Stompin' Tom has died at 77
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another Canadian legend, Tom Connors has died.... http://www.stompintom.com/
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/...rticle9400045/ Stompin’ Tom Connors dies at 77 PETERBOROUGH, Ont. — The Canadian Press Published Wednesday, Mar. 06 2013, 8:41 PM EST Last updated Wednesday, Mar. 06 2013, 9:10 PM EST Canadian country-folk legend Stompin’ Tom Connors, whose toe-tapping musical spirit and fierce patriotism established him as one of Canada’s strongest cultural icons, has died. He was 77. Connors passed away Wednesday from what a spokesman described as “natural causes.” Brian Edwards said the musician, rarely seen without his signature black cowboy hat and stomping cowboy boots, knew his health was declining and had penned a message for his fans a few days before his death. In the message posted on his website, Connors says Canada kept him “inspired with it’s beauty, character, and spirit, driving me to keep marching on and devoted to sing about its people and places that make Canada the greatest country in the world.” Connors is survived by his wife Lena, two sons, two daughters and several grandchildren. Dubbed Stompin’ Tom for his propensity to pound the floor with his left foot during performances, Connors garnered a devoted following through straight-ahead country-folk tunes that drew inspiration from his extensive travels and focused on the everyman. Although wide commercial appeal escaped Connors for much of his four-decade career, his heritage-soaked songs like “Canada Day, Up Canada Way,” “The Hockey Song,” “Bud the Spud,” and “Sudbury Saturday Night,” have come to be regarded as veritable national anthems thanks to their unabashed embrace of all things Canadiana. Still, Connors often complained that not enough songs were being written about his homeland. “I don’t know why I seem to be the only one, or almost the only one, writing about this country,” Connors said in a rare one-on-one interview at his home in Halton Hills, Ont., in 2008. “It just amazes me that I’ve been going so long I would think that somebody else (would have) picked up the torch a long time ago and started writing tons of songs about this country. This country is the most underwritten country in the world as far as songs are concerned. We starve, the people in this country are starving for songs about their homeland.” Connor’s fervent patriotism brought controversy when his principles put him at loggerheads with the Canadian music industry. In 1978, he famously returned a handful of Juno Awards he had amassed in previous years, complaining that some artists were being awarded in categories outside their genre while other winners had conducted most of their work outside of the country. He derided artists that moved to the United States as “border jumpers.” “I feel that the Junos should be for people who are living in Canada, whose main base of business operations is in Canada, who are working toward the recognition of Canadian talent in this country and who are trying to further the export of such talent from this country to the world with a view to proudly showing off what this country can contribute to the world market,” he said in a statement at the time. The declaration marked the beginning of a 10-year self-imposed exile from the spotlight. From Connors’ earliest days, life was a battle. He was born in Saint John, N.B., on Feb. 9, 1936 to an unwed teenage mother. According to his autobiography, “Before the Fame,” he often lived hand-to-mouth as a youngster, hitchhiking with his mother from the age of three, begging on the street by the age of four. At age eight, he was placed in the care of Children’s Aid and adopted a year later by a family in Skinner’s Pond, P.E.I. He ran away four years later to hitchhike across the country. Connors bought his first guitar at age 14 and picked up odd jobs as he wandered from town to town, at times working on fishing boats, as a grave digger, tobacco picker and fry cook. Legend has it that Connors began his musical career when he found himself a nickel short of a beer at the Maple Leaf Hotel in Timmins, Ont., in 1964 at age 28. The bartender agreed to give him a drink if he would play a few songs but that turned into a 14-month contract to play at the hotel. Three years later, Connors made his first album and garnered his first hit in 1970 with “Bud The Spud.” Hundreds more songs followed, many based on actual events, people, and towns he had visited. “I’m a man of the land, I go out into the country and I talk to people and I know the jobs they do and how they feel about their jobs,” Connors has said. “And I’ve been doing that all my life so I know Canada like the palm of my hand. I don’t need a map to go anywhere in Canada, I know it all.” In 1988, Connors emerged from his decade-long protest with the album “Fiddle and Song,” featuring a new fiddle style and the songs “Canada Day, Up Canada Way,” “Lady kd lang,” and “I Am the Wind.” It was followed in 1990 by a 70-city Canadian tour that established him as one of the country’s best loved troubadours. But his strong convictions about the music industry remained. Connors declined induction into the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame in 1993. Accolades he did embrace included an appointment to the Order of Canada in 1996, and his own postage stamp. “Whatever I do, in my writing, I do it for others,” Connors said in the 2008 interview. “I do it for my country and I do it for my countrymen and that’s the only value that I really have. If there was no money in this, I’d be doing it anyway. I’ve always been that way. Because it’s what I am.” |
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@27:36 in this concert footage of Stompin Tom you will see a young Ron Jones. Just last week he sent this along to me...
