Museum of Canadian Music

Since the age of 12 I have been interested in music, although I never played any musical instruments. The first concert that I attended was in 1971 (Tim Buckley-Curtis Mayfield-Frank Zappa, 3 gigs for $5). I started selling records in 1977 to help pay for my school fees for political science courses at the University of Montréal. I opened my first store, L'Aller-Retour, in 1983 on St-Denis street in Montréal and later moved the store to Ste-Catherine street. Although the store closed in 1992, I continue to be a full-time proffessional record dealer. I attended my first record fair in Europe in 1984 at Paris, France. Shortly thereafter, I started selling and promoting Canadian music in Japan - and in 1987 I was the first to introduce 'Milkweed' (a progressive band from Montréal) to Japan. Since my first visit in 1985, I have now made a world-record leading 102 trips to Japan to sell and promote Canadian music.
Since 1983, I have been promoting local musicians (always purchased their music - never consignment). I started my production company in 1985 with The Electric Roaches. I then re-issued CD's of Canadian progressive music in early 90's including both 'Opus 5' LP's, 'Milkweed', and 'Jacques Brégent's 2nd LP. In 2002, I introduced Gilles Rivard (Quebec Artist who did nice bossa LP's) to help feed the bossa nova frenzy that swept Japan earlier this decade. I re-issued Pierre Barouh's (french artist who created the Saravah label) first LP on vinyl.
I have stopped counting how many time I have travelled to Europe. I always have a great selection of Canadian music and I have kept promoting Canadian music of all kinds. I continue to buy/sell at the Barcelona and Utrecht records fairs.
I have also been collaborating with book writer's like Robert Godwin and Hans Pokora by supplying them with interesting information on rare records.

Over the past decade, Jamie has co-owned two Record Stores in the Vancouver area and worked with countless Canadian musicians from the past, doing interviews and conducting research, and releasing vintage Canadian music on CD. He professionally represents Canadian music legends Terry Jacks and Chad Allan. He co-owns Apollo Music (Retail) in the Vancouver area. He is also currently working on many projects with his company, Regenerator Records, which include Terry Jacks Anthology CD, The Poppy Family Live DVD, The Cool Aid Album, A Vancouver Rock CD Series, and a biography book on Terry Jacks, among many other things. Jamie has also recently performed live with Terry Jacks, Chad Allan, 54-40, and 100 Monkeys. After completing 3 years at BCIT in Broadcasting and Recording/Engineering, Jamie has enjoyed recording bands on his own. Most notably, he has recently recorded 100 Monkeys (featuring singer Jackson Rathbone from the Twilight movie saga) American punk icon, Andrew WK, MTV’s Nardwuar and his band The Evaporators, The Nocturnals live in 2009, The Centaurs live in 2010, Thee Manipulators, Phil Comparelli (54-40 guitarist), The Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.

Neptoon Records releases:
2004 - wrote the liner notes and re-released the historic Canadian 60’s compilation “Live from the Grooveyard” on CD.
2005 - produced the release of The Nocturnals Greatest hits on CD
2007 - formed a new record label Regenerator Records, with his best friend Larry Hennessey (of JACK FM’s Larry & Willy morning show),

Regenerator Records releases:
2007 - Chad Allan and the Reflections (a 1963 and early version of The Guess Who with Randy Bachman) on CD and LP.
2007 - interviewed Tommy Chong for a work-in-progress documentary about the Vancouver Rock and Roll scene.
2008 – Red Robinson (legendary Vancouver disc jockey’s first recording from 1960, a track that charted locally on CKWX Radio) on limited edition 45 rpm
2010 - Chessmen (a well-known Vancouver group in the 60’s that featured a young Terry Jacks of The Poppy Family).

Kevin McGowan has been living and breathing music for 25 years. He can play a few chords on his guitar, and keep a decent beat on the drums, but mostly he's just a huge fan of Canadian artists. He founded www.itcamefromcanada.com, which served as an archive of long-lost Canadian music, and also founded The Ruckus, one of Canada's most popular music podcasts. With the MOCM, Kevin works as a writer/editor for band bios and reviews. He's also our social media guy, updating our Twitter feed and Facebook page on a regular basis. He lives in Ottawa with his understanding wife and energetic son.

I started this "Canadian Music Discovery Project" back in 1988, building a Canadian music database from my own personal collection of Canadian music. I had a bi-weekly radio show called The Peaking Canuck Show on CiTR in Vancouver, British Columbia from 1990-1992 and was trained by The Human Serviette. He taught me how to spin a record on air. The show featured all-Canadian music spliced with 'Canadiana Mixing' - interesting snipits of Canadian historical audio soundbites. Since then I have never stopped this 'Canadiana Mixing' and the collecting of Canadian music. Some of this mixing will be featured in our 'Podcasts'. Over the years, the collection has grown to contain over 50,000 artifacts, in all it's varities, representing one of the largest private collections of Canadian music arifacts. This project will make this important collection accessible. In 2009-10 I published 200 discographies of Canadian artists on www.itcamefromcanada.com. I have re-issued rare Canadian music by Artok, Borealis, Class Info, D'arcy Draper, Dr.Philter Banx, Folklords, Free Beer, Heavy Cruiser, Huckle, Neil Merryweather, Philip John Lewin, Stan Martin, Psycho, Everett Haughton, Dave Baker, Martin Wall, Hush, Ivar Avenue Reunion, Bill Bissett and the Mandan Massacre, Honey Novick, Luddites, John Lyle, David Sinclair, Kaos, Love Cyrkle, Sugar & Spice. Every day that I have worked on this project, I am humbled by its' breadth and greatness. I hope that musicians, Canadian music lovers, and other collectors of Canadian music and memorabilia will provide additional information to help bring this project to fruition.

Snowden Walters is a father, an artist, a writer, a musician, a skier and somehow still manages to maintain a day job to support those activities (...Gawd knows there's no money in them!). He does share at least one thing in common with the supporters of the Museum of Canadian Music. That's a love of music, especially Homegrown music. Any style, any genre, any tempo - no problems, although he does tend to lean towards the storytellers and loves a good laugh. That's why involvement with MOCM is of interest.