No Sleep 'til Sudbury with Brent Jensen

Former Wargasm bassist, writer, and friend of the show Bob Mayo joins me this week on NSTS to chat about more songs I've never heard.    Regular listeners will remember that Bob has told some pretty courageous personal stories on the show previously, and that he's an incredibly authentic individual. Recently he was asked to give a talk at MIT about, in his own words, how heavy metal didn't necessa...

As discussed last week on NSTS, 1991 was the year that grunge exploded. However, the scene was still very much in its infancy - hard rock and heavy metal were still the most dominant version of rock. So this week, in addition to talking about U2, Garth Brooks, and Lollapalooza, we look at the two most powerful heavy rock bands of 1991 - Guns N' Roses and Metallica. Axl Rose made history doing some...

I'm pretty stoked about this week's episode, which focuses on the rise of the Grunge movement of 1991 - the stories behind how Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and other acts came to found this musical movement.   The most interesting aspect of what people understood to be 'grunge' is that many of the bands thought to represent the genre, including Soundgarden, Stone Temple Pilots, and Alice In Chains, really...

Guitarist and friend of the show Greg Fraser calls in to NSTS this week. He's got a brand new band called Storm Force, with a brand new record, Age of Fear - and it's been getting a lot of attention around the world since its release last week. Because he's such a great Canadian, Fraze brings in five Canuck tunes that make his skin vibrate. As always, we have some laughs and a great musical chat t...

This week on No Sleep 'til Sudbury, I examine the year of 1978 through some of the most bizarre and fascinating events that shaped it musically, including Richard Branson trying to have Sex Pistols singer Johnny Rotten join Devo as their new singer after the Pistols broke up. The facts behind the untimely deaths of Sid Vicious, Keith Moon, and Chicago's Terry Kath are also discussed, as is the ill...

Singer songwriter and friend of the show Suzi Kory drops by the NSTS studios this week to talk about her recent gig at the Horseshoe. Her new single "Settle of the Dust" just dropped, and you can check it out wherever you listen to music. Always a lot of fun to have Suzi on the show - she's funny, insightful, and loves to talk about music, navigating social media trolling, and the "Love Revolution...

Happy New Year, everyone! To kick off 2020 I welcome a very special and unique guest to the show. Jon McMurray has been described as the man with no memory, following a severe head injury he sustained in his 20s. However, he does remember music - and it's the bridge back to his previous life.  His attitude is incredibly inspiring, as is his story, which he graciously shares with us this week throu...

Welcome back to the 2019 No Sleep 'til Sudbury Christmas special, featuring none other than the legendary Rik Emmett. In Part II of this year's special, Rik and I return to his home studio to chat about the controversy behind Christmas classic "Baby, It's Cold Outside", who wrote the Jeopardy theme, the back side of the beat, and so much more. And, he performs another Christmas classic. Once again...

He's back! My pal Rik Emmett has joined me once again this year on No Sleep 'til Sudbury for two special Christmas episodes of the show, live from Rik's home.   I love working with Rik on this stuff, because he's so enthusiastic about it and puts in so much preparation. He killed it again this year, with more compelling perspectives, historical insights, and hilarious stories - all while playing h...

Film director Sergio Navarretta and screenwriter Alessandra Piccione are the founders of SNAP Films, and they are also my guests on NSTS this week. They're here to talk about The Cuban, their new movie starring Lou Gossett, Jr., and also Arctic Dogs, a new movie they worked on with Alec Baldwin, Heidi Klum, and John Cleese.      We have a great chat about their NSTS playlist, in addition to the cr...

Flute! We have flute! British producer, guitarist, and Grammy & Juno winner Chris Birkett makes his return to the show, bringing with him Free Spirits collaborator and flautist Shari Tallon to talk about their new record, called 11:11. They play two songs from the record, and as always, Chris has some entertaining stories - this time around, they involve Dexy's Midnight Runners and Thomas Dolby. C...

His story began with a broken neck. Joining me this week is performance physiologist, author, speaker, and music fan Dr. Greg Wells, and he shares his incredible story of coming back from a life-altering injury to achieve extraordinary heights. The playlist he provides serves as a guiding soundtrack to this journey.      Wells' playlist: The Who - Baba O'Reilly INXS - Kiss The Dirt The Tragically...