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Liona Boyd says, "Stompin' Tom launched my career with my first LP on his label Boot Master Concert Series."
and then Lightfoot took her out on tour and her career took off.. |
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He was a real Canadian.....he'll be missed.
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Sorry to hear about Stompin' Tom, I first came across his music whilst visiting Canada some years ago, I heard his song "Bridge Came Tumbling Down" I headed for a record store and bought a couple of his CD's and his book "Stompin' Tom and The Conners Tone." A terrific read, cannot recommend it enough. A sad loss.
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he was a neighbour here, that I'm sorry to say, I never met
had the biggest stones in the canadian music biz...a hero to the ordinary man i used to get out of bed at 5am for hockey practice before school...loved this one |
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Gord was shared globally, but I always thought Tom was a Canuck hidden gem
glad you stumbled upon some of his stuff, Jim this was the most authentic 3 minutes of Conan's week in Toronto years ago Conan saw a uppity downtown Toronto theatre turn into a small town saloon *Ron has a wonderful Horseshoe Tavern memory to cherish...what a fine film |
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Just listened to Gordon speaking on CTV a few minutes ago (via phone)He said, "Tom's music was poetry, poetry in motion"
audio @ http://www.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=8...ylistPageNum=1 He'll be out on tour so will miss any memorial/funeral.. our young Ron @ The Horseshow in 1973 watching Tom Connors. |
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When I spoke on the phone with Gordon in July 2012 - he mentions Tom:
I asked Gordon if there were any awards he would like to get considering he has almost everything there is to get and if he’s comfortable receiving all of these accolades. He laughed and replied, “I’m always busy working and staying prepared so I don’t have time to rest on my laurels too much.” “I do appreciate them and I’m beginning to appreciate them more and this latest one, this Songwriters award is a very important one. I feel very good about it.” I said, ‘there’s only three Canadians out of the almost 400 who have received the award.” Gordon said, “there’s Leonard Cohen, and myself and who’s the third?” I said I couldn’t’ remember and would have to look that info up. Gordon said, “they should put Bryan Adams in..Hey! They should put Stompin’ Tom Connors in!” I said that seeing Stompin’ Tom in Manhattan just might be worth a trip to New York and he laughed. http://www.stompintom.com/ |
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when you look at the list of 300+ others, many leave you scratching your head Tom certainly wrote about 250 other tunes beside the hockey song, eh? :) btw, the other good segment of the Conan stint here, was the "border" skit where you had to sing a segment of the Wreck to be admitted into Canada, lol char, could you give us a tutorial on how to do that screen capture?:cool: |
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Q107 Toronto@Q107Toronto
A public celebration of Stompin' Tom Connors' life will be held at the Peterborough Memorial Arena next Wed. at 7pm. Entertainment writer @ The Toronto Sun: Liz Braun@LizBraunSun Farewell, Stompin' Tom. Only you and Lightfoot ever sang the truth about the soul and psyche of the true north, strong and free. RIP k.d.Lang - k.d. lang@kdlang Stomp on #StompinTom May you have a swift rebirth. Thx for shedding some light on our selves and our #canadian culture. jann arden@jannarden Tom- I know you're up there stompin' somewhere amazing! Thanks for being on the planet! Safe Travels.... Burton Cummings Stompin' Tom Connors 1936-2013...one of Canada's recognizable faces world wide. He never craved success outside his native Canada, and ALWAYS had both feet on the ground. Made untold millions smile while he was here...truly one of a kind. R.I.P. Charles Thomas Connors... Chris Hadfield@Cmdr_Hadfield(Internat.Space Stn.) Very sorry to hear Stompin' Tom Connors died. I'll play Sudbury Sat Night up here today, sing with him on his way. CTV Canada AM@CTVCanadaAM Talking now to Gordon Lightfoot about the passing of his friend Stompin' Tom Connors. His strongest memory is how much Tom loved Canada. CTV Canada AM@CTVCanadaAM Ronnie Hawkins tells us no one was more Canadian than Stompin' Tom Connors. "There wasn't a town he didn't talk about & sing about" Prime Minister Harper: Stephen Harper@pmharper We have lost a true Canadian original. R.I.P. Stompin' Tom Connors. You played the best game that could be played. video of Ronnie Hawkins talking about Tom:http://www.citynews.ca/2013/03/06/ro...f-stompin-tom/ |
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hit the PRNTSCN button, open PAINT (or some such programme I guess) then PASTE it..you can cut/crop and save it..
