January 5, 2020 FP NEWSLETTER TOP STORIES Happy New Year and welcome to the January edition of the FP Newsletter, Vol. 48, our monthly publication giving you all our amazing music news! 2019 was a fantastic year for FUSIONpresents, but 2020 will be even better! We’ve made it a core mission to give you as much quality content as we can on our various social media channels. Content will include artist development “how-to” posts including music theory and instrument lesson tricks, information posts about music industry subjects including streaming, licensing, royalties, band agreements, to name a few, and of course, we’ll be posting a ton of amazing entertainment content for your enjoyment, produced and performed by our wonderful and talented artist collaborators. Please take a moment right now to follow us on your favourite social media platforms: Click on the icon We’re kicking off the year with a trip down to California to attend the NAMM Show, the annual convention of the Myles Philpott and Sami Ghawi at National Association of Music Merchants. We are accompanying the incredible Ayla Tesler-Mabe, and as usual, the FUSIONpresents SBOT Music our Canadian contingent is graciously invited as guests of Fender Musical Instruments. Fender launches its latest City Centre Office in Surrey planning out all the great line of guitars, the American Ultra, and we can’t wait to get some quality time with these beautiful instruments. We’ll entertainment and artist be taking lots of videos at NAMM with Fender and many other music industry leaders and influencers, so make sure development content we’ll be you’re following us on social media to not miss a beat of our adventures in La La land! sharing with you in 2020 on our socials! Also this January, FUSIONpresents and Roland Canada start a monthly artist development workshop series at the Roland Inspiration Centre in Surrey! The workshops will happen once a month on a Tuesday, with the first one taking place on January 28 and hosted by professional vocal coach, Heidi McCurdy! The FP Roland workshops will span a variety of subjects, from instrument, vocal and song writing development, to learning about the business of music, to new product launches and presentations. In addition, representatives from our BC music industry partners such as SOCAN, Music BC and Creative BC will also be involved in a number of workshops, helping artists learn about the resources available to BC music artists. On January 16-19, Myles and Sami Thank you for reading and enjoying our Newsletter, and don’t forget to follow us on social media! will be repping FUSIONpresents at NAMM as we accompany Ayla Tesler- Mabe in Anaheim, CA. The Canadian contingent is invited down to NAMM JANUARY WEST BEACH LIVE MUSIC SCHEDULE by our dear friends, Fender Musical Instruments. If you’ll be at NAMM, THU JAN 9 BLUES BY THE BEACH make sure to connect with us! Also, check out Fender’s latest great FRI JAN 10 BENITO & FRIENDS product release, the American Ultra. SAT JAN 11 CHANDRA RUSSELL BAND SUN JAN 12 SUNDAY NIGHT JAM w. MIKE KELLY THU JAN 16 BLUES BY THE BEACH This January, FUSIONpresents and Roland Canada start a series of free FRI JAN 17 BENITO & FRIENDS monthly artist development workshops at the Roland Inspiration Centre in Surrey. Our first session, FREE YOUR SAT JAN 18 WINGNUTS VOICE is on January 28 from 6-9pm with pro vocal coach, Heidi McCurdy SUN JAN 19 SUNDAY NIGHT JAM w. BENITO TESTINI exploring warm-ups to empower your voice, practice mic techniques and THU JAN 23 BLUES BY THE BEACH explore your unique expressions. FRI JAN 24 BLUE VOODOO WEEKLY WEST BEACH JAMS SAT JAN 25 JOKERS HILL BAND SUN JAN 26 SUNDAY NIGHT JAM w. SAMI GHAWI THU JAN 30 BLUES BY THE BEACH FRI JAN 31 BLUE COLLAR BAND All Ages Welcome on Sundays . Full Backline Provided FP NEWSLETTER Vol. 48 www.fusionpresents.com Page 1 of 3 January 5, 2020 FP NEWSLETTER BC ARTIST HIGHLIGHT : BRUCE’S CORNER by Bruce Connick LUDIC It is now the year 2020. I’m a little blown away by that. 2020 was always, in my mind, the future. When I was just a wee lad sitting in my fourth grade class room, I remember the teacher spending hours discussing the future in our social studies lessons. I remember him talking about computers, and space travel. At that point I was still years away from learning how to use a slide ruler, and now in 2020, I can design a house on my computer. (Actually, I can’t, but someone with CAD can.) Space travel is old hat now and SpaceX even reuses parts of the