it.

I, myself, play in a melodic punk rock band called The Penske File. The band, which consists of me and my two closest friends, is bred from this intense love and appreciation of music alongside the inevitable boredom that magnetizes to a suburban childhood.

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This is kinda fun:

NME’s 40 Strangest Rock Star Rider Requests

CM’s Kristian Partington recently witnessed Canadian atmospheric rock act Wintersleep and Scotland’s Frightened Rabbit turn The Phoenix in Toronto into a hallowed hall for the love of music.

Easter sermon this year echoed through the hallowed halls of Toronto’s Phoenix Concert Theatre, delivered by the combined voices of Wintersleep, Frightened Rabbit, and around 1,100 people who turned a Sunday night into one of the more memorable concerts I’ve been part of in a long time.

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