easy... lol I remember summers in Timmins and going into town to the Maple Leaf Hotel - it had separate entrances for Women and Men..lol - all ended up in the bar tho. There was always a chip truck out front selling fries in paper cones that dripped the vinegar out the bottom when I would overindulge. But then my pants/top would smell of fries and vinegar all day so that was a good thing.. |
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http://www2.macleans.ca/2013/03/06/c...ies-at-age-77/
Darren Calabrese/CP Canadian country-folk legend Stompin’ Tom Connors, whose toe-tapping musical spirit and fierce patriotism established him as one of Canada’s strongest cultural icons, has died. He was 77. Connors passed away Wednesday from what a spokesman described as “natural causes.” Brian Edwards said the musician, rarely seen without his signature black cowboy hat and stomping cowboy boots, knew his health was declining and penned a message for his fans a few days before his death. “I know Tom loved the fans more than anything. He’s probably one of the few artists that built his whole life around fans and nothing else,” Edwards said. “The man stood for everything that Canada stood for and he was very adamant that he stayed a Canadian and made it very apparent that he never left the country to advance his career and stayed very, very true to who he was.” In the letter posted on his official website, Connors issued a final thank you to his fans, to whom he credited his entire career. “I want all my fans, past, present, or future, to know that without you, there would have not been any Stompin’ Tom,” Connors wrote. “It was a long hard bumpy road, but this great country kept me inspired with its beauty, character, and spirit, driving me to keep marching on and devoted to sing about its people and places that make Canada the greatest country in the world.” The musician said he hoped his work would continue to “bring a little bit of cheer” into people’s lives even after his death and called on his fans to continue to bring Canadiana to the world. “I must now pass the torch, to all of you, to help keep the Maple Leaf flying high, and be the Patriot Canada needs now and in the future.” Connors is survived by his wife Lena, two sons, two daughters and several grandchildren. Dubbed Stompin’ Tom for his propensity to pound the floor with his left foot during performances, Connors garnered a devoted following through straight-ahead country-folk tunes that drew inspiration from his extensive travels and focused on the everyman. Although wide commercial appeal escaped Connors for much of his four-decade career, his heritage-soaked songs like “Canada Day, Up Canada Way,” “The Hockey Song,” “Bud the Spud,” and “Sudbury Saturday Night,” have come to be regarded as veritable national anthems thanks to their unabashed embrace of all things Canadiana. As word spread of his death, Canadians from across the country began mouring his loss. On Twitter, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said “we have lost a true Canadian original. R.I.P. Stompin’ Tom Connors. You played the best game that could be played.” The National Hockey League tweeted “Sad to hear that legendary Canadian Stompin’ Tom Connors has passed. His legacy lives on in arenas every time ‘The Hockey Song’ is played.” At the Air Canada Centre in Toronto many fans took to their feet as “The Hockey Song” was played after Connors’ death was announced. Despite status as a Canadian musical icon, Connors often complained that not enough songs were being written about his homeland. “I don’t know why I seem to be the only one, or almost the only one, writing about this country,” Connors said in a rare one-on-one interview at his home in Halton Hills, Ont., in 2008. “It just amazes me that I’ve been going so long I would think that somebody else (would have) picked up the torch a long time ago and started writing tons of songs about this country. This country is the most underwritten country in the world as far as songs are concerned. We starve, the people in this country are starving for songs about their homeland.” Connors’ fervent patriotism brought controversy when his principles put him at loggerheads with the Canadian music industry. In 1978, he famously returned a handful of Juno Awards he had amassed in previous years, complaining that some artists were being awarded in categories outside their genre while other winners had conducted most of their work outside of the country. He derided artists that moved to the United States as “border jumpers.” “I feel that the Junos should be for people who are living in Canada, whose main base of business operations is in Canada, who are working toward the recognition of Canadian talent in this country and who are trying to further the export of such talent from this country to the world with a view to proudly showing off what this country can contribute to the world market,” he said in a statement at the time. The declaration marked the beginning of a 10-year self-imposed exile from the