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Suzie Vinnick and Downchild Blues Band at Red Deer Memorial Centre Red Deer Wednesday

Published

4 years ago

5 minute read

Suzzie Vinnick

Downchild Blues Band a natural progression for Suzie Vinnick

By Rob Gilgan

For local folks that caught her in one of her house concerts of a few years back, Suzie Vinnick’s appearance with the Downchild Blues Band will be a refreshing memory. For the rest of us? A brand new treat. The Saskatoon native, who now calls the Niagara region home, is thrilled to be back on the road, in western Canada, and opening for this landmark band.


“I’ve known them for years,” Vinnick explains, and while she’s never shared a stage with them before, it feels like a natural progression for her. Originally, she was booked to open for the band in Ottawa and when the promoter learned she would be touring western Canada this fall, at the same time as Downchild, the decision was made to add her to the whole western tour. She’ll appear solo at the Memorial Centre in Red Deer on October 30, warming up the crowd for Donnie Walsh and the boys.

Vinnick is touring in support of her most recent album, Shake the Love Around, a 12 song set released in March of 2018 that’s left reviewers scrambling to find new words to express how well this artist showcases the diversity of the blues genre. The album’s title comes from the lyrics of All IWanna Do, a song she wrote with Steve Strongman, one of several collaborations on the disc.

Another, Drift Away, was written years ago, with Matt Andersen. “I would perfrom it at some of my shows and often, people would come up and comment on how it spoke to them,” she says, “It happened often enough, I reached out to Matt and asked if he’d be alright with me including it on Shake the Love Around and he gave his blessing.” Drift Away is one of those blues tunes that’s uplifting and validating. “When you’re going through a tough time, just breathe, you know,” Vinnick says, describing the song’s essence.

While Shake the Love Around dips into a variety of musical and lyrical styles, at its heart, it’s predominately a blues album, “There’s a bit of a blues angle to everything,” she adds. The single of the same name features a selection of Vinnick’s guitar heroes while showcasing her multi-instrumental prowess. The tour-de-force blues singer enjoys her time in the studio and the process of collaborating with other songwriters. “Sometimes it’s a better way to get a song completed,” she explains, “It depends, honestly, on what we come to the table with.”

She’s happy, not just with the album, but how it’s been welcomed across the country. She’s looking forward, after the fall touring, to share it with her many fans in Atlantic Canada. “I haven’t been to the east coast with it yet,” she says, knowing the album will be appreciated by the region’s seasoned blues enthusiasts. It’s not just fans that find Vinnick’s music and performance so noteworthy, as her career has been highlighted by many covet-worthy awards.

 

These include: 2018 Canadian Folk Music Award for Producer of the Year with her co-producer, Mark Lalama, finalist status in the Solo/Duo Category at the 2013 International Blues Challenge in Memphis, TN; the 2012 CBC Saturday Night Blues Great Canadian Blues Award and the 2012 Sirius XM Canada Blues Artist of the Year. Suzie has won 10 Maple Blues Awards (she has been nominated for 21 so far!), won the 2011 Canadian Folk Music Award for Contemporary Vocalist of the Year and is a 3X Juno Nominee.

Her most cherished sits in front of her, on her desk, reminding her of her prairie roots: the 2019 Saskatchewan Jazz Festival Special Recognition Award. This award takes her from winning an emerging contest at 19 and then follows her journey through the music business, including several appearances at the festival. “I was so thrilled and truly honoured with this award. It came with a two-hour show and I was able to bring on a bunch of players I’d worked with over the years,” she adds.

Thrilled and honoured also describes the invitation to open for Downchild Blues Band; she remembers, as a teen, seeing the Blues Brothers on Saturday Night Live and discovering the Toronto band she’ll be celebrating with here, on October 30.

Click for ticket information

Rob Gilgan

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Censorship Industrial Complex

JK Rowling dares Scottish police to arrest her over new ‘hate crime’ law threatening free speech

Published on April 2, 2024

By

From LifeSiteNews

By Calvin Freiburger

‘If what I’ve written here qualifies as an offence under the terms of the new act, I look forward to being arrested when I return to the birthplace of the Scottish Enlightenment,’ the ‘Harry Potter’ creator said.

Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling is striking a defiant tone in the face of a new Scottish law that many fear will effectively criminalize free speech on subjects such as biological sex and “gender identity.”

The Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act, passed in 2021 but only now taking effect, consolidates various preexisting “hate crime” statutes while also creating a new offense, “threatening or abusive behaviour which is intended to stir up hatred” on the basis of age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity, or variations in sex characteristics.

As covered by The Guardian and The Scotsman, various individuals and groups have raised objections to the law, including MP Joanna Cherry, who predicts it “will be weaponized by trans rights activists to try to silence, and worse still criminalize, women who do not share their beliefs”; said the Scottish Family Party, who says it will mean the “death” of free speech; and the Association of Scottish Police Superintendents and Scottish Police Federation, who fear it will overtax police forces inadequately trained to handle the influx of new offenses.

Scotland First Minister Humza Yousaf, who championed the law, insists that abuse will be prevented by a “very high threshold” for prosecuting cases and protects freedom of expression in a variety of ways, including a “reasonableness” defense. Ex-Tory MSP Adam Tomkins claims that simply “asserting that sex is a biological fact or that it is not changed just by virtue of the gender by which someone chooses to identify is not and never can be a hate crime under this legislation.”

Such assurances hit a snag, however, when calls to prosecute Rowling under the law prompted Scotland’s Community Safety Minister Siobhian Brown to walk back her initial assurances that “misgendering” would “not at all” violate the law, The Telegraph reported. “It could be reported and it could be investigated,” she said, “whether or not the police would think it was criminal is up to Police Scotland for that.”

On Monday, Rowling shared a lengthy Twitter/X thread of examples of “trans women” (i.e., men) and pro-LGBT activists she suggested were now a “protected category” despite their violent, abusive acts and/or hateful behavior, using the hashtag #ArrestMe to effectively dare the authorities to persecute her.

“The new legislation is wide open to abuse by activists who wish to silence those of us speaking out about the dangers of eliminating women’s and girls’ single-sex spaces, the nonsense made of crime data if violent and sexual assaults committed by men are recorded as female crimes, the grotesque unfairness of allowing males to compete in female sports, the injustice of women’s jobs, honours and opportunities being taken by trans-identified men, and the reality and immutability of biological sex,” she wrote. “For several years now, Scottish women have been pressured by their government and members of the police force to deny the evidence of their eyes and ears, repudiate biological facts and embrace a neo-religious concept of gender that is unprovable and untestable.”

“I’m currently out of the country, but if what I’ve written here qualifies as an offence under the terms of the new act, I look forward to being arrested when I return to the birthplace of the Scottish Enlightenment,” Rowling added.

Rowling, whose Potter novels are the best-selling book series in the world, has long been known as a doctrinaire liberal on most issues, in 2007 going so far as to retroactively add a same-sex relationship to the backstory of Harry’s mentor Albus Dumbledore, despite the character’s sexual attraction not being referenced in the books themselves or their film adaptations (until briefly being alluded to in the third film of the Fantastic Beasts spinoff series).

Even so, Rowling has been deemed a bigot by pro-LGBT activists for refusing to go along with the notions that gender is a social construct that may be changed at will, or that life-altering surgical or chemical “transition” procedures are appropriate for confused minors. In recent years, despite intense cultural pressure, she has only grown bolder in opposing the transgender lobby’s detrimental impacts on children as well as actual women.

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Entertainment

Elon Musk funds conservative actress Gina Carano’s wrongful termination lawsuit against Disney

Published on February 11, 2024

By

From LifeSiteNews

By Doug Mainwaring

‘As a sign of X Corp’s commitment to free speech, we’re proud to provide financial support for Gina Carano’s lawsuit,’ said X’s head of business operations.

Actress Gina Carano is suing Disney-owned Lucasfilm for wrongful termination from Star Wars: The Mandalorian, and Elon Musk is paying her legal bills  

Carano was fired in 2021 after she posted to social media, including X (formerly Twitter), conservative opinions on hot-button issues such as gender pronouns usage, Black Lives Matter, election fraud, the COVID-19 lockdowns, and mask mandates.  

Disney “bullied Ms. Carano, trying to force her to conform to their views about cultural and political issues, and when that bullying failed, they fired her,” explained Gene Schaerr, Carano’s attorney, in a statement.  

