cart
"Whispering Pines is the first comprehensive book, long overdue, on Canadians’ impact on contemporary American pop music. . . . This is a refreshing addition to pop-music literature as well as to the often neglected-by-Americans corpus of Canadiana."
Whispering Pines: The Northern Roots of American Music . . . from Hank Snow to the Band/ July 2009. 360p. illus. ECW, hardcover, $28.95 (9781550228748). 782.42 Hank Snow, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, Gordon Lightfoot, Robbie Robertson and the Band (except for Levon Helm), Bruce Cockburn, Kate and Anna McGarrigle—all Canadians. Yet Whispering Pines is the first comprehensive book, long overdue, on Canadians’ impact on contemporary American pop music. Schneider profiles major songwriting performers, fleshing out stories unknown by casual fans and perforce discussing some of the most critically acclaimed rock albums, from the Band’s Music from Big Pink to Neil Young’s After the Gold Rush. He explores the origins of particularly influential songs, such as Gordon Lightfoot’s great “Canadian Railroad Trilogy” and Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock” (the lyrics came to her while watching TV news about the festival in David Geffen’s New York apartment). If Schneider isn’t quite satisfying on what makes a song Canadian, it’s not through lack of trying. Rounded off by a very useful discography, this is a refreshing addition to pop-music literature as well as to the often neglected-by-Americans corpus of Canadiana.
