MUSIC

BY NICK KREWEN, www.samaritanmag.com

Members of the Canadian music industry now have somewhere to turn when they experience hard times.

Operating under the slogan "Created by the music community for the music community," The Unison Benevolent Fund (UBF) will eventually provide emergency relief for the estimated 12,800-strong Canadian music industry workforce that are self-employed or contract workers and aren't eligible for the benefits usually earned by salaried workers. .

However, UBF executive director Sheila Hamilton tells Samaritanmag the fund isn't quite operational, despite the generous contributions of several corporate and individual benefactors to the tune of $800,000.

"We're very close," says Hamilton, a former president and executive director of the Canadian Country Music Association. "We need $1 million in the endowment fund to really be operational."

Hamilton says the $1 million figure is the benchmark dollar amount set by the non-profit charity's board of directors for the endowment fund to start generating significant interest and become self-sufficient.

BY KAREN BLISS, www.samaritanmag.com

Guitarist-singer Brian "Head" Welch, who now fronts Love And Death, co-founded Californian nu metal band Korn in 1993, but the hard partying lifestyle left him addicted to methamphetamine and other drugs and alcohol. After getting clean and sober, he quit the multi-platinum-selling band in 2005, saying he wanted to devote his life to Christianity.

That did not mean giving up music, however, just conducting himself differently, which included wanting to give unto others.

Welch got a little carried away at first. One thing he contemplated was building skate parks for disadvantaged kids.

"Yeah, I was just off of drugs. I had entered this new life and I wanted to do everything," Welch tells Samaritanmag. "I wanted to be this saviour of the world. I would love to be involved in that, but I don't think it's on my radar of things to do."

One of the first charitable ventures he undertook was with Good News India, a Christian missionary organization which helps communities in Northern India by distributing food and clothing to the impoverished, furthering education, sponsoring orphaned or destitute children, and providing relief to people in the leper colonies. GNI does all this while heavily promoting evangelism and distributing bibles...

BY KAREN BLISS, www.samaritanmag.com

A coalition of late guitarist Jeff Healey's friends, family and fellow musicians is raising money to make The Jeff Healey Park in Toronto more accessible for disabled children by adding specially designed playground equipment.

The park, originally called Woodford Park, was renamed last June after the internationally acclaimed singer-guitarist who had been blind since age 1 from retinoblastoma, a form of eye cancer. He died of lung cancer in 2008 at 41.

"We can do something meaningful for as little as $20,000 to $25,000, like have a little area that's more accessible on the playground," says Rob Quail, who played in bands with Healey when they were teenagers and in their early 20s.

Shortly after, Healey - who played the guitar flat on his lap -- formed The Jeff Healey Band with bassist Joe Rockman and drummer Tom Stephen which signed to Arista in 1988 and released the Grammy-nominated See The Light. The band's last album was 2000's Get Me Some, then Healey released numerous solo albums.

Jeff Healey Park is located at 1 Delroy Drive in the Queensway and Royal York Road area of Etobicoke, where Healey was born and raised and was living at the time of his death.  Healey's family has lived across from the park for 47 years.

BY KAREN BLISS, www.samaritanmag.com

Soft-rock band Train launched its own wine in 2009, Drops of Jupiter Petite Syrah; followed by 2010's Calling All Angels Chardonnay, with a portion of the proceeds going to Family House, which provides free temporary housing to families of seriously ill children receiving treatment at the University of California, San Francisco Benioff Children's Hospital. 

This month, the group, which formed in San Francisco in 1994, will present the charity with a sizeable cheque.

"They have been getting money funneled from our wine for a long time, but this will be the biggest cheque - it's $50,000. And so they're gonna be real psyched," Train frontman Pat Monahan told www.samaritanmag, when he was in Toronto to promote the band's new album, California 37, out April 17.

Train will also release a new varietal, a cabernet sauvignon named after the album. Target in America will carry the wine, says Monahan.

"We've always believed in helping kids," says Monahan of how the band ended up selecting Family House to support. "We're also are very cynical about charity because there are a lot of people who take advantage of charity. You can go to web sites to find ratings and there were a couple of things that we were really interested in that were not rated very well.

"Of course we want to make wine because it's fun and we're a San Francisco band where wine is super big and also it's probably the best US wine, so if we're gonna do that, let's do something cool at the same time by doing something better for somebody.

BY KAREN BLISS, www.samaritanmag.com

Ace guitarist Slash rounded up Judd Nelson (The Breakfast Club, Suddenly Susan), Lovely Bones' AJ Michalka, True Blood's Kristin Bauer and more, to act in a music video to raise aware about homeless youth in Los Angeles.

"It's for the Los Angeles Youth Network. It's a shelter for homeless kids," Slash tells Samaritanmag during a visit to Toronto to promote his next album, Apocalypic Love (out May 22). "It's to raise money for them from that song 'Gotten,' the Adam Levine song from the last record. We did a really poignant video about that specific situation."

