Burton Cummings is proud to be surviving the Taylor Swift era
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With some turbulence facing the country these days, the Canadian music environment remains strong. It's an outlet to help carry the load.
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Enter musician and walking music encyclopedia, Burton Cummings, on the phone line. With decades filled with hit songs and historical Canadian firsts, Cummings, 77, has seen it all.
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In the midst of another leg of his A Few Good Moments tour, the proud Winnipeg native has a brief break after recently headlining the all-Canadian lineup for Line Spike Frontenac, north of Kingston, Ont. Keeping Canadiana spirit in full force, performing Runnin' Back To Saskatoon (co-written with Kurt Winter), was a perfect inclusion.
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Off the stage, one of his biggest achievements is his ever-growing MP3 collection, staggering in scope.
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'The minute CDs were invented, I was a happy guy and I went and got a whole half a dozen iPods and loaded them with all my favourite stuff because I fly all the time … so I've worked on my library now for 40 years and I can say this very honestly, I have way more documented music than any radio station in the world — anywhere.
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'I was never a vinyl fan because back in the hippie days we would party for days — and drink beers and play the records and they got scratched all the time — and then I would go and buy another copy of the white Beatles album … I never liked vinyl because there was always so much noise.'
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But he remains faithful to his era.
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'I don't listen to that much modern stuff anymore, but I have to take my hat off to Taylor Swift. She broke all the records that I ever knew about in the industry. I kind of joke on stage now that I've survived into the Taylor Swift era and it makes me very proud.'
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'To have a new album out at this age in my life and have the tremendous reviews that I've gotten — it's like people, and the critics, have been very kind to this album. I'm very happy about this at my age.'
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A Few Good Moments also reveals a bookend to his life. Cummings shot the cover photo.
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'It was 1970. The big clock you see I bought on tour in the Maritimes, I think Halifax. The small clock was my mother's alarm clock through her whole entire adult life. The watch in the middle — I got for being on The Dating Game and not getting picked — so there you go.'
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'In the 1960s, there was nothing for pop music on television other than maybe the Ed Sullivan Show. You'd see somebody lip sync one big record for three minutes. When the Dating Game approached us (The Guess Who) they said, look, Burton is still single. The other three guys were all married. They said if you let Burton be bachelor No. 3, we will let you guys open the show lip syncing a song. So in 1969 that was a big deal to get on national television — and we lip synced Undun.
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