spotlight. From Connors’ earliest days, life was a battle. He was born in Saint John, N.B., on Feb. 9, 1936 to an unwed teenage mother. According to his autobiography, “Before the Fame,” he often lived hand-to-mouth as a youngster, hitchhiking with his mother from the age of three, begging on the street by the age of four. At age eight, he was placed in the care of Children’s Aid and adopted a year later by a family in Skinner’s Pond, P.E.I. He ran away four years later to hitchhike across the country. Connors bought his first guitar at age 14 and picked up odd jobs as he wandered from town to town, at times working on fishing boats, as a grave digger, tobacco picker and fry cook. Legend has it that Connors began his musical career when he found himself a nickel short of a beer at the Maple Leaf Hotel in Timmins, Ont., in 1964 at age 28. The bartender agreed to give him a drink if he would play a few songs but that turned into a 14-month contract to play at the hotel. Three years later, Connors made his first album and garnered his first hit in 1970 with “Bud The Spud.” Hundreds more songs followed, many based on actual events, people, and towns he had visited. “I’m a man of the land, I go out into the country and I talk to people and I know the jobs they do and how they feel about their jobs,” Connors has said. “And I’ve been doing that all my life so I know Canada like the palm of my hand. I don’t need a map to go anywhere in Canada, I know it all.” In 1988, Connors emerged from his decade-long protest with the album “Fiddle and Song,” featuring a new fiddle style and the songs “Canada Day, Up Canada Way,” “Lady kd lang,” and “I Am the Wind.” It was followed in 1990 by a 70-city Canadian tour that established him as one of the country’s best loved troubadours. But his strong convictions about the music industry remained. Connors declined induction into the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame in 1993. Accolades he did embrace included an appointment to the Order of Canada in 1996, and his own postage stamp. “Whatever I do, in my writing, I do it for others,” Connors said in the 2008 interview. “I do it for my country and I do it for my countrymen and that’s the only value that I really have. If there was no money in this, I’d be doing it anyway. I’ve always been that way. Because it’s what I am.” |
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3 Canadian Legends who never left home...
Anne Murray, Lightfoot and Stompin' Tom. 1973 and 1975 - Paul Anka singing @ 1975 JUNO awards-Gino Vanelli, Tom, Anne in audience... |
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and 2/3 of them never had face work.... that's right, Gord's had some... shhh |
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yep - Gords fine face was chiseled from the finest Georgian Bay granite deposited by the pre-cambrian glaciers.......
;) |
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He had the craggy face of an old John Wayne and something of the sound of Johnny Cash but, like Gord, he was one of a handful of walking emblems of Canada. RIP Stompin' Tom...
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Canada Post honoured him in 2009 with a stamp like Gord had a few years prior.
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Full lyrics for BELIEVE IN YOUR COUNTRY@ http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/s/s...r_country.html "If you don't believe your country should come before yourself Ya can better serve your country, by living somewhere else." Tom Connors |
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he kept that "Rifleman" chiselled face right throughout his years, eh
i think his stamp image and layout was the best of the few series that were issued Stan Rogers, Lightfoot, Stompin Tom and Tommy Hunter... quite a front four C - eh - N - eh - D - eh |
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Q-Gomeshi and Bidini- http://www.cbc.ca/liveradio/popup/in...ramKey=toronto
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In 1977 Dave Bidini started a petition to bring Tom back from 'retirement' becuz he was pissed at the whole music scene...and he did come back after meeting with Dave and seeing the signatures...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stompin'_Tom_Connors As the 1970s progressed, he retired to his farm in Norval, near Georgetown, Ontario, to protest the lack of support given to Canadian stories by the policies of the Federal government, particularly the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). He also boycotted the Juno Awards in protest of the qualification guidelines set by the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (CARAS) for possible nominees who were being consistently nominated and awarded outside of their musical genre. He strongly opposed artists who conducted most of their business in the United States being nominated for Junos in Canada. Connors, who referred to these particular artists as "turncoat Canadians", felt that in view of the fact that