rocket as it returns to a barge in the ocean after it has been disengaged. That teacher even taught us about the future problem of pollution. And as technology has zipped along so has the problem of pollution as it has turned into global warming. They sat that music reinvents itself every 30 years. I think we can safely say that the sixties were such a decade. I also believe that the nineties were such a decade. Here we are 30 years later and what can we expect in this decade. After all these years, what new stuff can they come up with? On the other hand, they could be wrong. If you look at the 30 years before the sixties you get the thirties and I am just not aware of anything exciting happening in the thirties. A depression and dust bowl. But the twenties seem to be pretty interesting musically. The swing era. And that would mean that the fifties and eighties Ayla, Max & Rhett continue to make major were reinvention decades, and while there is an argument for the fifties as the decade of the invention of waves in the Vancouver music scene. Check rock and roll, honestly, the eighties sucked. out what Michael Di Iorio of Don’t Bore Us I’m excited about this year. It seems to me a perfect time to reinvent myself, and quite frankly, it might be recently said about the band: the last reinvention, so I’m going to really try to change some of the bad things and create good things in my life. I saw an ad on TV yesterday for an exercise club membership, and I smiled to myself as I thought “We’ve just found one of the greatest funk, jazz, how they were taking advantage of all the resolutions. I hope that all who have made a resolution are able pop and rock fusion bands you’ll ever hear this to stick with it. I also hope that music reinvents itself. Just because... decade, and we just had to share the magic… Self-described as “A funk, jazz & soul trio consisting of Ayla Tesler-Mabe and brothers Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers Max and Rhett Cunningham”, Ludic is one of by D.M. White the most colourful and energetic bands we’ve ever come across. Tom Petty started out his musical career in Gainesville, Florida. Early on, he was with the Epics and then Mudcrutch before they became the Heartbreakers with a few personnel changes along the way. And you won’t believe how we found them. The Mudcrutch made their way to L.A. in ’74 to find a record deal. They succeeded in recording and DBU office was feeling extremely flat one releasing a single with Shelter Records but that didn’t fly. Gainesville boys Stan Lynch (drums) and Ron evening, and so we decided to type in random Blair (bass) took a trip to California and joined Tom and Mike and crazy hashtags on Instagram to see what Campbell (guitar) and Benmont Tench (keyboards) to form we could find. Lo and behold, #funkyandfresh the original line-up of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. lead us to a beautifully accidental discovery of funk-rock band Ludic.” They released their first album in 1976. Although it didn’t sell much in the U.S., a stint in England proved more kind. For Ludic releases its 5th single, “Want U” on their third album, Jimmy Iovine came on board to produce January 15th! Click here to listen to Ludic on and together they created a critically and commercially Spotify.. successful album, "Damn the Torpedoes”, that made the band well known. Around this time, Tom had issues with his Also Check out “A Night With Ludic” below, record company over a bad contract, missed royalties and what the band cheekily describes as “alternate later album pricing. He took them on in court and payed his title: ludic in the wild: a national geographic d o c u m e n t a r y n a r r a t e d b y d A v I d costs with a tour called ‘the Lawsuit Tour”. Eventually the AtTenBouRoUgh.” record company would give into his demands. He never backed down. His fourth album “Hard Promises” was released and sold well establishing the band on their long road of elevating Rock prominence. Stevie Nicks was an admirer of the band and collaborated with them on more than one occasion. Bassist Ron Blair would leave the band on a 20 year hiatus and would be replaced by the multi-talented Howie Epstein only to re-replace him later. The band would enter the MTV age phase and release many videos to market their music, which became a necessary norm in those days and even somewhat now. The band went on a world wide tour, labelled the “True Confessions Tour", backing up Bob Dylan in the mid-eighties.