Entertainment
Suzie Vinnick and Downchild Blues Band at Red Deer Memorial Centre Red Deer Wednesday
Downchild Blues Band a natural progression for Suzie Vinnick
By Rob Gilgan
For local folks that caught her in one of her house concerts of a few years back, Suzie Vinnick’s appearance with the Downchild Blues Band will be a refreshing memory. For the rest of us? A brand new treat. The Saskatoon native, who now calls the Niagara region home, is thrilled to be back on the road, in western Canada, and opening for this landmark band.
“I’ve known them for years,” Vinnick explains, and while she’s never shared a stage with them before, it feels like a natural progression for her. Originally, she was booked to open for the band in Ottawa and when the promoter learned she would be touring western Canada this fall, at the same time as Downchild, the decision was made to add her to the whole western tour. She’ll appear solo at the Memorial Centre in Red Deer on October 30, warming up the crowd for Donnie Walsh and the boys.
Vinnick is touring in support of her most recent album, Shake the Love Around, a 12 song set released in March of 2018 that’s left reviewers scrambling to find new words to express how well this artist showcases the diversity of the blues genre. The album’s title comes from the lyrics of All IWanna Do, a song she wrote with Steve Strongman, one of several collaborations on the disc.
Another, Drift Away, was written years ago, with Matt Andersen. “I would perfrom it at some of my shows and often, people would come up and comment on how it spoke to them,” she says, “It happened often enough, I reached out to Matt and asked if he’d be alright with me including it on Shake the Love Around and he gave his blessing.” Drift Away is one of those blues tunes that’s uplifting and validating. “When you’re going through a tough time, just breathe, you know,” Vinnick says, describing the song’s essence.
While Shake the Love Around dips into a variety of musical and lyrical styles, at its heart, it’s predominately a blues album, “There’s a bit of a blues angle to everything,” she adds. The single of the same name features a selection of Vinnick’s guitar heroes while showcasing her multi-instrumental prowess. The tour-de-force blues singer enjoys her time in the studio and the process of collaborating with other songwriters. “Sometimes it’s a better way to get a song completed,” she explains, “It depends, honestly, on what we come to the table with.”
She’s happy, not just with the album, but how it’s been welcomed across the country. She’s looking forward, after the fall touring, to share it with her many fans in Atlantic Canada. “I haven’t been to the east coast with it yet,” she says, knowing the album will be appreciated by the region’s seasoned blues enthusiasts. It’s not just fans that find Vinnick’s music and performance so noteworthy, as her career has been highlighted by many covet-worthy awards.
These include: 2018 Canadian Folk Music Award for Producer of the Year with her co-producer, Mark Lalama, finalist status in the Solo/Duo Category at the 2013 International Blues Challenge in Memphis, TN; the 2012 CBC Saturday Night Blues Great Canadian Blues Award and the 2012 Sirius XM Canada Blues Artist of the Year. Suzie has won 10 Maple Blues Awards (she has been nominated for 21 so far!), won the 2011 Canadian Folk Music Award for Contemporary Vocalist of the Year and is a 3X Juno Nominee.
Her most cherished sits in front of her, on her desk, reminding her of her prairie roots: the 2019 Saskatchewan Jazz Festival Special Recognition Award. This award takes her from winning an emerging contest at 19 and then follows her journey through the music business, including several appearances at the festival. “I was so thrilled and truly honoured with this award. It came with a two-hour show and I was able to bring on a bunch of players I’d worked with over the years,” she adds.
Thrilled and honoured also describes the invitation to open for Downchild Blues Band; she remembers, as a teen, seeing the Blues Brothers on Saturday Night Live and discovering the Toronto band she’ll be celebrating with here, on October 30.
Rob Gilgan
Business
Donald Trump appoints Mel Gibson, Sylvester Stallone as special ambassadors to Hollywood
From LifeSiteNews
In a surprise post on Truth Social, Trump announced, ‘It is my honor to announce Jon Voight, Mel Gibson, and Sylvester Stallone, to be Special Ambassadors to a great but very troubled place, Hollywood, California.’