they had chosen to live and work in the U.S., it was only fair that they competed with Americans for Grammy Awards, and left the Juno competition to those who lived and conducted business in Canada. His protest caught national attention when he sent back his six Junos accompanied by a letter to the board of directors. "Gentlemen:I am returning herewith the six Juno awards that I once felt honoured to have received and which, I am no longer proud to have in my possession. As far as I am concerned you can give them to the border jumpers who didn't receive an award this year and maybe you can have them presented by Charley Pride. I feel that the Junos should be for people who are living in Canada, whose main base of business operations is in Canada, who are working toward the recognition of Canadian talent in this country and who are trying to further the export of such talent from this country to the world with a view to proudly showing off what this country can contribute to the world market. Until the academy appears to comply more closely with aspirations of this kind, I will no longer stand for any nominations, nor will I accept any award given. Yours very truly, Stompin' Tom Connors[citation needed] He remained in retirement for 12 years. In 1986, Tim Vesely and Dave Bidini of Rheostatics crashed his 50th birthday party and published an article about it in a Toronto newspaper,[8] initiating a resurgence of public and record label interest in his work which resulted in the release in 1988 of Fiddle and Song, his first new album since 1977. A couple of years ago on Tom's 75th Dave wrote this: http://arts.nationalpost.com/2011/02...ck-for-canada/ |
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RIP Mr. Connors.
I regret that I had never heard of him outside of this forum. He certainly was a handsome gentleman, in the same weathered, rugged way as our Gordon is today. I am curious, Char, from the lyrics you posted from Believe in Your Country - and I apologize that I don't know how to post a partial quote from my iPad - is Stompin' Tom regarded in Canada as a Woody Guthrie/Johnny Cash type of common man, or as more of a Merle Haggard "Okie from Muskogee" type of superpatriot? |
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Tom sang of the fire at the Macintyre Mine in Timmins where my grandfathers both worked and where as a kid we grandkids were taken to the depths the miners worked. All very exciting to ride in the buckets so far below ground level. Perhaps my claustrophobia and hatred of worms started then. lol Several years ago a cousin became Mayor for a few years...I haven't been back there since mid 70's.
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I think Tom was a common man with a super patriotism for his country. His life from birth was tough-he 'slogged' his way through, never forgetting what a blessing it was, despite those hardships to be a Canadian. He truly wore his heart on his sleeve. He breathed and lived that thankfulness every day and in every lyric.
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment...he_legend.html http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa...-tom-obit.html |
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i hope bid ini doesnt take the liberty to write some speculative book about him two days ago, a Target store (first in Canada) opened 20 minutes away from Connors farmhouse and my place... a neighbour commented, "maybe Tom figured it was time to move along" |
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instead of the red and white Tarjay bullseye:
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I wish we had a like button for these last two posts :)
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It seems sad that as an American citizen, I had never been exposed to Stompin' Tom ; I don't remember anyone, including the snowbirds, utter his name, even just in passing.
At an early point in Gords' career, he was convinced for a time that.. "people won't know of my songs until after I've passed away." He wasn't even 25 yet. But he knew that original talent and great songwriting doesn't guarantee anyone stardom. Tom was successful at his craft and a true Canadian. He stook up for his root values and so, it seems, never forgot where he came from; setting a fine example for others who'll follow in his foot steps. Thanks for the info, Charlene. |
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A very sad feeling with this lighthead2toe guy today.
The loss of a friend with such an iconic stature has left a huge impact. I got the news late last night so needless to say I didn't sleep too well. I met Tom shortly after I arrived in Toronto in the early sixties and we've remained friends all along the way. He would invite us to his place for parties etc. and he loved a good sing song. Sorry I can't find the headspace to write more. This is quite difficult. Best, RJ. |
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The National Arts Centre in Ottawa has lowered their flags...
