The JRMA steering committee & distinguished guests had a blast at the John Kinder Labatt Room (formerly the Amber Lounge) tonight. Media relations ace Darin Addison has done his usual topnotch job in detailing our announcements.

The only thing JBNBlog wants to add is Tommy Hunter, 74, and Gerald Fagan, 72, grew up east of Egerton in London. Here’s a quick #LDNont history quiz: Who grew up on Brisbin? Who grew up on Homan?

Here’s what Gerald Fagan had to say about growning up there in the early 1940s when he took me to the hood for a trip down his Memory Lane (or alley).

This neighbourhood has it own amazing lore. There was the house where Canada’s country gentleman Tommy Hunter grew up. That’s where the kids swam in the Thames. Here’s where they chewed the tar oozing from the ground.

“It was a Tom Sawyer existence. We rafted on the river. We swam in the river,” Fagan said in one reflective moment.

Over to Darin for the classy announcements about the co-hosts & more:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
JRMA Announces 2012 Hall of Fame Inductee and Recipients of The Dennis
Brown Lifetime Achievement Award
London, Ontario, CANADA (February 22, 2012) – The Jack Richardson Music Awards (JRMA)
Steering Committee is pleased to announce that Canadian country music icon Tommy Hunter will be
inducted into the JRMA Hall of Fame and Gerald and Marlene Fagan will receive the Dennis Brown
Lifetime Achievement Award this year.
London-born Tommy Hunter – Canada’s Country Gentleman – is renowned for his long running CBC
television program The Tommy Hunter Show. Hunter will be retiring after a final tour in 2012 that will see
his last stop at the RBC Theatre, John Labatt Centre on Tuesday, March 20 – also his 75th birthday.
Gerald Fagan, Conductor and Artistic Director, along with his wife, Marlene Fagan, who serves as
General Manager, have been at the helm of Fanshawe Chorus London, The Gerald Fagan Singers
and the Concert Players Orchestra for 34 years. They recently announced their retirement at the end of
the current concert year on July 31, 2012.
“Tommy, Gerald and Marlene have made significant contributions to music in London during their stellar
careers,” says JRMA Chair John b. Young. “With their upcoming retirements in 2012, this is the perfect
time to recognize these great Londoners.”
This year’s gala will be co-hosted by local producer/singer/songwriter Gary “GMAQ” McCauley (formerly
of the pop/vocal group the McCauley Boys) and Savanah Sewell, a founding member of the 379
Collective and marketing coordinator at the John Labatt Centre. Awards will be presented at the 2012
JRMA gala event to be held Sunday, April 15 at The Music Hall (185 Queens Ave). Nominations and
performers for this year’s awards and gala will be announced in the coming weeks.
The 2012 JRMA Career Seminars – featuring panel discussions on music promotion, licensing,
distribution, and booking, in addition to the ever popular Record Production and Demo Critique Panel –
will take place during the day on Saturday, April 14 at apk live – the third floor. The Youth Category
competition happens that evening at Fanshawe College. More details to be announced soon.
Nominations for the Fan Favourite – Original and Tribute/Cover – are still being accepted online at
jrma.ca/jrma_fave_nomination. Members of London’s music community are invited to register for the
JRMA Academy and the opportunity to vote for their favourite local musicians at jrma.ca/jrma_register.
The Jack Richardson Music Awards – named for legendary Canadian music producer Jack
Richardson – is in its eighth year and is London’s only grassroots, not-for-profit recognition of musical
excellence. Jack was chair of the industry advisory board for the Music Industry Arts Program at London’s
Fanshawe College in the late 1970’s. In 1985 he became the audio production instructor for the MIA
program at the college.
For more information about the Jack Richardson Music Awards visit, jrma.ca, find us on Facebook
facebook.com/thejackrichardsonmusicawards or follow us on Twitter twitter.com/#!/jrmalondon
###
For all media requests, please contact:
Darin J. Addison
parallel creative enterprises
darin@theparalleluniverse.com
519.679.5848
About Tommy Hunter
Tommy Hunter – born March 20, 1937 in London, Ontario – is a Canadian country music performer,
known as “Canada’s Country Gentleman”. In 1956, he began performing as a rhythm guitarist on the CBC
television show, Country Hoedown. The Tommy Hunter Show began as a CBC radio program in 1960 and
went on to replace Country Hoedown on CBC television in 1965. Hunter’s show was picked up by The
Nashville Network (TNN) in 1983 and ran on CBC until 1992. After his show was cancelled by the CBC,
Hunter continued to tour with his band, The Travelling Men. He has announced his intention to retire after
a final tour in 2012.
Tommy Hunter was inducted into the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame in 1984. In 1986, Hunter was
made a Member of the Order of Canada. He has received three Juno Awards and one Gemini Award. In
1990, he was given a place in the Country Music Hall of Fame’s “Walkway of Stars”. A street – Tommy
Hunter Way – was renamed in his honour in his hometown of London, Ontario, in the late 1990s. He
became a member of the Order of Ontario in 1996. In 2005 Tommy was honored with a Gospel Music
Association of Canada Lifetime Achievement Award.
About Gerald and Marlene Fagan
Gerald Fagan has long been regarded as one of the music icons of Canada. He brings a legacy of
outstanding musical achievement, garnered over five decades of conducting both in Canada and
internationally. Maestro Fagan has been a guest and founding conductor for many provincial choral
organizations across Canada. Internationally, Mr. Fagan has performed and appeared as a featured Guest
Conductor around the globe. Gerald has been honoured by Choirs Ontario, the City of London and
Conservatory Canada for his service to culture, and by the President of Lithuania as the conductor of the
first performance by a foreign ensemble following that country’s declaration of independence. In August of
2010, Maestro Fagan received the prestigious President’s Leadership Award from Choirs Ontario. In
November he was awarded an Honourary Diploma from Fanshawe College, and in January 2011 he was
named to the Order of Ontario.
Hailed as one of Canada’s finest musicians, Marlene Fagan has enjoyed a varied musical career as a
piano teacher, coach, church organist, choir conductor and accompanist. She is an accomplished choral
arranger and is resident arranger for Fanshawe Chorus London and the Gerald Fagan Singers. Her
management skills are exemplary and are exhibited in her ability to organize two concert series, over 300
volunteers, and all other duties connected with running three major arts organization. Marlene has given
workshops to many arts organizations over her long, distinguished multi-faceted career. Marlene has also
organized and managed five international tours for the Fagan Singers; has written and arranged
approximately twenty-five compositions each year and directs and produces fifteen productions a year in
London and Southern Ontario. On top of all this, she is the Founder, and for ten years President, of EML
International Artists Management. She assisted with the development of over thirty singers’ careers in that
time. Marlene was honoured by the YWCA as Woman of Distinction for the Arts for her contribution to the
arts in London.
For more information about the Jack Richardson Music Awards visit jrma.ca, find us on Facebook at
facebook.com/thejackrichardsonmusicawards or follow us on Twitter twitter.com/#!/jrmalondon

