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From the suburbs to the stage: 2 of this year's Juno nominees for best country album are rooted in B.C.

From the suburbs to the stage: 2 of this year's Juno nominees for best country album are rooted in B.C.

CBC27-03-2025
About five years ago, Tyler Joe Miller says he was "swinging a hammer," working as a carpenter and house painter, and just starting to break into the Canadian country music scene.
On Christmas Day 2019, he released his first single, Pillow Talkin', and his first EP came out the following year later. Miller has since been nominated for several Canadian Country Music Awards (CCMAs), including Songwriter of the Year in 2023.
Now, he's nominated for Country Album of the Year for his latest EP, Going Home, at the 2025 Juno Awards.
"This stuff is crazy," he told Gloria Macarenko, the host of CBC's On The Coast. "It still blows my mind that this is something that I get to do for a living."
WATCH | Tyler Joe Miller's What Good Is a Memory:
Miller is on the shortlist with Alberta stars Brett Kissel and MacKenzie Porter, Ontario's Josh Ross — who is up for five awards this year — and fellow British Columbian Dallas Smith.
While Miller grew up in Surrey, he and Smith both put down roots in Langley, B.C. — a community outside the hustle and bustle of Vancouver, where country-loving souls can enjoy the rural surroundings and, in Miller's case, raise some chickens.
"[There's] something in the water," Smith told Stephen Quinn, the host of The Early Edition. "I mean, the city's motto was where city meets country, right?"
His self-titled album, released in late 2023, is a Juno contender this spring and was already nominated for Album of the Year at the 2024 CCMAs.
Smith hasn't always been a country king; in fact, his career started in 1999 as the frontman for Default, a Canadian rock group that released four albums over eight years and won a Juno for Best New Group in 2002.
But he said he's always loved country music.
"I'm a big believer in a good song is a good song."
WATCH | Dallas Smith's How Do You Miss Me:
Smith recently played the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tenn., a dream for any country musician.
"It was incredible," he said. "To actually get the invite from the Opry … it's quite an amazing, humbling experience."
Miller spent some time in Nashville himself recently, writing new songs and shooting a music video.
Upon his arrival home, he went to Aldergrove to pick up some chicks — baby chickens, that is.
"We moved to a property here [and] it had like a kind of an old chicken coop that needed some fixing up, so I spent the last little bit fixing her up, and we're putting the run in pretty soon here," Miller said. "We're kind of learning how to take care of chickens now, I guess."
Now, the two Langley-based artists will face off on Sunday at the 2025 Juno Awards, where they're up against some stiff competition.
"I'll just take an Uber down," Smith said with a laugh. "I'm looking forward to it. I mean, the Junos aren't here very often, so I'm going to enjoy that and enjoy it being in my backyard."
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Review: Katy Perry's Vancouver concert was a two-way love affair
Review: Katy Perry's Vancouver concert was a two-way love affair

Vancouver Sun

time9 minutes ago

  • Vancouver Sun

Review: Katy Perry's Vancouver concert was a two-way love affair

Katy Perry rolled into Rogers Arena last night for the opening night of the Canadian dates on the Lifetimes Tour. Save appearing at special one-off events like the Invictus Games in Vancouver last year, it's been eight years since her last live outing here. So she put the question to the packed arena: 'Can I still be your hall pass? I'm 40 years old now?' In pop music circles, taking almost a decade between records and live shows is to risk irrelevancy. Seismic shifts in style and taste in the TikTok era come faster than ever before and this is hard on 'legacy' artists. Based on the high-energy, fully-engaged audience response to every aspect of last night's concert, Perry was spot on answering her own question with '40 and fabulous.' Get top headlines and gossip from the world of celebrity and entertainment. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder. The next issue of Sun Spots will soon be in your inbox. Please try again Interested in more newsletters? Browse here. Yes, her comeback seventh album 147 is a bit of a hot mess at times. But the title, meant to represent the phrase I Love You, certainly describes the way the singer engages with her devoted audience. She gives a lot to her fans. The concert plays out within a narrative line about a cyborg named KP 147 travelling different zones on the web to gain hearts that give her the power to take on the autocratic entity known as the Mainframe. This evil entity that shows up in the classic black-and-green outline of the Matrix has captured all the butterflies, which it uses for energy. This makes the world (even the sidekick, Kittybot) very sad. As the 28-plus video screens on stage deliver animated visuals of the journey and challenges the cyborg must face, we enter different levels with unique challenges that are overcome by the cyber-armoured singer and her eight very bendy dancers aided by a figure-eight stage set that has more nifty gadgets built into it than a James Bond car. Bright, flashy and constantly in motion, this is a fully-loaded arena event. One that got into high gear from the moment Perry arrived suspended in the air performing Chained to the Rhythm, with the extended Hot Chip remix outro adding to the club vibe. From there, it was right into a souped-up Teary Eyes for the first of many sing-along moments. Every track was faster than the studio version and slammed home the message that, like a Cirque du Soleil show, you didn't need to care about the storyline if you didn't want to. Rather, it was time to completely freak out over hits like California Gurls, Teenage Dream, Hot n Cold, Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.) and, of course, I Kissed a Girl dropped one after the other. This last hit was 'dedicated to my fans since 2008, to the gay community,' according to Perry. At every turn, costume change or trip running across the heads of her dance crew rigged up on a wire, Perry was in high-performance mode. She's been taking some flack for not being a great dancer on social media. OK, but is there a reason nobody is mentioning the side planks, full speed knee-drops, aerial somersaults and runway sprints that she does very well? There was even a full-split drop among the many dance bangers. That should give the haters a clear directive to just shut-up already. A perfectly magical moment came when Perry brought a group of randomly-chosen audience members onstage to join in on the crowd selection portion of the set. The candid responses to Perry's questions proved to be an unexpected comedy set within the show. Questioning a nervous 12-year-old fan named Ella about what she wanted to be when she grew up, the answer was a marine biologist. This led Perry to observe that the school system in B.C. must be incredible. Then came a 20-year-old from Medicine Hat, AB who worked at the Co-Op Gas Bar. 'Wait, you live in a town where people wear hats with medicine in them and has a gas bar?' Perry asked. 'How fancy is Canada?' The whole show was a two-way love affair between the artist and audience and thoroughly entertaining. When the only nitpicking you can come up with in a concert is that the song E.T. is boring and the (spoiler alert) victory over the mainframe went on for too long, you know the Lifetimes Tour is going to be the performance of a lifetime for many of Perry's adoring fans. She sang Roar on the back of a giant mechanical butterfly. What more do you need? Plus, for a bonus, opener Rebecca Black was a pleasant surprise. Backed by two men in skirts named Charles and Joseph, and sporting a black and white polka-dot minidress, the breakout YouTuber and DJ dropped tunes from her latest album Salvation in style. Without a doubt, fast '90s industrial-tinged dance music is making a big comeback, and Black knows her way around a hooky single. She also had one of the better song introductions of the year for her hit Sugar Water Cyanide when she asked, 'Are you bored, depressed or excessively heterosexual? You need to try this product.' This artist is one to watch. The Katy Perry experience is broken down into six sections with a finale encore to close out the event. Among the unique aspects of the concert is the fourth section. Titled Chose Your Own Adventure, it reflects fan-selected song choices drawn from online voting. These tunes are changing every evening. 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