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http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/...rticle9432076/
video links and pics a link above Stompin' Tom: Canada’s rough-cut bard leaves behind a rich folk-music legacy Brad Wheeler The Globe and Mail Published Thursday, Mar. 07 2013, 3:36 AM EST Last updated Thursday, Mar. 07 2013, 12:27 PM EST The singer is the voice of the people, and his song is the soul of the land. So, singer please stay, and don't go away, with so many words left to be said. For a land without song, can't stand very long, when the voice of its people is dead. Stompin’ Tom Connors, the Popeye-jawed, true-patriot troubadour, died on Wednesday. He leaves behind a legacy as rich as could ever thought be possible for a folk-music composer. The American badass Johnny Cash boasted that he’d been “everywhere, man,” but Connors was his country’s rough-cut bard of song, nonpareil – his Canadian content extraordinary and independent of CRTC stipulations. It was big news in the summer of 2009 when Canada Post slapped the Bud the Spud singer’s likeness on its 54-cent sticker. Of course Connors, responsible for The Singer (The Voice of the People) and more than 300 other songs, had left his stamp on the landscape well before then. In his rock and roll chronicle On a Cold Road, the musician, author and sometimes homesick Dave Bidini wrote, “Tom’s voice drew me back across the ocean, and the songs about bobcats and Wilf Carter that I’d once been embarrassed to listen to anchored my identity in a culture where nationhood was everything.” Bidini’s embarrassment was not uncommon; the canon of Connors was seen by many as hokey and homespun compared to other country-conscious songwriters such as Gordon Lightfoot or Robbie Robertson. Connors was the uncool stubby in world turning Heineken green – a throwback rube to a once unsophisticated country that had grown cosmopolitan. Connors stayed the course though, and his song-of-place material and sing-along historical markings eventually gained back appreciation. Nowhere was his idolization more vital than in the minds of younger Canadian songwriters. As noted in the landmark book Have Not Been the Same: The Canrock Renaissance, 1985-1995, Bidini and the artful folk-rockers the Rheostatics, partly empowered by Connors’ unwavering home-country boostering, in 1991 released Melville, an album that included Saskatchewan, Northern Wish and a cover of Lightfoot’s The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. The foreword to Have Not Been the Same is a poem by the Tragically Hip singer-songwriter Gord Downie, who wrote, “Sensitivity happens, and the idea is the more it happens the more it happens more.” And so the Rheostatics lead was followed by Downie and others, including Maestro Fresh Wes, the rap star responsible for the cocky maple-blooded declaration, “Because I’m from Canada, don’t think I’m an amateur.” In a posthumously released letter, Connors wrote that he was passing torch, “to help keep the Maple Leaf flying high, and be the Patriot Canada needs now and in the future.” Connors is gone, but not really at all – the land is strong with song and northern pros, no small credit to him and his dogged heavy lifting. |
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http://arts.nationalpost.com/2013/03...medium=twitter
DAVE BIDINI Stompin’ Tom Connors lived an impossible life; a life born from an impossible fiction where a single man affects so many despite having been raised with so little. As a toddler, Tom begged for change with his unwed teenage mother on the dirty St. John streets. Later, he was orphaned out to a family in Skinner’s Pond, P.E.I., but ran away a few years later, barely a boy, with no sense of where or why or how. For the first twenty years of his life, he was a lonely spirit drifting through the crushing nowhere of Canada in the fifties and sixties. He worked in the mines; he rode in the boxcars. Then, one Manitoba afternoon — at least I think it was Manitoba; with Tom, the stories blur into each other because there are so many of them — he met two school teachers. He’d started to play a little guitar — mostly American songs and some British, Irish and Scottish traditionals — and the school teachers asked him, “Why aren’t there any songs about Canada?” Tom had no good answer, so he wrote one. Then he wrote another. 61 albums later, the street urchin who never knew his father — knowing his mother barely more — would pass into the ether as the single most devoted Canadian artist of all time. As a figure in contemporary pop music, no one dared risk expressing defiance and anger the way Stompin’ Tom did; this coming at a time when it was all about ‘making it’ and ‘wooing American radio’ In a final message to fans released after his death on Wednesday night, Canadian country music star Stompin’ Tom Connors issued an appeal for Canadians to “keep the Maple Leaf flying high.” “It was a long, hard, bumpy road, but this great country kept me inspired with its beauty, character, and spirit, driving me to keep marching on and devoted to sing about its people and places that make Canada the greatest country in the world,” said Mr. Connors in the message, which was posted to his website. “I must now pass the torch, to all of you, to help keep the Maple Leaf flying high, and be the Patriot Canada needs now and in the future.” Mr. Connors died in Peterborough, Ont., at the age of 77 from “natural causes,” according to