Sunday, September 26, 2010

Bob's Book Launch Tour

With the release of The Top 100 Canadian Singles just days away, I'm getting ready to hit the road for promotion and publicity. This means a couple of weeks of interviews, airports, and book launches. It's a chance to meet up with old friends, and connect with many of the people who voted in the poll to choose the Top 100 Singles. Also, there are a series of events, free and open to the public. I'll get to talk to lots of Canadian music fans, get your take on the music, and your memories. If you want to talk about Canadian popular music, I'd love to see you at one of these launches.

At each event, there's something different. Some feature music, some include a lively debate, and at all the them, I'll speak about the book and the stories behind the making of it. I've included details below about the events about my schedule over the next few days.

Already, the interviews have begun, and you'll see them showing up in newspapers, on-line, and on radio and tv in the coming days.

Tuesday, Sept. 28:
Travel day: I make my way from Fredericton to Toronto, arriving just before 4 PM, and the first interview is scheduled for 5 PM! Please, Air Canada...no delays today.

Wednesday, Sept. 29
A media day. Doing several interviews which will come out the next day, the day of publication of The Top 100 Canadian Singles. These include CBC Radio 2, CP/BN news, Alan Cross for Metro and exploremusic.ca, and Greg Quill of the Toronto Star.

Thursday, Sept. 30
Publication Day! The book is out, and myself and publicity queen Sue McCallum of The Next Level PR are up and at 'em early, starting at Canada AM live at 7:45 with Seamus O'Regan, one of the illustrious voters in the book. We'll run around all day, from media outlet to media outlet, and hopefully this time Sue will let me get lunch. I must remind her for the Top 100 Canadian Albums release day three years ago, I didn't eat until 10 PM.

BOOK LAUNCH:
The official launch of The Top 100 Canadian Singles will be held in Toronto at 7 PM at Ben McNally Books, 366 Bay Street. The M.C. is Dave Bidini of bidiniband and Rheostatics, himself an accomplished author of several books on sports and music. Our musical guest is Newfoundland's legendary Ron Hynes.

Friday, Oct. 1
It's off to Vancouver early, arriving at 9-ish, and hitting the media trail there

Saturday, Oct. 2
More Vancouver media

Sunday, Oct. 3
BOOK LAUNCH
4 PM, Zulu Records, 1972 West 4th Avenue. Hosted by CBC's Grant Lawrence. Grant and I will have a grand chat about Canadian music, what is and isn't in the book, and I'm sure he'll bring up his near-pathological love of The New Pornographers' "Letter From An Occupant". He claims he will storm out unless it's #1 on the list.. We'll see. Now, at this moment of writing, we're ironing out the last details of a surprise musical guest. Hopefully everything will come together, and I can make the announcement ASAP.

Monday, Oct. 4
Travel to Calgary. A media day. A sister day. No need for a hotel, will be staying in the man-cave in the basement.

Tuesday, Oct.. 5
BOOK LAUNCH
7 PM Melrose Cafe and Bar, 730 17th Avenue SW, Calgary. Hosted by CBC Radio's Danielle Nerman. Ah, Nerman. I'm sure she'll be just as witty and charming as Calgary listeners expect. We go back, Nerman and I. Here's her biography notes:
Danielle Nerman is broadcaster, producer and columnist for CBC Radio in Calgary. Danielle is best known to Calgarians as "Nerman at Night," the entertainment reporter for CBC Calgary's drive-home show, The Homestretch.
Danielle began her career at CBC Fredericton, as a radio and television reporter hired fresh out of university. That's where she met Bob Mersereau. Bob taught Danielle how to write for television ... and where to find the freshest Tim Horton's donuts.
Since Fredericton, Danielle has filed for a number of national CBC Radio shows, including a documentary for Dispatches about people stealing dinosaur fossils from Mongolia's Gobi Desert.
Danielle Nerman has lived and travelled throughout Australia, Europe, The Middle East, Central America and Asia. She's moving to Beijing in December for a one-year stint as a documentary producer for China Radio International.

Wednesday, Oct. 6
A day off? Well, by that time, I'm sure Sue McCallum will have lined up a bunch more interviews to do by phone, or on-line. I hate that about Sue, doing her job really well and everything.

Thursday, Oct. 7
Travel to Winnipeg. Media day.

Friday, Oct. 8
BOOK LAUNCH
7 PM, McNally Robinson Booksellers, 1120 Grant Avenue, Winnipeg. Hosted by John Einarson. John's the author of a bunch of the best music books ever to come out of Canada. He's an acknowledged expert on the Manitoba music world, including Neil Young and the Guess Who. He co-wrote Randy Bachman's autobiography, and has written music biographies of Neil Young, Steppenwolf, Chris Hillman and the Flying Burrito Brothers, and his latest, on Arthur Lee of Love, has garnered great praise from Rolling Stone Magazine and a certain Robert Plant. His books regularly show up on the year-end best music book lists in publications such as Mojo and Uncut. John and I will no doubt debate his favourite bold statement, that Winnipeg is the rock and roll capitol of Canada.

Saturday, Oct. 9
Fly to Moncton. Attend and present awards at the Music NB celebration.
Then, I go home. But it won't be peaceful. There's a reading in Saint John, NB Oct. 14th, a Fredericton book launch Oct. 15th, another one in Halifax on Oct. 22nd featuring Sloan, a talk at Halifax Pop Explosion on the 23rd, and in November I'm in Hamilton for the Hamilton Music Awards, with some music guests there as well. More details on these later dates in a few days...

bob

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