Ahoy & hooray. Former CHLO DJ, former Radio Caroline DJ, founding presence with the Fanshawe MIA program, Tom Lodge is finally receiving his cinematic overdue.

Lodge’s Radio Caroline memoir The Ship That Rocked the World about his experiences as a “pirate radio” off the British coast is getting the full film treatment, Lodge reports from California where he has lived for many years. JNBLog has hoped passionately for this & here is the good news via e-mail:

Dear James,Now all is moving forward with the Radio Caroline story. Speakeasy Films L.L.C. has bought the rights to my book and has proceeded with filming. They were here last weekend with the whole Hollywood crew and lots of equipment.  They interviewed me and went deep into the story.  I was most impressed with their understanding and their clear feeling and enthusiasm for this important piece of music history.The producers are Joe Mundo and Jamie Talbot and the director is Hans Fjellestad.  They just finished making a film about the music that came out of “Sunset Strip”. Now they are heading off to England to interview, the rock stars, the deejays and all those who were involved with Radio Caroline.  Also they will be using a lot of the news footage from that time. I trust that you are well, All the best, Tom Lodge

This is great news, of course, & those who have kept faith with Tom over the years in the London region, including his sons, must be thrilled.

In closing, JBNBlog will revisit the closing of a My London column about The Ship That Rocked the World from a My London column 13 months ago. My London is The Free Press weekly cousin to JBNBlog and that column was a celebration of the book’s arrival in its definitive form following earlier & abbreviated editions. Here is what I wrote then:

The first versions of the book were dedicated to Radio Caroline’s admiral, visionary and Lodge’s boss and mentor Ronan O’Rahilly. He is still a major figure in 2010′s edition.

But this time, the dedication is to the memory of a Londoner, the late Christopher C. Peterson, who died in 2009.

Peterson, a London rocker, was “a close friend who has been very involved in the unfolding of this important story,” Lodge writes in the acknowledgments.

Peterson believed in Lodge and his story for decades $- and worked on the project tirelessly. Late in his life, he was pulling in support for Lodge’s ship of rock.

Chris knew it was a terrific read and would eventually get out there. Chris was right.

Tom Lodge, the former Londoner who had been a real-life “Pirate Radio” DJ off Britain in the 1960s, has died in California.

Lodge had been battling cancer. He died on Sunday at the age of 75, his wife Delphi Lodge said Monday. That was 46 years to the day after he was whisked off the Radio Caroline boat to interview the Beatles in an exclusive session at London, England. Lodge was born in Britain on April 16, 1936.

Family and friends were mourning Lodge and celebrating his remarkable life on Facebook and other social media on Monday.

Lodge published several versions of his “pirate radio” days when the music was based on ships broadcasting from off-shore and British government radio kept rock to a minimum. The Free Press critic said The Ship That Rocked The World, the 2010 edition is the one of those books to get.

On the jacket are raves for Lodge and Radio Caroline, the off-shore 1960s’ “pirate” radio ship that broke so many hit records, from such British Invasion heroes as Peter Townshend, Ray Davies and Paul McCartney.

The British-born Lodge first came to Canada in the early 1950s, settling in Hay River, Northwest Territories, where he worked as a commercial fisherman on Great Slave Lake until he and a friend got caught on a ice floe. His friend died, but Lodge was rescued and he wrote his first book about the tragedy.

Lodge then moved to Yellowknife where he worked in a gold mine before joining the CBC Radio as an announcer, became a station manager, then returned to England as a correspondent. He took a job as a disc jockey and program director on Radio Caroline, the radio station built on a ship that sailed off the coast of Britain to dodge the BBC’s monopoly.

Radio Caroline, on which the movie Pirate Radio is loosely based, was soon outlawed and Lodge came back to Canada to work as a DJ at CHLO-AM in St. Thomas. He continued to break hit records there.

While there, Lodge met senior Fanshawe College officials and agreed to open a Creative Electronics program in 1970. When college budgets tightened, Lodge convinced the province the program would feed the music industry, changing the name to Music Industry Arts in 1972.

In the mid-1970s, Lodge moved to California where he began practising Zen. He had an ashram in the mountains near Santa Cruz, California, and took the name Umi, given to him by his Zen master.

Family members and friends held a benefit concert to help raise money for his battle with colon cancer at the London Music Club in October.