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On the fourth ground of the Nationwide Music Centre, there’s a 38-year-old photograph of Jason McCoy.
It’s now formally a part of the exhibit for the Canadian Nation Music Corridor of Fame, included in a bit devoted to its latest inductee. McCoy, 53, was inducted alongside expertise agent Brian Edwards in 2023. There are different photographs on show, together with one among McCoy on stage on the Grand Ole Opry and one among him with youngsters in Honduras, the place he labored with World Imaginative and prescient to lift consciousness of kid poverty. He has additionally loaned his first electrical guitar, a Japanese-made copy of The Gibson Les Paul Jr. that he bought in Barrie, Ont., and his first acoustic guitar, a time-worn Stella, for the exhibit. However it’s that 1986 picture, which got here from his first skilled photograph session on the age of 15 or 16, that reveals how lengthy McCoy has been within the enterprise.
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Staring dreamily into the space, he’s wearing black with no cowboy hat and a Nineteen Eighties-style, boy-band hairdo.
“It’s wild wanting again over that stuff,” says McCoy, in an interview with Postmedia from his dwelling in Barrie. “Whenever you’re younger you might be extra frightened about what the jacket seems like than the music. It’s actually foolish what younger artists do. Then I look ahead and I’m 53 and I nonetheless do those self same issues, however I attempt to (steadiness) it a bit higher. There are two separate issues. There’s the enterprise and there’s music. I’ve all the time discovered should you think about the music, the enterprise takes care of itself.”
That’s the type of knowledge that presumably arrived early for McCoy throughout his 38-year profession in nation music. These items of McCoy’s previous are actually housed on the Nationwide Music Centre, which is the everlasting dwelling of the Canadian Nation Music Corridor of Fame, Canadian Music Corridor of Fame, Canadian Songwriter Corridor of Fame and Quebec’s ADISQ Corridor of Fame. The artifacts within the Canadian Nation Corridor of Fame are each bizarre: There’s every part from Wilf Carter’s saddle to Ian Tyson’s handwritten lyrics to 4 Sturdy Winds and the cartoonishly farm-inspired overalls worn by Gordie Tapp, one of many Canucks who starred within the cornball American selection sequence Hee Haw. McCoy was alleged to ceremoniously place his plaque on the wall on Feb. 2, a corridor of fame custom, and carry out on the Nationwide Music Centre however the occasion was cancelled after he got here down with laryngitis. (It has been rescheduled to June 14.) Nonetheless, he was ready to take a look at his exhibit whereas on a later journey to Calgary.
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“I’ve heard the time period surreal, however I’ve by no means understood what it meant till I used to be on the NMC,” he says.
McCoy might be greatest generally known as one-third of The Street Hammers, a multi-platinum, Juno-winning trio he co-founded in 2004 that additionally options Clayton Bellamy and Chris Bryne. However he launched his first solo album on the age of 19 in 1989, a superb six years earlier than his 1995 breakthrough self-titled sophomore album that supplied hits equivalent to This Used to Be Our City, Studying a Lot About Love and Candle. The Street Hammers’ newest EP, Again At It, got here out in the summertime of 2021, however McCoy hasn’t launched a solo file since 2010.
Nonetheless, it has been as a solo artist that McCoy has been touring Canada as of late as a part of a triple-bill that includes Doc Walker and Michelle Wright. The Nice Canadian Roadtrip drops by Calgary’s Ranchman’s on Feb. 24. The present is not going to have a typical opening band-headliner construction. All three acts might be on stage on the identical time with a shared band. Whether or not these types of old-school revue-style reveals will develop into a development stays to be seen, however the format is just like Aaron Pritchard’s Liquored Up tour with Cory Marks and Matt Lang.
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“Now we have the identical agent and I believe we had been all gearing as much as do a theatre tour,” McCoy says. “The agent had a front-row seat to all these artists and we had been all speaking about how we had been going to do it and the prices concerned and I believe he simply mentioned ‘You’re all speaking about this, why don’t you simply go collectively?’ It’s enjoyable. Now we have one band and all of us come out on stage on the identical time. It’s not like one is opening up for one more. It’s actually relaxed and we share tales and it’s enjoyable.”
As for the Street Hammers, McCoy and his bandmates are engaged on new materials. He hopes to carry out the plaque-setting ceremony on the NMC in the summertime. Given his early begin within the enterprise, McCoy nonetheless sees himself as comparatively younger. So he admits the Corridor of Fame honour “feels bizarre.”
“I all the time assume I haven’t recorded the file I need to, I haven’t written the tune I need to – all that form of artist-y junk,” he says. “I really feel fairly younger but it surely’s neat if you assume again about all of the miles you’ve placed on and all of the stuff you’ve performed. It’s principally been my spouse and I because the starting and we’ve travelled throughout this place in a single incarnation or one other in numerous bands. So it’s fairly cool to be acknowledged by your friends in that approach.”
The Nice Canadian Roadtrip that includes Doc Walker, Jason McCoy and Michelle Wright might be at Ranchman’s on Feb. 24. The rescheduled NMC and CCMA Current: Jason McCoy Reside in Live performance might be June 14.
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