This week I host someone I used to stay up late to watch as a teenage sports fan - broadcast legend Mark Hebscher. Since his days hosting the innovative Sportsline, Mark has done a number of other things including having written a new book entitled The Greatest Athlete You've Never Heard Of.  Hebsy is also a massive music fan, and we chat about all sorts of stuff - Mick Taylor, Paradigm Phantoms,...

Sometimes people just blow your mind with their depth of musical knowledge. Professor and author Rob Bowman did that to me this week on the show.  This guy operates on a completely different plane, folks. His musical knowledge is matched only by his passion for it. He's been hired to write for the Stones, Dylan, Rush, and so many others. We talk about his latest book The Flyer Vault, and also Zepp...

I finally talked former Tragically Hip manager Jake Gold into coming to the studio to do a NSTS episode.  As you can imagine, he told some terrific stories - about how he came into contact with the Hip for the first time, what the Road Apples record was originally supposed to be called, the dark stories surrounding "Locked in the Trunk of a Car". But also the special reason why a Cat Stevens song...

I have so much in common with Steve Jones. We both grew up in small towns in Northern Ontario, used music to cope through our small town isolation, went on to write music-based books, and now we both speak on what can be learned from music and applied to various aspects of work and life. And this week, we sit down and shed light on our intriguing similarities. We chat about Sudbury, The Violent Fe...

This week marks the first time I've ever hosted a full band in the NSTS studios, and that band was the very talented Jessica Rhaye and the Ramshackle Parade. Jessica's new record Just Like A Woman dropped last month, and the band stopped in to talk about it and also to discuss some skin-vibrating songs - each band member brought in one each. They wrap the show by playing Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wi...

My pal Kevin Comeau, guitarist of Crown Lands, drops in this week for an impromptu chat on the latest with the band and what it's been like opening up for Jack White and Rival Sons across North America. He came up with his song list on the drive over.            As always, Kev and I have a great chat, and after we talk about Crown Lands heading down to Nashville to record the new album, the conver...

I've been talking forever about music's ability to elicit an emotional response. My guest this week is musician Rob Carli, and he's created a special campaign that embodies this very idea - The Awesome Music Project.  Rob and his business partner Terry Stuart created The Awesome Music Project as a collection of stories detailing music's transformative impact on people, which eventually developed i...

Garage rockers Alissa Klug and Brendan Albert of Queens & Kings join me on the show this week, celebrating the release of their hot new single and video "You Got Me".     We play a snippet from the single and talk about some songs that make their skin vibrate, along with other stuff like stage fright, photography, Chris Cornell and Eddie Vedder, and where the intensity in their music really comes...

Julian Taylor drops by the NSTS studios this week to talk skin-vibrating tunes. His new record Avalanche is a funk and soul tour de force, and if you haven't heard it yet, you should. Julian is a super talented musician and songwriter who should be a lot bigger than he is.  We chat about his old band Staggered Crossing, a band I've loved since the late 90s, and lots of other stuff - the Funk Broth...

No Sleep 'til Sudbury is back with Canada's Queen of Punk, Bif Naked!  Bif's achieved a lot of things - topping charts with hit singles, beating cancer, and performing in Lilith Fair to name a few. We talk about the 20th anniversary of Lilith Fair and lots more - Desmond Child, New Wave, where I Bificus came from, Sudbury, protest songs, Iron Maiden and Madonna, and her upcoming seniors burlesque...

My guest this week is Brainsights CEO Kevin Keane, whose organization measures brain activity and more specifically, emotional and physiological reactions to stimuli. Fascinating stuff. Not surprisingly, Kevin also possesses a massive appreciation for the propensity for music to make our skin vibrate, and he shares some incredibly personal experiences he's had in this regard. Conversations like th...

The conclusion of my discussion with Twisted Sister founder and guitarist John 'Jay Jay' French airs this week, and what a discussion it was. His playlist is centred around John's summer spent in London in 1972 and the music he experienced there, but the span of our discussion is limitless.  We talk about motivational speaking, the similarities of our top five records, continued reinvention, the o...

He's back! Twisted Sister founder and guitarist John Jay Jay French joins me via Skype this week for part one of a very lengthy chat about all manner of musical things. In part one, John and I talk about the recording of Twisted Sister record Under The Blade at the site of The Battle of Hastings, best of Beatles versus best of Stones, his guitar collection, four hundred thousand dollar turntables,...