The legend of Belle Starr's been inspiring creativity for a century now: there's been dime store novels by too many authors to name, movies and songs from artists like Bob Dylan and Mark Knopfler that have riffed on the Texas outlaw's tale.

I'm loathe to miss a good show, but sometimes fortune doesn't shine kindly. The phenomenon known as Shovels & Rope last played Vancouver on August 2nd of 2012, the same night as the phenomenon called Wagons was playing at the Railway Club. We make our choices and I chose the Wagons--a good choice too, since the show I did go to was pretty killer. Sometimes,…

The show had just started when the text message came in from a singer/songwriter friend: "Drinking game: everytime Billy Bragg expresses a political opinion, do a shot." This elicited a solid chuckle from the group of friends I was sitting with at Vancouver's Vogue Theatre watching Billy Bragg on stage. We were about three songs into the set and it's fair to say that…

Canadians, we're fond of saying, often define themselves as "not Americans." With so much shared culture the line between what's Canadian and what's American can be a blurry one at times. We like hockey a lot more than Americans, we eat more doughnuts and there's always the unexplainable cultural appeal of Tim…