The suit explains that at one point, Disney/Lucasfilm demanded that Carano “participate in a Zoom call with Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy and 45 employees who identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community, going so far as to say that her willingness to endure such harassment and humiliation was a ‘litmus test’ for her.”  

Following her termination by the entertainment giant, Carano’s agent, United Artists, and her entertainment attorney, dropped her as a client. 

Elon Musk is making good on his promise 

Elon Musk has followed through on the promise he made last fall to fund the legal bills of people treated unfairly by employers over their posts on X/Twitter.      

“As a sign of X Corp’s commitment to free speech, we’re proud to provide financial support for Gina Carano’s lawsuit, empowering her to seek vindication of her free speech rights on X and the ability to work without bullying, harassment, or discrimination,” said Joe Benarroch, X’s head of business operations.  

Carano announced her lawsuit on X on Tuesday: 

After my 20 years of building a career from scratch, and during the regime of former Disney CEO Bob Chapek, Lucasfilm made this statement on Twitter, terminating me from The Mandalorian: “Gina Carano is not currently employed by Lucasfilm & there are no plans for her to be in the future. Nevertheless, her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural & religious identities are abhorrent & unacceptable.”    

“Nothing could be further from the truth,” explained the MMA fighter turned actress. “The truth is I was being hunted down from everything I posted to every post I liked because I was not in line with the acceptable narrative of the time. My words were consistently twisted to demonize & dehumanize me as an alt right wing extremist. It was a bullying smear campaign aimed at silencing, destroying & making an example out of me.”      

“Artists do not sign away our rights as American citizens when we enter into employment,” she added.  

The 59-page civil suit, which was filed in California federal court, begins with a clever, iconic Star Wars-style introduction:  

A short time ago in a galaxy not so far away, Defendants made it clear that only one orthodoxy in thought, speech, or action was acceptable in their empire, and that those who dared to question or failed to fully comply would not be tolerated. And so it was with Carano. After two highly acclaimed seasons on The Mandalorian as Rebel ranger Cara Dune, Carano was terminated from her role as swiftly as her character’s peaceful home planet of Alderaan had been destroyed by the Death Star in an earlier Star Wars film. And all this because she dared voice her own opinions, on social media platforms and elsewhere, and stood up to the online bully mob who demanded her compliance with their extreme progressive ideology.

Defendants’ wrath over their employees’ social media posts also differed depending on sex. Even though “the Force is female,” Defendants chose to target a woman while looking the other way when it came to men. While Carano was fired, Defendants took no action against male actors who took equally or more vigorous and controversial positions on social media.

But the rule of law still reigns over the Defendants’ empire. And Carano has returned to demand that they be held accountable for their bullying, discriminatory, and retaliatory actions—actions that inflicted not only substantial emotional harm, but millions of dollars in lost income.

The lawsuit cites many examples of appalling social media posts by other Disney/Lucasfilm personalities that went unaddressed and unpunished:  

In several social media posts, original Star Wars star Mark Hamill made comparisons of Americans who support President Trump with Nazis while also asserting that Trump is the KKK’s candidate. 

Co-star Pedro Pascal, who played the role of the Mandalorian, often expressed positive views on the Black Lives Matter movement, LGBTQ+ rights, and protests for abortion rights. He also compared Trump to Hitler.  During Pride Month, 2020, he posted two Disney-owned Muppet characters, Bert and Ernie, drawn as activists waving a transgender and LGBTQ+ pride flag and promoting “Black Lives Matter” and “Defund the Police.”  

Co-star Pedro Pascal’s June 27, 2020 social media post. Schaerr-Jaffe LLP court filing on behalf of Gina Carano

Disney even rehired Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn in 2019 after terminating him in 2018 for horrific social media posts years earlier such as “I like when little boys touch me in my silly place,” and “The Expendables was so manly I ****d the ***t out of the little pussy boy next to me! The boys ARE back in town!”  

Yet Disney failed to offer to reinstate Carano, and turned a blind eye to Hamill’s and Pascal’s offensive posts.  

“I would love to pick up where I left off & continue my journey of creating & participating in story-telling, which is my utmost passion & everything I worked so hard for,” said Carano on Tuesday.  “It has been difficult to move forward with the lies & labels stuck on me, backed & encouraged by the most powerful entertainment company in the world.”  

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