spokesman Brian Edwards. . There are few comparisons to Tom as an artist; even fewer to him as a person. As a musician, he was important in the way that the Ramones or the Velvet Underground were important. He was deeply original; his songs were easy to play; and his work triggered the awakening of a people. In Canadian terms, he was more punk rock than punk itself. In 1978, he burned the remaining copies of Gumboot Clogeroo and gave back his 6 JUNO awards as a protest against the greater Canadian music industry’s treatment of Canadian artists; pandering, as they did, to American and British soundalike bands and encouraging groups to supplant Canadian place names with American locales. As a figure in contemporary pop music, no one dared risk expressing defiance and anger the way Stompin’ Tom did; this coming at a time when it was all about “making it” and “wooing American radio” and getting to the Grand Old Opry. Tom stuck his neck out, and it got stepped on. Or stomped on. But these strong bones we used to build the music of a young nation. As a person, Tom was strong-willed, funny, driven, tough, playful and giving, if not forgiving; an Ontario cowboy with humble roots and an ego that needed feeding. As a young musician in awe of his talent, he had his sport with me while telling me to keep going. After writing about my encounter with him during his self-imposed exile at the musician’s secret 50th birthday party in Balnifad, Ontario, I saw him a few years later at an EMI music event (he’d signed with the label to record a handful of comeback records). I wasn’t sure whether Tom had read my piece — turned out he’d laminated it and hung it on his basement wall — so I was relucant to see him, fearing the worst. Before leaving the event, I passed by his table. He took one look at me and said: “Bidini, you’ve had to take a lot of s–t from me over the years.” I wasn’t sure how to react. Then my hero came over and hugged me. Tom liked to play both ends, and because we loved him, we let him. Tom smoked one hundred cigarettes a day and loved to drink beer. On tour, he had to drive the lead truck, and could never be the last person to go to bed. This meant that his band took turns staying up with him. Once, the drummer– a lightweight who’d been given a pass by the rest of the band– was approached by the other players, who told him: “You’ve got to relieve us for a night. We can barely make it through!” The drummer said okay, he’d take one for the team. The morning after his night with Tom, he was admitted to the hospital with alcohol poisoning. Tom went hard, even harder if you were young. There are so many stories about Tom, maybe half of them true. What we know is this: like the greatest tree in the most majestic forest, the thing we don’t see is the roots. And that’s what Tom was: this country’s roots. People under 30 — heck, under 40 — might not have lived at a time when the tree was a bud, a sapling, a single waving leaf. But this tree was pushed into life by Tom’s devotion to his remarkable and singular craft. Explaining the singer’s legacy to my blank-eyed kids on the morning after his death, I explained: “You know: the guy who does the hockey song!” Soon, they were walking around the room singing it. And so there was no finer a tribute to no finer a man. . |
Re: Stompin' Tom has died at 77
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at the National Music Centre - Stompin Toms stompin board - 1971 given to CKRR radio.
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Re: Stompin' Tom died
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not stereotyping all Snowbirds (i was one for a few days this year actually!), but they are not typically of the mold that would have Stompin Tom cd/LPs in their collections tom, the guy who did the hockey song gord, the guy who did the sinking boat song anne, the snowbird gal i hope these folk's legacies broaden in scope note to brad wheeler.... gord downie is not a follower, lol Ron, I'm sorry for your loss... you guys were cut from the same red & white cloth ...you have consistently paid tribute to Tom in your decades of performing that's a wonderful flag, char... it's now been much shared today:) |
Re: Stompin' Tom has died at 77
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i missed any hype about the 2012 opening of this arts centre we've still only a virtual hall of fame, even though talk of a 'place' lingers one day there will need to be a place where Gord's capo(s) can be exhibited:) |
Re: Stompin' Tom has died at 77
They haven't built it yet..it's in Calgary.Anne Murray was out for the ceremonial shovel in the dirt event a few weeks ago.
http://www.nmc.ca/ pics - https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?...1&l=8efc5048ce https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?.../photos_stream LOVE the guitar shaped shovels! |
Re: Stompin' Tom has died at 77
comment from a close musical colleague:
"gord and tom, both so clever with the pen...huge catalogues...albeit, their compositions are miles apart musically...on the other hand, no disrespect to lightfoot, but while he is very much admired, tom was and is very much loved" |
Re: Stompin' Tom has died at 77
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so the Stompin board is just laying in dirt in the foundation? lol edit: WAIT, WAIT... it sure seems to exist already..check this out http://www.nmc.ca/our-collection/ . |
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