The original version of the song, featuring Maroon 5's Levine on vocals (he does not appear in the video) and appearing on Slash's 2010 self-titled album, was produced and mixed by Eric Valentine. The new version was remixed at Astound Studios using what's called GenAudio's unique 3D spatial audio technology, AstoundSound(R), which is based on over two decades of R&D into how the brain processes audio information.

The high quality MP3 of the song can be downloaded by making a donation -- minimum amount $1 (US) --to Los Angeles Youth Network

Slash - who recruited singers from various genres for his last album -- says, "That particular song is not like anything I've ever written before and I was so attached to it. I was sort of shy about playing it for anybody and the few people who I did play it for didn't seem particularly impressed with it for some reason. I was really attached to it so I thought Adam would be the voice for that [but] I don't know this guy; I don't even know if he would like it. I just always thought that he had an amazing control and power over his voice. And so I sent it to him and he really liked it and that was all I needed. We didn't do anything to it, except we sat down and there was one chord that we extended so that was the whole arrangement was already together."

BY KIM HUGHES, www.samaritanmag.com

Toronto-based Michael Bowman and Cathy Cutz could blab your ears purple name-checking "synergy" and "metrics" and "low-hanging fruit" having worked for decades in media buying and marketing (Bowman) and event marketing (Cutz) for various corporations and non-profits including Christian relief agency World Vision, where they met.

But chat with them about their newly launched 145 Live Solutions and prepare to be flattened by good, old fashioned enthusiasm so straight-up palpable the phone line practically crackles.

In simplified terms, 145 Live Solutions spearheads relationships between businesses, non-profits and musicians, fulfilling the need of one by leveraging the strength of the other, while serving as interpreter (and matchmaker, manager, strategist) in subsequent executions.

The idea is an extension of World Vision's Artists Associate program, which provides tour support in exchange for child sponsorship generation at live shows. Bowman and Cutz oversaw that program for close to eight years and realized its limitations. Some artists have other causes dearer to their hearts and 145 Live Solutions can best pair up the right artist with the right charity and right company.

When corporations foot the bill to have non-profits travel with touring bands, for example, they get positive PR blowback (and tax breaks), while non-profits tap into a vast pool of potential new donors. Musicians in turn can raise cash for their favourite charitable causes while helping offset overhead by coordinating tour sponsorship with a charity partner.

By IAN WALKER, www.samaritanmag.com

A pair of Canadian music icons are putting their pride and wallets on the line all in support of an innovative charitable foundation called Music Heals. But this isn't just your average wager. Not even close.

At stake is as much as $15,000 each. And here's the kicker: There's a distinct possibility both men will lose. More about that later.

54-40 lead singer Neil Osborne and renowned music producer GGGarth Richardson (Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rage Against The Machine, Hedley) are currently in the process of making a record together. The two are also hockey nuts, with Osborne a longtime supporter of the Vancouver Canucks and Richardson a lifelong Toronto Maple Leafs fan.

Naturally, this led to a bet based on their love for their favourite teams, with both men making a YouTube video to help raise the hype. As you'll see in the funny clip, Osborne is risking his royalties that the Canucks will win the Stanley Cup while Richardson has gambled his producer's fees that the Maple Leafs will make the playoffs for the first time since the 2003-04 season.

"There's bragging rights at stake, but the main reason we decided to do it is to raise money for Music Heals," Richardson tells Samaritanmag.com. "It's something we both believe in so we thought what better way to bring awareness than a good-old hockey bet."

The BC-based Music Heals Foundation was founded by a group of music enthusiasts and provides funding to a wide range of music therapy services across Canada. For those unfamiliar with music therapy, it is used in many settings, including schools, rehabilitation centers, hospitals, hospices, nursing homes and community centers and is designed to help patients overcome physical, emotional, intellectual, and social challenges.

BY KAREN BLISS, www.samaritanmag.com

"If David Suzuki could hold a tune, I'm sure they would've asked him," Montreal rocker Sam Roberts quips in an interview with Samaritanmag about his recent appointment by the Canadian Academy of Recordings Arts & Sciences as the Juno Awards first-ever Sustainability Ambassador.

"I think that's gonna be my quote for the rest of this. If you hear it again, it's because that's gonna be my catch phrase," he laughs.

In all seriously, the Juno Award-winning singer-guitarist is a perfect candidate for the title and its obligations. He was first informed of environmentally-friendly practices by his roommate in university and found living that lifestyle was "very simple. It doesn't really take much." All these years later, he continues to implement them, and more.

"There are so many things - from the most small mundane details like the cleaning products and detergent that you use and washing your clothes with cold water and using phosphate-free hand soap and dishwasher detergent, to not flushing the toilet every time we go pee to composting to try to recycle as efficiently as we possibly can," says Roberts.

Canada's biggest music awards show -- which takes place in Ottawa this year over two nights, one a private untelevised gala dinner March 31 and one a more concert-like two-hour televised event April 1 -- will be using the Canadian Standards Association's event sustainability management standard, CSA Z2010, to guide the design and delivery of the awards and associated Juno events.