In an unexpected move, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has selected Mel Gibson, along with Sylvester Stallone and Jon Voight, to be “special ambassadors” to Hollywood in his next administration.
“It is my honor to announce Jon Voight, Mel Gibson, and Sylvester Stallone, to be Special Ambassadors to a great but very troubled place, Hollywood, California,” Trump announced on his social media platform Truth Social on Thursday.
Elaborating on his decision, Trump continued:
They will serve as Special Envoys to me for the purpose of bringing Hollywood, which has lost much business over the last four years to Foreign Countries, BACK—BIGGER, BETTER, AND STRONGER THAN EVER BEFORE!
These three very talented people will be my eyes and ears, and I will get done what they suggest. It will again be, like The United States of America itself, The Golden Age of Hollywood!
All three of the Hollywood stars are baptized Catholics and have, to varying degrees, professed and defended their beliefs both in God and in conservative principles more generally.
The appointments come just days after Gibson, who is well-known as an outspoken Catholic actor and director, appeared on the popular Joe Rogan Experience podcast, making headlines for defending the resurrection of Christ, talking about the post-Vatican II crisis in the Catholic Church, and speaking candidly about the important role his faith has played in his life. Gibson’s house was also one of many to have burned down in the fires ravaging Los Angeles, describing it as a form of “purification.”
Similarly, Stallone, who talked about his return to Christianity in the early 2000s after drifting away in his younger years, was also in the news recently for saying for the first time publicly that he is the survivor of abortion.
As for Voight, he was raised Catholic and attended the Catholic University of America, and is well-known for holding conservative views and talking openly about his belief in God. He is also the father of famous actress Angelina Jolie.
Censorship Industrial Complex
UNESCO’s New Mission: Train Influencers About Combatting Online “Misinformation”
The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is now incorporating teaching influencers how to “fact check” into its activities.
UNESCO claims that influencers have become “primary sources of news and cultural information” around the world – which prompted it to carry out a survey into how these online personalities verify the “news” they present.
Citizens in UN member-countries may or may not be happy that this is how their taxpayer money funding the world organization is being spent these days. But UNESCO is not only conducting surveys; it is also developing a training course for said influencers (which are also interchangeably referred to as content creators in press releases).
It’s meant to teach them not only to “report misinformation, disinformation and hate speech” but also to collaborate with legacy media and these outlets’ journalists, in order to “amplify fact-based information.”
The survey, “Behind the screens,” was done together with researchers from the US Bowling Green State University. 500 influencers from 45 countries took part, and the key findings, UNESCO said, are that 63 percent of them “lack rigorous and systematic fact-checking protocols” – but also, that 73% said they “want to be trained.”
This UN agency also frames the results as showing that respondents are “struggling” with disinformation and hate speech and are “calling for more training.”
UNESCO is justifying its effort to teach influencers to “rigorously” check facts by referring to its media and information literacy mandate. The report laments that mainstream media has become “only the third most common source (36.9%) for content creators, after their own experience and their own research and interviews.”
It would seem content creators/influencers are driven by common sense, but UNESCO wants them to forge closer ties with journalists (specifically those from legacy, i.e., traditional media – UNESCO appears very eager to stress that multiple times.)
Related: United Nations Development Program Urges Governments to Push Digital ID
Under the guise of concern, the agency also essentially warns creators/influencers that they should be better aware of regulations and “international standards” that pertain to digital media – in order to avoid “legal uncertainty” that exposes them to “prosecution and conviction in some countries.”
And now, UNESCO and US-based Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas have launched a one-month course which is currently involving 9,000 people from 160 countries. The goal is to train them to “address disinformation and hate speech and provide them with a solid grounding in global human rights standards.”
The initiative looks like an attempt to get “traditional” journalists to influence the influencers, and try to prop up their outlets, that are experiencing an erosion in trust among their audiences.
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